My travel diaries
Thursday 31 May, 2007 - Syaphru Besi , Nepal
I'm kept awake most of the night by monks playing loud woodwind instruments in the monastery next door. It makes a change from dogs barking, but at least the dogs aren't trying to be tuneful.
We have an early start, too. Siling and I leave at 6am to head for the bus station on the northern part of Kathmandu ring road, where we meet the cheerful Maila, who will be joining us on our trek. Maila was both cook and guide on a trek I did in the Annapurna region of Nepal five years ago and it's strange seeing him again, though he hasn't changed one bit. He still lives up to his nickname of Maila the Smiler.
Although the bus is due to depart at 7.10, Siling tells me it never leaves on time, and then it will wait on the ring road until it fills up. It's old and rickety, and I'm braced for a knee-jarring full day's ride along winding dirt tracks. Our destination is a village called Syaphru Besi at the far end of the road due north of Kathmandu, whose location makes it the gateway to both the Langtang trekking region and the Tamang Heritage Trail, which we intend to walk over the next few days.
We have some early bad news when Siling buys a paper and learns that the monsoon is going to arrive early this year. It usually reaches Nepal in mid June, but an article in Siling's paper says it has already reached Mumbai, and is due in Nepal on 6 th June. This means the back end of our trek, as we pass through Helambu on our way back to Kathmandu, is likely to be very wet. I don't so much mind the rain in Helambu, but I had been hoping for clear skies as we pass through the Gosainkund lakes area, the high part of our trek where we would expect to get the best views. The monsoon is scheduled to arrive the day before we get there, and Silings says it's likely to mean snow at that altitude. I don't mind snow - in fact, I quite like it - but I don't want cloud. Oh well, a monsoon trek will be an interesting experience, though my photos will probably be rubbish!
Our bus leaves at 7.30, and thankfully only waits for about half an hour on the ring road. It leaves Kathmandu surprisingly quickly, and within minutes we are climbing up the side of a hill to a high pass. Beyond the pass the road descends gently along zig zags clinging to the sides of green and fertile hills, amongst villages and terraced fields. It eventually descends about 1000m to the town of Trisuli Bazaar at the bottom of the valley, where we stop for lunch of dal bhat.
After lunch, instead of heading logically along the valley floor, the road rises high above in a series of switchbacks. For the next two hours my view of the Trisuli valley remains the same, just looking down from a little bit higher each time. The bus keeps stopping to pick people up and set them down again, and becomes quite crowded, with people standing up all along the aisle. I'm one of only about half a dozen westerners on the bus and it really wasn't designed for people of our size. My knees take a constant battering and I frequently bang my head on the luggage rack above us.
Beyond the switchbacks the road flattens out a little as we climb to our maximum altitude of 2100m. Siling and I sleep for most of this section - the best way to appreciate the journey - and I wake again shortly before reaching Dunche. This marks the boundary of Langtang National Park, and I have to get out to show my passport and buy a permit from the park headquarters.
Most of the passengers get out at Dunche, and the bus is quite empty for the remainder of the journey to Syaphru Besi. If I was hoping this would make it more comfortable then I'm quickly corrected as we descend zig zags again on an increasingly bumpy dirt track. We're dusty as hell and being thrown all over the place in a bus that's falling apart. As it bounces around I hear a thud and look across to see the unoccupied seat opposite me has separated from its legs and slipped to the ground. A few minutes later I hear an even louder thud and see that exactly the same thing has happened to the entire back row of the bus behind me.
"I'm glad we're walking back to Kathmandu," I say to Siling, rubbing a recently-acquired bruise on my head.
The discomfort ends at 5pm when we finally descend into Syaphru Besi and reach the road end at the bottom of a gorge. Our bags, which were locked away in the boot, are covered in a film of dust.
No matter though. We check into the Buddha Guest House, which has a peaceful garden just above the road, and better still, a solar shower which enables me to clean away the day's considerable quantity of accumulated grime. I'm mightily glad to be off the bus, and equally pleased I won't need to board it again. I'm looking forward to starting the trek tomorrow as I've not really done a great deal of walking since leaving the UK six weeks ago. Despite reaching 7000m on Everest, the majority of my time seemed to be spent acclimatising in my tent.
The mountain explorer Bill Tilman came to Syaphru Besi in 1949 during an extensive exploration of the Langtang region. He described it thus:
"This small village, with scarcely any fields, seemed to live by what it could fleece from travellers - which, I thought, would be very little judging by what they had to offer and the kind of traveller who passed through. It is a dull place, like the other villages on this rather dull trade route where neither mule-trains with jingling bells and scarlet wool-tufted harness, nor tea-houses where the picturesque muleteers foregather, are met." ( HW Tilman, Nepal Himalaya )
While in a literal sense it may still be true today, I can't help thinking this a rather miserly description of the place. Its position at the end of the road from Kathmandu, with its regular bus service, has certainly put an end to the mule-trains and given villagers an opportunity to make a living from travellers, but when I look at the friendly-faced lady of the Buddha Guest House serving us tea, I'd have to say it's a little bit harsh to describe her as 'fleecing' us. And as for it being a dull place, I'm really happy to be here, and looking forward to the journey ahead.
We sit outside the guest house drinking black tea in a steep-sided valley close to the Tibetan border. Siling tells me how Tibet got its name.
"Tibetans travellers called their country Bei, and when they came over into Nepal they drew a map to describe where they came from to people they met. 'Ti' (here) 'Bei,' they said."
He tells me a similar story about Nepal: "Ne" (there) - "Pai" (the land of holy places), because a Tibetan who arrived in the Kathmandu valley saw so may temples. I'm not sure whether Siling's story is just apocryphal, but to keep him company I decide to tell him the one about how the kangaroo got its name.
"Apparently an explorer got off Captain Cook's ship, saw a kangaroo and asked an aborigine what it was called. 'Kang-a-roo' replied the aborigine, which apparently means, 'I don't know.'"
Remarkably, Siling accepts my story quite readily. He's used to leading British trekking groups, however, and it wouldn't surprise me if he's heard it before.
"Do you know what they call a deer without any eyes," I ask him.
"No idea," he replies, laughing in a way Nepalis often do when you try a bit of deadpan humour on them.Previous 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 Next
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