My travel diaries
Friday 1 June, 2007 - Gatlang, Tamang Heritage Trail, Nepal
We're up at 6am and away by 7 on the Tamang Heritage Trail. We start by climbing steeply. A vehicle track zig-zags up the hill directly above Syaphru Besi, but Maila finds a footpath between each zigzag so that we don't have to walk along the road. The first part of the climb passes through rice terraces before becoming a track through patches of blue pine. It's very steep, and Maila sets a fast pace, so I frequently have to stop for water. On the way up Siling spots a child picking berries from a box myrtle tree, so he asks for some for me to sample. He calls it a kafal berry, and the berries are red and sweet, rather like a raspberry, but contain a very large stone, so that although the fruit tastes nice, there's not much on it - certainly more stone than berry.
Siling goes on to explain that a particular type of Nepalese barbet (bird) has a song that sounds like it's saying, "The berry's ripe, the berry's ripe". He tells me a local legend about how this song came about.
"A brother and sister lived in the mountains of Nepal long ago, but the brother had to go away to join the army. Before he leaves they make a pact: he will return every year, but she must send him a message when it's time for him to come home. She tells him he should return when the kafal is in season, and she will send him a message to say the berry's ripe.
"This is the last time the young girl sees her brother alive, for in his very first year away, he's killed in the wars and doesn't respond to her message. But she never gives up hope that one day he will return. Every year thereafter she sends a message to say the berry's ripe, until in time death takes her as well.
"Yet still she continues to yearn for his return. In her next life she returns as a bird and keeps sending her message: 'The berry's ripe. The berry's ripe.' And this is how the barbet came to have its song."
We continue up to a col where there's a tea shop with views down into the valley before us, and the villages of Goljung and Thambuchet. I buy coke, sprite and fanta for each of us, and this acts as rocket fuel and gives us renewed energy to continue up a further 100m to a viewpoint with a view that is quite unexpected. We've come up 850m to 2300m, and find ourselves on top of a wooded hill commanding views on all sides. There is a slate terrace bedecked with prayer flags at the top, and we have classic Himalayan views of snow-capped mountains between branches of blue pine. The view to our east is dominated by 7225m Langtang Lirung and its close neighbour Langtang II, and to our north we see beyond the nearby grassy green mound of Nagthali Ghyang, the highest point on the Tamang Heritage Trail, to the snow-laden mountains of Tibet, including one called Sanjen which looks quite dramatic with its ridge and sheer south face. It's a picturesque conclusion to a stiff but satisfying climb.
We find a narrow track which slants across the side of our wooded hillside and down to the village of Goljung. This side of the hill looked impossibly steep from the col, but the path is good, and we descend swiftly to the fields and terraces surrounding the village. Siling and Maila are much more sure-footed descending than I am, so it's something of a challenge keeping up with them. I'm glad when we reach the village, not just because I get to have a rest, but I've also worked up quite an appetite.
I still have to wait two hours before I'm finally fed. Tourism is somewhat underdeveloped along the Tamang Heritage Trail, and there are no established tea houses in Goljung, but Siling and Maila find a family who are prepared to cook us some dal bhat as long as we are happy to wait. My two companions set about gathering information from the villagers about places available to bring trekking groups. Siling and I get led by two local boys to a couple of families who are willing to provide homestay accommodation. The first house is a bit drab and characterless, with just two small timber panelled rooms set apart from the rest of the family, with no common dining area. I like the second one, though. It contains one big L-shaped room with tourist beds in one of the arms of the L, the family's beds and living area in the other arm, and the kitchen in the corner in between. It's a stone building and feels exactly what homestay accommodation should be like. There's even a small child sleeping in one of the beds to give the place an authentic feel! I give Siling the thumbs up, and we return to our first family for lunch. We find ourselves in an upstairs room where a shy young woman cooks our dal bhat in pots on the floor. There is no chimney in the room, and smoke from the fire drifts through cracks in the ceiling. I'm famished, but she's happy to keep cooking rice and curried potatoes until we're all satisfied.
After lunch we have a stiff climb to get back onto the road, and I find it quite hard going in the midday heat, especially at Maila's 'sherpa pace'. I'm determined to keep up with them, but I find myself going through water like nobody's business, and eventually have to bite the bullet and ask Maila to slow down. He has a mischievous smile on his face and I wonder whether he's testing my stamina. I'm relieved when we reach the road, which contours around the side of a hill about 400m above the valley floor. There is mixed woodland on both sides of the track, so not only do we have a gentler gradient to let our dal bhat settle, but there are patches of shade to provide relief from the unrelenting sun. Although the track is wide enough for a vehicle and is marked as a road on our map, it was apparently built to transport slate from a quarry which is no longer used, and as the bus goes no further than Syaphru Besi, not a single vehicle passes by on what is actually quite a nice path to walk along.
We continue for a couple of hours, then leave the track to find a path to Parvati Kund, a sacred lake in a peaceful clearing at 2500m. This is the highlight of our day. The lake is in a lovely setting among wetland beside a lonely Hindu temple and a couple of Buddhist stupas. As I climb up a bank to photograph the buildings, the clouds clear and we have great views across the valley to Langtang's twin peaks in the far distance. This is a total contrast to my Himalayan experience in Tibet a month ago. There I was right in amongst the mountains looking up at snow-capped giants from a bleak and barren desert landscape, but now, just a few hundred miles away, I find myself surrounded by greenery in a setting which feels mountainous in an entirely different way. I feel like I'm looking down from on high, gazing across the valley we've been traversing all afternoon, and the white giants form a distant backdrop.
'Kund' means lake in Hindi, and Parvati is the consort of Shiva, one of the three principal gods of the Hindu pantheon. Shiva's own lake is nearby at Gosainkund, and we will be passing that way in a few days time on our walk back to Kathmandu. Siling tells me a story about how the lake was formed.
"Parvati knew that if you stir milk you get butter, the essence of milk. She assumed that if you stir water you will eventually obtain the essence of water, too, but she didn't know what that was, so she asked her husband Shiva to take a bowl of sea water and stir it until he discovered its essence. Faithful Shiva did as he was asked, but when he tasted the substance that was left behind, he discovered it to be a terrible poison. He needed pure water quickly to cure his illness, so he took a handful of earth to hollow out a bowl to fill with fresh water. As he waited for the hollow to fill, the lake which is now known as Gosainkund was formed."
I tell Siling that some of his story has a basis in fact, for the sea contains too much salt for the human body to cope with on its own. This is why you cannot drink sea water to quench your thirst: the excessive quantity of salt will effectively poison you. I reply to Siling with a similar story from British folk legend. A few months earlier I had been staring across the Giant's Causeway, a pathway of basalt columns stretching out into the sea on the north coast of Northern Ireland. Legend has it that the causeway was built by the giant Finn McCool to enable him to wage war on the Scottish giant Benandonner. A few miles south of Giant's Causeway is Lough Neagh, the largest lake in the British Isles. This lake was formed in a similar fashion to Gosainkund, when Finn McCool scooped up an area of land and cast it into the Irish Sea. The land attached itself to the sea bed and became the Isle of Man, while the hollow left behind filled with water and became Lough Neagh.
Storytelling over, we tear ourselves away from the tranquillity of Parvati Kund and descend to the village of Gatlang which sits on the hillside a couple of hundred metres below us, and a similar distance above the valley floor. It takes us about half an hour to reach Gatlang, and discover it to be a lovely well-preserved village of slate-roofed houses, bedecked with traditional Tamang ornate wood-carved windows, some of which have been painted in a very colourful fashion. It's one of the most beautiful unspoilt villages I've ever come across in Nepal.
We reach the community lodge at the bottom of the village at about 5.30. It's a basic affair, and our sleeping arrangements are mattresses on the floor of a shared dorm, but it does the job, and we are the only people staying there in any case. The lodge is brand new, but it's been built very sympathetically out of local stone, and includes the traditional carved windows.
It's been a long day. In all we've ascended a total of 1550m, and descended a further 750m, all at a fairly fast pace. I'm knackered, and have drunk over 4 litres of fluid today without needing a piss. I don't think I've sweated so much in my life, not even running around a football pitch or a squash court. The 'sherpa boys', Siling and Maila, know that I climbed to the North Col of Everest just a few weeks ago, and should be fully acclimatised, and although I'm not a mountain boy like them, they seem determined to put my fitness to the test. I'm quite enjoying the challenge of it all, and am equally determined not to slow them down too much if I can help it.
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