My travel diaries
Saturday 9 June, 2007 - Chisapani, Helambu, Nepal
This has not been a great day, but then I've been expecting it to be like this for a couple of days now, for today we finally felt the full force of the monsoon. Shortly after setting out we find ourselves walking through a heavy and prolonged downpour. We descend a deeply rutted pathway and I have to concentrate on where I'm putting my feet as the likelihood of slipping is high. I left my lightweight waterproof trousers back home in London, and although I brought my salopettes with me to wear on Everest last month, they are quite heavy, so I left them in Kathmandu to cut down on weight.
Before long my trousers are drenched. They become so heavy with water, and I've lost so much weight on my travels over the last couple of months, that they begin riding down my backside and adopt the low slung look with a couple of inches of boxer short showing, that I believe is the fashion among young people these days. Every wet, miserable cloud has a silver lining, and this one's is that I've become inadvertently trendy.
We can see nothing of the landscape ahead of us as visibility is only a few metres, and I'm concentrating so much on where I'm putting my feet that it would scarcely matter anyway. It's simply a case of putting one foot in front of the other, getting your head down and getting on with it. After about an hour and a half, we reach the village of Golphu Bhanjyang with its main street of enclosed terraced houses. It's not a very nice place and normally somewhere you would pass straight through, but we're glad to reach a settlement and stop for a very welcome cup of coffee in a dark and poky tea shop on the main street. We have a short break before moving on through the continuing rain.
Still we descend, and after about another hour's walking we reach two more remote tea shops, both of which are closed. We stop at one with a sheltered outdoor area to take refuge from the rain and have some biscuits. To compound my misery, as we're leaving I smack my head on the roof of the shelter. Nepali buildings are not designed for people my height, and throughout this trek I've probably smacked my head twice a day on assorted doorways, beams, canopies and shelters, and I shudder to think how many brain cells I've killed. I took my climbing helmet with me to Tibet and never wore it, but it would have been far more useful here. This is a particularly nasty bashing because I had my head down, was setting off at pace and caught myself square on the right temple. I now have a large bump and a headache which remains for the rest of the day.
Shortly after this the path descends through farmyards on either side. Sometimes it's unclear which paths lead to houses and which are the main trail, and every so often we end up in somebody's back yard and Maila has to poke his head into a doorway and ask the way. The farm terraces appear to drop away sharply, and if we could see more than a few metres ahead of us, we would probably find ourselves walking high up on a hillside. Presently we reach Chipling village and stop at another tea shop for coffee and Mars bar. The village is a sprawl of houses stretching for a long way beside the steeply descending track, but many of the houses look quite picturesque with their traditional thatch.
We leaving Chipling at 11.30, and shortly afterwards the mist clears briefly to reveal a landscape of steep hills and ridges crammed to every square inch with green terraced fields. Our path clings to the side of one of these hills and we can look down into a network of valleys with cottages dotting the hillsides. The view is all too brief and before long we are back in mist which remains for the rest of the day. The path has now descended to a low point of 1750m, and from here on it climbs steadily again along a wide dirt track. Wheel marks indicate that some vehicles have used it recently, though happily we see none.
We reach Chisapani (meaning "cold water" in Nepali) at 1.30, where we stop for the day. Although we have descended from 2470m to 2220m, by my calculations we have actually descended 850m while climbing a further 600m more. Although we have a shower and running water in our lodge, the rooms and dining room are dirty, and unlike yesterday's lodge it's not a particularly nice place to stay. I have some very soggy clothes to dry, but the only place to hang my washing line is partially over my bed, which isn't ideal. The room is cold, and in the morning my clothes are still wet.
The lodge gets busy during the day and seems to be a popular place for locals to hang out. There is talk of another strike tomorrow in Kathmandu, which would leave us without transport when we reach the end of the trail. We discuss our options, which include a very long walk all the way back to Siling's house in Kathmandu, or taking an alternative trail to the popular tourist village of Nagarkot, where we could stay an extra night in a comfortable lodge and hope the strike is over in two days' time. Later, news reaches us that the strike has been cancelled and we revert to our original plan of walking to Sundarijal on the edge of the Kathmandu valley, from where it's a short bus ride home.
I've now finished both of the books I brought with me, so in the evening I have to play Siling at cards. This is something I've tried to avoid because he's a bit of a card wizard and keeps thrashing me. He shows us a card trick which is a bit of a shaggy dog story about a sirdar (sherpa leader) and one of his guides whom he keeps sending over various high passes to procure equipment for his expedition. Each piece of equipment is a set of cards. For instance, the sirdar asks for 4 yaks to carry the equipment, so Siling shuffles the cards and deals out 4 aces from the top. Then the sirdar asks for 4 porters, so Siling shuffles again and deals out 4 jacks. Unfortunately he makes a bit of a mess of things after this. The sirdar asks his guide to get 4 girls for the post-expedition party.
"Now, how did I know you were going to say that?" I say to Siling.
He shuffles the pack and deals out 4 kings. Maila and I burst out laughing.
"Those are funny looking girls," I say. "What kind of party is this?"
We polish off 4 large bottles of San Miguel and turn in for sleep at 10 o'clock, by far my latest night of the trek, although Siling and Maila have spent several more lively evenings fraternising with lodge owners and whiskey.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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