The Millennium Trip – Letter #8

By: Keiron Burchell

Namaste everyone,

I love Kathmandu. I am sorry, but I do. Without doubt it has been the most tourist-orientated city so far, unquestionably the most expensive. Despite all this, despite myself, I have been seduced by it’s filter coffees, it’s sit-down loos and it’s supermarkets selling Gillette shaving blades and Werther’s Original sweets.

Yesterday evening I met up with two South African honeymooners and we found a restaurant serving juicy pieces of rump steak flown in from Hindu India and cooked by God-knows-who in Kathmandu.

Even the sub-cultures are fascinating. Outside the main tourist areas all the would-be flower children gather in the Nepali tea shops overlooking the squares. They sip jasmine tea, smoke hash and listen to Tracy Chapman and Suzanne Vega. The girls wear floral patterned cotton dressed and the guys grow their beards and all of them try to pretend that they aren’t really studying business at Leeds University.

Have just returned from my nine-day solo trek around Annapurna Base

Camp (ABC) in the Himalayas. The day before leaving for Pokhara, I went

in to one of the many travel agents in Kathmandu in order to find out what condition the trail was in. This being the monsoon season, the area is prone to landslides. The two beefy Sherpa types behind the desk took one look at my scrawny 69kg frame and became emphatic;

“Don’t go,” they said, “It’s the rainy season; There will be landslides, and leeches…” They shuddered theatrically. “And besides, you won’t be able to see anything.”

After

allowing this to sink in, they hit me with their sales pitch. “Why don’t you wait a month and then take a guide and a porter?” I had heard all of this before, and more, as the main aim of the hike had always been altitude acclimatization for Tibet, so had come prepared.

That evening, I said good-bye to my Swedish friends again, before catching the bus to Western Nepal the following morning. Panagiota was still holed up in her hotel room with Dysentery. As soon as she had recovered, they planned to head for a beach in Goa.

I had a FANTASTIC trek. An amazing, mind expanding, perception-altering trek. When it rained I used my raincoat; when the leeches appeared after the rains I used salt; where the road had been washed away by landslides I used the alternative route. And fortunately, on the four days when it really mattered, the day broke clear and crystal, exposing

the mountains in all their glory.

And there were distinct advantages to trekking off-season. Prices were

reduced; I had whole hotels to myself; I had personal service wherever I

went and I was able to catch villagers doing things other than touting for tourists: Farming, spinning yak hair, shelling rice grains, weaving bamboo baskets etc. This was trekking for wimps; trekking for couch potatoes like me. Every few kilometers along the route there is a tea shop-cum-Lodge where you can stop and rest or even spend the night if you feel un-inclined to continue.

These lodges, with their slate roofs and stone walls, have names like ‘Super View Lodge’ and ‘Hill Top Guest House’ – no-one like the Nepalese for overstating the obvious – and they all advertise ‘Best Quik Service’, ‘Real Hot Shower’ and even ‘Apple pie!’. They offer mostly Tibetan food and accommodation on a controlled but escalating scale depending on how far you are from civilization or at least from the nearest road. I like to call this the “Mars Bar Scale”; In Pokhara, a Mars Bar will cost you $0.30. In ABC, after that same Mars bar has been carried for three days on a Porter’s back, it will cost you upwards of $1.40.

On the way up to ABC I took it easy, doing between 6 to 8 hours trekking per day. On the first day I climbed from 1000 to 1500 metres above sea level through terraced fields of rice, bamboo and maize. These farms appear to cut giant sized, yellow-green coloured staircases up the hillsides through the Rhododendron forests.

During the following five days I see-sawed between 1500m and 3000m above sea level. Occasionally catching glimpses of the mountains in the distance, I walked over hills and through valleys of temperate cloud forests consisting of moss covered Oaks and Rhododendron, Ferns, bamboo and…leeches.

Determined little matchstick sized bastards, they lie in wait in muddy pools and, upon your approach, stand upright and sway towards you in a

“Mmmm yummy, Mom remembered Melrose” kind of way. If you stand

still long enough you can watch them racing each other as they flick-flak up your trouser legs.

After this, I spent a full three days above 3000m eating garlic soup and

trying to grow as many red blood cells as possible. Above the tree line at 3000m and below the permanent snow line at 5000m, the vegetation consists of Alpine meadows with cowslips, forget-me-nots, buttercups and daisies creating a riot of colour against the backdrop of grasses and clover. On the morning of my ninth day I was sleeping at ABC (4200m a.s.l.) and I woke up at 05:15 to find myself surrounded by soaring peaks in every direction, the tallest being Annapurna I, the tenth highest mountain in the world at staggering 8091m.

As Naipaul observed, the geography of the Himalayas is simple enough:

There are hills, valleys, saddles and passes just like anywhere else. Here it is only the scale that defies comprehension; People, houses, even villages are dwarfed by the sheer size of the surroundings. A journey across the valley to a point directly opposite you will take a whole day and could involve a vertical descent and ascent of 600m.

In 1950, after becoming the first man to scale a 8000m peak, Frenchman Maurice Herzog’s expedition to Annapurna I took a month to fight their back through the forests and monsoon rains with the expedition Doctor having to amputate frostbitten fingers and toes as they went. With the benefit of hot tea, warm hotels, and a 30km bus ride it took me two days.

Just in case I haven’t been, let me make myself quite, quite clear: The views are akin to a religious experience, the accommodation is perfectly

comfortable, the living expenses are minimal (as long as you can survive

without Mars bars), and the villagers could not be more friendly. 80 000 tourists a year could not be wrong.

This is it. This is the holiday you have all been looking for. Sell your bodies, sell the satellite dish if you absolutely have to, but make sure you see this at least once in your lifetime.

PS: For a truly memorable experience, don’t forget to bring your walk-man and a few of your favourite CD’s along with you.

On Saturday I leave for my organized four day tour of Tibet and then for mainland China.