[JPM Travel Journals]
INDIA and NEPAL 01
Intro to India
Holi Holy Vrindaban
The Sadhu in Taj's Shadow
Pushkar's Respite
A Sitar & a Vespa in Udaipur
The Clean-Bombing of Mumbai
Goa Beach Hippie Sighting Tours
Unequal Vision in Benares
Everest, Out the Window
Into Their Thin Air
Anna Purr Now
Within You Without You
Rishikesh Part 2
Amritsar: Bold, Gold
His Holiness of Dangerous Liasons
Delhi Visit #5
New Delhi Turns to New York
[ PHOTO ARCHIVE ]
20 May 01
Kathmandu, Nepal.
"I'm just passing through here,
on my way to somewhere civilised.
And maybe I'll even arrive."
I returned to so-called civilization less than a week ago, after three weeks in the Annapurna Himalaya. Eleven kilograms strapped to my back for twenty days of almost every variety of weather and temperature. Certainly one of the most incredible things I've every done in my life. Oddly, what kept coming to mind was my solo cross country USA motorcycle ride three years ago. Similarly I saw so many different places, so many different ways of life, had my patience and my energy constantly tested, constantly flirted with serious danger but survived with one of the most intense experiences and set of memories locked in my head.
The Annapurna Himalaya from Upper Pisang village rooftop.
From a physical stand-point, I've probably never been this tanned, this fit, and this fired-up about the great outdoors. Additionally, I've never had such a shaggy set of whiskers as this either-- and it's become more than a bit comedic at this point-- I can't decide if I should just shave and be done with it, or continue in this semi-alter-ego would-be mountain man.
Now I am back in Thamel, the over-crowded, overly-loud quarter of Kathmandu where the majority of foreigners find themselves. Tucked neatly into the cheap and simple Star Hotel, I've traded the din of scratchy Nepali radio tunes and address for ex-pat favorable tunes from the dive bars surrounding here. Dodging cars and hash dealers and maniacal rickshaws-- I'm trying to readjust. Its fantastic how quickly and how pleasurably I slipped into a temporary himalayan world without engines, usually without electricity, and became so irrationally attached to a knit hat and a pair of good boots.
The literal high point of the trek was crossing the Thorung La pass at approximately 17,769 feet, 5416 metres. It was a serious undertaking, and one of the most surreal days I've had. I'd been on the trek for about ten days prior to the "summit" day and reckoned myself to be fairly well acclimitized to the lack of oxygen. Oddly, at Thorung Pedi (base camp, so to speak) at 4800m, the day before, I started feeling really ill. I'd had an bowl of strong garlic soup, drinking it down and then chomping all the raw cloves, too; all this on a starvingly empty stomach. When I started feeling weak and nauseous I got concerned- - failing to couple A with B, assuming I was coming down with AMS (Acute Mountain Sickness) symptoms from the lack of oxygen at this altitude. Of course, I'd had no other symptoms, not even the faintest headache in all these days-- usually the first cue that one needs to go to a lower altitude. All I was remembering was that I felt sick as a dog that night, last December, with my brother Adam and my father, in Mexico, Iztaciquatl, at about 5000m (15,600) and lost my dinner that time upon reaching the desolate mountain refugio, all of us feeling wretched and weak. So naturally when I started feeling ill I assumed I'd screwed the pooch and brought myself too high, too fast. The disorienting nausea compounded on itself with the anxiety, and it was not a good time then. Paranoia always exacerbates existing discomfort.
Add to this the fact that the day's trek to Throng Pedi was through a growing snowstorm, getting heavier after our arrival at base camp, and that descent was not very possible. Everyone in the freezing lodge was playing cards and warming their feet with the gas burner blazing under the long wooden table. All I could think was that I felt horrible and didn't know why, and was taking the official advice that if you don't know what you're suffering from, assume it is the Altitude.
Without a goddamned thing to be able to do, I sat it out, and interestingly enough after a few hours I felt almost normal, yet somehow sure that I wouldn't sleep a wink at this high altitude. Wrong. After twenty minutes wearing all my winterwear and two warm hats, snug in my zipped and clenched down bag, I started nodding off-- blew out the candle and found some dreams about 9 pm.
I woke at 05.30, feeling fantastic, laced up my boots and packed my articles, ate some breakfast and made my way through the crunchy snow. There were five of us, the others being those I'd met in the previous days, trekking companions-- and we agreed to stick fairly much together for safety's sake. And for four or five hours we pushed to the top. Past the graves of unfortunate trekkers, along ambigious trails in the fresh snow, it was bright and wonderful and intense. Two well-acclimitized canines followed us from base camp, up the snowy trails, for a good hour. It was so surreal.
One or Two breaths per step. Pausing for a photo at ~17,000 ft
The angelic white snow peaks and plains, the blue of the sky-- it was emotional at times-- and coupled with the trying circumstances it was like living in a dream-- alternately sublime or hellish. Breathing one or two deep, harsh breaths per step, stopping often to catch my failing breath, eventually I made it past all the false summits, up all the inclines, and to the final Buddhist chorten (in simple: stacked stones) and the flapping tibetan prayer flags. The obligatory photos followed, I drew some pictures in the snow with a stick, and we all hung out in the thin air for a little while. I was still laughing about the snowman I tried to build at about 5200 metres-- he fell over just as I withdrew my camera to photograph his feeble frame, despite all my hard efforts and troubled breathing.
Summit Party. Thorung La pass. 17,769 ft, 5416m.
Peggy (Canada), Anae (Germany) & guide, Javier (UK), Ayel (Israel)
(Our NZ friends were still on the way...)
Then began the long steep descent of several hours to Muktinath. The views of Dhauligiri and its neighboring peaks were astounding. Eight thousand metre mountains make anything else you've seen look like, indeed, mere hills. At one point, not long before the final descent to the village, I stopped on a ridge, just past a crumbled and deserted yak herder's hut-- the moon was rising behind me and the sun setting in front of me behind the monster peaks. Sucuumbing to cliche, I have to say I really couldn't believe most of what I was seeing. I collapsed on the soil, a victim to my overloaded senses once more.
I'm realizing now in trying to type all this up that it's thoroughly impossible to be properly articulate and fair to all the things that I saw and felt in those three weeks. The nights of rain pounding down on the tea house lodges-- I was sure it would rip the roofs away and leave me wet and freezing. The filling of aluminum water bottles and adding of iodine tablets; eating questionable meals. The hard walks, the steep descents. The number of times I was almost knocked into terrible falls or landslides by clanking, ornate mule trains. The frail poor porters hauling immense loads with baskets and straps across their foreheads. Passing myriads of Buddhist mani walls and piled structures. The hot springs in Tatopani, the valley of Kagbeni and Red House lodge. Waking up early to suck down hot black tea and climb onto the roof with a slotted log ladder to draw Nigiri's mountain face. Losing my head in the fierce winds of the Kali Gandaki valley trails and screaming at the Annapurnas, chewing on the dirt and dust in my mouth. Bathing on freezing nights from a metal bowl of lukewarm water. Running to escape the rain, only to find a smoke-filled hut and amused locals, looking at me like an upright turtle. Waking easily at dawn every morning. Blasted tunnel rock pathways. Impressive views one after another, day by day, surpassing the last. Lemon tea, vegetable macaroni, momos, tsampa tibetan porridge, dal bhaat when nothing else seemed advisable to eat. Sing-songing happy villagers-- namaste! namaste! namaste!
Youth of Today. Muktinath, Nepal.
Gompa and Peak near Manang village.
Restoring Buddhist paintings in a Kagbeni monastery.
At 4.30 in the morning, some few days before the Annapurna circuit was coming to a close, I climbed Poon Hill from Ghorepani village. In the moon's glow I could see the silohette of the massive mountain ranges, Machupuchre, Annapurna, et al.. but once the sun broke the clouds rushed in and I was drinking hot chocolate with a bunch of other semi- grumpy trekkers absorbed in the clouds here on this hill peak.
I wasn't ready for it all to be over, but exhausted enough and fearful enough of the weather's decreased reliability and visibility in those last few days, to not continue on into the Annapurna Sanctuary for one more week of it all. But I did add two days and took a longer way to the point where the road, and autos, meets the trail.
I finished up by myself, walking into Nayapol from Birethanti, and climbed on top of a peculiar large machine which I was reacquinted with from failing memory-- defined as a bus. I sat on top, in the blistering sun, weaving through the valleys and hills back to Pokhara. Every part of me was aching and sore. If the bus flew off the road's steep edge I wouldn't have cared-- such was my contentedness and bliss.
I almost never get culture shock going -to- exotic, different places. I almost always get it severely when I go -back- to places that are more civilized, more modern, and more built up than where I've been. And this was the case with Pokhara. It took me a good two days to come back to a sense of relative sanity; then to muster the courage to board another bus bound six hours back to Kathmandu. It didn't help that the previous night I'd met and conversed with a young Canadian man who'd a week earlier been departing on a bus that drove off the side of a ledge, rolled three times, killed seven people. He escaped with bruised elbows; I rode back to Kathmandu with a sensitive stomach and white knuckles.
From here not much is absolutely certain. My sitar waits for me in Varanasi, but honestly, after this gorgeous month of a much friendlier Nepal, I'm not particularly excited to be back in frantic, chaotic, trying India. I really want to go to Rishikesh and the north, in Himalchal Pradesh. I just hope I can deal with crazy Benares long enough to book myself passage to the mountains where I hope to find the mouth of the Ganges and a serene yogic escape where the Beatles pilgrimm'ed to in '67. ('68?)
I'm still waiting to find out about a possible english teaching short term gig in China, and flirting with other ideas of killing time and gaining insight before I head to Berlin looking for work and a decent roof for the fall. I've been trapped in thought about Egypt, having met many others recently that have seen the pyramids. And I'm thinking about exotic mostly-overland routes of making my way to Europe, possibly going to Turkey, Syria, Jordan on the way.
Yesterday, an English friend, from just before and during the trek, Javi, and I walked to Pashupatinath and then Bodnath. P is a hindu site with some elaborate, auspicious burning ghats on the dingy river there. I sat and sketched bodies ablaze from the opposite shallow banks of the river, charred arms frozen in mid-air pleading to the sky-- and the funeral attendents in bootleg bad 1980's rock t-shirts. Sick. Then Javi and I strolled on, after much hassle from the souveneir sellers, to Bodnath. We did several laps around and also ascended the cool Stupa there. The highlight, if not the funky Buddhist monks and nuns that always make me smile with their shorn hair, maroon robes, and Dalai Lama-esque glasses, was perhaps the small children anxious and begging J and I to hold their hands and spin them around in dizzy circles in the air. They'd stagger away, stumble, then come back for more.
Butter lamps and Boddhisatva Glow.
Now I pass the days still recovering from the intensity of these last weeks. I read entire books in a day, mountaineering texts, trekker's journals, pen postcards, sketch the children, and spin the prayer wheels.
At night, again, in the flame's flicker, the failed electricity, I tune to the din of the street noise, ocassionally getting up to stand on the balcony to watch the filthy boys paddling bicycle tyres down the deserted Thamel streets with a stick. Then, again, warm in my down sleeping bag I fall into a peaceful slumber, anxious for the next day.
Within You Without You >>
©2001 JPM. All photography and writing copyrighted.