From My Notebooks In 1976: India to Nepal

This might be a good time to imagine yourself in Kathmandu, with no TV.

Friday, 31st, to Pokhara

Into Nepal towards Pokhara. First flat road then mountains rise up steeply before me, a rich red-brown village, houses of adobe, top half white, lower half terra cotta. Frames painted in almost black brown, and intricately fretted wooden shutters. Echoes of Ecuador, Colombia. Poor Nepalis wear shawl or cloth, muddy white, and tight trousers that often look more like ragged bandages. Bare feet, toes splayed, calloused, creviced. Rich Nepalis wear conical hat with design in pink ice cream colours, a suit jacket over long-tailed shirt and tight legged trousers with baggy tops. Jackets always of very dull material. The tops of old-fashioned English suits. (The jackets come to Nepal. The bowler hats and trilbys go to Bolivia). Someone told me that in Afghanistan the secondhand clothes business is literally so.

Road to Pokhara has many broken patches and rises quite high, but weather is perfect. Arrive in mid-afternoon though the town itself escapes me. A local directs me to the lake where I find a colony of small restaurants. “Lakeside, Lake View, Greenlake, Baba, Snowland, Hidden View,” each with rooms attached for about five rupees. Food is served outside on tables under canopies – variations on basic Chinese meals, with buffalo meat (Buff). Many dishes, even the tea, have a vaguely unpleasant taste, which I called Tibetan Aftertaste (TAT). Never diagnosed.

[Here I have to confess to a quite extraordinary lapse on my part. I have since diagnosed the taste. It was cilantro (or the coriander leaf as some call it), which I had eaten happily in South America, but not since. Now, in Pokhara, I didn’t recognise it, and so I didn’t like it. It shows me just how subjective taste can be.]

The population consists mainly of slightly blissful Westerners, and sharp, dedicated Nepali boys who seem to run the whole show. The latter are multi-lingual, gifted calculators, and shrewd conversationalists, but their most impressive feature is that they never solicit to the point of hustling. They DO take No for an answer, unlike their Indian counterparts.

Behind the front row of best places overlooking the lake are other cheaper huts for tourists.

I met Collin, the Australian maths teacher on his BMW. He is designing a raft to float down the Murray River. With him is a Kansas Peace Corps guy, newly commissioned, full of his coming project (a water system) with an amazing vocabulary of Mid-American expressions that sound close to blasphemy out here. I learn from him that there are five stages in the realisation of the individual, culminating in the person who has formed his own value system and is able to apply his intelligence to realise his objectives.

On a later visit we meet a couple in Snowland. He has ginger beard, morose expression, glasses and little woolly hat. She looks like an off-duty nurse. She conducts both sides of their conversation, telling him what his likes and dislikes are, discussing the merits of various dishes in the light of his tastes and physical needs, and then orders for them both. He said: “I’ve had enough grease for one day.”

Saturday, December 1st, to Kathmandu

Lovely ride. Much of it along a river. 120 miles. 5 hours. Good road except for the last section climbing up to pass into Kathmandu Valley. Visit British Embassy to find Dudley Spain. He’s not there. I’m recommended Kathmandu Guest House. Then go to Freak Street and Durbar Square, to see if Carol spots me.

[Somewhere along the way – probably in Delhi –I made contact with Carol, who had been travelling independently, and we’d arranged to meet in Kathmandu. I was expecting to find her there.]

Met Gavin Fox, and we meet again at 7pm at Swiss Restaurant for dinner. Just after eating Carol sees me through window and comes in looking like a Russian princess. We are so delighted with each other that poor Gavin is embarrassingly de trop.

We go to Carol’s hotel where Lorenzo is staying – also Australian – whose partner was knifed when they were camped out on a trek. Then we go back to the K.G.H

Sunday, 5th December

Leave K.G.H. to go to Lalibala Guest House.

[The Lalibala had a large, gated yard where bikes and other vehicles were safe, and we met an exotic mixture of travelers there, including a young English couple on a bike, Meg and Eliot, whom I visit to this day, almost fifty years later.]

The Lalibala Guest House, 1976. John Murray surrounded by BMWs. But where’s my Triumph?

There it is, with me doing my Grouch Marx impression

Follows: A week of hunting for permits, visas, boots, etc. [We decided to do the Annapurna trek.]

Visit Swayambu Temple – where monkeys slide down the handrails.

Starting the trek, December 13th

10am from Shining Hospital along valley of strewn pebbles and boulders through villages and Tibetan camp, slowly uphill.

Some confusion at first crossing. Dave comes, and goes to Dhanpur, and we climb steeply for 1200 feet, to Nandanda. I have a really hard time climbing with the pack, but no lasting pain. Arrive 5.30. Great views. Marriage ceremony greets us at last step, led by two men with vast alpine horns, and bride covered in a litter. B&W pix. Passed women in shoulder litter, carried like backpack, in the valley.

Marriage procession in Nepal

Words fail me

14th, Nandanda

Long night. Before dawn a small dog outside does barking exercises non-stop. Up at first light to catch Annapurna and Machapuchare. And the sunrise. Dark stooping figures of women with a child between, barefooted, shawled and loaded with baskets and head straps. They are chattering loudly. Who wants to change their lives? Think of Cudlipp and his “Poverty of Aspiration.” Pompous phrase. Who gives a fig for his opinions and beliefs? It’s his power they listen to. How could he know what they need? {God often speaks through crooked mouths} [Cudlipp was a famous and on the whole admirable editor of the Labour-orientated Daily Mirror. Can’t think why I took him on this way.]

Later a band of pack donkeys passes below lodge window which overlooks square dalle roof and stone street. Ponies have cockades and strips of carpet to protect flanks from harness. They all wear bells of many different tones and pitches, and the combined sound makes a wonderful river of sound flowing ––––––.

Mahendra lodge. ‘Peanut tea’. Saw sunset from rise. Slept in loft. Sewed up Carol’s pouch on stoop. Carol took pack on to Kare, Lamle, Chandrakot, then down steeply to Birethanti.

Long suspension bridge. Checkpoint. Lorries. Because Ghorepani tomorrow is high and distant we go on to Tirkedange – a tiring last haul up about 1500 ft. Map is wrong here, and first village which ought to be Hille is in fact Sudami. At T there are already several people – two Japs and a young Aussie with a very hearty manner.

We sleep on the floor here. Just after we arrive a vigorous young man comes in with a lightish pack on his back – tennis shoes, neatly pressed trousers – an almost theatrically athletic entrance. He almost immediately starts playing with the children, and has a very familiar manner, but because I take him to be a Japanese trekker it’s not until he changes into shorts and a T-shirt and busies himself about the place, I realise he’s the father. He has walked from Pokhara that day, while we are tired after taking two days. [In fact, Pokhara is much closer than Kathmandhu]

Sleep on mats, but the Aussie has spilled Raxi on one, and I breathe it in. [Raxi is a local liquor]