ASIA - NEPAL: THE ROCKY ROAD TO NIRVANA
by Mike Currie



It’s 6 am and pitch black. A dozen or so sleepy travellers, silhouetted in the dim light of a tea stall, hoist bulging backpacks above their heads and unseen hands rope them to the roof of the bus.

Soon we’ll be rising above the polluted Kathmandu Valley, heading for the crystal clear Himalayan air of Syabru Besi, around 80 kilometres north, near the border with Tibet. The bus is nearly empty. It should be a good trip.

By 6.30, as the engine bursts into life, the aisle has disappeared under sacks of rice, bags of cement, bottled gas, baskets of vegetables and caged hens; everything is here, it seems, except a sacred cow.

Long western legs are now squashed up tightly against narrow seat backs, and locals who arrived late jostle for space on top of the goods. They are lucky. On the roof, around 20 passengers cling to the metal frame of the luggage rack.

The driver slips in a tape of Indian rock music, turns the volume to full blast, and we are on our way. Behind his seat, a white metal box invites: "Suggestions’’. I could make a few, but know they would never be implemented.

Giant letters above the windscreen proclaim this to be a "Tourist Vehicle", but the bus soon stops to pick up more passengers, who climb over the seats like monkeys, and somehow squeeze into pockets of space.

It’s still dark as we leave, and it’ll be dark when we arrive. It will take 12 hours to cover those daunting 80 kilometres. For this is Nepal’s most dangerous road, clinging precariously in tight, narrow switchbacks to the mountainsides from which it was blasted.

There is barely space for two buses to pass each other. The driver has to perform minor miracles at times, reversing to gain an extra few centimetres. Sometimes the drop is a sheer 1,000 metres, and there are no crash barriers.

By lunchtime we reach the small town of Trusuli Bazar, on a valley floor, having "conquered" the first group of mountains. We eat dal bhat, Sherpa food consisting of steamed rice, lentil soup and pickled vegetables. It will be our staple diet through the days and nights ahead.

This first stretch of road is luxury compared to what lies ahead. At least it is sealed. As we start to climb again, we are on hard-packed dirt.

By late afternoon a major landslide has cut a deep, ugly scar into the mountainside above, and taken with it almost half of our ribbon of road as it gathered speed, sweeping huge boulders into the valley.

We leave the bus and walk stiff-legged across what is left of the road, as the driver edges the vehicle across. Now we must trek up between the switchbacks, waiting for the bus to manoeuvre slowly through a thick deposit of debris.

Some Tibetans have joined the bus, the women in colourful traditional garb. Their millet terraces cling impossibly to the steep slopes of the mountainsides. We are not far from the border with Tibet, and some of the older passengers fled into Nepal in 1959 after the uprising, our trekking guide tells us.

Most passengers leave at Dhunche, a dusty one-horse town with simple lodges, but we will go on another eight kilometres to the very end of the road, to the hamlet of Syabru Besi.

There’s no respite from the sardine-like conditions, though. The bus is again packed as we leave.

This final stretch of road is just a string of potholes, and it takes 90 minutes to cover the short distance, with heart-stopping precipices at the edge. Thankfully, we sink into darkness, and I can no longer see the drop.

When we reach Syabru Besi there is a blackout. The only light is from the myriad stars. We grab a warm beer in the lodge, eat a hot, candle-lit meal, and tumble into bed. The lodge costs the equivalent of US$1.5 a night, the bus ticket was just over US$3.

The difficulty in reaching the remote Langtang mountain range has perhaps helped preserve the traditions and cultural values of the displaced Tibetans.

A few Japanese tourists charter choppers, though most visitors opt to face the road journey. It’s much easier to get to the starting points for the Annapurna Circuit and Everest base camps, and so trekkers have largely overlooked the Langtang area.

As we set out from Syabru Besi next morning, trekking up to the tiny hamlet of Lama Hotel at 2,480 metres, we immediately pass through a Tibetan village and across a narrow suspension bridge high over a raging river.

Before our lunch stop at the glorious riverside setting called Bamboo, we pass the Landslide lodge, named after a mudslide that happened a few years ago, and which still scars the area. Now who’d want to stay in a lodge called Landslide, I wonder.

Bamboo is just a cluster of two or three lodges on the lower reaches of the Langtang River. A peaceful setting that belies the dangers the monsoon seasons pose. There were two other lodges here. Both were swept away by floodwaters recently.

It’s a tough climb to Lama Hotel, on narrow tracks clinging to steep gorges high above the river, and we are thankful to have porters as the air thins, slowing us.

Langur monkeys sweep gracefully through the jungled slopes, and higher, dozens of macaques cross the track 100 metres ahead and disappear among boulders that litter the mountainside. Langtang National Park is rich in wildlife, including snow leopards at higher elevations.

Lama Hotel is a misnomer, for there is no hotel. There are a few lodges perched precariously in a dark chimney between sheer mountains, the silence broken by the roar of glacial melt in the Langtang River.

A double room costs US$1.3, but there is no electricity, no heating, just simple beds with a mattress on which to unroll your sleeping bag, and a communal toilet. In daylight there is a solar heated shower. In darkness, the water is ice cold, and we will retire a little guiltily, unwashed.

Mountain life unfolds, however, in the living room of the family that runs the lodge. It doubles as a canteen for guests. There is a kerosene lamp, and a roaring stove packed with logs provides welcome warmth. A line has been slung up on which we can hang wet clothing.

We linger after the other guests leave, reluctant to climb up to our cold, dark room. There is no television here, and children are unspoiled. We have stepped back in time.

The owner’s eldest child, a girl aged about nine, sits by the stove and tells an obviously gripping tale in a language we can’t understand to her two brothers and sister, who sit in a tight circle, wide-eyed, riveted. Mum knits silently in a corner.

The next morning as we climb higher up the ravine, the snow-covered peak of Langtang Ri, 7,246 metres above sea level, pokes through majestically in the distance.

On the opposite side of the ravine, the slopes have been stripped bare by a huge landslide. It happened a decade ago, and was so devastating that it is even marked on our map.

Dislodged boulders the size of houses remind of the day the raging glacial river was dammed, tamed by millions of tons of soil and rock. It took two days before the waters burst through again, and the artificial lake disappeared.

This night we arrive at Langtang, a Tibetan village with prayer flags and stupas, and we see our first yaks, under a vista of snowy peaks. Lower down the trail, Tibetans had offered us yak curd.

I am unable to sleep all night because the air is too thin. We have reached 3,500 metres.

We head off for Kyanjin Gompa the following morning, a slow, breathless climb to 3,900 metres, beneath the Lirung Tsang glacier, where we visit a tiny yak cheese factory and marvel at the views.

Another sleepless night, and I decide to head back down. Tiredness can lead to mistakes, and the track is narrow.

I go a little beyond Lama Hotel, and stay in the Moonlight Lodge, which offers terrific views down the valley. Here I meet up with Amos Nadai, Israel’s Ambassador to Norway, and we swap tales of our travels.

In Norway, Amos has security guards with him wherever he goes. Here he is only accompanied by his guide/porter.

We eat vegetable momo, a meal that costs around US$1.3, and I chuckle to myself as this tough, amiable man, who is used to staying in palatial hotels and having high-level talks with VIPs, makes his way up the wooden stairs to a cold, unlit room that costs only 40 cents US – a night.

I stay by the log fire to dress a minor wound on my porter’s foot. I give him a spare band-aid, and in the morning he has stuck it on his cheek. In the mountains, band-aids are a luxury the Nepalese don’t have. My porter has used the spare one as a status symbol.

We make a detour the next day, a long hard slog up slippery mud paths to the Tibetan village of Thulo Syabru. The villagers have hacked steep terraces into the mountainsides, and are harvesting and fermenting chang, a fiery spirit made from barley and millet.

In spite of its isolation, this village has electricity. Thulo Shaygru invites me into his low-roofed home. It’s a memorable experience, surreal. We watch the VCD "Seven Years in Tibet", sitting with Tibetans in traditional dress, the air heavy with burning incense, prayer flags fluttering outside under a canopy of stars.

It’s a long, steep descent to the potholed road we covered in the bus between Dhunche and Syabru Besi, at times a sheer drop from the edge of the path hundreds of metres to millet terraces.

We trek this road back to Dhunche in daylight, gasping at the precipices our bus had negotiated in the dark. Tonight we’ll stay in Dhunche. Tomorrow - Another nightmare journey on the Tourist Vehicle.

Photo courtesy Guillaume Dargaud www.gdargaud.net/
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