It’s almost midnight and I am lying in a narrow bed with a searchlight strapped around my head, reading Tilled Earth, a collection of short stories based in Nepal. Just outside the big picture window, the ground drops several thousand feet into the valley below. Against the invisible horizon stand the chiseled white peaks of Annapurna South and Macchapuchre, making their mighty presence felt even in the deep dark that has descended over the Nepalese village of Gandhruk. A mere thirty-six hours after leaving Dubai, I couldn’t have been in a place more different. And I have probably never exerted myself harder to get somewhere.
Earlier that morning, we began our trek in the village of Nayapul (900m), one of the starting points of the Annapurna Circuit in the Himalayan foothills of Nepal. It had seemed easy enough then, walking through Nayapul, where daily life spills out of the small wooden houses into the verandahs and the narrow, unpaved lanes. There is great industry and energy but the pace is charmingly unhurried. The Nepalese sweep their small shopfronts, feed the chicken, wash the laundry, bend over sewing machines, comb their hair and shout after their children. Around a sharp bend, a low chant emanates from a small, semi-dark hut. A group of bodies sway inside.I stop to watch but a fleeting sensation of being an intruder into something intensely private makes me move on.
Along the sluggish Modi Khola, the sun beats down on our heads. A little wrinkled woman in a red batik skirt stops to inquire where we are headed. In the huge conical basket strapped around her head, the chickens raise a raucous protest. ‘Ah, Gandhruk!’ She smiles, raising her eyes to an alarmingly high point in the mountains. Lunch is at Riverside Guest House that extends a ‘Heartly Welcome’ and claims to have clean toilets. Indeed, the hole in the floor is basic and you have to bring your own loo roll but any nasty smells or sights are mercifully absent.
After lunch, we begin to climb. Rocky, uneven steps cut into the mountainsides are the only way to reach Gandhruk at 2000m above sea level. First-time trekkers like me soon feel winded and light-headed. I begin to wonder exactly what I have signed myself up for. But gradually, as we climb higher, the first feel of sharp mountain air laced with the smells of forest cools our hot faces. Panoramic vistas open up at every new turn. Above us, mountains swirl in mists. Below, they extend in lush terraced hillsides. Far below in the valley, the river appears nothing more than a silent grey ribbon.
It begins to rain. At a tea house, we stop to pull our rain ponchos out from the backpacks. An old man in a traditional Nepalese hat sits on a rickety picnic bench at the edge of the cliff. Fat drops of rain patter down around him and on his head. But he seems oblivious. We fill up on water and apples and move on to climb more steps.
Five hours and extremely sore legs later, we trundle up the last few flights of steps to Annapurna Tea House in Gandhruk. There’s nothing like being exposed to the elements to make you appreciate the warmth of a family-run lodge or ‘real’ toilets and hot showers, even temperamental ones, for that matter. The dining room is rather drafty but the hot Yak Cheese Pizza and deep-fried Apple Donuts warm us up. Behind the kitchen counter, a baby slumbers deeply on a flat wooden bed, oblivious to the trekkers from all corners of the globe who, for a short while become a part of his home and family.
Gandhruk is home to the Gurung tribes and the famous Gurkhas of Nepal. Here, there are no cars and very little electricity. For someone just out of the concrete jungle, it is hard to imagine life in a place like this that reverberates with a deep silence and the awe-inspiring beauty of the proud Himal.
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