Some Mountains, Some Cities, A Lake, Some Butterflies

Nepal though: Nepal is also a nice country.

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I arrived at High Camp on the Mardi Himal Trek in a bit of a whiteout and snowstorm: visibility was low, and got lower throughout the day. It was only a three hour hike from Low Camp, where I woke up to a thin layer of snow covering the ground that had not been there when I went to sleep (admittedly, that was about 12 hours before). This hike at first brought me through some forest, a bit cold and a bit quiet, and then along a ridge line where on both sides the ground fell away so steeply that I would have hesitated to ski down it, given the opportunity, But not so steeply that I would have not gone at all. Anyways: pretty precipitous, and occasionally downright cliffy. The clouds moved in throughout the morning, as they did almost every day up in the Himalayas in the Annapurna region, and for much of the hike I could see just until the next bend in the path. The entrance to the camp I noticed by colorful Tibetan prayer flags piercing through the white. I wondered about whether to go on, but the proprietor of the hut at which I stopped was very persuasive, and the warmth of his restaurant and endemic fire was very persuasive, and I stopped and read for the rest of the day.

I had packed too few books, by far. I packed only one book in a moment of stupidity that I would regret for the next week: there is not much to do on a solo trek when most of the people that you meet prefer to speak in Nepali. I ended up finishing six books; those of the more mathematically enclined might notice a slight discrepancy. This is explained by the fact that, rather than saving the battery of my poor phone so that it actually might continue to function throughout the trek, I just read and read and read.

And so I passed the evening of my fourth day up on the trek, snuggled for warmth in from of a fire and later on in my sleeping bag. Later on, I got dinner with the others that were up there: the owner and his wife, a man starting his own treking company (who had come to High Camp with the sole reason of taking photographs for his website), and a friend of his. I was part of the conversation on occasion: the owner made fun of the western habit of marrying late, and the trekking-entrepreneur explained the impact Buddhism had had on his life and business. They were all quite nice (as, I suppose, most people I interact with and describe mysteriously end up being), but turned back to Nepali conversation with some regularity.

And then.

The full moon rose above the horizon, and the clouds melted away into the sky as the last rays of sunlight withered and faded. The fresh fallen snow glowed in the moonlight on the peaks of Himchuli, Annapurna South, Mardi Himal, and Macchepucchare, or Fishtale, the Nepali Matterhorn. It was one of the most beautiful panoramas I have ever experienced. The word breathtaking is usually used hyperbolically, but for moments there I literally forgot to breathe, overwhelmed by the serenity of the moonlight and the snow. The word awesome is also used, I have been pleased to discover, authentically meaning worthy of awe in this corner of the world. It was a breathtaking; it was awesome. It was paralleled perhaps only by the sunrise the following morning, as the pink light illuminated the crinkles and wrinkles, crevasses and chasms of the mountains surrounding us. I am happy to be among mountains again, ecstatic to be out in nature, in fresh air.

In the evenings I slept in villages overlooking the river valley, camps in the jungle, in freezing cold temperatures and decently warm places, with hot, fresh food and local ingredients (see: the buffalo out back, the small garden, the snow melting on top of the oven), flocks of green parrots flying by, buffalo watching you with apprehension, slowly chewing. The dogs in the villages will gladly join you for a short jaunt, although they occasionally got impatient with my slow pace. I hiked alone, but had good conversations with the owners of restaurants, tea shops and hotels, and the occasional fellow trekker or hiker, and a lot of good time to be quiet and think about things. After hanging out with other people almost non stop for the past few months, the quiet and the solitude were wonderful, and the respites from this, gathered around a warm fire eating good food, were delightful. I had a good time.

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The towns of Pokhara and Kathmandu I visited before my trek, and they did not have quite as much of an impression on me, although they were still quite nice. The city of Kathmandu, everyone here tells me, is dirty, grimy and smoggy, but having become used to the environment of Delhi, I found the streets relatively clean and the air relatively fresh: you can even see the sky! It is blue, and lined with mountains!

I stayed in rather touristy areas of both Kathmandu and Pokhara, although I am not especially proud of that. My first meal, upon landing in Nepal, was gnocchi bolognaise that wasn't half bad. I stayed in Thamel, and walked up and down streets lined with shops selling treking equipment and shops selling souvenirs and knick-knacks and money changing shops, and not much else. Eventually, I went a bit further afield, and walked an hour to the Boudanath Stupa (yet another world heritage site off the list), on the way passing through a great variety of neighborhoods and places: schools, military bases, libraries, long, empty roads, some interesting graffiti and a small market selling goods not to tourists. The Stupa itself had all the usual magnificence of a world heritage site, tall and golden with eight gigantic eyes staring out at you from the four sides right at the base of the umbrella, with prayer flags emanating in all directions from the top. But there was something different about the ambiance of the place: whereas the stupas I had visited in Myanmar were surrounded by monasteries, smaller stupas or temples if there was anything at all, the Boudanath Stupa is surrounded by shops selling Buddhist knick knacks and hotels and roof top restaurants overlooking the ground below. Everyone was wearing shoes. A small group of children followed me for a bit, making jokes about my waterbottle and practicing their English swear words. I sat on top of a roof and ordered a hot chocolate and chow mein. It was different. There were, of course, many people reverently practicing their religious beliefs, it just wasn't everyone. A B__aba, in India called a Sadhu, dressed in orange robes with long flowing white hair and beard sat amongst the crowd, chanting to himself while a fruit vendor cried out nearby.

In Pokhara, a World Peace Stupa sits on top of a hill across the lake from the city, and I meant to visit it, I swear. But I slept in instead. But the city! While Kathmandu is lined with mountains, Pokhara is really lined with mountains, and there is a lake, and the air is clearer and there are a lot of parks and again: I was in an entirely touristy area, and most of the restaurants had a set of Italian, Chinese, and Continental foods, and then maybe a bit of Nepali and Indian as well. And again, the streets were mostly lined with treking and souvenir shops. With the occasional bookstore. I was searching for The Brothers Karamazov, as someone I had met in a hostel had been reading it and it had been on my mind as a perfect solution for the problem I had of finding a book: a good price-per-page and also something that would occupy me for some time while still being interesting. I've been meaning to reread it for a while. But: I went to seven shops! Seven! And found a single book by Dostoevsky: The Idiot. It is interesting seeing the collections of books that are popular at other countries book stores. Guy de Maupassant features a lot more heavily than I would have expected, as does Paulo Coelho. And there is always a bit of Tolstoy, but never any Dostoevsky. So I bought The Idiot, and a two-in-one book of novels by Conrad, and Peter Mathiasson's Snow Leopard, an account of him starting in Pokhara and hiking in search of some kind of sheep and also maybe a snow leopard, and then also a John Irving. Heavy books, all, as I have come to notice, but they should hopefully occupy me for a few months.

Anyways but if I found Kathmandu to be a pleasant city I found Pokhara to be suuper pleasant. I really enjoyed the day that I spent out on a lake with a brightly painted rented canoe, mindlessly and lazily going back and forth. At one point I decided that I should do something more than laze for hours, so I spent some time lazily going back and forth and rescuing butterflies that had fallen into the lake. I was not terribly effective: as soon as a butterfly got dry enough, it would takeoff, leave the comfort of my canoe, fly for a few feet and crash into the water again. And then also sometimes I worried that I was actually hurting them when I picked them up out of the water. This is all probably a metaphor for something. It was a nice way to spend the time though. Probably more meaningful than the people paragliding from the peak of a nearby mountain which I watched with no jealousy whatsoever. The rest of the days were good, too, although I really didn't spend them doing much. Walking up and down the street, bargaining half-heartedly with book-sellers and -buyers and outdoor gear salesman. I treated myself to some treats: a chocolate milkshake, a beef burger, some Korean bibimbap, a brownie, some Netflix. A good, relaxing time before and after the hike which itself (I only walked 4 or 5 hours each day, taking it slowly due to some stomach problems) was not entirely unrelaxing. I think: I want to come back to Pokhara and the mountains beyond, and I think it is a good place for my family to come as a whole. Ok?