Nepal - A Month in the Mountains, Part 1

In the back of an empty pickup truck driven wild by a half-cut teenager, I sat on my old bag and prayed to survive the night. Four, five, six hours or more rattled on. My hands wrapped claw like around the railings, occasionally glancing up to see the moon shift and the sky jump a shade darker. The shiny eyed pilot swayed and swerved around blind corners and lumbering trucks, hitting every bridge at break neck speed, the trailer pitched and plunged with a crash. We groaned, but just one more day of this, one more day on the road and our dreams of the city would be solid at last.
Food. Shower. Bed. Food. Shower. Bed. Food. FOOD. FOOD. FOOD. BEER. FOOD.

The city of Pokhara was the carrot on the stick, leading down eastern routes through golden valleys and monstrous mountains. The plan was simple, or at least it was meant be: hitch west and walk back east. But after leaving the map in a truck on one of the many flustered cabin exits (my bad), the trip had strayed far from the plan. So rather than aiming for Pokhara, we walked from valley to village using a Lonely Planet guide book and a compass, through beautiful mighty land like I'd never seen before, until one day we walked out of the mountains.

Our month in the mountains had made us wary of the drunk and now we had one as our driver. We had trusted the babble of drunks before and regretted it, and now, hardened by the long days of the road - better at smelling the bull - our instincts prickled. Yet we gambled and jumped in a trailer, roaring on from a dusty pub car park.

Turning from the tarmac randomly and rumbling into dark fields, James snapped alert throwing me a pen knife. We pulled to a stop at a brick walled compound poised and ready for anything, when the moon-beam smile of a kind face slid into view. The lanky man leaned under a yellow light bulb at an open gate, his hands pressed together in the settling peace of a Namaste. We had learnt to trust that smile, to know it as a friendly one. Same as we knew how to recognise the ones to avoid.

Pocketing the knives ashamedly, the boss stood bog eyed from gin and gestured to sleep on his office floor. He owned a chemical factory and plastic bottles of branded 'POISON' stood sentry across his yard. So we rolled out the mats for a final time and closed tired eyes on another long and weird day in Nepal.

Nepal had found everything I'd asked for: challenge, adventure, fun, risk. The unparalleled excitement of life on the road and a window view into life at the top of the world, following tracks unpolished for tourists. Living the way of the unshowered for those few weeks had peeled back the layers of life that can become wrapped in nonsense in the cruise of easy living, illuminating appreciation for our lucky lives and burning our bellies with what a man would do for a mother-made sandwich.

Katmandu, one month earlier:

Sat on the bottom bunk of a smoky dorm room drinking a rough beer, I shook the hand of a tattooed Australian. Trading travel plans like every other traveller in every other hostel around the world, I half jokingly jabbed James an offer to join me on the trip. No one ever listens to these worryingly weird plans with any real sincerity, but James looked up from the ash tray in his lap with a firm stare - "yeah aright". His reckless daring along with the wincingly bad beer egged me on and we clinked bottles on it, hoping we could muddle through whatever Nepal had in store.

On the many long days to come, I was often grateful for our chance meeting, as the trip without his laid back nature and calm resolve, would have been a very different month alone in the mountains. And whilst we left the city as strangers, we returned as friends forged for life.

The next morning, after achieving half of the expedition shopping list written on my arm before it dissolved in sweat, we marched through the smog of the city.

Two lives with common hopes for adventure, two clean bags crammed heavy and two heads swimming with doubts.

When usual living is so predictable, its a strange, unnatural yet exhilarating feeling to let the road unravel and take your life where it will.

In the dust of Kathmandu the hitching seemed hopeless, drivers returning a jolly wave to our hopeful thumbs. Getting desperate we started waving at trucks, flailing around by the road in a sort of ritual dance until somebody stopped wondering what the problem was. We pointed at the trailer "can we get in there?" - the driver shrugged and we climbed over. Progress looked worryingly little on that first day, jumping from trailers to cabins and clinging to the back of tractors. We folded out the map on the roadside; Nepal looked big.

It was dusk, the sun a syrupy yellow as we scanned the hills for a camping spot. Our ears twitched behind toward the clatter of a nearing truck and we hoped for a last lift. The driver, a kid looking no older than 15 peered over the wheel and gave us a worried nod. The road climbed and twisted and then dropped into the next valley, the burnt beams of the sun leant purple shadows over the hills. As the road crumbled at its edges, I looked over the trailer side down into the depths - death stared back.

The trailer shook and crashed, and at one point the violence of the ride knocked me over and sent me bouncing around the mud and metal. I clambered up and stood at the roof of the cabin, gripping the rust for life. My heart thumped pulling a half manic grin cracked with thrill and terror. I flipped to James, his eyes fired, clinging to life too and loving it. Wrapped in tattoos and hair straggled wild, he looked like a pirate bandit stood at the bow of a ship, riding the waves of a storm into freedom.
The noise, the dirt, the fear, the legendary land tweaked in a setting sun - this is what I left the city for - this is what I left England for - untamed travel.

That night when we arrived in a village, a nice man let us sleep in his garden and very kindly offered us some buffalo skin for tea. He presented it raw, the shiny slice of red flesh spread out on his palm, glowing and glistening with veins. Thankfully though after a quick charring on the fire it looked slightly less gross. Still though, it was gross.

We hadn't got far, but we had begun and just one day from the capital we had experienced adventure to rival any other in our lives.

The road went west for 5 days; time blurred in the sweat and wobble of truck cabins and mucky trailers.

Nepal slid past: dust drenched towns split by sad bars and empty shelved shops. Thatched roofs of farm houses sit simply in flat dry fields and fires curl at the feet of locals sat with seemingly no plans.  

Busses bound like enormous puppy's with endless energy, the driver puffs out his cheeks as he pushes too far and fish tails. Inside is crammed dark with bodies, the bus sides streaked with sick. Car wrecks lay on the roadside evident of the unlucky - trucks tangled and torn as if chewed on by giants

We sit in silence on sweaty seats for so many hours checking the time is irrelevant. The cabin mate hangs an arm out the window tapping on the metal to help guide through tight gaps, the driver darts his head out to spit his paan, twitching at the wheel with instinct.




On the fifth day we found ourselves crammed in a final pick up with a local family, heading north to where the road broke into a path. The dust narrowed to the wheels and I squirmed in my seat hating every minute. The ride cut short when the tail gate fell open and our bags dropped out. Mine lay in the rocks but James's was missing and he returned having retrieved it from the bushes slightly flushed, to see the truck rolling on without us. And so the great trek and sweat began. The mystery of the mountains loomed ahead and we took our fist steps east.

Our bellies hopped with nerves. Neither of us had done any exercise in months and our bags weighing over twenty kilos strained at our shoulders almost instantly - James bringing his laptop probably wasn't necessary.

I wondered if I was really cut out for this sort of thing; do you need be brave and strong with lots of shiny equipment? Was there a reason everyone paid for guides to follow down sign marked trails?
Walking into the Himalayas without a map wasn't very clever. Was it all going to be a disaster?

Its the kind of fear that you laugh at before you're actually in it.