1 November – Kathmandu
I slept well, suffering remarkably little from jet lag and lack of rest. We got up at 8am and went down to breakfast in the guest house. We had fruit porridge and pancakes washed down by a massive pot of very strong tea. This all took ages to arrive but I guess it is par for the course here and at least the service is amiable. Mana arrived while we were eating, complete with red tikka on his forehead as he had just been to pray. For a small fee he would queue at the immigration office for our trekking permits, secure our bus tickets and find us a porter. When you are short of time US$14 seems a small price to pay to get someone else to stand in queues and fight with bureaucrats all day while you go off sightseeing in Durbar Square!
We departed in the direction of Kantipath (one of Kathmandu’s main streets) and the headquarters of the Himalayan Rescue Association (HRA) to see if there were any other trekkers looking for partners and to inform ourselves of current conditions in the Annapurnas. Eugene and I were still at that stage of over-politeness assumed when you don’t know someone very well. We both thought it might be safest to acquire a larger gang in case we should prove to get on each other’s nerves after a few days on the trail. The helpful assistant at the HRA told us that there was no snow yet and advised us to set off alone together as soon as possible before the imminent Diwali celebrations brought the city to a standstill. We would be sure to meet plenty of fellow trekkers along the way. In fact, too many people in a core group could cause problems and delays as there was more chance of someone getting sick or not acclimatising to the altitude. We concluded that he had a point and decided to leave the following day with whoever Mana had managed to find as our porter and guide. We enjoyed browsing through our predecessors’ comments in the visitors’ book and each bought an HRA T-shirt before moving on to the Royal Nepal Airlines office to reconfirm our flights to London. (This might seem ridiculously organised since we were not flying out till several weeks later but Royal Nepal, nicknamed Reliability Negative Airlines, was notorious for double bookings and bump offs and we’d been advised to reconfirm once on arrival and again a couple of days before departure from Nepal.) Half our plane load was in there with the same idea including one poor couple whose backpacks had gone missing. Eugene also managed to buy a ticket from Jomsom to Pokhara on 15th November, leaving enough time to walk the first part of the Annapurna Circuit and several extra days as a safety net in case of sickness or disaster. So far things were going remarkably smoothly. Surely some snag must appear soon!
Had lunch in Freak Street. If we’d hoped for gangs of spaced-out ageing hippies and ganja floating out of every doorway, we were disappointed. Most of the travellers looked like normal if slightly scruffy individuals wearing nothing more outlandish than Nepalese trousers and ‘Free Tibet’ T-shirts, and drinking cups of lemon tea and Tuborg beer instead of floating in a haze of noxious weed smoke! Lonely Planet describes the Oasis restaurant as being ‘slightly run down’ but the food was excellent. Hot sun had melted away the morning mist and it was now so hot that pale Irish Eugene was beginning to look decidedly pink and flustered, so we had to take refuge at a shady table. This was a good move as we shared it with a really fun British couple who were in Nepal for the sixth time and had many tales to tell. Their first visit had been in the 70s when Freak Street was really full of freaks.
‘You’ll enjoy trekking,’ they told us as they got up to leave. ‘You’ve got the right attitude.’
I know I like walking and don’t particularly mind limited squalor and primitive conditions. I can’t stand whingeing travellers or people who fail to appreciate the magical spark ignited by a completely different and exotic culture. I was relieved to find that Eugene seemed to be an excellent travelling companion – very easy-going with a well-developed sense of the ridiculous.
Durbar Square was amazing! My eyes darted in all directions to alight on new scenes of colourful splendour. The traditional Newari buildings were unlike anything I’d ever seen, square with pointed roofs covered with intricate and sometimes erotic carvings. Nepal is an ethnically diverse country. The Kathmandu valley is home to the Newaris who often look quite Indian with high-bridged noses and round eyes. Sherpas from the Everest Region and Tamangs from the west and centre look more Tibetan with Mongolian features and almond eyes. They are all very attractive people, small neat and brightly dressed. A plethora of sounds and smells added to the colour. A touristy market sprawled across the ground displaying gruesome looking cutlasses, masks and loads of heavy jewellery. A local market burst with fruit and veg and, everywhere, temples and stupas rose to the skyline. I spotted Sarah and Amanda, cameras ready for action, gazing up at a temple and looking confused. We arranged to meet up for dinner and went off in separate directions to explore the square. We were accosted by ‘posing sadhus’, skinny holy men decked out in ragged orange and yellow robes, chains of orange marigolds round their necks, and with matted grey hair and long wispy beards. They earn their living by looking photogenic enough to want you to give them a few rupees for a shot, whereupon they scatter fiery marigold petals in your hair and mumble an indecipherable blessing.
Every few seconds children tugged at your arm begging for pens, rupees or for you to take their photo. One little charmer, aged all of four, stood squarely in front of me and demanded:
‘What is your name?’
‘What is your name?’ I retorted.
‘My name is Ditendra.’ He posed with a younger brother while we took photos then scampered off to play among goats and stupas only to reappear a few moments later, cheeky grin complete.
When we left Durbar Square in what we hoped was the direction of Thamel it was hard to get rid of Ditendra and co. I was afraid they would get lost.
‘Come along now Ditendra sweetheart. You’d better run along home or your mum will worry.’
We found ourselves in a maze of teaming streets lined with market stalls selling food and clothing, chains of flowers and Diwali decorations. I wouldn’t have dared to venture down there alone for fear of getting lost but Euguene, whose sense of direction is better than mine, insisted that we should come out near the HRA eventually. We pushed through the jostling sari-clad bodies, revelling in the exoticism of it all, until we did finally come out in Kantipath. I felt more confident about trekking with such a pathfinder. We met two girls from our plane on the way ‘home’ to Mahalaxmi and stood in the street to talk trekking. It’s wonderful to be amidst so many like-minded people after the weeks of isolation at home.
Back at the guest house we were introduced to Narayan our porter, a diminutive Nepali with a baseball cap and a huge grin. I let out a gasp of shocked horror:-
‘But he’s half my size! How can he possibly carry both our bags?’ I was seriously afraid that he would break his back in the attempt. However, Mana assured us otherwise and Eugene (6 foot 1 inch and 14 stone) insisted that Narayan could probably flatten him and I dare say he was right.
We all three departed on our first expedition together, to a trekking shop to hire extra equipment. We tried on huge down jackets that made us look like Michelin men. I also took a foam carry mat. I asked Narayan if he had all his gear for the trek as I’d heard horror stories of porters freezing at altitude through lack of warm clothing. Narayan insisted that he had, although in fact he walked the whole circuit in a thin anorak and canvas pumps!
Narayan walked us back to the hotel through streets lined with interesting looking jewellery and clothing shops and bid us goodbye, promising to meet us again at 6.00 the next morning to go to the bus stop. Now that departure was imminent there was a great air of excitement and Eugene and I laughed and joked about the coming adventure, pointing out all the bad sides while looking forward to it immensely. The hilarity was interrupted by a tap at the door and I opened it to reveal a guy wearing a towel.
‘Err. Do you have a drop of shampoo I could borrow? Biman Airlines have managed to lose my backpack so I haven’t got a thing.’
I retrieved my small bottle of shampoo and passed it through the door. Since Eugene had also borrowed my soap the previous night, I joked that wash stuff was not going to last long but at least we probably wouldn’t be using much of it during the next three weeks! We giggled stupidly at the thought of joining the great unwashed and there followed various lavatorial comments about the virulent forms of diarrhoea that you could pick up from the plentiful parasites that lurked in Nepal’s water supplies.
‘Why are we doing this?!’
‘Because it’s there. Ha ha ha!’
Our Great Lord Tony Wheeler from Lonely Planet advises all trekkers to register with their embassies before heading out into the boon docks but we realised that we had completely forgotten. We rushed out to meet Sarah and Amanda for dinner.
Another blackout meant that the pretty garden of the Pilgrims’ Hotel, where Sarah and Amanda were staying, was enchantingly candlelit. We found them waiting in the foyer. We had decided to try the chicken tikka masala at The Eclipse restaurant as recommended by our lunchtime companions and it proved to be excellent. We drank lots of beer, took posy photos and generally had a great time, then moved on to Helena’s for coffee and totally scrummy apple cake – a real culinary orgasm.
We had meant to get an early night since we have to get up at 5.00am tomorrow but we ended up being the last to get chucked out of Helena’s. Then when we arrived back at the Mahalaxmi we stumbled into a scene of amusing traveller’s blues in the foyer. A British guy was having a heated telephone conversation with his girlfriend in England. She wanted to come and join him in Nepal but he was having far too much fun on his own. He confirmed our rapidly formed views that the Nepalese are super friendly people and the travellers some of the most interesting on the world circuit. Since this ‘happy couple’ had already had one disastrous journey around Eastern Europe, it looked like the end of an unbeautiful relationship.
‘You two seem so relaxed and happy travelling together. How do you manage it?’
‘Oh, we’re not a couple,’ we assured him hastily. ‘We’re just cheapskates! We met on the plane and thought bugger sex segregation if it means saving $10.’
The reception boy produced a big pot of Chinese tea and we were joined by the Danish guy of the towel and lost baggage.
‘Oh. I didn’t recognise you with your clothes on!’
It was very late by the time we retired to our room to repack. Since my Boots bottle of iodine had already cracked, staining my hands and the bathroom sink shit-brown, we had bought a reinforcement. We decided to stab the plastic inner lid with a penknife to create a foolproof dropper. The blasted stuff spurted all over Eugene’s trousers making it look like he had just had a case of one of the virulent forms of diarrhoea.
Eugene picked up an enormous bottle of Optrex.
‘By the way, I’ve got a glass eye.’
I looked at his two seemingly perfect blue eyes.
‘Oh yes! And a wooden leg too I suppose and you’re planning to be the first person to walk the Annapurna Circuit on one!’
‘I’m serious. I lost it in a hurling accident when I was nine.’ And to prove his point, he took it out and put it into a glass of Optrex.
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