6th November: Bagarchhap (2160m) – Bradan (2850m)
I awoke at about 2am feeling that I had to pee. My sleeping bag was warm and outside felt very cold. I remembered that my torch batteries were dead. Damn! I lay half dozing in my bag until I heard Eugene get up muttering curses under his breath. Minutes later when Beth got up and strapped her miner’s lamp to her head, I realised that this was my lucky break. We both dragged our boots on and clumped down the wooden ladder from our room. The loo was occupied by someone making a lot of repulsive noises.
‘Eugene. Is that you?’
‘Uhu. I’ve got the runs.’
Beth and I peed on the grassy patch in front of the loo. Hearing poor Eugene struggling made me suddenly realise that I was feeling slightly queasy myself. I turned and threw up all over the grass then apologised profusely to Beth. This disgusting duet did nothing to settle her own dicky stomach.
At 5.30am an alarm clock went off with a series of head jolting beeps. I reached for mine and jammed at the buttons. The beeping continued.
‘Beth! Turn the damn thing off!’
Beth, ear plugs firmly wedged in lugholes, slept on blissfully. The offending alarm was embedded in the depths of her backpack. Eugene and I threatened her with its destruction in the event of a repeat performance.
I staggered downstairs to where the others were eating omelettes and fried eggs for breakfast and threw up over the garden wall. Eugene was in the toilet again. Even Narayan admitted to feeling naramro (Nepali for below par) and muttered a litany about bad dahl baht. Lousy as the whole team felt, we judged that we were all just about fit to walk and so staggered out into the morning undeterred. Every ascent took great effort. Sympathetic trekkers told me I looked like a ghost. We were passing a clump of bushes when Alison darted out clutching a loo roll.
‘God! That was close,’ she said. ‘I thought I’d have to go in my knickers if I didn’t find a decent bush soon.’
Most people from our Bagarchhap guest house seemed to be stricken in some way (except for the indestructible Serge). I imagine that one of the cooks had not washed his/her hands. Determined to keep up our liquid intake, we stopped for some tea at a small guest house about an hour out of Bagarchhap and found the Austrian trio, Paul and Irena. They easily convinced us that it made sense to stay in smaller places away from LP’s recommended overnight stops, thus avoiding long waits for food and bathroom pressures. They were intending to stop at Bradan, half way on to Pisang, rather than staying in the ‘official’ rest stop of Chame that night. We perused the map. Bradan looked a long way in our weakened state and we thought we might make for Tleko, a hamlet with a single guest house just a little way past Chame. By lunchtime a nasty cold wind had sprung up and we ate inside for the first time in daylight. Our hostess looked more Tibetan that anyone we’d seen until now. She crouched over a smoky wood fire to prepare our Tibetan bread – all we could face. Beth, Paul and Fiona wandered in. Paul and Fiona’s order was going to take an hour so Beth, who was sticking to a diet of boiled water and packet soup, decided to continue with Eugene and me and push on to Tleko for the night (which would ultimately prove a lucky choice). Eugene and I walked ahead while Narayan and Beth, encumbered by large packs moved a lot more slowly behind. We were beginning to feel better now – about 70% – so we sang to keep our spirits up: Resum piriri, Cockles and Mussels, Where do you go to my lovely.
‘You look like Marlene Dietrich,’ sang Eugene throatily and Dutch Paul appeared round a bend ahead. Since he looked more like Indiana Jones at the end of a hard day it struck us all as incredibly funny. Laughter is good medicine for bad stomachs.
Chame was the largest village on the trail so far. It even boasted electricity pylons. I momentarily wondered if this might mean hot water, but it was only 2pm and the others were keen to go on. I went into several shops to look for a torch. The batteries of my old one kept going five minutes after I had put them in so the torch rather than the batteries must have been defunct. I managed to impart my wishes to the locals with a combination of halting Nepali and sign language. Luckily Nepalese people are good at understanding six butchered words of their tongue abetted by an elaborate pantomime. This makes travelling in Nepal much easier than in China where you practically need a PhD in Mandarin before the locals will even consider trying to understand you. I felt very weary along the last uphill stretch to Tleko and was glad to see a promising looking white building with blue shutters and the sign for a guest house. Our faces and spirits fell when we realised it was closed for Diwali.
‘We’ll have to go on to Bradan,’ said Eugene, flopping down looking exhausted on the benches of the deserted restaurant area. ‘It isn’t that far and it’s supposed to be an easy path.’
‘Where the fuck is Bradan?’ was the recurring cry that long afternoon. We had walked about 15km on empty, queasy stomachs. We kept expecting to see flat-rooved houses in the distance as we rounded each bend in the hills, but each fresh hope was quashed by empty views. Eugene and I stopped to wait for Beth and Narayan at intervals but found that we quickly chilled if we stood still for long. We decided it was best to keep going vistare vistare (slowly slowly) – among the first words that most trekkers learn.
‘Kata ganda lata Bradan?’ Eugene stammered out hopefully to every laden local we encountered. The reply was always ‘ten minutes’ or ‘not far – just over there’ but it was the furthest ten minutes we had ever known.
We finally staggered into Bradan at about 5.10pm. We waited for Beth and Narayan at the chorten by the village entrance, but after 15 minutes with no sign of them, we thought it best to find a room for us all and then look for them. There were only two accommodation possibilities in Bradan so it was easy to find which one the Austrians, Paul and Irena were in. Two Nepalese girls who we had kept passing all day were also there. They had intended to go on just a very short trek out of Besisahar but were enjoying it so much that they had decided to continue and were now rushing to catch a plane from Ongre in two days’ time. Eugene and I asked for a room with three beds, dumped our stuff and went off to find Beth and Narayan who arrived exhausted at 6pm.
Although I felt so tired and had thought I wanted nothing more than to collapse into bed, I was glad that we had come to Bradan. It was a lovely atmosphere in the guest house that night. It was freezing so I want to the dining room wrapped in my hired down jacket. I was greeted by a chorus of ‘hellos’ and Tony and Eva shifted to make room for me around a large square table. What a blissful surprise! Underneath was a bucket of coals shielded by a communal blanket. I was soon lovely and warm. Narayan was soon fluttering around in the kitchen helping serve everyone with endless pots of tea. Eugene and I were both feeling much better now – almost back to our lively selves. We still couldn’t quite face real food though and gnawed on Nebisco biscuits and Tibetan bread instead.
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