Do You Want To Taste Me?

 Pictures

People go to Chitwan for all sorts of reasons. The top of those would be for Tiger, of course, the most elusive. They come for rhino, elusive too yet some how more tangible. They come for all of the beach resort atmosphere that can be soaked up from the deck chairs laid out along the Rapti river.

The village of Sauraha if a collection of tour operators and hotels (the hotels also offering their own tours and guide) all eager to take your money. This is where we made our fatal mistake. We decided to stay at the Annapurna View hotel as they actually had rooms in our price range. But we decided NOT to take use their in-house guide. So, and I don't think I am paranoid in thinking this, they felt a little miffed. We had an interrogation over dinner: "Was the other tour cheaper?", "Were any other guests going with us on the tour?", and as we excused ourselves from our meals, "Is the food ok? We need feedback if we are going to improve it?". Then as we lay in our bed in the heat of the jungle with no breeze and no fan (load shedding), we listened to the guide we 'snubbed' creak in the hammock a metre from our door and pump water from the mechanical well outside our window through the night. It was then they turned. They became uber friendly, which strangely is more disconcerting than if they were nasty.

We had chosen Bobs (Best of the best) as our guide. We started with a canoe safari, which was pleasant enough in the coolness of the morning. We saw quite a few water birds but no Gharials or other crocodiles. Then we had the walk back. We stepped out of the canoe and Bobs immediately took us aside to give us the talk. He explained what we should do when confronted by any of the native fauna. It involved a mix of running, climbing trees and praying to god. If we see a rhino then climb a tree; a tiger - pray, keep eye contact and back away slowly, and the dangerous sloth bear just pray. Well at least Bobs carried a long stick for our protection. He then stepped into the grass that was taller than us and we were off. The drama that we left back in our guidebook came along too and it was growing in confidence with every step. First there were fresh rhino tracks in the river bank, then the strong scent of urine and then we stepped into the jungle. We saw scratches on a tree marking the territory of some tiger, we found rhino droppings then a false sighting of rhino. The drama was becoming the star of this show. We saw monkeys and birds and rustling from wild boars, but no big game so we stopped at a observation tower. 

Then it was act 2. We were met by another couple of guides and a Czech staying at our lodge coming from the other direction, they were walking in and walking out. I noticed a scratch on his calf that he dismissed as an occupational hazard of having to climb a tree to avoid a rhino. This is when he described his near death experience of a Belgian who insisted on getting to close o a rhino. He saved the Belgian but was thrown through the air 7 or more times by the aggrieved rhino. He managed to escape but was carried in a jeep to a hospital never to see the Belgian client again. This guy was rhino bait, the guide to have if you want to see rhino. They had already see rhino that morning :( But we were headed back in that direction so we had hope.

That hope had been dashed when we made our way out of the last stand of trees and climbed to the top of the second observation tower. But as we sat and stared across the grasslands towards India our guide spotted a white spot back the way we had come from. And if you watched, it moved - rhino. They are white because of the dried mud they cover themselves with. So we made the obvious decision to head back there. It was still a little way off in the tall grass so I climbed a tree (for a better view). This is when I saw Roselin and Bobs trying to get a closer look too. But they were heading toward the rhino, away from the trees and into the long grass. I thought back to Bobs little sermon on the bank of the river then took a second confused look at Roselin and Bobs. Going away from climbable trees and into grass twice as high as Roselin didn't seem like the intuitive action of sane people. I stayed in my tree. Finally they came back to the growing group of people in the trees and I came down from mine.   

The next day morning was our Elephant Walk. We had been told there are elephant rides in the park itself, not the surrounding buffer zones. But we later learned these are reserved for royalty and high ranking politicians only. Elephants set out in a continuous stream as they a filled with eager tourists from loading platforms. They amble at a lolling gait on separate but interconnected trails all headed to the same destinations. We heard monkeys and saw deer and birds and then in a mud hole a rhino and its calf. They and everything else seemed unfazed by the elephants and the chattering tourists snapping away on their backs. Still most of the time we were both mesmerised by the elephants as they explored their surrounds with their trunks, and snacked on tasty tidbits they came across. We even witnessed an elephant retrieve a lost thong from the ground for one girl with the simple twist of its trunk. Some, not ours, would even hold aside branches as they passed through the trees. We had time then to change into our swimmers for the elephant bathing. And disappointingly for Roselin we couldn't find a 'small' elephant but still we went in. I think Roselin had one of 'those' experiences because the only word she could say for several hours later was 'elephants' with a beaming grin on her face!

After nearly 3 months of travelling we are starting to regain our traveller mindset. This mainly involves eating the cheapest food we can find and walking everywhere. So in this mode we bought some Chitwan honey and fruit. Honey here comes in five flavours, and after an amusing "Do you want to taste me?" from the sales girl we settled on the Butter Tree. It was then off to the Elephant Breeding Centre and we were on the clock. On refusing their generous offer of bicycles, our hostel had cautioned us that the walk would be more than 4 hours. This came down to 2 or 3 when we mentioned that others had done it. I would like to think it was our superior mountain fitness, more likely our miffed lodge owners trying to drum up business, but we made it in 50 minutes and stopped for icecream. In fact we arrived so early that there was noone in the ticket booth and much to my disappointment only 3 elephants in the stables! We had the time to ourselves to watch to 10 year old calf and its proud mother before the twins and all the other mothers and calves came back from the jungle and the tourists flocked in from their jeeps and bicycles.      

The area of the park has been hunting reserve over a century before the Hattisar was turned into a breeding centre to retain the skills of elephant training. The sights of the chained elephants and the treatment from the elephant handlers and the implements of their trade is off-putting. Still the elephants have 5 hours of jungle time, are crucial in patrolling the park for poachers and they genuinely seem to enjoy themselves. As an aside the riders are not mahouts in Nepal as a mahout is the lowest rank only assigned to cleaning out the stables but Phanits or Pachhuwas; the top rank is a Subba, attained after perhaps 40 years. 

To me, the Elephants are the main attraction of Chitwan. They are are all pervasive in village life, regularly walking the streets or the private ones seen in peoples backyards. Even now back in Kathmandu the sounds of dogs and even truck brakes remind me of the belows heard in Chitwan. Roselin even bought a small box made of elephant poo paper.   

It's the people that you meet, walking down the ... track

Pictures

Some, even some I am related to, say that a holiday is where you sit back and read a book. Maybe, if you are energetic, you could socialise with some friends. Just so long as they do all the organising and preparation. Others, such as my Father, can not sit still. They need to busy themselves and it is not what they do as long as they are doing something. Roselin is most certainly one of the latter, but I guess I would fall into the middle ground somewhere (if I had a choice). When you see tourists trekking up these valleys, straining, gasping like a grounded guppy, you ask yourself the question "are they having a good holiday, are they enjoying themselves?"

Roselin was first to read about this trek; 'The ultimate Everest circuit ... Only for the truly adventurous.' [Lonely Planet : Trekking in the Nepal Himalaya 2009]. But then regretted it when she handed the book to me and saw the excited smile on my face. Why would anyone "choose" the Three Passes? Is it a macho thing, for the bragging rights, as Roselin I-am-just-doing-this-walk-for-you, would so often decry? Or is it because the one walk encompasses all of the highlights of the Everest region? Perhaps it is a little bit of both. It was also Roselin's idea to start the walk from Shivalaya and walk to Namche Bazaar rather than fly. This would add another week of walking and, because the trail runs west to east crossing a deep valley every day, the folklore says that by Namche you have accumulated as much ascent as the height of Everest and descended the height of Ama Dablam. Not for the feint hearted, which I must assume Roselin is most surely not. A trip to Nepal is considered incomplete, at least to friends and family, if Everest (Chomolungma in Tibetan, and Sagarmatha in Nepali) is not viewed, photographed, bagged and tagged. But Nepal is the kingdom of the Himalayan range, there are so many snow capped peaks, walls of peaks. They form a labyrinthine of snow, rock and ice. There are sacred lakes and forests and rivers. And dotted between are tiny villages that eke out a living from potatoes and tourists. And literally sitting on the top of all of this is the spectre of altitude. Not a trivial factor, as we are reminded by those that have succumbed and are carried down on the backs of porters and horses and sadly those that have died, days from where we walked, days from when we walked there.

The trek started like most epic voyages, with a bus trip. For some reason seating numbers are merely indicative. Indicative that you may get a seat or alternatively there is always the aisle to sit or stand in as you prefer. We managed to get a seat above the rear axle (no correlation to allocated seat numbers) by evicting some locals, but then that is the privilege of not paying local prices I guess. Our driver was not worried by the near vertical drop on one side of our narrow road nor the apparent solidity of the rock wall on the other as he sped along mountain roads entertaining ludicrous speed only when sighting another vehicle in front of him. The road soon deteriorated to a dirt track, and I think I have had smoother rides bouncing over grass downs in pursuit of recalcitrant ewes. Roselin had bruises, I had mild whiplash, but to top it all off we had a drunk join us for the last 15 minutes who insisted on serenading us all the way to Shivalaya with about 3 words of his ballad that would be repeated until he insisted on trying to stand and rummage through his pockets and then fall back to his seat to sing again.

And so the walk began, with such an auspicious start how could we fail in our quest. We walked through Rhododendron forests, potato fields and occasional tea plantation. Generally by 3 in the afternoon the clouds moved in and the rain began as is typical for this time of year. They were long days of 7 to 9 hours including an hour for lunch. You could generally see where you were headed that day, but the way to get there either meant dropping far below to a river, crossing a suspension bridge, and then regaining all that altitude again OR climbing to a pass and then dropping to the river. It was a few days after that we confirmed the curious herding trait of guides. A village may have as many a 8 lodges, but invariably as evening approaches, they would gather their wide eyed and staggering clients into a single lodge. My pick of this section of the walk would have to be the village of Junbesi. After walking through cloud we crossed a small pass and descended through Rhododendron forest. We were then pounded by hail and had to take refuge and Tibetan tea (easier drunk if you consider it soup). Finally we rounded a turn a looked down on the picturesque valley, the village of Junbesi nestled in its fold, the first real snow caps as a backdrop. The valley had a little of everything: pine forests, grassed hillsides, bright green barley crops in terraced fields, smartly painted buildings, stupas and gompas, and of course, with those white peaks, the promise of giant mountains around the corner. We passed doughnut parity with Australia at around Phakding; a little bit bigger, not quite as tasty, and a little more expensive at AUD $2. We were now on the main tourist highway between the airport at Lukla and launch site for all the treks of Namche Bazaar (3420m).

There is a Sherpa saying: "Yaks do not function below Namche. Above Namche, tourists do not function". On the 'highway' yaks have replaced mules. The mules have been the semi-trailers of trail, hauling important supplies but ripping up the trails and reducing them to slippery rocks in pools of mud. From now on it is the dominion of yaks, At 4000m you have 60% your normal oxygen, villages at this altitude are seasonal, artificial, they exist only to service tourists and climbers. There are no trees, no grasses and only a few shrubs. At 5000m you are down to 53% of the oxygen at sea level; you have to take two breaths for every one you would normally take. The landscape is mostly brown earth and grey rocks; glaciers and ice dominate the spaces between the peaks. There is no running water because it does not 'run' at the subzero temperatures of the night.

In ten days we crossed Renjo La (5345m) from the Bhote Kosi to the Dudh (Dude) Kosi, climbed Gokyo Ri (5360m); crossed Cho La (5420m) to the Khumhu Khola and climbed Kala Patthar (5550m); finally crossing Kongma La (5535m) to Imja Khola and ascending Chhukung Ri (5546m). We never once dropped below 4500m. It is the first time our guide has done all this in one trip and it is not surprising that he didn't expect us to be so insistent to do every pass. But we did complete it, and whatever I did Roselin did as well with short legs and a persistent cold (she broke). Perhaps all the second takes she got from porters and guides are warranted, not only does Roselin look like a Sherpa but she has the heart of one as well. A special thanks to Samir Tamang who guided us and helped along the way, we would recommend him and did.

Trekking is 25% slog and 75% sitting around reading, writing, playing cards, or just chatting to fellow walkers about the usual subjects (where you have been and where you are going). Still, even then, the slog part is for me almost a walking meditation because you spend it alone (even if you are in a group), silent and generally reflecting. Even after 2 months of travelling I was still thinking about work. It wasn't that nagging feeling like I had left a light on somewhere, but more of that urge that walls had to be knocked out and the bathroom renovated. But as those thoughts crystalise and even though that email to the CEO fails to be written, mostly because you are kilometres from a computer rather than your own discretion, then you can let go. I know that some have already forgotten about the frustrations of the day by the time they have walked out of the office front door and bid adeiu to the receptionist, but this is my curse.

It is in this 75% time that you meet doctors training for the Everest marathon. We met a Canadian working in Nepal for 15 years for various UN agencies. He claims to have originally got that gig because he was a writer for Sesame Street. In Gorak Shep we met a member of a Pakistani expedition to summit Everest; to him Everest is 'easy' compared to the technicalities of K2. We started off with a Kiwi father and his two young daughters in Sete staying at the Shobha Lodge; we lost them near Junbesi, one daughter suffering from altitude. In Junbesi we met a young Australian trio on their gap year and celebrated Nepali New Year with raksi (home made whiskey). In Lukla a British couple on a 6 month holiday hoping to go back and work on Oz. There are so many that you meet - they help wile away those in-between hours and fill you with ideas and possibilities for further travels.