We left early on a Wednesday morning nearly three weeks ago now. We had to make it up to Ghandruk from Pokhara with enough time to trek onwards up to Tadapani before evening or bad weather set in. The land rover finally left the city after collecting several additional passengers, all family members or relatives it seemed, their children and baggage, stuffed into the available space and spilling out everywhere. They all talked fast and non stop the entire journey in that strange, strident rather guttural tone the local women here have. As a lover of silence including during journeying, It felt wearing after awhile. I had expected to have the vehicle to myself, excepting for the older lady, wife of the guesthouse owner, up at our destination.
The road was easy enough out of Pokhara for the first hour, through the mountains climbing gradually, with immense views of forested hills and deep valleys with rivers and waterfalls opening out on every side. It was good to get out of Lakeside after spending a whole month there; since arriving from Kathmandu at the end of June in fact. We were lucky with the weather, which was clear with occasional sunshine. My drive from Kathmandu had been through the torrential rain that has marked the progression of the monsoon season ever since, even to today. This mattered, because from Ghandruk I was changing to horseback and didn’t really relish the idea of three hours of solid drenching.
After the first hour, the land rover turned off the main highway and we were on the road to Ghandruk. I use the term ‘road’ loosely here as the severity of the monsoon had left it deeply rutted, eroded by rivers and blocked by landslides. I’ve seen all sorts of roads in my time, but this has earned the dubious privilege of being the worst ever. The remaining travellers decamped at the spot on the edge of the village where we were met by the guide with pack horse and a porter who lugged all the baggage in a large basket strapped to his head. The lady of the household accompanied us, having spent a few days with relatives down in the city.
The path up to Tadapani was steep and stony, and in many places made almost impassable through landslides and erosion. But the people of these parts are well used to these conditions and walking everywhere with heavy baggage. Although the pack mules and horses carry a certain amount of foodstuffs and heavy goods, I was told that all the heaviest and most awkward equipment like refrigerators and washing machines were all portered up in the same manner as my baggage, slung on the back with a strap around the head. It seemed unimaginable.
Riding in this manner (I am not one of life’s trekkers) I was at leisure to see the expansive mountain vistas, although much of the time we were also trekking through dense Himalayan high mountain forest – ancient woodlands, some of them over a thousand years old. A brief stop for tea at an unlikely small tea shop that emerged through the mists, and then on again. It must be remembered that these are the well trodden trekking routes that normally see hundreds of visitors every year. The monsoon season and the pandemic have joined forces to close the adventure travel business completely, at least for the time being. I was the only foreign visitor in Tadapani for months apparently.
Arriving some three hours after leaving the jeep at Ghandruk, the reality of the situation became apparent. Tadapani is not in fact a settlement, merely a collection of small guesthouses entirely serving the needs of trekkers, so the standard is fairly basic at best. Rains had taken out the hydroelectric plant serving the settlement, so there had been no power for nearly a month, with one line only, borrowed from a neighbour, to charge mobile phones, which everyone living there used. The hotel itself was was rustic and ‘quaint’, reminding me of what some medieval hostelry from the days of Chaucer might have been like; that or some establishment from the wild west. The rooms were monk cell simple; the toilets and showers communal and outside. I can cope with exterior shower facilities, but always need a loo in my room, so this was a blow given I had double checked and been reassured that there were toilets right next to where my room would be. I hadn’t, however, understood that this meant literally outside, meaning nightly excursions into the cold and wet.
The clouds had descended by then and the famed vistas of Annapurna and Machapuchare, now grandstand view close, were hidden behind them, as indeed they had been pretty much since I have been here. No matter, I reminded myself, I was here for different reasons, trekking and sight seeing not amongst them. I had spent nearly a whole month staring at the cloudy forested hillsides of Lakeside, and then again up at Sarankgot, whence I had gone once in desperation, for just a brief glimpse, which brief it most certainly had been, teased by a single fleeting vision of the immense snowy heights of the Annapurna range the first afternoon there, before cloud had once again engulfed them.
Why so important? Of course they are majestic and beautiful and infinitely worth seeing just for that. But, more importantly, the mountains were for me symbolic of my deeper purpose, hence being teased by fleeting visions of them was itself highly symbolic of that. People come to this region specifically to see the mountains and generally also to climb them, so coming in the monsoon season would always be pointless. Not only is it rare to catch a glimpse of these elusive giants with the heavy cloud cover, it would be almost impossible to try and climb them.
In Zen philosophy, it goes something like this: Before Zen, a mountain is just a mountain. During Zen, a mountain is the sublime truth and spiritual heights of the seeker. After Zen, a mountain is just a mountain. I was still pretty much on that upward ascent to the goal of Realisation, if by then certainly far advanced. I had already been to the mountains nearly a year earlier during my visits to the three Chota Char Dham pilgrimage sites of Gangotri, Badrinath and Kedarnath, in that narrow window of opportunity between the opening up from the lockdown in India and the closing up with the arrival of the winter snows. That mountain range is simply a part of the high Himalayas that stretch from Pakistan through to the mountain Kingdom of Bhutan and beyond, high up to the Tibetan Plateau. Uttarakhand is on the same approximate latitude as its geographical neighbour Nepal, so the range that includes Annapurna is not so far from them. Then I had consummated my year long Indian pilgrimage by visiting these three sublime and sacred sites and had experienced an indescribable vision[i] of Highest Reality as manifest there (in Yogic terms if loosely, Prakriti)[ii]. Then I had had to return to the UK for six months, so coming back to Nepal and its mountains has always symbolised for me a return to that sacred journey and a reengagement with and deepening of the visionary truths I had experienced earlier.
More prosaically, I had time to consider all this from the balcony of the guest house in Tadapani, scrutinising the clouds for the smallest signs of a mountain beyond and the rain sweeping across the landscape. Below me in the hostel precincts clucked chickens and a curious trio of two large male and one female turkeys. At first it was entertaining to observe the antics of the two turkey cocks as they strutted and occasionally fought one another in a semi permanent Mexican standoff (made all the more relevant as they are fowls which were originally domesticated there). The hen would sometimes try to intervene by offering herself in a prone mating position, but this merely exacerbated the competition and aggravation, one male balancing precariously on her back whilst fighting off the contender. In time, their constant strident and querulous bickering became merely an irritant.
Nights were predictably marked by cold visits to the outdoor loo and bedding that had that distinctive musty smell that comes from lack of use and damp storage. The first morning, after warming porridge and tea, I stirred myself to go out and explore one of the trekking routes that went up behind the guesthouse and into the forest – a real Tolkien style Fangorn forest it was too with ancient beautiful trees festooned with ferns, mosses and lichens, practically a forest in their own right. The mountains were visible occasionally through the trees, adorned with their own forests and waterfalls everywhere, but the magnificent giants were still guarding their secrets. I had been warned about the danger of leeches, as this neck of the woods (literally) is really bad at this wet time of year and having had one unpleasant experience with a leech back in Lakeside, I didn’t want to repeat it.
In this way three days passed uneventfully enough, and, when able to get myself out of bed at dawn, I was rewarded with a partial vista of my snow-capped neighbours on one occasion at least. Even without them, the views are awesome and the sheer scale of these mountains reaching far up into the sky, hard to imagine. My planned stay of a week or longer diminished with the passing of time, the miserable broken nights visiting the outdoor loo, and the challenge of little to do but contemplate the clouds and the rain and cheer myself up with regular cups of tea, or petting the family cat. The food, I should point out, was at least plentiful, wholesome and tasty and the family running the place unfailingly kind and obliging. I arranged for the horse to come and get me on day four and take me back to Ghandruk, where an arrangement with an hotel run by another member of the family had helpfully been made. And so I bade my farewell to this strange upland forested world and made the reverse trek downhill – much more challenging than coming up, as some parts of the path involve nearly vertical leaps downhill. Here my riding skills proved not only welcome but essential, and undoubtedly prevented me from being flung off the horse on several occasions. The day itself was beautiful however, clear, sunny and hot. And so to Ghandruk village and the next part of the tale.
[i] I have described this term ‘vision’ in the essay ‘In Defence of Faith’. Sometimes a vision is actually that, the seeing of something, like an hallucination perhaps. In most cases a vision is the mystical apprehension of an ultimate truth and something experienced inwardly, not via the mind. People commonly employ different substances (Ayahuasca, Hashish, Peyote etc) to induce altered states of consciousness in order to have visions or insights of this nature as an ‘easy route’ to ‘Enlightenment’. I have discussed this practice extensively elsewhere in the website (pages still in development). It is not a practice I have ever engaged in myself and would urge caution to others tempted to do so for reasons explained there.
[ii] ‘In the Spirit’ is about my personal journey to the Sacred, more particularly during these last two years. During this journey, oft referred to as ‘Pilgrimage’, I make references to some of the more mystical experiences that I have had. At times I have attempted to describe these more fully, as much as it is ever possible to do this, but the blog itself is merely a diary, an account of the more secular and practical aspects of the journeying itself. Many people do not particularly enjoy or want to have another person’s spiritual ideas and beliefs forced upon them, when all they want is an entertaining account of a life as lived and the sorts of experiences, insights and comical moments that this can offer. The main body of the website is devoted to my own views and beliefs as evolved through my journeying, although this is still in development at present. But for interested readers, that is where the more spiritually orientated accounts and ideas can be found.