The journey upwards took some ten hours in total, with a brief stop for lunch, and we rattled into Jomsom at six in the evening, just as the light was starting to fade. No city this, more an extended village of mainly traditional houses which, being the location of the airport, had expanded a little to accommodate the increase in tourist traffic, now at an effective end since the arrival of the pandemic. It was a relief to finally be there and after a dish of the regional speciality momos, and hot sweet milky masala tea to revive the travel weary, I settled into a small room at the Trekkers Inn thankfully and waited for my world to stop moving.
The window of my room looked out directly onto the still deserted airstrip and, beyond that, the snowy heights of Nilgrili. It was cold and the landscape otherwise barren, the stark mountain sides dotted with sparse shrubs. Set back from the one main street and its traffic, it was at least blissfully quiet here, unlike busy noisy Lakeside Pokhara. I decided to spend another whole day and night here to rest before attempting the onward journey up to Muktinath.
The following morning after breakfast, I wandered around in the sunshine and checked out the main part of town, slightly further along from the airport side along a dusty unpaved road that passed for the high street. Apart from some administrative looking buildings in the modern part of town on the far side of the river and a large army encampment, there was little else bar the traditional stone built, flat clay roofed houses and stores, and, of course, the ubiquitous guest houses and small hotels. Jeeps, mainstay of regional transport, were everywhere, parked in the transport terminal or rattling along the street; and, of course, many of the colourfully dressed and distinctive looking local folk, native to this region. Large black Himalayan mountain dogs or versions thereof, small brown cattle and occasional herds of sheep and goats roamed, scratched, slept, barked or bleated their way through the streets to add to the vibrancy of the scene.
Eagles, whistling thinly on the high mountain airs, soared overhead and the river, grey and heavy with silt and still swollen from the recent excessive rains rushed noisily through the town centre, hemmed in by the barren mountain heights on every side. It was a shock to see how stark and arid the region was though, after the lushness of the land at the lower elevations, human wrought deforestation being the likely culprit, as certainly there are still areas up on the mountain slopes where spruce forests survive.
There being little else to do, I returned after awhile, intent on finding a café, as even in these remote regions, good coffee can still on occasion be found. And so I happened upon a piece of pure Paris in the unlikely setting of Mustang’s Jomsom. It felt like one of those Sci-Fi or Fantasy films where you open a door and find yourself in a completely different world.
A few years back, during the artist and writer stage of my life, I used to be a regular visitor to that consummate City of Lovers; I even wrote a poem dedicated to it with that title. Lover of the wilderness and Indigenous, traditional cultures as I am, there will ever be a small, significant place in my heart dedicated to Paris. Once, on a cold wet January afternoon in Saint Germain de Prés, I had passed a café looking all warm and inviting with the sign ‘Jazzy and Cosy’ written in the window. In I went, needless to say. The Himalayan Java Coffee Café in Jomsom was a piece of that: jazzy and cosy. Warm jazzy music was indeed playing as I went in, a small café which doubled as an art gallery, the walls covered with really excellent paintings of the region and people, executed in a neo Impressionist style, a style very close to my heart. Part of the Parisian experience for me always consisted of at least one visit to the Musée d’Orsay, home to many famous Impressionist and Post Impressionist paintings.
I fell into conversation with one of the guys running the place called Sanish Maharjan, who turned out to be one of the artists too, a fine watercolourist, the other (Dhwoj Gurung) being currently resident in Kathmandu. We talked about art and my own experiences as an artist, and then many things, and his companion Mahendra Gurung, who works as chef in the hotel restaurant there joined us. In response to my showing interest in the electronic keyboard, Sanish sat down and started to play. Firstly he played a piece of classical piano music that sounded rather like Chopin (I recognised the piece but couldn’t name it). He played beautifully and it seemed surreal to hear this music in the high street of Jomsom of all places! Then Mahendra joined in as percussionist on his instruments and there evolved there some of the best music I’ve heard. It was quite extraordinary, really mesmerising and I began to feel that I was there as much to meet them and experience their music, than just waiting overnight for the next stage of my journey.
I returned to the café later that evening and we walked up the street to an old house turned bar they own, when the night scene takes over from the day. It transpired that Sanish is actually a classical guitar player (played some fabulous Flamenco style music amongst a wide range) and has recently taken up the saxophone too, which means he plays three of my favourite instruments. Before the evening progressed bringing more people with it, I relaxed and enjoyed a homemade pizza and a wide range of their musical talents, finishing with some excellent saxophone music, before it was time to take my leave.
The next morning I was off to Muktinath to conclude the last stage of my journey on the Road to Salvation. But when I came back down the street that night from the bar, cold and dark by then, the wind blowing, with few folk around and the occasional dog, it reminded me strangely of those evenings in Paris, where I used to stay in a small hotel along the Rue de la Huchette in the Latin Quarter, when I would come back late from the famous Caveau de la Huchette jazz club, not Jomsom in Mustang at all …
