I set off the following morning at ten, in a beat up car that passed for a taxi. After the gruelling ten hours drive up from Pokhara, it was only around an hour and a half to Muktinath on roads that were at least navigable. As we left Jomsom, the stark bleached arid mountainscapes unfolded […]
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 […]
The Sanskrit word ”Mukti” (also Moksha) broadly translates as ‘salvation’. In Eastern religions and theological traditions with their implicit belief in reincarnation, salvation is understood rather differently to the way it is in Christianity, with its emphasis on hellfire and damnation. Salvation here means freedom from the otherwise eternal cycle of reincarnation, envisaged as a […]
I almost always travel alone, excepting for earlier years when my daughter was younger and sometimes accompanied me. It’s better that way. There is absolutely nothing between you and the real experience of the world you are moving through. If ever you have a travelling companion, no matter how well suited they are, there is […]
The monsoon has been unrelenting this year, pretty much since I arrived in Nepal, certainly in Lakeside Pokhara. Happily, however, there have been occasional respites and it’s important to be ready to take full advantage of these as you never know when there might be another. The skies clear and the sun shines and hopes […]
The journey from Tadapani down to Ghandruk took around half the time as it had going up, unsurprising given the precarious speed of the steep descent. Ghandruk itself is around 500 metres lower in altitude than Tadapani and, until the arrival of the adventure trekking business, was merely a small Nepalese village of pretty, traditional […]
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 […]
I often see them running along the edges of the paddy fields here and have spent sometime trying to identify them properly, but whether they’re the Indian Gray Mongoose, or the Small Asian Mongoose, they wreak the same havoc amongst the villagers’ chickens. A few nights back, one checked out the contents of the tea […]
I’m up in the clouds now. Literally. Yesterday I moved from the family guesthouse where I’ve been holed up these last three weeks in Lakeside Pokhara, up to the heights of Sarankgot, which, during these months of heavy monsoon, spends much of its time wreathed in a dense cloud cover. After a night of heavy […]
It’s now three days since I returned from Sarankgot and life has predictably settled back down into much the same rhythm it had before I left. But I’m hopeful I can manage the challenges of commune living with a little more grace and detachment. The folk here, at least up here on the floor where […]