Nepal

By Marc Ethier

Gather Correspondent 

We march uphill for six hours. The wind is intense and unrelenting. The trail follows a rising abutment of ferrous rock that meets a cleft in a larger eminence of broken granite, then continues upward through sere patches of scrub vegetation toward white-capped peaks in the distance, and higher toward an unknown point near the wide-arched sky. We march on.

The air thins. Our breathing is louder, our rests more frequent. We summit a brown ledge decorated in prayer cairns -- each visitor, for luck, places a stone here -- and round an outcropping of rust-brown rock draped in a profusion of desert shrubs, and still the path climbs, always to another foothill, always up, toward the cloud peak wilderness of the Thorung La Pass and beyond.

The great snowy pinnacles of Yakawakang and Khatung Kang watch our progress. Somewhere beyond, swirled in snow and wind, unseen but distinctly felt, lay Everest.

***

After nearly a week in Kathmandu we’d gotten restless. The mid-April heat was picking up. We stashed half our gear and got out of town.

We hopped a bus west for Pokhara, base camp for many of the big Himalaya treks. Five-and-a-half hours later we would pull into the bucolic town nestled in the low hills where the Terai meets the mountains and spend one last restive night before embarking north.

Our dreams were about to be fulfilled. We were headed to the High Himalaya.

***

Though we questionably needed the one and certainly didn’t the other, we went with a guide, Raj, and a porter, Manoj. Raj’s English was good – his Japanese was better: the Japanese are in Nepal in force – but Manoj had none. Raj is a 22-year-old college student studying psychology; Manoj, 19, is newly sprung from school responsibilities. We felt like babysitters – at least until the second day of our expedition, as we wearily climbed above the Kali Gandaki, a green ribbon glinting in the powerful sun far below in the deepest canyon in the world – toward Muktinath, one of the holiest of many holy sites and shrines in this region hallowed by two of the world’s largest religions.

Day One had been an easy march from the airport in Jomsom to Kagbeni, a village at the confluence of the Kali Gandaki out of Mustang territory in the north and the gorge that leads east to Khingar, Jharkot, and Muktinath.

Day Two, following the alluvial ravine but far above it and getting farther with every step, was a slog. But it soon took on magical qualities. The reality of being on the justly famous Annapurna Circuit, flanked by the most stunning scenery on earth, was almost overwhelming. And the irrepressible good cheer of our companions was a source of strength.

***

We passed through Khingar, where women sit at looms and sell brightly colored yak’s-wool scarves, prayer wheels, prayer flags, trinkets and necklaces, to Jharkot, where the scene is much the same. As we moved among Jharkot’s closely huddled buildings – built to protect against constant fierce winds – and shale-rock flagstones scored by mule shit we met an ebullient Frenchman headed jauntily in the other direction.

“This is Paradise. Welcome to Paradise,” he said. “I came here four days ago and said, ‘I will go no further.’ There are mountains all around, and the people are beautiful. There is no reason to go on to Muktinath. Everything you could wish for is here.”

High praise. Jharkot indeed looked like a pleasant spot. But we pushed on.

Muktinath beckoned, and we’d come too far, barring great misfortune, to alter our course.

***

We wander through subalpine meadows set about with gentians, dandelions, harebells, spinifex and other low coarse scrub bitten by wind and scored by sun. Our noses are burned. Our cheekbones are raw. We climb one tumulus that leads to another and another and occasionally onto short spaces of even ground, where we shamble slowly to rest our leg muscles. Stony scree fields swoop upward to a jagged blue-and-white horizon of impossible tors, the world's rooftop: we’re glad not to be attempting an ascent of those.

Raj sings snatches of Nepali song. Manoj hums. We pass a big tent in the middle of a field rocky with glacial deposit that has been turned into a makeshift disco: the good times are rolling here at 12,000 feet. The four of us break into involuntary dance to the beat of Hindi hip-hop.

We weren’t meant for this clime, or these climbs. But if the half-naked sadhus can do it then we, clad in the latest North Face knock-offs from Kathmandu, must persevere. In four years they say this trek, this pilgrimage, will be made moot by a road from Jomsom all the way to Thorung La, and perhaps one day over it. If so we’re glad to be here doing this the right way, the hard way.

***

We have no mishaps. Everything takes exactly as long as it’s supposed to. We check in at the Police Check-Post in Ranipauwa, the settlement outside Muktinath itself. Lisa buys a pair of scarves, gifts for family.

We stumble into our teahouse. We stagger upstairs to the rooftop restaurant for lunch. We go back downstairs because the sun is too much. We wander past the gate, the only break in an undulating white wall leaning against the wind-blasted hillside above Ranipauwa, into Muktinath, which is not one temple or shrine but a compound of them. We take ablution in the 108 fountains that are said to cleanse the spirit. Thousands of pilgrims annually come from great distances to wash in them. We give a donative.

We eat fruit and cookies and think about having a beer but don’t. All beer, soda and mineral water must be hauled up the trail into the mountains by mule, or on human backs. Instead we have large glasses of Mustang coffee, a local moonshine concoction. It warms us. We huddle snugly in our blankets as the Himalaya cold pours off the mountains that surround us on all sides. We read. We sleep. We awake in the yellow-grey dawn and watch the sun dance on the frosty peaks.

We have seven more dawns to come.

Marc and his wife, Lisa, sold their home outside Washington, D.C., quit their jobs and embarked on a yearlong world trip in September. They have visited Fiji, New Zealand, Australia and Southeast Asia and will continue to India and Europe through September 2007. You can find all of the Global Nomad articles at www.twoheadedturtle.gather.com. Read more about their adventures at www.2headedturtle.com.

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