So it was back on the bus to Pokhara for me, happy with the
company of Ido. We planned to go to Lower Mustang to trek as it was the only
rainless trekking area in Nepal at that time of year that wasn’t a restricted
area.
Upper Mustang
would have been amazing too but it costs $500 for a ten day permit besides all
the other costs and hassle that goes with organising a trek in that area. But,
in Lower Mustang you can get a taste for the scenery and culture that the magic
of restricted Upper Mustang holds. Because we only had a few days (it was the
12
th by the time we left for Pokhara, and I had a flight to Beijing
on the 19
th) the plan was to fly to the tiny airport at
Jomson and then hike that area –
Jomsom to Muktinath – Muktinath to Totapani.
I knew this bus route from Kathmandu to Pokhara well now, Blue Sky Travels again with
the same tasty food stops in the muggy sweltering heat. Pokhara remained lovely,
with the lake glistening in the heat and the lazy low season chugging on, though
like Thamel it was filling up as low season was coming to an end. The evenings
began to have the slightest of chills. It was back to Yeti Guesthouse who
remembered me from all those solitary days I had there a couple of weeks back.
We went straight to a travel agent to ask about all the details on getting to Jomsom.
There had been many serious landslides on the route that we wanted to take
(between Ghasa and Totapani) so a jeep couldn’t drive all the way from Pokhara
to Jomsom, and even if it could you wouldn’t want it to at Rs70,000 ($600 USD).
And you’d be bumping along a crazy road for an entire day, changing jeeps after
every landslide. So the easiest and cheapest option was to fly to Jomsom from
Pokhara for $95 and a twenty minute flight. We were lucky in that we could
still go without a guide, though the law is changing very soon to say that
everyone needs a guide even though you really don’t need it on the Annapurna
circuit. The permit was more expensive if you’re guideless, around $25 instead
of $20. (This is for Lower Mustang, the non restricted area of Mustang) All in
all for the flight and permits needed came to Rs12,500 - £89. A bargain if you
asked me, to trek one of the most beautiful areas in Nepal.
Ido had come from India and so was happy to find all the
nice restaurants and coffee places in Pokhara, we treated ourselves to some nice
food. On the lake you can hire boats so we took one out at sunset. The lake is
clean and a beautiful dark blue-green, surrounded by mountains and if the
clouds have completely cleared (not often at this time of year) you can see the
Annapurna snow-topped range in the distance. The boat costs Rs300 an hour and
has some really heavy awkward wooden oars so it’s not that easy to row across
the lake, much better to row to the middle and float around getting lazily rosy
cheeked on red wine.
The next day we set off ready for our flight and our trek,
all very excited. But when we got to the airport early in the morning it turned
out that the flights were cancelled, and had been for the last two days because
of clouds and wind around Jomsom. Gutted! We sat and played chess at the tiny
airport until lunch time to see if anything changed, but they were completely
cancelled that day. There was no flying in the afternoon because of the strong
winds in that comes each afternoon to the area.
 |
| Pokhara Airport |
No matter, Pokhara is a place I
could definitely spend more time although we only had one more day to make the
flight work otherwise we’d have to call off that trek, our days were numbered.
It was a scorching hot day and we walked back the 45min from the airport to the
centre. That afternoon we took another boat out onto the cool, dark green lake
and jumped in to swim which was all I felt like doing, it was so hot. It’s not
appropriate to wander around in swimwear so the opportunity to swim without
having an entire bank full of revellers gawping at you is to escape to the
middle of the lake in absolute privacy of water and mountains.
We got to the airport next day at 5am, one hour before the
first flight when it was still dark and the place wasn’t even open. It was more
like a bus station than an airport, it was that casual and tiny. Things were
looking good, as the dark lifted it revealed the grey outlines of the Annapurna
range which I’d never even seen from Pokhara so often were they obscured by
clouds. As the light grew more orange-pink and the warm rays of sun broke out
from the horizon the snow topped peaks became sharpened against the clear baby-blue
sky, it was an incredibly beautiful and perfect morning and we were again
extremely lucky, the weather hadn’t been this good for days.
 |
| Sunrise at the airport |
The flight was definitely going ahead, and after being
frisked and our bags searched in a small booth we walked out onto the tarmac to
see our tiny propeller plane which scared the living daylights out of me, I’m
scared of flying at the best of times. I think it’s the claustrophobia of the
tiny space and not being able to escape that really gets to me, and this plane was
seriously tiny. The propellers made a huge racket warming up to take off, this
was no pressurised cabin and the noise of the engines and wind were deafening.
I expected an extremely bumpy take off and flight, but the mountain air was
still for us with no wind and so the take off and flight was quite smooth,
thank goodness. My palms were sweaty and my chest tight, not sure how I would
have coped with the tiny plane flailing about on the wind too. And the scenery
was astonishing. We got to see the Annapurna range from the top on a clear day.
The mountains and valleys were dark green and the very highest (from around
8000m) were topped with glinting glistening snow. These are the crowning moments
that make up my travels!
Landing is always when I have the worst time (ever since I
had a serious near death experience landing in the worst gales that England had
in over 100 years once when I was arriving in London from South Africa one
January) and so when the plane started its descent amongst the mountains I had
to bury my face and cover my ears in my lap. The fumes from the engines were
also making me gag and when the landing came amongst the wall of mountain I
felt woozy as hell. But who cares! I was in Jomsom, lower Mustang, with the
Annapurna range splayed across the sky like a mountainous feast.
The Lonely Planet ‘Trekking in Nepal’ describes Jomsom as
not being pleasant, but actually it was one of the nicest villages I saw on
this route. We left the tiny airport and were directly on the main street which
was paved in grey slate and lined with comfortable looking guesthouses, small
mountain shops, a restaurant or two and some other village necessities like
banks and the collection points for trekking permits. It looked like somewhere
I could definitely spend more time, but time we did not have. It was now the 14th
of August and I had to be back in Kathmandu on the 19th for my
flight. We were straight on the route to Kagbeni. This area was extremely
different to the Annapurna trek I did before. The ABC trek was soaking wet, hot
and bursting with forest and greenery,
had well worn paths that hugged the side of a smaller, deeper valley.
Lower Mustang in comparison is bone dry, with a sharp, blue, cloudless sky, a
steady wind in the afternoon and almost no greenery, just the beautiful endless
mountain desert.
 |
| Jomsom main road |
I love this landscape; it brought back all the happy
memories of Ladakh in India. The high altitude and the expansive, empty desert
with epic, huge mountains and valleys dipping and towering at every angle makes
me feel clear headed, tiny, problems insignificant, and spiritually connected
with the hugeness of space. The way to Kagbeni was all these things, along a
huge river valley of ancient mountain rocks gorged out by millions of years of
steady water flow.
Recently a road has been built between Muktinath and Ghasa
which the
Trekking in Nepal Lonely Planet guide mentions, saying that makes this trek ‘over’.
But if you could see the road that statement would be absurd. The ‘road’ is a
rough track gauged out the mountainside, twisting and winding around the most
landslide susceptible landscape I’ve ever seen. Just putting a foot wrong would
see you tumbling down the mountain and straight into the ravine, which
genuinely almost happened to us. Between Jomsom and Muktinath it’s drier and so
the road survives a bit better, and I’m sure that in high season it’s a bit
busier but really, this is no highway. If you didn’t know there was supposed to
be a road there, you would probably mistake it for just a rough mountain track
or part of a river. At one point, between Jomsom and Kagbeni, we had to take
off our shoes and socks and wade across a freezing river that just appeared in
the middle of the rocky valley. Two jeeps were trying to get across this river
too as it was the ‘road’, and one of them was half submerged in the rocks and
water and the other had a rope tied to its bumper trying to pull it out.
 |
| Crossing the river in the 'road' |
The route were taking was delightfully clear of people in
this low season, and we just couldn’t believe or understand why. The sky was
clear blue with no hint of rain in this area. The days were sunny and long,
warm in the day getting crisp and chilly in the evenings. The mountain peaks
shone and glistened at the tips with snow in the mornings, and at their highest
point were just covered in the afternoon by some rainless clouds. It couldn’t
have been more perfect for trekking.
We decided to spend a night in
Kagbeni, an ancient Buddhist village
that is also the ‘gateway to Mustang’, it’s as far as you can get (officially,
we found out that you can get further if you wanted to into Mustang, another
six hours walk from Kagbeni on an alternative route to Muktinath). It’s nestled
into the valley with very comfortable, friendly guesthouses. These guesthouses
are also homes so it’s as if you’re staying with a village family, making them
it extra bit special. We stayed in Hotel Shangrila which was a big old wooden
house with an open mezzanine hall making it really spacious and airy, but also
at the same time traditional and cosy with a dining room on the top floor with
all glass walls so you can gaze out onto the mountains. As with everywhere we
stayed in the area, the food was freshly made with lots of love and care, one
of the best things about trekking in Nepal, and so cheap. There was dal bhat of
course, and mushroom soup and oats with locally grown apples.
The village has tiny old lanes of crumbling ancient Buddhist monasteries and homes, but there is also a lot of building work going on there as in the rest of the area, probably to accommodate all the thousands of trekkers that come here in high season. But now in low season we had the whole place to ourselves, the only guests at Hotel Shangrila, seeing other trekkers infrequently.
 |
| Hotel Shangrila |
The plan was to walk all the way to Muktinath the next day.
Blazing sunshine and wall to wall blue sky was the morning greeting. The path
lead through the apple orchards and their green and red apples, I picked and
ate one and it was tangy and delicious.
Not wanting to follow the road all the
way we ended up following another track that lead to ledge on the mountainside
that was virtually a vertical drop into the ravine so we had to scale up a
rocky and landslide prone mountainside to get back up to the road. It was treacherous
and fun at the same time... there wasn’t much to hold onto except some gnarly
small shrubs and rocks that broke off into fragments erratically. We got to
road eventually sweaty and panting to find the most dazzling view. Dramatic
valleys of rock and the bright green patches of the cultivated land of the
villages that lay here and there along bottom of the valley next to the river,
with the striking peaks of the mountains against the bright blue sky. We were
high up now, above 3500m, where your breath becomes shorter and your head
clearer. Buddhist prayer flags dotted at the high points lent picturesque colour
to browns of the mountains. It was all just so stunning.
As we got higher up the mountainside the landscape became
greener with more crops and farms of hay and apples, grass with horses grazing
and summer flowers blooming. We stopped in Jharkot which is a village just before
Muktinath for lunch, and it turned out to be one of the prettiest villages I’d
yet seen. Tiny warrens of ancient buildings toppled over and around each other,
hundreds of years old. There was a 500 year old Buddhist monastery and the
whole place had an ancient historical atmosphere, a true Buddhist mountain
village in Lower Mustang. We had lunch in one of two guesthouses open in the
village (it looked like there was only three in total) of salad and yak momos
(I got an addictive taste for yak momos from our previous stop, I think I also
was craving protein after so many months of vegetarianism) and again it was
made deliciously and with love by the women of the house. The salad was a work
of art...
 |
| Jharkot |
We left Jharkot after lunch for Muktinath, our highest
destination at 3800m and the last village before the Thorung La Pass at 5400m which
unfortunately we didn’t have time to climb on this trek. Instead of scaling
Thorung La the plan was to turn back along the way we came and then continue to
Totapani in the opposite direction. We planned to stay in Muktinath which only
took 20 minutes to climb to from Jharkot, but were met by a very disappointing site.
Muktinath appeared as an ugly big village that lead you in on a wide throughway
that was a building site from start to finish. There were no alleyways,
interesting nooks or even very old buildings or the feeling of history that
seeped from every other village. There was tons of new building going on, with
a disgusting concrete square hotel smack in the middle of the town, banging and
building and dust and dirt and piles of rubble and machinery dotted all around.
Maybe once this was a pretty town that now was being flattened by building and ignorant
officials who thought that what tourists most wanted was concrete hotels. The Trekking
in Nepal Lonely Planet guide gushes about Muktinath being a beautiful place and
somewhere you should stay with a vibrant atmosphere, which is so weird, I can’t
see how this village is more beautiful or better than the quaint, friendly and
pretty village of Jharkot, for instance. The views of the mountains are
beautiful there though so it’s worth the climb, but take my advice and go back
down to Jharkot to spend the night, it’s nicer in every way.
 |
| Muktinath |
 |
| View from Muktinath |
Once back there we met a friendly man who grew up in the
village but now was a businessman elsewhere and was back to visit, and could
speak a bit of English. There were cute kids running around and also very funny
dogs, one that was following us got into a spat with the dog that ran things at
the monastery. He was waiting on the roof as we looked around, and chased the
dog away that had followed us from Muktinath. They love sitting on the roofs in
this part of the world, I noticed. Also chickens and any other small domestic
or non domestic animals around, maybe because of the way the buildings are
layered on top of each other on the hillsides.
After a night in Jharkot it was back down the valley the way
we came to Kagbeni. We were to do an epic amount of walking that day, trying to
get all the way to Marpha. Even after agreeing to take the faster, main route
we still managed to get lost trying to be clever taking a shortcut. It only ended
with us huffing and puffing back up a steep valley to the main path again. Back
in Kagbeni we ate apricots off the trees and had a yak burger at Yak Donald’s
(note, get your own burger they aren’t big enough to share, and are so
delicious you won’t want to). We sped down to Jomsom which was where we started,
there is a strong headwind on this route on most days and walking against it
became a real effort, for me anyway. But we didn’t slow the pace, and after
around six hours of hard walking we stopped at Krishnu Guesthouse (where Jimi
Hendrix famously stayed) and had some coffee and Tibetan bread with yak cheese,
one of my favourite meals on the trek. There we met an Australian guy who was
cycling the trail, and this involved carrying your bike and gear over many,
many areas too rough to cycle. Very hardcore, that’s all I can say. We saw a
New Zealander also doing this along the way, it looked utterly amazing to be
alone in the mountains with next to no possessions, but I can’t imagine how
physically difficult it must be. This was just enough energy for the final push
to Marpha.
 |
| Yak Donalds Kagbeni |
 |
| Jomsom |
The sun was going down but the wind was still relentless,
only quietening down just as darkness fell and we were safe in Marpha. The
scenery after Jomsom became more and more beautiful, dark greens and greys and
dramatic mountains covered in pine forest, with the river flowing faster and
more energetically over the millions of smooth grey stones that made up the
valley bed. The sun was dropping and so was our energy, but we powered on and
passed speedily by a few more trekkers also heading to Marpha who were surprised
to find other trekkers on that route at that time, racing along. There were
also buses on this rough mountain pass but none that would take us at that time
of the evening.
Eventually just before nightfall we reached the stunning town
of Marpha, famous for being the Southernmost Buddhist community in the world
(they are all centred around Tibet, Bhutan etc) and also for
brandy, there
being many apple orchards in the area. I picked another apple en route that was
delicious and crunchy. They made lots of things out of this diverse crop...
brandy (which was famous and even exported) cider, apple pie, apple crumble,
apple juice, dried apple. It was all so yum.
As with everywhere else Marpha was almost completely empty
and if felt as if we had the whole village to ourselves. I think this must have
been my favourite village on the trek overall, and I wished with all my heart
that we could stay there for longer and climb the mountains and discover the
ancient monasteries dotted around, and the old ancient part of the village that
is set deeper into the surrounding mountains and valleys. There was no building
work going on in this village, it was neat, small, ancient and complete, with a
big main monastery proudly set in the hillside (being looked over by a tiny
three hundred year old monastery precipitously wedged into a steep big of
mountain) with a meditation retreat right behind it. I longed to spend a week
or more there. We found a friendly, homely guesthouse along the main pathway of
the village, where the owner greeted us like old friends and treated us with
such devotion, making fresh delicious food for dinner with his wife, and plying
us with the local cider and brandy to keep us warm. We had walked for eight
hours that day and covered quite a distance, and so needed lots of sustenance.
 |
| Marpha main monestary |
 |
| Three hundred year old monastery |
There were many equally lovely looking guesthouses in the
village and also some tourist shops selling yak wool scarves or Tibetan jewellery,
but there were next to no tourists there at that time of year so it was mainly
the village locals buzzing with the evening’s activities of chatting to
neighbours and children playing together.
It was very sad to leave early the next morning but I vowed
to go back to Marpha one day. It was now the 17
th and I had to be in
Kathmandu by the 19
th, a little ambitious but made possible by being
able to take a mountain bus from Marpha to Ghasa, walking from Ghasa to
Totapani for four hours, staying the night in Totapani and taking another bus
an hour walk away from there to Beni, and then taking a taxi from Beni to
Pokhara where I’d catch the next morning’s bus to Kathmandu. Phew! The bus from Marpha to Ghasa cost Rs700 which
seemed quite steep for the two and a half hour ride, but the roads were crazy
and treacherous so maybe that was why, also of course it was a tourist not
local price. While we waited for the 8:30am bus some local children came to
watch us play chess, noisily commenting on the best moves and pointing them out
to us. They were very sweet, energetic and curious of us and after putting the
chess set away they pranced around us, confidently taking our cameras to take
pictures and laugh at themselves.
The bus took us through some more beautiful landscape that I
would have much loved to walk not drive through, stopping for dahl, fried bread
and chai for breakfast and then carrying on with the just eaten food bouncing
and lurching in the stomach. This was the ever crazy, jagged, boulder strewn
roads of Nepal’s mountains at their best. From Ghasa to Totapani were some
quite unbelievable landslides. The bus would stop when it came to one and everyone
would gather their things (some families with babies and huge loads) get out
the bus, climb over a huge pile of boulders and rocks from a landslide, and
find the next bus waiting on the other side. This happened over and over again
so that progress was really slow, and I was glad to get off at Ghasa and walk
the four hours to Totapani. I’ve never in my life seen roads such as these; I
can’t even believe that vehicles attempt to drive through them. It’s like an
assault course set up by the mountain for its own amusement.
This was now the Western route of the Annapurna II trek, and
the scenery became more like my Annapurna Base Camp trek. It was hotter,
wetter, with closer valleys with much denser forest. It rained a bit but then
the blazing sun came out making the day extremely hot. It was really beautiful
though, of course, but just so different from the dry desert mountains left
behind only a few hours away further north. We got to Totapani hot and sweaty,
finding a big old wooden guesthouse with rooms set in a jungle-like garden with
steps leading down to the village hot springs. It was the same idea as the hot
springs at the ABC trek I did, but definitely not as pretty or as rustic, more
like an artificial square of swimming in a fenced in area. We took an evening
walk along the main pathway of the village and ate some local rice snacks,
sitting amongst the locals chatting amongst themselves in groups of young men,
mothers with babies and little kids excitedly chattering as the sun went down. The
electricity was out, and you could see studious children sitting at desks doing
their homework by candlelight. We ate and played chess by candlelight too,
spending an evening in that soft natural light is always a pleasure and a
novelty.
Because of all the landslides, getting to Beni meant some
more walking of around an hour and a half (including a little bit of steep,
tiring climbing) through the muddy, hot pathways of the now wet Annapurna
trail. The culture and people changed instantly from Buddhist to Hindu, and we
saw some smartly dressed pilgrims sweating and hoisting their skirts up from
the heat, asking us directions to an unknown to us site. Eventually we found the
bus to Beni after climbing on a slippery muddy path close to the mountain, next
to a powerful river. There was a road (of sorts) and a collection of buses
surrounded by some chai stands. Some men were hoisting a motorbike belonging to
a foreigner that had obviously broken down, straight onto the top of the bus.
It took about ten men and a quite gargantuan effort to do this, but these
Nepali’s would have put a house on top of the bus if that’s what someone
needed. We climbed onto a packed bus and set off on the crazy road, sliding, I’m
sure very nearly into the ravine, at every turn. After an hour the rickety old
bus stopped abruptly and everyone got out, it had run out of petrol and a boy
had to run to the closest village to fill a big bottle up with some to bring
back. The bus passed by villages so closely to the shacks that lined the side
of the road that you could see what the family was eating on their dinner
plate, or what board games the children were playing at their little tables.
The extra height of bus because of the motorbike meant that sometimes someone
had to climb on the bus to move aside electricity wires, with no hassle or
objection, I’m sure they did that every day.
 |
| Putting a motorbike on the top |
Funny video of us bumping around
I never got car sick before, but after months of sitting on all
these absolutely insane bus rides I really started to feel it, and couldn’t
wait to get off after around two and a half hours later when we finally arrived
in the small town of Beni. There, thank goodness, we could get a taxi the two
hours to Pokhara. There was a Spanish couple there who wanted to do the same,
and after a breakfast of boiled egg, Tibetan bread and tea we thankfully got
into the car and looked forward to a smoother road. The taxi cost Rs3000
between four of us and was totally worth it.
We made it back to Pokhara hot, tired and happy. We did the
trek in four days which was very fast,
but still completely stunning and worth it. I can’t wait to go back to go into
Mustang again one day, which I most definitely will do. Everything worked out
perfectly even on the tightest of schedules and as always with these things I’m
so happy I took the risk and made the effort to do something like that instead
of playing it safe.
The bus the next morning to Kathmandu was long and hot, and
after one last race around Thamel and my last dahl bat at Or2K, I made my way
to the airport to board the plane to China. I had absolutely not mentally
prepared myself for the insane clash between Beijing and Nepal, I hadn’t
thought about it (or wanted to) at all. I loved Nepal with all my heart and
would have stayed there much longer if I could have, but I will be back one
day.
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