During the long reaches of the night (after Tiger’s invasion) I had been dreaming of setting off early and pounding our way back down the mountain towards civilisation. O the last thing I wanted was to be told we were going for a stroll. Even then, I had thought it would be just a couple of hundred yards in order to stretch our legs. So I was feeling pretty gloomy when it appeared we were going a fair bit further on. But, as is so often the case, they were right and I was wrong. After all, we had not struggled all the way up here, just to take one brief look and then turn on our heels and turn back, especially when the hotel (laughably called) was the grottiest, smokiest, nastiest one we had stayed in throughout.
For the stroll was very pleasant, up a gentle meadow. There were some boggy bits to navigate, as well as to cross a pair of streams, one of which was crystal clear, the other milky7 white, which flowed into one another. And then onwards to a temple set at the base of the mountain, the Chalani Nadi, with a spring flowing out from it (rather clever design on the part of the original builders than anything miraculous, but lovely all the same.) Everyone but me scrambled down and then up some rocks to reach it; I did not think I had the energy, and when it became apparent you had to do the last bit barefoot, all the more reason to stay where I was and take some long-distance photos.
But by the time we had taken some photos, sporting the “Dhangadhi, City of Cricket” t-shirts we had been given for the purpose, had made our way back to the hotel, waited for Bharat and Hari to have some lunch – they eat a prodigious amount, three times a day – and set off down the mountain, it was 12. With something of sigh, I was all too aware that it would be quite some time yet before we were done with this… experience? Trek? Ordeal?
Having made the long climb up the day before, we now had the equally long descent to manage. In general, I found it a lot easier, not losing my breath at regular intervals, and then there was the pleasant stroll through the meadow and woods. Even so, I was becoming wearier and wearier, and slowing down as a consequence. We passed pretty much straight through the Marie Celeste village, still abandoned, still all locked up, and on to Ballekhola, the farm with the pigs – there really was no alternative.
And for a time, both Val and I thought it was becoming close; there were sights we thought we recognised. But on and on and on we plodded, slowing all the time, with the light fading fast. I think this was my lowest point of all: Bharat, trying to reassure us, told us there were just twenty-five minutes to go. It was the closest I came to having a real strop, or just sitting down and refusing to move. But that was not an option. So I gritted my teeth and on we plodded, Bharat guiding me, as before, with the torch on his phone. But no actual stumbles this time, just the saddest of spectacles.
And then, at last, we were there; by the greatest fortune, our sleeping hut was the first building we came to. I staggered inside and collapsed onto the low wooden bed, unable to move.
But, remarkably, despite the depths I had plumbed, it was not too long before I could be roused, and led into the Farmhouse once again, to sit at the table, and then more or less to refuse anything to eat – I simply could not face that all too familiar meal again. But I drank some sweet tea, and then, with no fire to tempt us all out this time around (which was probably just as well) we all went to bed in the same room once again, Val and I once more slotted together, unable to turn over without the other’s say so.
