Today was a pubic holiday – a festival in which ladies wear red, I know no more than that – and Yogi had hired a taxi to take Aparna, Eva and me on an excursion into the mountains. We were supposed to set off at ten, but predictably it was just after eleven that we departed. Actually, that is unfair, since at ten there was the most tremendous downpour – we are in the monsoon season, after all – and it would have been crazy to leave then.
The taxi was the same one, with the same cheerful driver, that had collected me from the airport, and by taxi standards it was rather small, with three people squeezed into the back; I, of course, was given the guest of honour seat, riding shotgun.
We took the highway out of the city, swerving past the cows sitting down in the fast lane, and past a huge and impressive and apparently brand new teaching hospital on the edge of town (but empty and shut up, apparently for political reasons), and then up through the jungle occupying the foothills, with monkeys congregating in the road.
Our first destination was an old bridge – I think Aparna said it was Nepal’s oldest wooden bridge – which the authorities were taking no chances with. There was a more modern replacement a few yards downstream, and both ends of the old bridge were firmly blocked off to traffic. It had become instead a tourist destination, with a fair crowd of locals, dressed up to the nines in all their finery, taking photo after photo. Photography being essentially free nowadays is a great democratisation, but it does make it overpowering in situations like this. There were also a couple of professionals, with huge lenses, and rather surprisingly they were doing some business. The bridge was in an attractive spot in a river gorge, and a heart shaped stand had been set up in the middle, with room for five or six to arrange themselves on it.
It was still a grey and misty day, so as we continued to climb into the mountains themselves, we found ourselves enveloped in low cloud, rather taking away the prospect of any good views. But there were glimpses of it nonetheless. More interesting for me was to see exactly the same sort of villages that we had seen forty years ago. The huge difference was that these villages had a road running through them, and that made a big difference. Of course we had never come to this part of Nepal, so there can be no direct comparison, but I understand the villages in the east of the country, that we did trek through, have undergone the same transformation.
While we had encountered villages which had just a shop or two, and those with very little to sell, now the villages we saw would have at least a couple of dozen such places, cheek by jowl, and all offering a wide range of goods: snacks, bottles of water and coke, sweets, tins of vegetables… And all, of course, because it could all be brought up by lorry, and not by donkeys, or porters with straps around their foreheads, carrying huge burdens. It also meant that, among the familiar lean-to shacks, larger villages had relatively impressive modern buildings.
We stopped at a stall on its own, which had a relatively impressive display of fruits and vegetables (and all organic, as Yogi was keen to emphasise.) Different types of tomatoes and bananas, green beans, potatoes. Modern European supermarkets would have rejected it all, but they are ridiculously obsessed with appearance.
For lunch, we stopped at a rather extraordinary place, a large and relatively modern hotel, a vision in bright lime green, and ate a splendid thali-type meal, in that the food keeps coming – more rice, more dhal, more vegetables – if you keep eating. Naturally, I did not avail myself of this option, but was relatively pleased with the fact that I almost cleared my (first) plate; maybe I am becoming more accustomed to the food.
Our final destination was a large waterfall. It was an impressive sight, and was another popular local tourist destination (as In Ethiopia last year, as yet I am the only white person I have seen… except for Eva, of course.) Naturally, it attracted a very similar crowd to the one at the bridge, but if anything was even more frenetic, with a range of viewpoints set up. Yogi in particular is a prodigious taker of photos, so there were many, many taken. Some times, such places irritate me – the noise, the inevitable mess – but actually I found it all charming. And it was especially pleasant when a particularly pretty girl in a beautiful outfit decided she wanted a picture of me, her and Eva on a swing.
It had been clear on the ascent that building the road was not the end of the process. Paved for most of the way, but with sections that had to be negotiated with care, either because of smaller rockfalls, or much more extensive landslides which had swept the road away, leaving bumpy, rocky, muddy stretches. And we found ourselves particularly affected by such things. When the time came to return. During the time we had been at the waterfall, an enormous tree on top of the cliff next to the road, had finally given up the ghost, come sliding down the hillside, and toppled across the road, cutting off access in both directions (except for a couple of motorbikes manhandled over one end, and an elderly gentleman walking up the road, who did not allow this to disrupt his journey one jot.)
Yogi and I walked up the road from where we were stopped to inspect the situation, chatted and joked a little with the crowd of beleaguered travellers, and were told that a digger was on its way. I thought it unlikely that this would happen for a while, so strolled back to the taxi… and very shortly there was sudden movement among those gathered, and it seemed we were on our way once again. A pity – I would have liked to have seen the removal in action.
With both a delayed start and a delayed return, it was getting pretty dark for the return journey. One way and another it was a pretty scary journey, what with the fading light, the clouds we drove through, the oncoming traffic, the ill-defined road… but actually I wasn’t scared at all, having confidence in our driver. I was nodding off intermittently, and it was the moments of waking, or being jerked awake, that were most disorienting.
But, obviously, we made it back in the end, after a splendid day. A beer or two and some philosophy with Yogi in the hotel, before dragging myself up to my room. I am mildly concerned that I am quite as exhausted as I am; at the end of each day, I can scarcely move. But it’s all fun.
