OUT OF THIS WORLD

TEXT AND PHOTO JOHN NARAYAN PARAJULI
(From the Kathmandu Post, October 24, 09)

A late-monsoon holiday to Mustang is filled with landslides, unexpected breaks and surreal landscapes

A delayed monsoon and strikes had made our plans to visit Mustang uncertain. After weeks of agonising over it, my wife and I finally boarded a tourist bus from Thamel to Pokhara at the end of August, but once inside the bus, everyone had the same look of disbelief and was probably wondering the same thing: Where are the damn tourists? Tourism in Nepal seems to be going through a period of transition. Western tourists are increasingly being replaced by domestic and regional visitors. Some tourism entrepreneurs will tell you, even off-season is good season for business nowadays. The green-plated tourist buses are packed more and more with locals and Indians. While the phenomenon has partly to do with the issue of road safety, it is also partly because a new class of upwardly mobile Nepalis has emerged along with an increase in Indian tourists. As we were approaching Damauli, a speeding truck smashed the side mirror of the bus scattering broken pieces of glass all over our vehicle. While trying to avoid a total collision, the driver had forcefully jammed the brakes— quite literally—that rendered the bus totally immobile, and he had to send for a technician to fix the brakes. Since we had to reach Beni that day, we waived down and hopped onto the next Beni-bound bus that came our way. We arrived at Beni very late in the evening after being stranded near Maldhunga in Baglung, where a bus that had been caught in a landslide had blocked the whole road. As we approached Beni, a fellow passenger, a total stranger, invited us to her house—the worry in our faces must have been visible, but we had to politely decline. She then volunteered and took us to her relative's hotel. We ran into two young and possibly trainee monks next to our room who, perhaps in secrecy, were taking some worldly pleasures by gulping down few glasses of local raksi. We could overhear them rationalising among themselves why they drink, and other monks don't. The next morning, a bus took us to Chamere, which was an hour away. Because of the landslide, we had to walk for about 20 minutes to go past a section where the boulders and mud were still crumbling. After another hour's jeep ride, we arrived in Beg Khola, where the swollen rivers had swept a section of the road. We found another jeep on the other side of the river, but we were 4 people short of the full capacity. We offered to pay some extra, but the driver wouldn't agree. So we decided to make use of our two limbs, and after a good seven-hour walk, arrived in Ghasa. We did stop on the way for tea and rest—chatting with locals and travellers, while marvelling at the scenery. As we would stop and enquire about the time it would take to reach the next point, people would confuse us with different estimates. It is amazing how fleeting a sense of time and direction do we have. Never take the time estimates of village folks at face value: Half an hour can mean anything between ten minutes to two hours. The locals seemed to have mixed feelings about the construction of the new road. Transportation had definitely become easier and goods cheaper, but the downside was that not many tourists trekked along the Annapurna Conservation Area routes as earlier. It is quite visible that people have invested a lot of money in facilities for tourists to stay overnight along the route. Like many trekkers did before the road was built, we intended to stay in Ghasa overnight and leave the next morning. Instead, we met two government employees who were headed to Jomsom. They assured us that they will find a jeep to travel and a hotel for us no matter how late at night we arrived in Jomsom. So, we continued, and reached Jomsom at 10:30 in the night, after a change of three more jeeps on the way, walking up and down the hills, and on suspension bridges that would swing violently in the pitch-black night. We were really touched by the warmth of the locals. Despite commercialisation in places like Jomsom, folks in these mountains have not lost their honesty and hospitality. Trust still seems to be a currency around here, and the guest word is taken quite literally. Although we were paying for the services, it did feel almost at home. Next morning, we woke up to the sounds of a landing airplane. We didn't know that our hotel was just opposite the airport when we arrived the night before. The landings and take-offs of twin-otters silhouetted by the mountains were a breathtaking sight. A Sri Lankan friend once put it after visiting Mustang: The landing at Jomsom airport always brings prayers to the mind of even a non-believer. We took a jeep headed for Muktinath. Drivers in these parts of the country are quite young. Among the half-a-dozen drivers that we used during the whole trip, only two appeared to be in their late 20s, while the rest were much younger. None of the drivers were from Mustang. They were either from Pokhara or further away. Local men seemed to be in short supply. All the businesses like restaurants and hotels are run by mothers and daughters, quite literally a women's land. Perhaps it epitomises the predicament of Nepal's rural areas in general. As we walked up to the Muktinath temple at a staggering 3,800 m, I could feel the effects of the thinning oxygen in my lungs and knees. I panted for the most part as we scaled up to the temple from breathlessness and excitement alike. Three hours later, we took another jeep down to Kagbeni, but to our dismay, it didn't live up to the impression created by the film. The next morning, we walked down to Jomsom. I had slightly sprained my right foot the previous day while navigating between boulders in one of the landslide affected sections. So we took four hours in a lazy downhill walk—sometimes scavenging for ammonites, at other times just awed by the surroundings—an unwinding effect, a calm that was accentuated by the almost silent flow of the Kali Gandaki River—and occasionally punctuated by the sounds of speeding jeeps and the gushing wind.