On occasion, I have been known to laugh in the face of danger, or at least snigger a bit in the face of reason. And so, food poisoning or no, I started out on the journey to Gumda early in the morning of February 12th. I had totally repacked my rucksack leaving behind all non-essential items and adding in the warm clothes I'd purchased from Jamel, plus a hardcore sleeping bag. I think it more or less weighed the same by the time I'd finished, to be honest. I am the only backpacker I know who doesn't get a 'Heavy: Bend Knees' tag added to their bag whenever they check it in at an airport. Still, on the flight over to Nepal it weighed in at 18kg, which is about one third of my current, non-food-poisoned body weight. While for the most part I would agree that it isn't particularly heavy, I also wouldn't advise anyone to walking up some steep mountains carrying a third of their body weight on their backs, especially when they aren't really feeling 100%. Don't let that stop you, though, if you fancy recreating my adventure in the comfort of your own country.
Actually, I guess it did contain a couple of items that weren't strictly speaking essential. My luxuries were these:
- A third pair of trousers. Given the luck I've had with trousers on my travels thus far, this seemed entirely justifiable, although I didn't actually need them in the end. Perhaps this was Sod's Law proving powerful enough to balance out the wrath of the Trouser Gods. Perhaps I am only cursed by the Australian Trouser Gods, and am favoured by the Nepalese ones. Perhaps repeating Motorhead's Trouser Blessing (from the excellent Rock N Roll album) placated the Trouser Gods enough to leave me and my trousers alone. However, I like to think it was the human sacrifice that did it.
- A couple of books, a pack of cards and a travel chess set. They don't weigh a great deal and I was going to have to amuse myself some of the time.
- One tin of Cadbury's Drinking Chocolate Powder and a spoon to eat it with. It may be a cultural experience but I'm not going to last a month without chocolate.
But I digress. The first part of my adventure mostly involved sitting pretty still for about eleven hours. The bus goes from Kathmandu to Arughat, which is literally the end of the road. Rural Nepal doesn't have a great deal of infrastructure and the roads simply don't reach many parts of the country. The bus itself seemed sturdily built and was brightly decorated inside. There were garlands of garish (and presumably fake) flowers around the front windscreen and pictures of Hindu gods on the walls. The flowers at the front matched the colour scheme of the painted walls, in as far as anything matched anything else. There were rather too many colours to reasonably expect all of them to match each other. The seats were comfortably enough, if clearly designed for people even shorter than me. The stereo blasted out West Nepali folk songs and Bollywood classics as we crawled through the traffic-choked streets of Kathmandu and out onto the equally traffic-choked narrow, winding mountain roads. In theory, drivers keep to the left but mostly drivers use whichever side of the road seems like the best idea at the time. As a result, you get some pretty messed up traffic jams. Add to this the fact that the road is barely wide enough for one vehicle to drive along with all four wheels on solid ground, let alone for that vehicle to be simultaneously overtaken by a large truck and undertaken by a motorbike, and the situation becomes even more fun. There were regular stops for food and for the driver to try (and fail) to buy more fuel. After a few hours the semi-road became a definate non-road, but we continued to bounce along into the evening.
Don't think for a moment that I didn't enjoy the journey. I was feeling much better, the scenery was stunning and there was always something going on. We bought fruit and cake from sellers through the windows of the bus and got out to stretch our legs whenever the bus made an extended stop. When I say 'we', incidentally, I mean myself and my translator/guide Peter.
We reached Arughat after dark and set off to walk from the bus station to the town itself. The first thing you do is walk over a suspension bridge; it's all rather exciting. Once in town, we had to go to the police station to 'sign in', so that if we disappeared up in the mountains then - in theory - someone would notice. The police guy in charge seemed like a jolly fellow and joked (in Nepali) while taking down our details. Clearly there's not a great deal for police folk to do in Arughat, as a whole crowd of police men gathered to watch us filling in the forms. From there, we walked through the rest of the small town and out the other side to the lodge where we would stay the night. It was a clean, friendly place with a comfortable bed, although we were already far from such extravagances as actual toilets.
Bright and early the following morning, we set off on the eight-hour or so walk to Lapu Bessie, where we would be spending the next night. The path started off a reasonably gentle ascent and got steadily steeper as the day wore on. Towards the end of the walk we rounded a corner and almost walked into two girls from the village. Suzanna and Sungita are the neighbours of Purnee - my host-to-be - and had come to meet us as Purnee was unable to. They were so shy, though, they nearly ran off as soon as they saw us. Still, they recovered enough to tie a peach coloured scarf round my neck and give me a rhododendrom flower, both tradition signs of welcome. A little further along the road and we met another person from the village, who I assumed was either had mental problems or was drunk, but turned out to be one of the local 'Jakari', or witch doctors.
After a particularly guelling ascent, we finally reached Lapu Bessie and I gratefully dumped my rucksack (cursing extra trousers and books and chocolate). The lodge was, again, clean and friendly but somehow obviously out in the middle of nowhere. It made me feel somewhat like I was staying at Heidi's grandfather's house. The walk the following day was even harder than the first and I was pretty exhausted most of the time. Still, you can't help but gorp at the stunning scenery and the... Nepalishness of everything. At Papa's House #2 in Kathmandu, I had made some comment to Shova about the breathtaking mountains you could see from the roof. She'd laughed and said, "You can't see any mountains from here. Those are just foothills". Well, these were definately mountains; your brain gets confused between 'these are small' and 'these are far away'. I think my brain assumed it was a particularly well-painted scenic backdrop, at least to start with, because I just couldn't get my head around the scale of it all. There are many, many, (many) photos to come but I don't think they really do it justice. I come from a country where the highest peak (Scarfell Pike) stands a mere 978m in its socks, but Gumda sits on a foothill at a mighty 2000m. That's over twice as high as the highest point in England. No wonder my poor brain was having issues.
But yes, eventually we made it to Gumda. The walk was very hard but, I think, totally worth it. I had many, many exciting adventures in Gumda but you'll have to wait for the next exciting installment before I start regaling them...
