Waiting for MLTR to come over the stage. Sound system being checked.. crowd has swollen a bit.—
Dinesh Wagle (@wagle) November 19, 2011

{more tweets inside]

mltr perform in kathmandu

Nepali band Kutumba, popular for their instrumental music, warm up the audience before the visiting Danish band MLTR show to the Himalayan audience how they have learned to rock in all these years. This is the second international gig (by western musicians) since last February when Canadian Bryan Adams kicked off his show with Bob Seger’s Katmandu.

Originally posted from WordPress for Android

Here are more photos from the concert: (all by Suraj Kunwar)

Here are my tweets from the concert venue (chronological order):

Waiting for MLTR to come over the stage. Sound system being checked.. crowd has swollen a bit.—
Dinesh Wagle (@wagle) November 19, 2011

Just surveyed the MLTR concert venue, inspected gold, slvr etc sections, not many ppl, way way below wat it was at Bryan Adams show in Feb—
Dinesh Wagle (@wagle) November 19, 2011

The feel too is not as grand & magnetic as it was in the national stadium in Feb. Just comparing betwn @bryanadams & MLTR shows in Kathmandu—
Dinesh Wagle (@wagle) November 19, 2011

But then ppl here in Tundikhel, the MLTR concert venue, are excited, some dancing, & waiting for the band to come over the stage & perform—
Dinesh Wagle (@wagle) November 19, 2011

MLTR open their show w/ some dramatic effects…n now I can see/hear the crowd lipsyncing the sleeping child (2nd no.) twitpic.com/7gaid5—
Dinesh Wagle (@wagle) November 19, 2011

One dude is waiving Sun&Moon. Don't know why. But MLTR say they r pleased be "here, so far away, in Nepal"—
Dinesh Wagle (@wagle) November 19, 2011

MLTR ask us if we are warm or freezing after doing "someday". Crowd so far seems to be enjoying the show.—
Dinesh Wagle (@wagle) November 19, 2011

Didn't plan to tweet much today n my phone reminds me of that now, battery down! #nowplaying: something you shld know—
Dinesh Wagle (@wagle) November 19, 2011

A plane is about to take off from Tribhuvan International Airport's runway.

CNNgo recently put Kathmandu’s Tribhuvan in a list of 10 “world’s most hated airports” along with JFK, LAX and Heathrow detailing correctly the shortcomings of Nepal’s only international airport. But the travel site also said correctly, at the end, this: Never mind. The city’s markets and surrounding mountains are lovely.

I agree with both the criticism of the airport as well as the praises for the city of Kathmandu. A few days ago clouds disappeared from above the green hills of Kathmandu valley providing us the stunning view of the mighty Himalayas that overlooked the airport. Fliers must have seen those snow-capped mountains from close and relished the view. That must have helped them to forget all the hassles that they might have gone through at the airport before boarding in the planes. Here are more photos and the detailed entry on the subject: Kathmandu’s (and Nepal’s) Tribhuvan: One of the World’s Most Hated Airports (!)

जीतमान घर्ती

मेरो मध्य पहाड यात्रा जर्नलका कतिपय पन्नाहरू यहाँ प्रकाशित हुनै बाँकी छन् । तिनमा तस्बिरहरू पनि थप्न बाँकी छ । तर जीवन अगाडी बढीरहेको छ । यसैबीच मैले त्यही यात्राबाट संश्लेसित दुइ जर्नलहरू पत्रिकामा प्रकाशन गरिसकेको छु । एउटा “रुकुम-रोल्पा एक्स्प्रेस“ शीर्षकमा अघिल्लो साता र अर्को “शान्तिको लामो सास“ शीर्षकमा यो साता । ती दुबै टुक्रा मैले रोल्पाको लिबाङस्थित एउटा साइबर क्याफेमा बसेर लेखेको हुँ जसमा मुख्यत शान्तिकालमा गाउँले जनताको “परिवर्तित” जीवनीका केही झलकहरू प्रस्तुत छन् ।

तस्बिरमा देखिएका यी जीतमान कमरेडसँगको त्यो दिनको यात्रा रमाइलो भएको थियो । मैले चाहि दिनभर खुट्टा खोच्याउदै हिड्नु परेको थियो देब्रे घुँडाले धोका दिएपछि । यिनको एउटा गधाले मेरो सात किलो जतिको झोला बोकिदिएको थियो । अन्यमा मैले उनको गधाले भारी बोक्ने दर अनुसारको पैसा दिन खोज्दा जीतमानले लिएनन् । यिनी कुनै जमानामा माओवादी “पीएलए”मा भर्ती भएर केही आक्रमणमा सामेल भएका थिए ।

“उतिबेला पार्टीका पछाडी दौडीइयो, अहिले गधाको,” एउटा सन्दर्भमा उनले भनेका थिए । दसैंमा गाउँ लुकुममा मेला आयोजना गर्न उनले वाइसीएललाई १२ सय रुपैया चन्दा दिएको बताए । युद्ध सकिएपछि पनि पार्टिले सेनामै रहन दिएको दबाव नकारेर खच्चडमार्फतको व्यवसाय थालेका उनले पार्टीप्रति अझै सहानुभूति भएकाले त्यो चन्दा दिएको बताए । “काङ्ग्रेस, एमालेले मागेभने पनि दिनुहुन्छ त ?” मैले सोधे ।

“दिनुछु,” उनले भने । “१२ सयै त दिन्न तर दुइचार सय दिन्छु किनकी गाउकै मान्छेहरुले केही गर्ने खोजेर माग्न आए दिन्न भन्न कसरी मिल्छ ?”

जीतमानको थप कथा (र तस्बिर) यहाँ छ । अनि त्यो दिनको मेरो पीडादायी हिडाईबारेको विवरण (अ‍ंग्रेजीमा) चाहि यहाँ छ- Limping all day long with a Donkey caravan to reach Rukumkot

[Added later in the day: Here's link to the article that I wrote after reading all those documents and talking to many people: माओवादी-भारत सम्बन्ध: पहिले विस्तारवाद, अहिले अवसरवाद

Libang

Unlike many other Nepali districts Rolpa has a distinct image of its own. Unfortunately that ‘distinctiveness’ is not necessarily positive and/or based on positive vibe. Think about Iraq and Afghanistan of the past decade. Rolpa once was Nepal’s ‘ground zero’. During the height of the Maoist insurgency that began in Rolpa’s Thawang village in 1996 (and ended in 2006 in Kathmandu) the district headquarter Libang had shrunken inside a 3-km radius ‘Green Zone’. The GZ was surrounded by barbed wire and protected/guarded 24-hours a day by the armed soldiers. It was dangerous to venture out of the Green Zone for government officials and anyone who wasn’t friendly to the rebels. The area outside the GZ belonged to them. That was way back in 2000-2001.

I had never come to Rolpa before. Like many other Nepalis who have never seen Rolpa I also had a certain image of this place in my mind: war-ravaged hills and settlements where people loved to fight, shanties half burned and torn apart. Killing is what the people of Rolpa enjoyed, I thought. That’s definitely a misplaced and misinformed notion about Rolpa and Rolpalis. I realized that till this evening I knew only one Rolpali- my Rolpa-based colleague. He too isn’t a janajati (or Magar to be specific) who are majority in the district.

Chakchake hill at 2032 mt was cold. I felt like I had just arrived at a place close to the Himalaya. I also thought the hill to be actually where the administrative center of the district was located. I like such place to live. The road from Dang to Libang has just been blacktopped, the last laborer left the work-site only a couple of weeks back, I am told. The work, like in many other road projects, is far from satisfactory. But the point is the road is no more bumpy. It’s blacktopped. That’s a big deal in Nepal where people have been furiously digging roads all over and God only knows when this new ‘agricultural’ road network gets blacktopped.

I had left Tulsipur early in the morning to reach Ghorahi where a Dang-based colleague of mine was waiting for me. He took me to the nearby bus stand where I learned that seats for the bus that was about to leave for Rolpa (at 7 am) were sold out. But I was determined to make it to Rolpa. So I entered inside the bus and made myself at ease on a mudha, on of those makeshift stools that the buswallahs keep inside for people like me. Extra income for them. Two hours into the journey I got a seat that, strangely, hadn’t been sold by the ticket counter. A lanky teenaged boy and his younger sister had occupied that. The boy offered me the seat by his side.

The 5-km long curved road from Chakchake to Libang bazar is challenging for drivers of long-body Tata buses. These buses are too long to have enough space to negotiate the turning points. Drivers have to press breaks a lot and they have to use back gear a lot too. Passengers could feel pungent smell coming out of tires as the heavy usage of breaks and the load of bus had created a lot of stress and fissures on them and on the road.

As we were about to reach Libang (may be at a point some two kilometers away) a male passenger vomited right on the back of a female passenger who was seated infront of him. She was wearing a red kurta. The vomit not only landed on the outer side of kurta or her back but it went inside. I was at the back of the bus and the incident happend at the front. But it wasn’t hard to comprehend the situation the lady was in. What could she do? Throw away the kurta? Not possible. There was no water. Somebody helped her clean a bit but it was impossible to clean that fully. She stood up and waited for about eight minutes as the bus crawled on the road and reached Libang to finally get off the bus.

I asked a shopkeeper for a hotel to stay. The man pointed to the one nearby. It was surprisingly clean hotel with nice rooms. Some of them offered a view of Libang bazaar and the hills. But those with the view had no attached bathroom. I went for the view. I really wanted to see THE Rolpa.

Here are some photos from my bus ride on what people are forced to call a ‘highway’ that connects Rukum with Dang. In between these districts is Salyan. The road isn’t blacktopped which meant a bumpy ride that lasted for about 7 hours. The funniest thing is that I ended up, albeit reluctantly, sharing a hotel room with a man I met in the bus, at the end of the trip, and disagreed on the need of the road networks in Nepal. The bus halted at

Tulsipur, the final destination, where I got off along with the person. It was too late for me to go to Ghorahi (and stay there) to catch a bus from there to Rolpa the next morning. So the man took me to the hotel that he knew as he also stayed nearby and ate there when his wife didn’t stay with him.

>>This post contains 46 photos.

Look ma, I lost my tooth.

This a sequel to the previous post titled People and Faces from Rukum’s Headquarter Musikot [RIP, Steve Jobs]. In this post I present photos that I took (of kids) during my excursion in Musikot, the headquarter of Rukum. I somehow encounter kids willing to be photographed (and very happily) during my trips. From Helambu (heading back to school and doko girl) to Dadeldhura (garlanded & Dasain tika on their foreheads).

So who are these divers? I don’t know. I didn’t feel like interviewing them when I saw them diving, swimming and trying to catch fishes in a small pond by the roadside. I was returning from the airport that is located at the lap of a hill that overlooks the Musikot bazaar. One of the kids seemed to be in charge of rest of the kids. He was overseeing the fishing operation. The in-charge was bullying, directing and, sometime, thrashing others. Not before long one of his ‘subjects’ challenged him. They almost got into a fist fight. The ‘leader’ was pretty tensed as other kids were not getting enough fishes. I called him ‘the contractor’ and everyone laughed and started calling him ‘oi contractor, contractor’. Have a look at this photo where they are seen angrily facing each other. Others started laughing.

I meet other kids on my way back to bazaar.

The lady on the left was about to smoke a cigarette when she saw me holding a camera. She didn

It was a bumpy, and at times scary, ride on a Bolero early in the morning but that saved me a day’s walk to arrive in Musikot, the headquarter of Rukum district. As I ordered the food I took out the iPad from my bag and started browsing the Twitter app. A tweet by Kyle G Knight, a Kathmandu-based Fulbright fellow, attracted my attention. The tweet was an extract from a New York Times article with the link at the end: “with Apple’s resources, he could’ve revolutionized industry to manufacture devices more humanely, and chose not to: http://nyti.ms/pY0oeT“

Could’ve? I sensed something wrong with the tone because I knew Steve Jobs was sick and that he had resigned from Apple recently. My worst fear came true. The story began with this sentence: “STEVE JOBS was an enemy of nostalgia.”

[Nov 5 note: I wrote an article on Steve Jobs/स्टिभ जब्स - the news, his book and the person in yesterday's Hello Shukrabar, the weekly supplement of Kantipur. The book, called "Steve Jobs" by Walter Isaacson, was published on 24th Oct. I downloaded a copy of its Epub version on iPad on 27th.]

I felt incredibly sad as I read that report. It was as if somebody I had known for long and from very close had passed away. I browsed the Times site to read other news reports and the obituary piece. A report mentioned American president Barack Obama’s statement in which he, according to the Times, described Mr. Jobs as one of “the greatest of American innovators” who exemplified the country’s ingenuity. “There may be no greater tribute to Steve’s success than the fact that much of the world learned of his passing on a device he invented,” Mr. Obama said.

That felt so true. I was one of those people who had just learnt about Jobs death in the device he invented.

The Times report added: “And many passed along the news with their iPads and Macintoshes and iPhones, simply because these devices of his creation had become so integral to their daily lives.”

On the day Jobs had died, I was in Dhorpatan, away from the Internet and the news, capturing beautiful scenery in the iPad- both in photos and videos.

After getting updates from around the world on topics other than Steve Jobs it was time for me to go around the Musikot bazaar to explore the place. I didn’t like it. The hill looked unattractive with ugly concrete buildings sprouting all over. The neighborhood looked dirty. The good view from near the airport was the only consolation of the day. I walked for about 20 minutes from the bazaar to reach the airport where a small Nepal Airlines plane landed, dropped off passengers and boarded in others and flew away. All in about 20 minutes. That is what is called Short Take Off and Landing.

Ten minutes to the walk, I felt a pinch on my knee. Left side of the left knee.

It was 6:40 am. I was heading downhill to Kakri. They said the village was about 30 minutes of walk away. There was one brief moment of confusion when I couldnt find the path that disappeared into the excess soil from the road work. I made a couple of jumps and found the path.

I felt another pinch on the same spot of left knee. I thought about yesterday’s walk. I could feel pain on calf. And on both legs. Thighs were paining too. But this particular pinch, piercing pain, was different. For calf or thigh pain walking more is the way of cure. Muscles get used to with the process in a matter of hours. I wasn’t worried about those pains. But this pain had a needling effect.

This pain started to grow as I walked. Soon I was limping. It took me 1.5 hours to cover the trail that others had said I would cover in 30 minutes. I think I could have walked that distance in 45 minutes if my knee hadn’t let me down. Now I was hardly dragging myself on the route stopping mainly to give the knee some rest and to take photos of two dense neighborhoods of Kakri village.

By the time I reached the village I had realized that I must hire a porter to carry my baggage. But I knew that the bag, weighting around 7 kilos, wasn’t the real problem. I understood that I was into a serious problem that had very less to do with the load on my shoulder. Still I asked about porter with the first man I encountered in the village. All unemployed boys in the village had been employed these days at the road project, the man said. I had very slim chance of finding a porter, he said.

I dragged myself to the hotel situated at the end of the village, close to the school building which was on the west. On the east was a river over which a bridge had been put up. If I wanted to go to Thabang, the Rolpali village where the Maoist conflict had been kick started in 1996 (and now has been developed as a model village by the party), I had to cross the river and walk for about 3.5 hours. The mostly uphill trail went through dense jungle. A serious fight had erupted inside my mind. Didn’t I really want to take that route and go back to Rukumkot via Mahatgaun? Or, should I stick to my original plan that was to go to Rukumkot directly from Kakri? My weak knee defeated my desire to go to Thabang.

I decided to stay at the hutel for longer than the usual duration of rest. My enthusiasm to walk had now seriously been challenged. I also realized my limit. I ordered half a plate of chowmein. I munched three freshly baked doughnuts. I drank two cups of tea. I brushed my teeth. I washed my face. Then I rested.

I rested for an hour.

Three girls came at the hotel. They were also headed to Rukumkot. I decided to walk along with them. But I was not sure about my pace and, worse, ability to walk. I had to reach Rukumkot, some four hours of walk in normal circumstances, to catch a jeep. I walked ahead of the girls for about 20 minutes. Two of them were school girls. One of them was going all the way to Khalanga, headquarter of Rukum, to take part in a training program related to adult literacy campaign. The eldest among them worked at Khalanga and studied in a college there. Two girls stayed behind. They said they were organizing a sanitation related program in the village where they stopped (Khabang).

The other girl continued her walk with me for about five minutes. I stopped to take a photo. She went ahead. In a while I again stopped to talk to an Assistant Sub Inspector who was trying to make a phone call from his Hello Nepal mobile phone. I met him a few hundred meters away from his office that was located by the road. I talked with the policeman for about 10 minutes. He offered me food (“khana khayera jam na sir”) but I refused as I needed to walk slowly but continuously till I reached Rukumkot, the old headquarter of Rukum.

The girl who had earlier told me that she was a 11th grader in a school in Lukum, largest settlement in Kakri VDC, was nowhere to be seen. After walking for about 20 minutes I saw her walking on the another hill. She was walking fast. Or, may be I was walking slow. I kept feeling the pain on my knee. It was only becoming intense. The pain was particularly problematic whenever the trail went down. I walked for about 30 minutes to reach a place where one hutel served lunch. I stopped there and ordered food. It turned out to be a brilliant decision.

There were three guys who were waiting for food. We ate together. They were also going to Rukumkot. They were traveling with a caravan of donkeys. The conversation somehow got started on it’s own. The hutelwallah was a aboard returnee (Malaysia). One of the three guys had also returned from Saudi Arabia a decade ago. This made me curious about those men and their village. I took out my notebook. I had plenty of questions to ask. One of the three guys was a very young man, about 17 years old. He didn’t interest me much. The remaining guy owned the donkeys. The hutelwallah turned out to be a Dalit (the so called untouchable).

We started our walk. Soon the donkey owner asked me if I wanted a donkey to carry my luggage. I had passed the bag to him within three seconds. The offer had come to me as a pleasant surprise. Now I was carrying a small bag that contained a camera and an iPad. [Added later: Read about the donkey-owner, Jeetman Gharti, in Nepali here: रुकुम-रोल्पा एक्स्प्रेस- शान्तिकालमा गाउँले जनताको जीवनीका केही झलकहरू and जहाँबाट “जनयुद्ध” शुरुभएको थियो…]

Donkey’s walked faster than me. It was not the case when I was fit and fine. I tried my best to walk together with donkeys and the three men. Good thing about donkey caravan is that they need to be stopped to provide them an opportunity to graze. Just when I was wishing the caravan to stop (I needed to rest) the men stopped as if they had heard with wish. That halt also gave me an opportunity to talk to the donkey owner who was once a Maoist “People’s Liberation Army” fighter. Once peace returned (when his party signed a peace agreement with the government formed after the popular 2006 uprising) he opted for a new job. “Then I used to run after the party… taking part in attacks in Palpa and Phaparbari,” he said. “Now I am running after donkeys.”

I limped a lot as I climbed up to Rukumkot. I limped more as I climbed down to the main bazaar from the hilltop. It was terrible. The pain was overwhelming.

But that ‘unbearable’ pain now was overshadowed by the joy of seeing a beautiful village. THE most beautiful village I have seen in recent times. Nice location, beautiful houses, quiet atmosphere. The sun as about set. From the hilltop I could see kids playing football in a small ground in the middle of the village. But the best attraction, which I had not expected at all, was a lake covered on all sides by lotus. Thus the name: Kamal Daha. During their “people’s war” the Maoist had attacked an army post close to the daha. Villagers told me that they heard the gun fighting that whole night. Maoists had lost 34 of their comrades.

Rukumkot was once the headquarter of Rukum. Now it’s Khalanga. I was thankful to those who shifted the headquarter from here because being an administrative center demands pressure to the village. That pressure would have ruined its beauty. Rukumkot is divided into three parts- first part is at and around the hilltop. Second is by the Kamal Daha. The third part further down. This one also boasts a pond- smaller than Kamal Daha.

The donkey caravan stopped at the bazaar close to Kamal Daha. I was going further down, 10 minutes walk, to stay at a hotel there so that I could catch a jeep to Khalanga early in the morning. The jeep service begins from the third part of Rukumkot. As I limped down I saw people playing volleyball on a playground close to the smaller Daha. It was windy when I reached the third part. I booked a room in a hutel close to the jeep’s ticket counter. Then I went to a medical shop. The boy there put an anti-inflammatory gel on my knee and bandaged it. I felt better.

Back in the hutel, food was ready.

DW at Cubang pass. This is before he took the wrong trail and got lost for about half an hour in the jungle.

From Nishel Dhor to Kakri via Taka Shera

(Oct 17 note: Photos related to this post will be posted later this week.)

Waking up in Nishel Dhor: When I sleep early, like 8:30 or 9 pm, I wake up before the alarm clock comes to life. This was one of those mornings because that was one of such evenings (when I slept early and, more importantly, fell asleep early). But I remained in bed till 6:15 am, thinking about the day ahead and about those things that are not significant. I enjoy such moments- the self-imposed pressure to wake up and start the journey. To move ahead. And the desire to remain in bed, to get some more sleep. To go (back) into dream as the sun appears on the horizon.

Hunger strikes: I woke up and I paid. The lady was already awake. She was cleaning dishes with warm water. She made a cup of tea for me upon my request. I also asked for a packet of noodle and stuffed that into the side pocket of the backpack. Later in the morning, as I became hungry and thirsty and somewhat afraid of the uneasily quieter and lonely journey that witnessed me crossing one mountain after another in a thick jungle crowded by not a single human but all sorts of noise that, when combined- and that came as combined- produced one big, weird and somewhat frightening sound, I realized the importance of that substandard noodle that some profit-oriented company made especially for such rural areas where price, even by a rupee, matters a lot and the quality comes a distant third. The second, if you are interested to know, is the access to the noodle itself.

Three hours: Everyone who I had talked to about the trip from Nishel Dhor where I had halted overnight had told be about the jungle that I had to cross before seeing the next village where, some said, I could lunch. I had prepared myself mentally and, by the time I started my walk at 6:37 am, physically for three hours of contineous walk through the jungle. There were some moments when, tired of walking all alone amidst thick, tall and some old trees, I longed for a human presence- even if that was hostile to me. At one point when the trail divided into two equally convincing ways I was faced with a usual dilemma. I followed my instinct and took the trail that was heading downhill. I was right.

Civilization: It was such a pleasant feeling, the feeling of belonging and that of safety when I saw a sign of civilization, cultivated fields on the other side of the hill separated from the hill I was walking on by a deep george where a river flew without caring much about my mental state. It would take at least two hours to reach there, at those fields, according to my instant calculation. There were no houses on that side of the hill. It was all treacherous slope, steep one, except for the fields- a few pieces of land where humans had worked on recently. I am not far from human settlement, I told myself. I had entered Rukum. Baglung had been left behind the forest.

A woman and three girls: Okay, to be honest with myself here, I had bumped into a woman walking from the opposite direction somewhere in the jungle when I had walked for about an hour. I didn’t speak to her, she didn’t talk to me either. We communicated via our eyes briefly before we both took our respective steps forward and left each other behind. She was an old lady who carried a small bag at her back that hanged on her forehead. She wore the traditional attire- that piece of apparel called Gado that every Magar woman wears in this region. Mostly village women and girls who haven’t lived in the cities wear that in fact. Then during the same time when I saw the cultivated filed I came across three Magar girls (you know them by their eyes and their attire that I mentioned above) who were carrying baskets that contained things I couldn’t guess about.

Imaginations: A tap, cemented and working fine, confirmed my assumption that I had indeed penetrated the jungle and was about to enter the human settlement. I stopped to drink water to my hearts content- I was so very thirsty. And I took out the noodle packet that I had already opened and consumed some not-so-tasty thing with deep satisfaction. I had eaten that when I had stopped at a Chautari overlooking the river. On the other side of Chautari was a bare hilltop with plenty of open space on its body. That empty space gave me some opportunity to expand my imagination. The kind of imagination that you do when you are walking along and when a small movement, even that of a bird for example, makes the hairs of your arms go up at 90 degrees because of fear of some unexpected happenings. You want to engage yourself with those imaginations.

Dev Bahadur Budhathoki of Rukumkot in Tak Shera vilage of Rukum. Read about him in Nepali in the story linked below. His wife, on right, was busy making raksi. Refer to the blog post for more.

Raksi: The human settlement, first village of Rukum that bordered Baglung, came as a disappointment. No place for lunch. No shops. Came across a shop after walking another half hour and they didn’t sell anything useful for a hungry man other than biscuits that tasted like rubber. The shopkeeper’s wife was in the kitchen. I asked her from outside if she could cook food for me. She didn’t respond. When I went at the door, peeked inside and repeated the question, she pointed at the big pot placed over the fire and said: raksi varkhar basaleko, nikalna mildaina, dui ghanta lagchha. (It will be two hours before I can take out this pot in which I am making raksi.) I wished her good luck and moved ahead, downward. (Btw, I interviewed and photographed her husband.)

Changing plans: My immediate destination was Taka Shera village. I had initially planned to halt there in the evening. But when I reached there it was around 2pm. My plans keep changing as I talk to people and get sense of the geography, distance and the time to cover that. That’s how you travel in non-Lonely Planet areas. No maps, no reliable information about the trail ahead in hand. So you ask every second person you meet on the trail about the trail ahead and the geography. I made up my mind to go to Thawang as I learned that the famed Rolpali village is not very far from Kakri village which was a couple of hours away from Taka Shera. Hang on, I had actually planned to go to Rukum Kot. For that, I was told, I must reach Kakri by the evening and stop there overnight. I wasn’t sure where I was actually headed to. I was open to all options as they came by. Somebody suggested me to stop at a small village called Cubang, the base for the hill that must be crossed to reach Kakri.

Horse rider: After leaving Taka Shera (where I talked to a Maoist who ran a small grocery shop. I bought three packets of juice and a packet of biscuit- much to his pleasure.) I climbed a hill aiming to reach Cubang and thinking about cooked food. I heard bells ringing somewhere on my back. I knew what it meant. I turned back to see a man who was riding a horse and coming toward me. As he approached me he unmounted himself and started to talk with me. Where I was coming from and where I was headed to. Initially, by his look, I thought he was a policeman from Taka Shera village. I was wrong. He had one whole story to tell which, while asking questions as and when needed, I listened with a great interest. In the middle of the story he saved my life (and took one).

Almost died: For the first time in my trip I slipped. The trail was not an ordinary one, not easy one. Loose peebles made going downward particularly treacherous. When you fell off you would reach, by rolling over the steep hill, the river Sano Bheri (also called Uttar Ganga). Same river that I had crossed with so much ease in Dhorpatan valley where it was in its weakest form (divided into many streams and spread out). He acted at the second I fell down and caught my luggage that had already tilted towards the edge, the slope, the river- about a kilometer below us. That was frightening.

Creeper is killed: I resumed my walk with extra caution. After walking a few steps he screamed “Snake, Sir.” By the time I saw the creeper he had already hit it by stone. By the time I took out my camera from the luggage he had already killed the thing. I briefly saw him pulling up the snake with a stick and hurling it upward in about 75 degrees towards the river. I saw the dead snake falling over a rock several meters below the trail.

“Was it necessary it kill it?” I asked.

“It wasn’t but since we came across it and it was not that difficult to kill it, I killed it. That’s it.”

I didn’t ask further about his swift action against the snake which was about a meter long. We continued our walk and talk for the next 10 minutes. It was now time to say good bye, we parted our ways after we exchanged our numbers (upon his request. He carried a Sky CDMA cell phone that received the signal at his home as well.)

Cubang was half an hour away. Met a shepherd. 300 sheep. Rs 5000 each. “So you got Rs 1500000 spread out over these fields,” I joked. He smiled. I moved on.

Cubang had both pleasure and disappointment for me. I am charged up by such place. Cold, right on the lap of a tall hill covered by thick forest. A handful of houses, lots of animals and people working on their fields to plant something. A small stream would have made that place perfect, I thought.

On the other hand, two hotels were closed, locked up.

I was not in the mood to wait and take chance. It was quarter to 4 and, I thought, if I walked as per the most popular estimate that I had extracted from many people I met and randomly inquired about the trail I could make it to the top (everyone called it Dhuri) by 5 pm. Another one hour to climb down to Kakri, I was told. I could make it to Kakri by 6, just before it was too dark to walk. The weather was perfect. And I love to walk at this altitude. The fact that the trail went through thick jungle didn’t bother me much.

And I made it to the pass at 4:50.

On my way up, immediately after leaving Cubang, I had met two boys- the elder one was about 14 years old. I had asked him which way to take in the situation that there were two trails originating from the pass. The boy had told me to take the one that went rightward.

Lost and retrieved: At the top I saw three trails- left (towards Lukum where I wasn’t going), middle that went directly downward and right that went through a field and passed by an abandoned hut. I was smart. I took the right one. I walked for a minute and became suspicious. At the same time I was excited to see signals in my cell phone. That man (who saved me from falling off) was right. The Nepal Telecom tower at Thawang village of Rolpa sending signals up to this point. I had to call two persons: one lived in Rukum and the other out of Nepal. All attempts to make calls failed. The signal was weak. Clouds may have played villain, I thought. While dialing numbers I kept walking. The trail became smaller and the leaves scattered over it looked fresh, not pressed by people who walked over there. I kept walking because I was going to the right direction as per the boy and the horse rider. Rightward. I could hear sounds of sheep coming from far away, pasture above the hill. This hill looked frightening. From my vantage point, I could see dark rock on the lower side and a steep part covered by not trees but by grass where even sheep would find it challenging to go and graze. Thick jungle, strange noise of insects and birds and the feeling that I may have taken the wrong path started to frighten me in a serious way. Add to that the timing of the day (half an hour or so before it got dark). Was I in a serious problem? It would take me at least 20 minutes to go back to the point from where the path got divided into three trails.

I whistled loudly. No effect. Oh daju!!! I screamed hoping that a shepherd at the hilltop would listen to me. No way. There was no shepherd around, above the frightening hill. I walked a few steps further and saw the trail going upward! It was indeed a wrong trail. Kakri is down, not up from here, I told myself.

Below me was jungle. I saw a small hut by the road covered with blue zinc plates. Hope. I whistled again and followed up with a scream: “Oh daju!”

A woman appeared after a few attempts. Then a man came in the sight. “Is this the right way to Kakri?” I inquired.

I didn’t understand what he said. I asked again.

“No,” came the reply.

He was barely audible. He was almost a hill away from where I was standing. I was standing somewhere in the middle of the hill where as the hut was located almost at the base. May be a kilometer of distance was separating us. Or may be 500 meters of air distance. I have no exact idea. But there was no way to reach there at the hut without going to the point from where the trail split into three. I felt that the man at the hut told me to take the trail that went directly downward. The middle one. I should have taken that earlier. My instinct had failed me. Or, the boy may have seriously confused me, if not misled me outright. Whatever the case, I had lost my precious 40 minutes. Time was running out.

Soon I came across the road that was being constructed to connect Kakri to Tak Shera via Kol village.

I finally reached at the hut. I called the daju who came out to receive my thank you from close.

The original trail meant for humans and horses (mulbato) was partially damaged by the ongoing work for the road that is meant for cars and busses. I asked the man if the trail ahead was okay. He said yes adding that there were small trails built along the road at the places where the old one was destroyed.

Almost died, again: Later I would be cursing him and regretting so very deeply for taking the route and not taking the Lukum trail instead. I regretted for the whole trip in the first place. Who wants to die in a jungle that too by falling off a trail that didn’t exist in the first place? But there was no option but to try crossing precipitous slopes made by construction workers who had wiped out the old trail and made no effort to make a new one for people to walk on before the road became usable.

Four points were very dangerous. Two of them terrifyingly so. While crossing one of those two, especially the first one, I must admit that I saw death from very close. The road, big one, abruptly ended at what looked like a landslide of about 3 meters wide and God only knows how many more meters deep. My estimate is more than a kilometer. Enough height for a person to be killed when fallen. And there were no trees to save a falling body. I knew it was not a natural landslide but a spot left carelessly by the construction workers.

Acrobatic feat: So how did I cross that? There was hardly a place to place my one foot. And the place that could be considered for such a placement was filled with loose peebles and dry soil. The moment I tried to place a foot- left one because the hill was on my right and it was impossible to put right leg first and cross the point- over a possibly safe and reliable point it slipped over loose soil and stones. So I had to “cling” to whatever had remained over there- the stones and soil. No bushes, no plant. Ok, instead of clinging to loose stones and stepping on a slippery earth I tried to put my body load on my two hands- an acrobatic feat perhaps if not a survival instinct or a sheer luck- and jumped over by placing the left foot for a fraction of second and removing it to place it to another precarious point.

‘Death-in-action’: Never seen death from so close. Not even during the recent earthquake. Unlike during the earthquake, there at the ‘landslide point’ I could actually see the ‘death-in-action’. I stopped for a few seconds to see stones and soil go down because of my movement. As I sweated and frantically tried to place my left leg on a firm position and unsuccessfully grabbed a small landmass by both hands I could visualize myself falling over, rolling down several hundred times and smashed on the ground, may be on some boulders in between, to death. Somebody, perhaps a goatherd or a construction worker, would find my body after a few days. Horrible scene. I didn’t come all the way to this ridge to die, I told myself, that too by falling off a road that was being built to make people’s life easier.

Celebrating life: I somehow crossed that death trap. I celebrated the life. I felt so much relieved. I was trembling. But I didn’t halt, I kept walking. May be I ran a few meters before settling into my usual pace. My heart was beating faster. I was furious with those who were digging road and left walkers to such a life-threatening challenge. I remembered the boy who had suggested me to take the trail that went right as I climbed up from Cubang. He had also told me that the trail to Kakri was difficult because of the ongoing roadwork. He was too mild in his assessment, I thought. There was no trail at all at some points. He should have used stronger words to describe the situation and discourage me from taking the route. He didn’t. (Indeed, I had taken a different route but that didn’t work either. May be, I thought as I struggled to regain my composure, I should have taken the Lukum route.) He gave me the impression that the trail was bad like as in difficult to walk compared to much wider road which is definitely an easy place to walk.

My celebration came to a halt when I saw another precarious path. The wider road had ended at a corner and from where the road ended began a very small trail that first went uphill and straight for a few meters and went downward. I could barely see the path. It wasn’t as dangerous as the previous one because here I could at least place my legs. What immensely comforted me was the sight of some people coming from opposite direction. They had walked the same path. Is that the trail on which I must walk? I asked that question to an old man. Yes, he said. Really? I expressed my amazement. “Can’t you see people coming from other direction walking on that trail?” the man shot back.

Monkey trail: This particular trail was like what people in village call Monkey Trail. A trail for monkeys. Definitely not for their descendants. But there was no option. I walked. Very carefully. There was one point where construction workers had left a huge rock half broken. The rock blocked people from walking with their body straight. The stone could push them towards the ridge- especially those carrying luggage AND child. I was astonished to see a woman carrying a child negotiating her path over there. When I reached that stone a moment of tension aroused. Three persons were coming from the opposite direction and one of them appeared to be drunk. That’s what I felt. He was giving me space to walk on his right side facing the edge. And he told me: “ok, jump here and go from this side.” there was no space at all. I didn’t want to take a chance. I stopped, didn’t move and told him to back off a little bit and make some space for me to jump. After a few seconds filled with tension, he backed off. I jumped. Rather creeped. And landed on the other side.

I don’t recall walking on such difficult path before.

The Hutel: Now I was walking on the road but it was getting darker. I need to stop because I thought what if more precarious path await on the other side of the hill. I came to a small hut where a man was about to prepare meal. I asked him if there were any places nearby to stay. He pointed to a house on the next hill, about half a kilometer away, by the road. “That’s a hotel,” he said.

It turned out to be a place where some construction workers and project officials went to eat snacks. Not exactly a hotel but a house for a family whose headman worked as a laborer at the road project. I asked if I could stay overnight. Yes, I could. So much relief. I didn’t want to walk. I had walked enough: 12 hours (with about 2 hours of rest in total.)

My hosts roasted corns for me and themselves. I took one. Tasty. And second. Meal was being cooked.

The guy, a Dalit (so called untouchable) had returned from Qatar for good because, he said, he couldn’t live in the heat there. Became sick, he said. He told me how he was caught in between the warring sides during the Maoist armed conflict. He was pressured by the Maoists to join their guerilla force. He didn’t want. He ran away, and while doing so, couldn’t complete school education. One day, while traveling to Rasuwa to work at a hydropower plant as an alternative to joining the Maoist army, he was detained and beaten up by the state Army for “being a Maoist” by virtue of being a Rukumeli (native from Rukum district.)

We dined together. Rice and karkala curry. That was nice. Fulfilling. Time came to go to bed. The couple emptied their bed (khat), put new bedding over there and told me to sleep there as they, with their son and an old lady, slept on the floor. The whole house was one small room. My awkwardness was nothing in front of the tiredness that was overpowering me. I went on the bed. In a matter of what felt like minutes I found that it was already another day! (That part was added later!)

I woke up at 8 in the morning. Unusual in normal times. Unusual when I am traveling. When I am not traveling and staying home I wake up very late. Like around 9:30. When I am traveling I generally wake up very early, like 5:30 or 6 because of the pressure involved. It’s better to walk early in the morning before sun comes up to suck up your energy.

First day’s walk had been longer than it should have actually been. That had made me more tired.

So I woke up at 8 am even though the alarm bell on my cell phone had dutifully alerted me at 6:30 am. After having a cup of tea and a Tibetan bread I was ready to explore the valley. It was my plan to explore the Dhorpatan valley in the morning before resuming the walk for a few hours to reach a place called Nishel Dhor (or Nishi Dhor). As per the suggestion of the sahuji of the hutel, I took the shortcut to reach the other side of the valley. That meant avoiding the proper trail which has a bridge to cross the river and saving myself from walking about an hour just to reach the other side where offices of the hunting reserve and a Tibetan refugee settlement are located. Both are close to the airstrip under maintenance.

So I wanted to go to the other side (lap of the facing hill) of the valley. I had to cross the river. Instead of walking to the bridge I went straight and walked over the grazing filed divided into several sections by the river that was also divided into several streams. Sahuji had old me that I could make it to the destination in about 20 minutes. I crossed the streams at 7 points- two of them were big with up to knee deep (on the shallower point) water.

I finally made it to the other side of the valley. The office of the hunting reserve was closed. Obviously. It’s the Dasain day. The day of Tika. I went to look for the Tibetan refugee camps. I saw a woman washing clothes on a tap by the trail. She turned out to be a nurse working for a small health post run by the Tibetan government-in-exile. She told me that she was in Dhorpatan as a Tibetan government employee. Apart from this remote location, her job has taken her to many other Tibetan (refugee) settlements in mountainous region (as part of the posting in rural areas.) If she had total control over things, she said, she would have stayed in Pokhara. Her previous posting was in Humde, Manang. She said she was happy to have a government job (that paid her around Nepali Rs. 12,000) and serve her compatriots as well as Nepali population.

Three other Tibetan women arrived at the tap. Not to collect water or to do anything related to tap. The elder one, 40, asked me if I was a reporter. She knew a reporter from the area. After a while, as I was returning to the hotel via the same unclear and unspecified route I met an old woman at a shop. She too knew this reporter who is a friend (and ex-colleague) of mine. She too had a message: “Tell him the Chhantyalni of the shop in the ground asked about him.”

I came back to the hotel. This time it was easier to navigate the grazing field. Ate the food that had just been cooked. I had spent three full hours exploring parts of the vally and walking on the riverside. The water was icy, my feet will remember the cold for some time to come. This river gets a new name as it goes downward and leaves Dhorpatan behind. The new name is Sani Bheri. This river is also called as Uttar Ganga.

Then I started my trek at 12 aiming to reach a place that everyone said was about three hours of walk away. They were all correct. It took me three hours to arrive at this place (Nishel Dhor). A small musical ceremony was going on at the small hutel where I decided to stop and stay for the night. My shoulders are happy today. No uphill to climb, no sweating, no scorching heat. I love to walk on this altitude. Cold and nice landscape. I walked alone for the entire 3-hour trip. Had met a group of young boys but they were waiting for their friend to come by. I was in no mood to wait. I continued the walk.

Back to the hutel. I took loads of pictures of the song-and-dance ceremony in which the damains (a group of Dalits who are known for playing musical instruments) played live music. Most of them and other people there were drunk. Jaand was being served pretty generously. The organizer of the party (his word) had come to the village from his workplace in India (a hotel in Chandigarh). He said he was an assistant to a cook with the Taaj hotel there. He had invited all the damains to play music at his home. At the end he and his wife danced together. The photographer in me delightfully captured the moment in my camera. The organizer paid damain some money. They in turn blessed him via some poorly sung songs.

I too was made to dance by the organizer, the hotel owner. He insisted several times that I take a glass of jaand. I respectfully declined.

[This entry was posted on Oct 16. Pics were added on Oct 24]

'Pinging' in Pingdanda of Baglung

(Oct 14 Note: Pics will be posted later when I reach Kathmandu. I am still on the move. Libang, Rolpa is the current location.)

A long and tiresome journey. Walked for about 10 hours to reach a place that is a small valley surrounded by jungle on all sides. The forest is where hunters come to aim at wild animals. Dhorpatan is Nepal’s only hunting reserve. You are permitted to kill animals of your choice (there are some conditions to abide by and royalty to pay). Western hunters land in helicopters to venture into the jungle. A river flows through the middle of the valley. Houses are scattered on the laps of the hills. Eastern and western parts of the valley- opposing ends of the river- have comparatively ‘densely populated’ neighborhoods. The space in the middle of the valley is empty and open. Apparently the river occupies most of that land in rainy season. In other times, however, this serves as a grazing field for horses and donkeys. River water is cold. This whole area is covered by snow- as much as two feet in the valley- in winter. Snowing will start in a couple of weeks, I am told. A small and rarely used airstrip- apparently under construction- is on the northern bank of the river (north-eastern side of the valley). The river flows from east to west. I am not sure about the altitude of this place at this point. (Added later: 2850 m to 3000 m in the valley.) The valley itself may not be that high (Poon Hill, for example, is at 3200 m.)

The trek began at 7am from Burtibang, second biggest settlement/marketplace of Baglung district. There are a lot of ‘bang’s in this region. Burtibang is the commercial and administrative hub of remote western parts of Baglung. About 20 villages (VDCs) of Baglung consider this small town their ‘district headquarter’ while folks at Baglung Bazaar call this region remote and relatively backward. Burtibang branches of government offices including Nepal Bank Limited were forced out of the town during the Maoist insurgency (’96-’06). Those offices haven’s come back. This has caused great difficulties to the people of the region, a local Maoist leader told me. “Number one demand of the people here is that those government offices that were displaced during the conflict should return to Burtibang,” he said. “Without them here people have to go all the way to Baglung to do small works like paying land tax.” What an irony! Maoists who flushed out all the government offices during their “people’s war” now want the same offices to return. Time has definitely changed even in remote areas where, it is often said, time passes very slowly.

Burtibang is two days of walk from the district headquarter (called Baglung Bazaar which also serves as the headquarter of Dhaulagiri zone). A road has been build in recent months that connects this town with Baglung Bazaar which is 97 kilometers away. The road, part of Pushpalal Madhyapahadi Lokmarga, penetrates Baglung district which looks like a miniature replica of Nepal on maps through east to west. This road, still under construction, aims to connect Nepali mid-hills from east to west (Baitadi). The Baglung-Burtibang part is basic, unpaved of course and has no bridge at several points. Thus passengers face difficulties in traversing. My earlier post details some of the hardships that people have to go through while traveling on this road.

Back to Burtibang-Dhorpatan trek. Easy trail- a road that has been made unusable for jeeps by the monsoon rain and landslides at various points- for the first several hours. The first four hours in particular were much easier. The sun wasn’t very strong and the trail wasn’t steep. But it was a lonely affair. No soul was to be seen for the first four hours on the trail though that shouldn’t mean I didn’t see any person. The trail occasionally passed by fields where various crops had been planted. I also saw a few farmers working or heading to fields for work. But I walked alone. In such moments, I feel, it was normal for me to feel that the mammoth and green hills on my both sides as well as the river with a strong current on my right completely belonged to me. Ha…

I stopped for tea at a hutel (hotel/tea shop) that was located right on the road. (The trail passed by the building’s entrance. That is normal in villages. (Okay, in cities too.) Also right on the road, by the home, was a linge ping where kids were swinging. I took some pictures and also ‘pinged’. A small settlement could be seen a few hundred meters above the ping. The village is called Ping danda (Ping hill). Folks at the teashop told me that the ping and the village’s name were unrelated. But I found it very difficult to trust them.

I walked for another 30 minutes and halted for snacks (noodle soup and Frooti juice) at a hutel which was slightly bigger than the previous one. There were a few shops too. When I reached a village- called Bobang- that was so very quiet I saw a caravan of horses ready to be taken to where I was heading to (Dhorpatan). Dhorpatan- where I am now- produces a lot of potatoes. Farmers from Bobang split their time between Dhorpatan and Bobang. They live in Dhorpatan and work in potato fields. They move down to Bobang around/after Dasain to escape the winter snow in Dhorpatan. A few families stay back. Horses and donkeys are used to transport the produce to the quiet village (Bobang) as the road ends somewhere close to it. Tractors carry potatoes to the place where I began my journey in the morning (Burtibang). The road will be in operation after Dasain/Tihar festivals when rains completely stop, I was told by some immensely hopeful villagers.

I walked for about an hour with the horse caravan. A man extended his hand to shake mine as he uttered two words, “Namaste sir.” Another man followed the suit. That was unexpected. When you travel alone you have to be extra careful as to who you are befriending (and in this case shaking hands). For the first time in this trip I introduced myself in the first go (usually I just try to tell people that I am just a traveller trying to see parts of Nepal). This has some benefits as well. When people know that they are with a journalist they become extra careful in speaking their mind truly and openly. They are no more in their natural form. (Sometimes, however, it’s exact opposite. A reporter has to identify the right situation and act accordingly.) They either become too formal or start complaining about the things that they are not pleased with or hold themselves back from talking freely. To get people talk among themselves and in their true/natural form I sometime tell them, if I am asked to identify myself, vague things like being a student or an unemployed or something that they don’t really care about.

When I told them I was a reporter traveling to see their villages their tone changed to seriousness. It took me for about 10 minutes to realize that the first guy who initiated the unexpected handshake was drunk. I am very bad at identifying drunk people by their behavior. (He complained of, among other things, lack of strict action against those who manufactured and sold contaminated Tuborg beer saying, “A lot of people drink beer, don’t they, sir? How can they sell contaminated beer? That too by a brand as reputed as Tuborg? Who can we trust now? No one.” I had asked him what was the most pressing problem in the village.

The other guy, a 10th grader preparing for SLC this year, turned out to be exceptionally aware and knowledgable about politics and, most importantly, problems faced by his community (Dalits or the so called untouchables). He had informed opinions, frustrations and even ways/ideas to solve those problems. We became friends and kept conversing for the next three hours as we pushed ourselves uphill and munched Chokofun that I had carried. I am definitely sure he was not drunk.

I bought him snacks (noodles) and shared my Mirinda at a hutel near the jungle. That was sort of a base camp for the tough uphill trail that went through dense forest.

The trail became ruthless during the last hour of the trip. Seventy-five degrees uphill, my assumption. It felt like 90 degrees. What could be a strictier punishment than such a trail after walking for about nine hours already? I could now feel the weight of my luggage that was pulling me downward. My shoulders were bruised, I could feel the pain. Today is the first day of my backpacking which naturally made my shoulders feel the pain even more. My hope is that things will get better with my shoulders from tomorrow as they habituate with the load. Best thing of the day was a weak sun. Best thing of this heartless uphill was that it was at the altitude of above 2000 meters- my favorite place to walk. We may have climbed 1000 meters in that last one hour of the trip. I must thank the boy, my companion, who offered to carry my backpack. I couldn’t resist his offer when he asked for the third time. He carried it to the top. Thank you, dude.

I was depleted when we reached at the finishing point of the uphill. Deurali. Deurali offered a picturesque view of the valley. THE valley. Piercing waves of chilly wind coming from northern direction hit us. We took rest for a few minutes. Sweats cooled which made us colder. The boy took out his jeans and put that on with this remark: Jado bhayo (it’s cold up here).

We walked downward for about 15 minutes to reach the first group of houses and hutels. I stopped at the first hotel I saw. The sahuni, a Gurungseni (this is a Magar-majority region) gave me a cup of tea and a Tibetan bread. That was yummy.

I went to the room and got myslef covered by the blanket. It was cold. I needed some serious rest. My shoulders needed that more than any other parts of my body. I woke up at around 8 pm. Food was waiting for me.

My co-travelers. We had to stop in the middle of the road, not very far from Burtibang but before taking that Tractor ride, because the driver said the jeep ran out of gas!

To the plains,

I traveled a distance of about 96 kilometers in the past 36 hours. Of those thirty-six hours, I spent almost 11 hours in Jeeps (four in total including a Hulas Mustang) AND a tractor with six wheels. Of those 11 hours 2 may have been spent taking breaks and waiting for the next jeep. This is a HIGHWAY that will, after its completion, connect many rural villages of hilly Nepal with each other, to district headquarters and, of course, to Kathmandu.

The road is still under construction and there are no bridges at many places which means passengers have to change jeeps whenever a major river comes (it’s the same river twice). And there are landslides at two points. Passengers have to walk for as long as four kilometers (half a hour or so) at such blockades so as to meet a waiting jeep. And if there is no jeep waiting, they have to wait for it. AND if there is no jeep at all (“one has just left and will come back only after 1.5 hrs and other one is broken”) you hop into a tractor and complete the journey. The tractor part, though not entirely new as I had seen people traveling in tractors in Karnali highway in 2007 when it was being constructed. I had willingly and for fun had tried that for a few minutes. Today it was not a matter of choice. It was compulsion. Well, may be not. I could have chosen to walk for two hours under the mid day fully bright sun. Like many of my jolly travel mates (that’s a separate story) I preferred a tractor ride over trekking. And it was so unique an experience for me that I was tempted to make (and successfully made, after several attempts) an international call to share the experience live.

The ‘bumpy’ tractor ride

Yesterday evening. Stayed at a friend’s home! Never thought that I would reach that place. But that happened. At the altitude of 1100 meters the village, on the banks of a crystal clear stream that is not crossable without a bridge, looked pristine, peaceful and simply beautiful. I walked by the paddy fields as sun setting and it started drizzled resulting in a thin rainbow. Talked to village elders and professionals on the topic of my choice. Visited THE FM radio station that also serves as the office of a community newspaper. The high school was hosting the final match of basketball tournament and students competed in singing duet songs (dohori geet) as part of the competition. People are, by and large, satisfied.

I was fortunate that I completed the journey in ONLY four jeeps and a tractor. “I rode five jeeps last month as the ….Khola (stream) was too swollen for a jeep to cross it.” I am omitting the name of the stream deliberately but that should matter much to the point this whole description makes. The road is a lifeline to the people of Nepal. People love to travel in vehicles- even if that means suffering the painful bumps in a tractor. Walking is simply a second option to be considered if it’s absolutely unavoidable. Oh, the fare! Guess how much did I pay for the journey (or journeys- depending upon how you count)? More than 1000. Add to that the cost for my overnight stay and food. This is not where poor people travel which should not be interpreted as me being rich. Seriously, Rs 1000+ for 91 kilometer.

My journey, on the other hand, is far from complete even after a half an hour torturous tractor drive. But the road practically ends at this point, a small bazaar (bigger than my expectation in fact). The trekking begins on a road (not highway) for about six hours where vehicles don’t ply (bad condition). It will be a lonely trip from tomorrow. May be not because it has never been since I left home on Saturday (1 Oct). I keep on meeting people. Just that sometime I feel too lazy to start conversation and continue the talk. But people start to talk themselves. And today’s group of young men returning their home to celebrate Dasain was particularly outspoken (especially in terms screaming profanity, swearing and booing girls). But they weren’t as bad as I description of them may have portrayed. This much for now. Thoughts about tomorrow’s journey is starting to overpower my thought process.

[There may not be an update tomorrow because there will not be GSM cell phone signals available in the village (and the area) I will be heading to. But then Ncell seems to have planted their cell phone towers all over these hills. If they have done the same in the hill of my destination as well, my iPad will be connected for sure. I appreciate the quality of their EDGE data service. Better than Nepal Telecom's GPRS service.]

PS: Meat of a wild boar, killed last night by a local hunter, as served in the lunch this PM.

From the hills

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[PS, added later: The road that I traveled on part of what is called Pushpalal Madhyapahadi Rajmarga. The 96 KM is the stretch that covers the length of Baglung district (which is a miniature version of Nepal)- from Baglung Bazaar to Burtibang. I stopped overnight in a village called Hatiya Galkot that lies somewhere in the middle of those two large settlements.]

Enjoy the view.

DW

I have decided to stop here in this village called Hatiya (of the Galkot region of Baglung) tonight. It’s a mixture of voluntary and forced decision. I got a friend here in this village. On the other hand, jeeps that came from Baglung Bazaar don’t go beyond this point. I will have to walk for about half an hour and cross the stream to find a jeep that will take me to Burtibang. I talked to a few locals here- went to a FM station that has been established recently. I talked to a ‘model’ farmer who grows organic food professionally and sells them to earn an enviable living- going by the local standards. Here are some photos that (my friend and) I took during our walk in the village. We also crossed over to the neighboring Harichaur village. In fact the rice fiends seen in the photos are from Harichaur.