Nepal: The God Of Fire, Sacrifice, Lightning And Renewal (cont.)
The trek up to the Annapurna Sanctuary went off without a hitch. I hiked solo. In an area where trekkers provide the main impetus for the local economy, everything seems to be designed around making the trip as easy as possible – except for the fact that you still do have to do all of the walking yourself. If you took the wrong trail, some local would inevitably point you in the right direction. No Maoists ever appeared to demand a “donation.” Nor were there any government officials at the Annapurna Conservation Area Program checkpoints to make sure my trekking permit was in order.
But I had plenty of company after the first night. Villagers, porters, and trekkers ranging from solo travelers such as myself to guided groups with more than 20 people trod the stone byways of the hills, along with cattle, goats, chickens and other livestock, while griffons, lammergeirs and eagles watched from above, gliding on the thermals.
The mountains seduce and awe the traveler, in turns emerald and gentle (though steep), then towering and huge, ice fields and glaciers changing their aspects with the movement of the sun and the clouds, mythic and elusive. The peoples of the middle hills – mainly Gurungs – embodied Buddhist kindness: open, friendly and generous; you often felt a kind of comfort and humanity in their presence that you only find in acquaintances and friends of many years in the West. They also possessed an uncanny knack of knowing what you wanted to hear, even if it was at variance with what you needed to hear.
The steep trails ascended and descended the deep valleys cut by the tributaries to the Modi Khola, the only river descending from the Sanctuary, an almost completely enclosed ring of peaks, with seven peaks over 7000 meters, five peaks over 6000 meters, the tallest of them all of being Annapurna I, at over 8000 meters. Annapurna’s huge south face rose steeply above ABC (Annapurna Base Camp), the summit hiding 4000 meters above the four lodge settlement. For the three days I spent below Annapurna, the Goddess of the Harvest, she demurely hid behind a cloak of clouds, showering us daily (and nightly) with snow, hail and rain. One local, down the trail on the descent, informed me that this angry show of foul weather occurred because someone brought meat past a Hindu shrine guarding the trail below the Sanctuary, in defiance of local customs. One of the world’s most difficult climbing challenges, one that repelled most attempts and had claimed the lives of many preeminent Himalayan alpinists, Annapurna sternly concealed her sheer white ramparts.
Nearing the end of the trek, back where I started at Phedi, reports from locals painted an ominous picture: no transit available, demonstrations, road blocks and volatile social unrest. Without a taxi or bus to Pokhara, it could take up to seven hours to walk back to town. And if flights had been cancelled back to Kathmandu – we already knew that all busses and taxis had been banned from traveling the route – the return to the capital city would be a seven to ten day walk--maybe more. The sacred cows of the Himalayan economy, tourists, now felt pinched if not downright panicked.
After a few fruitless hours of cell phone calls for cabs, a bus magically appeared to take passengers most of the way back to Pokhara. A minute of haggling reduced the price for our group of four from 1000 rupees a head to 800 for all four. Blackened heaps of metal and small stone chicanes slowed the journey, and after a two hour walk over hot tarmac, my first shower in almost two weeks, I drank a tepid Everest beer, emblazoned with the image of Tenzing Norgay holding his flag-draped ice-axe aloft on the first ascent of the world’s highest peak. Demonstrations - even by school children - sporadically made their presence known. The blue-camouflaged police appeared impassive, somewhat threatening, but disarmingly polite and obliging when approached. But one thought occupied my thoughts: get the fuck out of here.
And so I boarded Air Agni and, after a few minutes, fell asleep. Two days later in Katmandu, my hotel awoke me at 5:30 AM for a police van to the airport. The flight departed at 1:30 PM, but due to the city-wide curfew, they could only guarantee this ride. I boarded with three other tourists into an early ‘80s Toyota van, all windows reinforced with metal grating. We rode with eight police officers, one with a grenade launcher, the others heavily armed; and for the first time on the trip, the thought occurred to me that something very bad might soon take place. We set off; but just a few blocks later, the police transferred us to a large, gleaming white tourist bus, packed to the gills with Westerners. We then glided through the empty, heavily fortified streets of Kathmandu, lined with sandbags, barbed wire, and machine gun nests to the airport.
As I stood outside the airport smoking, for the first time I could view the city of Kathmandu as it might have been some decades ago. Due to the curfew, no motorized vehicles could travel; so for the first time, the usual thick brown carpet that choked the valley did not exist. 200 kilometers to the west I could see the twin 8000 meter peaks of Dhaulagiri and Manaslu, gleaming pink, then white in the early morning sun. The city was tranquil, though it would erupt over the next three days in massive demonstrations against the king. As I departed, I thought about Agni, sacrifice, fire - and rebirth, renewal. I had only experienced small setbacks, trivial worries, the quotidian annoyances of a Westerner in Asia. Those millions here, now, in Nepal - they have suffered for years, but perhaps, purified by the flames of revolt and fratricide, they could start anew.
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