Himalaya (2004)

by Michael Palin

  ‘Namaste.’

  At that moment the stocky accomplice appears once again. He is less charming and, having scrutinized us all one last time, he makes a remark and goes.

  Nawang eventually recovers enough to translate.

  ‘He said he has the tape measure.’

  The galla, together with all his records and the tape he used to measure the chests, has gone, along with Adrian and his two fellow officers. Though there appeared to be no physical threat, there seemed no question of their not going, nor of who they were going with. I walk outside. The sun has set and the distant peaks of the Himalaya, a moment ago blood-red and magnificent, are now cold, grey and remote. I find myself scanning the faces of the villagers. Everything seems very different from this morning. Perhaps they all hate us, stirred to anger by the Maoists, who’ve portrayed us as friends of a corrupt and oppressive government?

  I realize, rather pathetically, how easily I project my own feelings onto others. If I’m happy, they must be happy. Now I’m suspicious, they must be too. Their expressions give nothing back. They get on with their work and I get on with my insecurities.

  To complete a rotten end to the day, our cooks serve us goat in batter with tuna sauce.

  Day Forty Eight : Lekhani to Pokhara

  Adrian and his companions have not returned. Wongchu, our experienced Sherpa leader, doesn’t want to stay here a moment longer than we have to, and in truth, there’s nothing much we can do.

  We wait until nine, then strike camp and head off down to the valley. As we leave the village we pass groups of young men standing around. Faces that were so eager yesterday, are either blank or confused as they wait to be told what they probably know already, that all their efforts were wasted.

  I feel we’ve let them down and try to avoid catching their eye.

  Soon Lekhani passes out of sight, and we pick our way down steep and precarious clay tracks through tiny settlements where we are the objects of considerable curiosity. The sticky heat of the valley replaces the cool of Lekhani, and I’m pouring sweat by the time we step carefully along the knife-edge rim of a rice paddy and out onto a level but half-finished highway, which in happier circumstances might have prompted mass whistling of the River Kwai march.

  The road-head, over two hours’ walk from Lekhani, is at a pretty village called Dopali, surrounded by silent, wooded slopes and a clean, fast-rushing stream. Life seems utterly restful here. An old lady cradles a cat, a family sit on the steps of a beautifully carved timber-frame house whose long doors are folded open to reveal slanting rays of sun spilling onto a cool, clay floor. Dopali is like something in a dream, a vision of delicious drowsiness and lethargy sent to subvert the purposeful and debilitate the dedicated.

  We pick up vehicles here and, once away from the villages, J-P calls Adrian’s superiors in Kathmandu to tell them the bad news. Absurdly, whoever he gets through to is not helpful. It’s a Sunday, the commanding officer is having lunch and can’t be disturbed. As J-P won’t disclose details of what’s happened, they seem to presume he hasn’t any, and the harder he tries to convince them, the harder they stonewall.

  It is a credit to J-P’s persistence that eventually the word gets through.

  By the time we’re back in Pokhara all hell is let loose. At least three separate calls from the British Embassy ask us not to breathe a word of what has happened at Lekhani to anyone. This is the first time the Maoists have abducted a serving British officer, and may mark a significant change in policy. We eat, but, for once, no-one’s terribly hungry.

  By evening there is still no word of Adrian and the others.

  Day Forty Nine : Pokhara to Chomrung

  Early morning microlite flight over the lake and up towards the mountains. Myself in one tiny craft, Nigel filming me from another. Feel terrifyingly unsafe. Tucked in behind a Russian pilot with a big seventies moustache who speaks only in thumbs-up signs, with thin air on either side. Cavorting at 10,000 feet above the ground, secured only by a car seat-belt across my lap, I experience pure terror for the first half-hour, and for the next, as we come down low over the shining lake and wooded hills, pure joy.

  When I get back to breakfast, someone shows me the front page of the Kathmandu Times. So much for secrecy. ‘Maoists abduct British Army Officers’, reads the headline. Below is a jumbled report, which not only includes our director among the abducted, but has promoted him as well. He appears in the story as ‘Brigadier General John Paul’, which I hope won’t go to his head.

  And still no word on their whereabouts.

  While we’re in Pokhara a good opportunity arises to try and glean a little more insight into just what’s going on in the country. John Cross, born in London and at various times in his life a soldier, diplomat and author of eleven books, including Whatabouts and Wherabouts in Asia, is an ex-Gurkha and expert in jungle warfare. He lives in a comfortable house in the quieter part of Pokhara with his adopted Nepali family.

  We talk beside a small Hindu temple in his garden. It’s an esoteric affair, containing a Buddha, a picture of the Blarney Stone, and a figure of St Jerome, the patron saint of languages.

  ‘Cover all our options,’ he grins.

  John is a wiry, sharp-eyed 78-year-old. He still looks and sounds military, with a clipped delivery, straight back, green shorts and socks pulled up to the knee, but his replies are never predictable. He speaks ten Asian languages.

  ‘I learnt one in seven days. Mind you, I wasn’t eating.’

  He sees an historical pattern in what’s happening here.

  ‘This is my third revolution,’ he tells me. ‘The first one was in Malaya, the second was in Laos. The first one the government won, one-zero, the second the Communists won, one-all, and this is my third. Third time lucky for who?’

  He sees it as something that’s been bubbling for a long time.

  ‘The poor have been marginalized.’

  Law and order and a strong political base are prerequisites for defeating the rebels, but understanding the poor, as he has tried to do by travelling up and down the country, is also vital.

  Wearing thick, dark glasses for his fading eyesight, John brushes off my query as to whether he’s been tempted to try and help the Nepali government sort this one out.

  ‘I’ve got to keep a low profile here.’ He smiles. ‘The doctor said get hit on the head, you’re blind for life.’

  We leave Pokhara this morning for our first serious assault on the mountains. Brigadier General John Paul, mindful of the fact that we will soon be crossing into Tibet and operating for several days above 16,400 feet (5000 m), has scheduled a five-day, altitude-training trek to Annapurna Base Camp.

  The one sop is that, because of time constraints, we shall be taken by helicopter to our start point at Chomrung. A 20-minute flight instead of what would be a two-day walk.

  Once the helicopter has delivered us we’re left in deep and almost sensuous silence, hemmed in by the steep and thickly wooded walls of a valley, one side in brilliant sunshine, the other in deep, impenetrable shade.

  At this height - we’re at just over 7000 feet (2130 m) - even the most precipitous slopes are cultivated. Across the valley, I can see a farmhouse with 40 terraces, descending the hillside below, one after the other. Rising high in the distance, the summits of Annapurna and Machhapuchhre (Fish Tail Mountain) mark the parameters of our adventure; our constant companions on the trail, the objects of our pilgrimage.

  For now, the atmosphere is relaxed. We sit outside the hotel in warm sunshine surrounded by all the trappings of an English country garden: thickets of marigold, chrysanthemum and nasturtium, butterflies fluttering round hydrangea bushes. The trail up to Annapurna runs through the hotel and a steady stream of walkers comes by. Three Israeli students tell us they have been approached by Maoists and asked for 1000 rupees (about PS7) each. They pleaded student poverty but the Maoists were insistent, and, as one was armed, they thought it best not to argue. They were dealt with very courteously and
issued with receipts. An English hiker we talk to later said that he and his party were asked for 2000 each. The Maoists justified the price hike because the British, and the American, government supplies arms to Nepal (the very arms which the Maoists are probably using).

  The guerrillas don’t like the Annapurna Conservation Area, presumably because it’s a government initiative, and recently forced six of the checkpoints on the trail to close. The 1000 rupee fee that was levied to pay for conservation work they now take for themselves.

  Nevertheless, Wongchu, so nervy yesterday, doesn’t think we’ll have trouble with the Maoists, who he refers to, dismissively, as ‘Jungle Army’ and, even more derisively, Long Noses.

  There seem to be plenty of other things to worry about, if a large sign just outside the hotel is to be believed.

  We are, apparently, in an Avalanche Risk Area. ‘Cross the Risk Area before 10 am’, the sign warns. If you avoid the avalanche, you could still fall victim to Acute Mountain Sickness.

  Symptoms are divided into ‘Early’, which include, ‘Headache, Loss of Appetite, Dizziness, Fatigue on Minimal Exertion’ (I had three of these four in Ladakh), and ‘Worsening’, characterized by ‘Increasing Tiredness, Severe Headache, Walking Like Drunk and Vomitting’ (sic).

  ‘What To Do?’ asks the big metal signboard. The answer is unequivocal.

  ‘Descend! Descend! Descend!’

  The accommodation, on two floors, is clean and basic, with a bed and pillow and a lavatory and washroom at the end of the block. There is electricity but it only manifests itself in one dim bulb per room. As a result of strict anti-litter controls, all drinking water is boiled, instead of bottled. The chicken at supper is, well, muscular.

  Day Fifty : Chomrung to Dovan

  We set off about eight. Our 35 porters, though expertly marshalled by our 13 Sherpas, are not used to the stop-start interruptions of filming, and by 9.30 we have reached only as far as the Chomrung General Store. More worryingly, our progress up to Annapurna has been entirely downhill. We’ll surely have to pay for this.

  The store, crowded with schoolchildren buying sweets before climbing up to their school in Chomrung, is our last chance to buy what J-P calls ‘sophisticated provisions’.

  The range of goods on the shelves gives a foretaste of the weapons we might need should we ever have to touch the void: Pringles, porridge oats, toilet paper, vodka, ‘Man’s Briefs’, chocolate, ‘Bandage for Knee Caps’, nail clippers, Chinese playing cards and rum.

  Once outside the village we continue down on paths occasionally stepped with wide stone slabs (mostly laid by women of the local Gurung tribe) until we cross the Modi Khola (the River Modi) and at last the ascent begins. The porters bend to their work. As I watch their rubber sandals nimbly negotiate the rocks ahead of me I’m ashamed to think how long I spent deciding which kind of boots to wear. And some of them are carrying 40 kilograms in their wicker backpacks.

  For a while it’s idyllic. Prayer flags festoon the trees at intervals, fat bees feed off the cornflowers, lizards sprint across the mica-sparkling rock.

  ‘Namaste,’ I say cheerfully to everyone we pass.

  On one particularly steep section we’re overtaken by a mule train, the animals sashaying nimbly past and shoving me sideways into the bushes with their panniers.

  ‘Namaste!’

  Wongchu sticks fairly close to me. He’s been given the impression that I’m someone of consequence, though he’s not absolutely sure why. He’s in his late thirties, solidly built with the broad features and high cheekbones of a northern Nepali or a Red Indian chief. He’s horrendously over-qualified for this sort of work, having twice summitted Everest. On one of those occasions he arrived at the top at 5.30 in the morning, so far ahead of the rest of the party that he lay down on top of Everest and fell asleep until they arrived. Now that is cool.

  He talks in staccato bursts of heavily compressed English, a lot of which I miss.

  ‘Bondo. They call me Bondo.’

  I nod and smile, vaguely.

  ‘Bondo,’ he repeats, smiling broadly. ‘The Gun.’

  ‘Ah, yes.’

  ‘Ask anyone on Everest for Wongchu, they may be confused. Bondo Wongchu everybody know.’

  He drops bits of information at regular intervals, as if I need food for the mind as well as the body. Did I know that the tip of Everest is limestone, a seabed pushed five and a half miles into the sky.

  I ask him what he thinks about the situation in Nepal.

  He looks around with a shrug and an expansive sweep of the arm.

  ‘Nobody in charge of the country any more.’

  We climb over a spur and begin moving down through thick rhododendron and then bamboo forest. The way becomes increasingly dark, overgrown and claustrophobic. The sun has disappeared behind the mountains and a white mist is descending over the forest as we reach our overnight stop at Dovan. There are three of the long, grey, stone buildings with their blue, painted, tin roofs to choose from: The Dovan Guest House, the Annapurna Approach Lodge and Restaurant Hotel Tip Top. All are identical and all are full. In the courtyards a largely Western crowd of trekkers is resting, washing, snacking, lolling and generally looking knackered.

  ‘Tourism,’ mutters Wongchu, contemptuously. Though of course he makes his living from it.

  The Sherpas set up camp. We’ve had a long, hard day’s walk and only about 1000 feet (300 m) to show for it.

  Basil is in a bad way. He doesn’t like trekking - ‘the longest walk I do is from the bar to the table’ - and seems to have been cursed with a cold and a knife-like sore throat.

  The talk at supper is not uplifting, turning mainly around the choice of our next camping spot, bearing in mind the risk of avalanche further up the mountain.

  As we sit at the table after supper, Wongchu, unbidden, comes round and massages shoulders, arms, heads. A good massage too. He has fingers like steel.

  ‘Sleep well, now,’ he assures me.

  How wrong he was.

  Day Fifty One : Dovan to Derali

  Temperatures fell sharply in the night and when I push back the flap of my tent it’s ice cold with condensation. As we approach the toughest part of the trek, I can no longer ignore the inconvenient fact that I am feeling pretty lousy, and, if I’m about to get what Basil is already suffering from, things could get a lot worse.

  He sits at breakfast with a pile of tissues beside him, dressed all in black and looking like death warmed up. In between painful coughs and raucous nose-blowings he delivers sharp and pithy observations on the joys of trekking, most of which seem to be eluding him.

  French toast and boiled eggs are barely digested before the Sherpas set about striking camp with military precision. They like to keep moving. Or do they know something about avalanches we don’t?

  I stubbornly resist offers from Nawang and Wongchu to carry my backpack for me. It’s become a matter of pride for me to carry it, a defiant attempt to show that there is still something I can do for myself.

  We set out at half-past seven, climbing up steep stone staircases through a tangle of semi-tropical woodland, with wispy lengths of Spanish moss trailing from the branches of the trees like a trail of feather boas. When we emerge from the trees the sunshine is still way up in the mountain tops but the air is cool and fresh.

  I feel a sudden surge of joie de vivre and ask Wongchu if he thought I could climb Everest. Flattered that he says yes with barely a pause I ask how long it would take.

  ‘You must do training. Get used to altitude. Climb other mountains first.’ He looks me up and down. ‘I get you up there in maybe 75, maybe 100 days.’

  I was thinking about a week.

  ‘No time on this schedule, then.’

  He grins and indicates my backpack.

  ‘You want me take that?’

  The distance between us and the tantalizing ceiling of sunlight high above us is gradually decreasing, but it’s not until 10.15 that it tips over the rim of the mountains a
nd spills into the valley. The temperature change is instant and dramatic. Off with fleece and on with 35 factor sun cream.

  The scenery change is equally dramatic. After 24 hours of sometimes oppressive forest, the valley now opens and widens out and for the first time I have a sense of the monumental scale of what we are heading into. The 40-mile-long wall that stretches from Annapurna I in the west to Annapurna II in the east has no fewer than nine summits above 23,000 feet (7010 m). Even closer to us are Annapurna South at 23,678 feet (7200 m), Hiunchuli, over 21,000 feet (6400 m) and, barely five miles due east, the mesmerically eye-catching Machhapuchhre, the highest of its two pinnacles rising just short of 23,000 feet (7010 m).

  This is sublime mountain scenery. Only Concordia in Pakistan, on the threshold of K2, reduced me to the same sense of inarticulate wonder.

  Not much time for wonder, inarticulate or otherwise, as we have to keep moving, stopping, filming, moving and eventual stopping for a more substantial breather beneath a soaring overhang called the Hinko Rocks.

  Animism preceded and has survived the religions that came to Nepal and it doesn’t surprise me to hear that this conspicuous rocky cave is a sacred place. Talking of myths and legends, I ask Wongchu about the yeti.

  He says that like everyone else round here he believes it exists.

  ‘I saw some yeti in the mountain.’

  ‘What did it look like?’

  ‘Look like monkey, it look like people like us.’