The Times Companion to 2017

by Ian Brunskill

  The day before, Somaliland’s president, Ahmed Mohamed Mohamoud Silanyo, had decreed a day of prayer for rain to end the drought. Having prayed for two years for rain themselves, the people in Sihawele now fear a downpour, worried that their fragile shelters will be washed away by the deluge.

  The rains, even if they come, will not bring back their livestock nor solve the longer-term question hanging over the sustainability of the pastoral life in this rapidly withering corner of Africa. Life in these remote, arid lands was never easy, aid officials acknowledge, but population growth and increased drought have made it harder than ever.

  “It is easy to see why such a way of life can quickly reach a tipping point that turns a drought into a humanitarian crisis,” Alexander Matheou, the director of programmes at British Red Cross, said.

  Or as Mrs Abdi, crouched inside her tiny shelter, put it: “If the rains come now, they will be too late. We have already lost everything.”

  Not quite everything. Five days after Yusuf’s mother died, word came through that he had survived, thanks to lifesaving treatment.

  He remains at the clinic, being treated for malnutrition, one less loss for his father to bear.

  NEPAL IS BACK: ANCIENT TEMPLES, MOUNTAINS AND BENGAL TIGERS

  Tom Chesshyre

  APRIL 22 2017

  RUBY-RED RHODODENDRON trees with trunks adorned with delicate white orchids line the path to the remote village of Panchase Bhanjyang. Below, the mountainside plunges to crop terraces and clearings with water buffaloes. Smoke rises from far-off dwellings. Luminous clouds scuttle across the valley, cooling us as we pause after our five-hour hike.

  We are on the edge of the Annapurna region of mountains in central Nepal. Somewhere to the north is Fishtail mountain (Nepalese name: Machapuchare, 6,993m, or 22,942ft), which resembles a half-submerged fish descended from the heavens. Somewhere to the southeast is Everest (8,848m), the granddaddy of the Himalayas. All around, snow-capped peaks lurk behind clouds.

  This is a mystical, soul-lifting place.

  We continue upwards, tackling a steep rocky section. My guide, Su, pauses to examine leopard droppings. “About a month old,” he says. Only once has Su spotted a leopard here, when the creature disappeared in a flash after encountering a group of British backpackers in fleeces. “Very shy,” he says, striding onwards.

  All is quiet. Since the morning we have passed a mere handful of hikers: French walkers with porters heading to Pokhara. And when we arrive at Panchase Bhanjyang, having covered eight miles, we are the only guests. Maya, one of the three sisters who own the Happy Heart Hotel, ushers us to a plank-like perch in front of the wood fire in her smoky kitchen so we can warm up with tin cups of lemon ginger tea.

  As she tends the rudimentary stove she tells us about April 25, 2015, when an earthquake measuring 7.9 on the Richter scale struck Nepal, bringing the loss of almost 9,000 lives, destroying tens of thousands of homes, turning centuries-old temples to rubble and in a few terrifying minutes ruining the tourism on which so many parts of the nation depend. “It was big shaking,” she says. “Big, big shaking. Our main house collapse.”

  The costly rebuilding of this property took a dozen workers three months, but the hotel itself escaped serious damage. Yet since then guest numbers have halved at its ten well-appointed, but simple rooms: £4 a night, with electricity, clean toilets in sheds and pictures of the Hindu elephant god Ganesh on the bedroom walls (he is said to bring luck). “People are too scared to come because of the earthquake,” says Maya, who has a remarkably laid-back take on the disaster.

  Nepal has been through a lot in the past two years, not least a pair of powerful aftershocks soon after the initial quake, which brought down many more buildings. Now, however, with reconstruction of some (but far from all) temples and the immediacy of the trauma fading, tourists like me are beginning to trickle back. I have signed up to a ten-day tour, beginning in Kathmandu, with visits to sights in the Kathmandu Valley, Chitwan National Park (to the west), and culminating in our magnificent Annapurna hike.

  The country is still a long way from normal — and the effects of April 2015 are obvious on the drive from the airport to the centre of Kathmandu. Buildings with precarious-looking support beams, great piles of rubble and roads with teams digging up cracked pipes (the authorities are modernising the water system) create an impression of barely suppressed chaos.

  This is heightened by the awful traffic jams. The earthquake came as the capital was struggling with a population influx from the countryside. In recent years many youngsters from rural areas have sought more glamorous lifestyles glimpsed on the internet, turning their backs on the hard grind of working the paddy fields. The result is that Kathmandu is busy, and the pollution from vehicles and building sites is dreadful. So much so that my city guide, Archana, regularly loses her voice after leading tours. She hands me a face mask to keep out dust. Despite this, my lungs ache at night after a day’s sightseeing.

  See the sights we do — what’s left of them. In Durbar Square, in Kathmandu’s medieval centre, the white walls of the old royal palace are cracked and crumbling, with crude support beams and an exclusion zone in case the crippled edifice decides to call it a day. Beyond, many of the temples are little more than construction sites behind corrugated metal walls.

  “This is the temple of Vishnu,” says Archana. “At least, it used to be.”

  Near here I get talking to an Australian couple from Sydney. “We sat up there where the pillars were last time we came,” says Jill, a retired teacher. She’s looking at a picture on a display board. “Now everything looks like it was hit by a bomb.”

  Yet there is a still a huge amount to see in Kathmandu. The Sydneysiders and I chat for a while, and they tell me how they were asked for donations by “very polite” Maoist insurgents when they went trekking in the mountains in the 1990s (Nepalese politics has had a rollercoaster ride in recent years). Then we go to see the beautiful temple of Kumari. This is home to the eponymous “living goddess”, who is now aged ten and who was selected for her unusual role when aged three. When she menstruates for the first time, Archana says, a new goddess will be selected. No photos of her may be taken in the temple.

  On our visit Kumari happens to come to the window of her balcony, dressed in a red and gold robe and wearing Cleopatra-style eyeliner. She regards her audience (us) somewhat disdainfully, pouts and returns to an inner room. The 20 or so tourists in the courtyard are delighted.

  Afterwards, we visit “Freak Street”. This is close by and is where hippies hung out in the 1960s, enjoying the Himalayan nation’s plentiful marijuana, now illegal, although the waft of weed is not an unfamilar smell in Thamel, Kathmandu’s tourist district and very much backpacker central.

  Then we drive to see the remarkable cremation temple of Lord Shiva, known as Pashupatinath Temple, on the Bagmati River. Here a series of funeral pyres, ghats, are ablaze by the murky water’s edge. Wood crackles. Thick white smoke swirls up. Many Indian tourists are taking pictures — this is a key Hindu pilgrimage site. Cows graze by the river and monkeys skip about on rocks. Palm readers, who are Hindu priests in saffron robes, sit cross-legged by a path, patiently waiting for customers. On an impulse I have my palm read by one. He clasps my right hand with his turmeric-stained hands and says that I “could be very rich”, “will travel a lot” and may have “two or three children, but not with family planning”. With this, the priest winks and asks for 500 rupees (£3.85).

  We go to see the great white stupa of Boudhanath in the city’s north, which has had part of its golden tower repaired since the 2015 quake. Shops all round the stupa sell knock-off branded shoes and climbing wear — North Face jackets are available for £15; “North Fakes”, as they are known locally. Monks in maroon robes jostle past. Local couples circle the stupa for good luck. About 12 per cent of the Nepalese are Buddhist; 80 per cent are Hindu.

  So concludes our final afternoon in Kathmandu, but before heading northwest for the Annap
urna trek, we have three stop-offs planned, each revealing the state of Nepal’s post-quake recovery.

  The first is the medieval city of Bhaktapur, about eight miles south of the capital. The labyrinthine red-brick centre of this much smaller city, which was the centre of power in the country until the late 15th century, has been preserved over the years, yet its frailty meant it took a bad hit two years ago. Now just about every building is propped up by wooden beams, some of which look makeshift. Many of the central temples are still being painstakingly rebuilt. And parts of the recently reopened National Art Museum are off-limits because of cracks in the walls.

  This museum is home to fantastic medieval paintings of Hindu gods, as well as portraits of Nepalese kings, beginning with the founder of the Kingdom of Nepal in 1768, the much-loved Prithvi Narayan Shah, and ending with the last king in 2008, when the monarchy was brought to an end. This decision came after the world headline-grabbing royal massacre of 2001, when Crown Prince Dipendra went on a shooting spree, murdering his father, King Birendra, and killing himself. The final portraits have a spine-chilling quality.

  Tin “earthquake victim shelters” are still in Bhaktapur, as are faded blue tents supplied by China. Some families are living in buildings that are not considered safe. “They are taking a risk,” says Su, who is accompanying me from here to Annapurna.

  Onwards we go, driving up a mountain overlooking Bhaktapur that rises to 1,950m, and on to the hill town of Nagarkot. Along the way we pass army bases where Gurkhas who later join the British Army are trained — they can be seen running along the steep single-track road carrying rifles and heavy packs (no wonder their fitness levels are renowned). We check in at dusk to the Sunshine Hotel, get an early night after a power cut (Nepal’s electricity supply is still in a parlous state), then wake at the crack of dawn to do what everyone does at Nagarkot: watch the sun rise.

  At 5.45am we are on the hotel roof with binoculars gazing across a hotel that is still being rebuilt after the earthquake to see the sun slowly appear beyond the jagged ridge of the Himalayas. Orange and peach light rises in heavenly shafts, soon forming a fiery blaze above the icy peaks. The tip of Everest can be seen in the distance by a band of cloud. We look on in awe before having breakfast, where Subbha, the waiter, tells us how his grandfather died in a collapsed building on this hillside in 2015.

  Almost everyone has an earthquake story. Su is no exception. When the ground began to move he was in a street in Kathmandu, and he imagined he was simply experiencing a dizzy spell. Then, when moped riders began to topple in the street, he realised something significant was afoot. Phones were not working, telecommunications towers had come down, so he rushed as quickly as he could to his village to check that his wife and son were OK.

  This took nine hours, including a 15-mile hike. His wife and son were, thankfully, fine, but their house was badly damaged. He bought a tarpaulin to act as a tent in their garden. A month later he was allocated a tin emergency shelter, in which they still live. “I need $25,000 to buy a house,” he says. “Everyone in my village is in the same boat. We are all in it together.”

  It is a seven-hour drive from Nagarkot to Chitwan National Park. Here, we check in to the Jungle Villa Resort overlooking the Rapti River. As we do, staff at the hotel wave us over to a deck. A single-horned rhino, of which there are about 500 in the park, is wallowing in the shallows.

  So begins a marvellous two days, witnessing rare sloth bears, more rhinos, gharial and mugger crocodiles, and finally — best of all — a Bengal tiger. The creature is pacing through shrubland and, when it sees us, turns and disappears almost immediately. Yet for a few seconds we have witnessed the elusive beast, of which there are about 120 in the park. Apparently there is a one in 20 chance of such a sighting (even the guides are thrilled).

  It’s worth adding here that when I arrive there is just one other hotel guest. Sahodar, the hotel manager, tells me that business is down about 70 per cent since 2015. In 2014 127,000 foreigners visited Chitwan National Park. Last year this figure was 56,000. It’s an excellent time to go to Nepal if you want to avoid tourist crowds.

  This is true on the trekking trails too. At the Happy Heart Hotel, after our eight-mile hike, I get to know the handful of Spanish, American and German guests — trekking is very sociable — and in the morning we all head off our own ways after a dawn visit to Hindu and Buddhist temples on a peak. Su and I tramp for 18 miles through beautiful rhododendron forests and villages growing garlic, cabbages and spinach, all the way down to Pokhara, with its backpacker hostels and bars.

  We are exhausted and, to celebrate, we go for Everest beers and chicken curries at a bar in the middle of the strip, which was, luckily, unaffected by the quake. Hardly anyone is around. Rolling Stones and Beatles songs play out across empty bar stools as we raise our beers to our adventures. Nepal is back … even though the mountains never went away.

  LE PEN CAN BE PRESIDENT IF SHE PLAYS THE LONG GAME

  Giles Whittell

  APRIL 29 2017

  ON MONDAY THOUSANDS of French nationalists will march through Paris in honour of Joan of Arc and the woman they consider her spiritual heir, Marine Le Pen. In past years these marches have been defiant but bedraggled affairs; this one promises to be glitzier. There’s an election in progress with Le Pen in the running and the fate of the Fifth Republic at stake. And Lionel Tivoli will be there, with a fresh face and a story to tell.

  Tivoli is 28 and secretary-general of the National Front in Nice. The hardline anti-immigrant party has always done well in the city, where the Alps meet the sea and wealthier pieds noirs liked to settle when war drove them from Algeria in the 1960s. But it has done especially well since Bastille Day last year, when a Tunisian-born loner ploughed through the crowds on the Promenade des Anglais in a 19-tonne lorry.

  The attack killed 86 and wounded several hundred. Squat steel posts now march down the middle of the promenade to prevent a repeat. The city has taken the opportunity to plant new palms where old ones were mangled by the lorry, and the National Front has seized the moment too. Its headline demand is for an end to the Schengen system’s open borders.

  Since last July its local membership has doubled. “We make the link between immigration and security for two reasons,” Tivoli says, exhausted after a day spent printing posters for round two of the presidential election. “The world is at war with Daesh and they infiltrate our country because the borders are open.”

  On the face of it round one all but secured the presidency for Emmanuel Macron, the uber-liberal who dared to marry his teacher and conjure a political movement from thin air. But Tivoli takes a different view of recent French history and of the next eight days. He believes that Le Pen’s moment has come.

  He believes that the 7.2 million conservatives who voted for the Catholic, Thatcherite François Fillon in round one (despite Fillon hiring his wife on the taxpayer’s dime to do precisely nothing) will lurch further to the right in the end in much greater numbers than the pollsters say.

  He is optimistic but not delusional. Across the south of France, and in much of the north, the first stage of this contest left millions of voters with no appetising option. Many now look to round two with open sympathy for Le Pen as the next victim of a great establishment stitch-up — Fillon being the first — and a what-the-heck impulse to stick it to Macron. These people include an unknowable number who voted for Jean-Luc Mélenchon, firebrand of the far left. They are all likely to be grumpy for at least the next five years, and what then if Macron fails? What keeps the French political class awake at night is the thought that Tivoli has correctly predicted the result, if not of this election, then the next one.

  All the polls give Macron a lead of at least 20 points over Le Pen. They tell three stories. One is of his undoubted talents. He’s a “political Casanova” who can seduce anyone while revealing nothing of himself, says a Republican politician who considers him a friend.

  Another is the story of President Hollande’
s near-total failure to reform the French economy or seduce anyone except his girlfriends; and the Socialists’ implosion as a result. A third is the story of mass dégagisme, the chucking out of both main parties by mainstream as well as fringe voters disgusted with what they have concluded is an unshakeable, bipartisan political habit of getting nothing done.

  Last Sunday 40 per cent of French voters turned their backs on the centre. That rejection ends the long first act of the Republic and carries echoes of last year’s US election, with this difference: Trump was a have-a-go hooligan but Le Pen has been laying siege to power for 30 years. What is easy to miss as national attention swings to Macron is Le Pen’s long-run achievement in recalibrating what is acceptable in French society and politics.

  Whatever happens on May 7, Le Pen is likely to win more than twice as much of the vote as her openly racist father did against Jacques Chirac in 2002. Already the National Front is the biggest single party in two giant regions — Hauts-de-France in the north and Provence, Alpes, Côte d’Azur in the southeast — and the only reason that it does not run their regional governments is that Socialists withdrew to give Republicans a free run.

  “She promises to secure the frontiers. What’s wrong with that?” asks Serge behind the counter in a sports shop off the promenade. “The only aliens she’ll expel are the ones on terror watchlists,” says Christian, a friend. They manage to make Le Pen’s offer to voters sound perfectly reasonable, and indeed her efforts to detoxify her brand (her dédiabolisation) have passed a major test. She is a shameless revisionist who does not believe France bears responsibility for its treatment of Jews in the Second World War, but that did not appear to hurt her in round one.

  A few blocks away Valerie Collin, who owns a gift shop, and Bruno Carnazza, a retired policeman, are buying fruit and accommodating themselves to the choice of May 7. Both voted for Fillon in round one. Both have grown-up children. Both are fascinated by Brexit. Valerie is hesitant but leaning towards Le Pen for round two.