The marvellous thing about trekking in Nepal is, of course, the altitude. The snow and ice-capped mountains are amazing in the very clear air. The way of life and the religion have a sparse beauty that is a product of the sparse landscape. The high places are wonderful, both culturally and physically. But it’s so cold. You carry a down jacket and a down sleeping bag and sometimes you go to bed wrapped in both of them. The experience has to be short lived; very soon you crave warmth. And so our trek came to an end. We walked down to Luckla and from there flew in a light aircraft back to Kathmandu.
The flight was one of my happiest experiences ever. I know this because I remember that I could feel the smile on my face. Luckla airstrip is very short. The small, propeller driven aircraft don’t so much lift off as fall off the end of the runway into the immense space between the mountains. Then they climb slowly and cross the corrugated landscape of the Himalayan foothills, negotiating high passes on the way. The land is mostly cultivated and the terracing makes beautiful patterns when viewed from above. Kathmandu airport was busy and we had to wait, circling the town of Barakphur a few times and looking down on the temples and market places. The landing was, for me, just the right side of scary, as I like to call it, but as we left the aircraft I noticed the blanched faces of those for whom the flight had been just the wrong side.
Flic and I had walked for twenty-eight days, much of it at great altitude. We had enjoyed most of it very much and been deeply moved by some places and experiences. Mr Parkinson had made his presence known towards the end of the trek as Flic recorded in her journal:
Climbing up and up the next day, there is almost no flat land and I realise that I haven’t seen a wheel let alone a car for a month. Richard is feeling low today as his left leg won’t lift and every step is an effort however eventually he cries a bit and then gets angry which makes him walk so fast I can’t catch up with him and then he feels better. It is wonderful here in Tsuryopka above Namche. Magical heavenly patch of earth.
Always before our travels there was uncertainty about my health and my ability to cope. Our trips have been much more than just holidays and more than just experiences. Each journey is a challenge. And once again the challenge was met and we had a special sense of achievement. But this trip had only just begun. Kathmandu, lowland Nepal and India lay ahead. First Kathmandu, from Flic’s journal;
Saturday – a holiday for Nepalis who can afford it. We walked through dusty streets towards a tree-covered hill topped with stupas and gompas and prayer flags. We passed a small gompa where people were offering red colour, marigolds, flowers and winding string around a tree and lighting candles and praying. They put red colours on their foreheads and marigold petals in their hair.
We crossed a small river that smelt foul and had pigs rooting around the banks and ducks and chickens. We went through real streets and past real lives away from the tourist part of town. Lots of signs of Hinduism and Buddhism that are big parts of everyday life here. On the steps sat people begging for money and people selling things for other people to give the temples – leaf bowls, boiled eggs, marigolds, rice, sweetcorn. It was a special day for mothers and babies so one gompa had a long queue of people waiting to throw rice or corn in. There were statues of Buddha where candles burned and offerings were left. We were interested to see so many monkeys sitting, playing, defleaing each other, climbing and ganging up and rushing around eating the rice and corn left for the gods.
I talked to a man whose baby had a fever and he’d taken her to the hospital yesterday but today he’d brought her up here and ‘look’ he said ‘her fever has almost gone’. The place was crowded but not many white tourists.
Some poor dirty children begging but mostly clean well looking children and their parents having a day out. One man was selling green parrots and budgies without cages. Another had apple-shaped balloons. There were monks there too from young boys to old men dressed in dark red with short hair and prayer beads and some with ipods. On the far side were great trees swamped with prayer flags blowing in the breeze. When the wind doesn’t blow the air is smoggy and quite polluted but it’s blowing today.
Two other memories of Kathmandu. First, the Garden of Dreams, a colonial style garden that was created in the 1920s and recently restored. It is set behind a high wall by a busy street. There is an entry fee so it is quiet inside, a peaceful retreat from the noise and chaos of the rest of Kathmandu for those that can pay for it. I don’t remember seeing any locals wandering around. Flic described it as a haven of trees, flowers, poetic quotes, water and expensive tea.
In complete contrast was a bicycle rickshaw ride back to Hotel Nature from Durbar Square, a genuinely historical part of the town where there are old courtyards and palaces and temples. Night falls fast in that part of the world and it fell heavily that evening as there were extensive power cuts in some parts of the city through which we were travelling. It was also rush hour with a chaotic mass of traffic in a state of intermittent gridlock. The combination was extraordinary. We travelled through near darkness among a multitude of other vehicles, some with lights on, many without, and passed busy shops and cafés lit by candles and stray light coming off the street. The bizarre shadows, the noise and bustle in the dark, the motionless commotion at jammed intersections, all together gave the sensation of being in some strange almost-nightmare, the allegorical dream sequence in a sinister art-house movie.
Then we went to Pokhara. I managed to get off the bus when it stopped outside of Kathmandu just in time to be violently sick. I was fine for the rest of the seven hour journey and then, when we arrived at a little lakeside guesthouse, other things happened. As Flic put it: Richard has a bad stomach but sorts himself out wonderfully in the dark toilet and changes his clothes. Wonderfully because Parkinson’s reduces your movement and these bad tummy moments are more of a challenge than they might otherwise be. When we get home to Wales people always ask us if we got ill on our trip. Most travellers seem to get a day or two of stomach trouble in India or Nepal – some get more. We like to ask did you get ill staying at home? The answer is often yes, followed by a description of a week or two with flu and a bad cold to follow. We prefer to go away.
Pokhara is a sprawling unlovely city on a plain near the mountains. One corner of the town lies along the side of a beautiful lake and is heavily infected with tourists and tourism. There are hotels and gift shops in great numbers. But just where the town gives way to countryside there is a friendly village atmosphere and small places to stay looking out over the lake. That area is very special, a place we have returned to from time to time and one of the very few places we have visited where I would be happy to live. The lake and the hills around are particularly beautiful in the mornings and evenings.
One day there we took a boat out on the lake for something like five hours and saw extraordinary birds with – and we know this because we bought a bird book – extraordinary names. Best of all were the big brightly coloured kingfishers, more properly called the brown-headed stork-billed kingfisher. There were some extraordinary brightly coloured people on the lake too. On a small island there are some temples which people visit on holy days, holidays and special occasions (i.e. all the time). They are brightly dressed and pile into small boats for the trip across the water. Hinduism is fun, it’s colourful and, like Buddhism, there is a reverence for places and landscape features (the River Ganges is the most obvious example).
We stayed a few days in Pokhara, visiting small scale tourist destinations like the bat cave and the Sita Gorge, renting bikes and pottering about the town and the countryside around both of which were full of interest.
We were cycling along a busy road on the opposite side of town from the lake when I noticed that each road to our left seemed to end abruptly in space, as if on the edge of a cliff. We went down one of these roads and found ourselves looking down a very steep long slope into a vast valley with a braided river winding about between a mass of boulders and gravel that, I guessed, was material c
arried down out of the hills in the rainy season. In landscape terms this didn’t make sense, a deep valley so close to a big lake; there was something I couldn’t understand about the geology of the area. But more extraordinary was the human activity: lots of people dotted about the valley bottom putting pebbles or gravel into plastic sacks and carrying them up the steep slope on their backs. It looked like ridiculously hard work, something like a torture or punishment, and it was clear that the people doing it were very poor and unsuited to the task. We saw old people who in our country would be enjoying their free bus passes and their gardens but here were condemned by their poverty to this grim labour.
Back in our guesthouse by the lake a young man, the son of the owner, wanted to take us to stay at his grandparents house on the terrai, the flat plains of southern Nepal. We would be near Chitwan nature reserve but staying in an ordinary farming household. Of course the guy wanted to charge us a daily guide’s fee for taking us there and showing us around. Fair enough. The young man was called Eshaw and he had a slightly awkward but likeable manner as well as a catchphrase; he would show us something a little bit different. So we went off with him on the bus one morning and it was a great experience like he said, something a bit different.
Over to Flic now: the bus took four hours and then Eshaw took us in a taxi to his grandparents. Their house is built by hand and mostly of wood. I drew it with the grandfather and his friend sitting either side of me. Cows goats and cat and buffalo and ox. Sugarcane papaya mango banana coffee potatoes beans radish cauliflower rice maize in the garden. They had a wonderful way of making gas for cooking. Straw and dung from a small open barn next to the house was chopped with a special tool and dropped into a concrete lined pit where it made methane that was piped straight into a cooker in the kitchen.
This was a better version of picturesque poverty. Although the land was absolutely flat there was much beauty in the landscape: fine trees, a diverse range of crops and animals, simple but handsome buildings and none of the ugliness of urban areas – no traffic, no noise, no big new buildings. And the people weren’t really that poor. Their lives were simple and their material possessions few but they had a healthy lifestyle, a friendly community and a clean environment. There were schools and young people seemed educated and spoke some English.
Close to the village there was a community forest, a sort of nature reserve owned by the locals. One evening we were walking by the entrance of the forest (it was fenced off to keep wild animals away from the crops) and a man came rushing over to us to warn us against going into the forest in the evening because two tourists had been attacked by a rhinoceros recently.
Eshaw’s grandfather and his friend generally sat around outside watching the world go by. Flic was taken with them and had a chat with the grandfather with Eshaw translating. The grandfather was 89 years old and had been a Ghurkha in the British army in the Second World War. He had done some of his training in England and had parachuted into the jungle to fight the Japanese. His only regret was that he had served too short a time to get a pension.
Elephants are the big thing at Chitwan. We took an elephant ride into the forest to see wildlife and found it a disappointment. We went into what had been referred to as jungle but it felt like a wood in Buckinghamshire. I don’t remember any major wildlife experience there. We also visited an elephant breeding centre and on another day Flic paid to help wash an elephant in the river. This is tourist stuff, not significant encounters with places and people different from ourselves. And yet it was worthwhile in its way. Flic wrote: from my window I can see an elephant under a shelter. On the way to the lodge we passed an elephant in the road. Amazing animals – so big and graceful, gentle and strong. They are wonderful. I feel in love with elephants.
Looking back now I can see the big difference between some of our more touristical experiences and the times when, as Flic put it, we went through real streets and past real lives. I’m thankful that we were able to do both.
In Nepal we had spent time in flatlands and highlands, cities and countryside. Nepal is a great little country. They managed to retain an independent sovereignty throughout the centuries of British imperialism. And they now have the charming habit of keeping their clocks fifteen minutes ahead of those of the massive country that surrounds them on three sides. I wonder if the great little country that I live in should keep a different time zone from its mighty neighbour. But no, Wales is to the west of England and would have to keep its clocks fifteen minutes behind. I won’t suggest that. I don’t think it would go down well at all.
J is for Jericho (Palestine)
In 1977 I stayed in the Hisham Palace Hotel Youth Hostel, Jericho, whose name echoed its steady decline from the glory days when it was frequented by the likes of the late King Hussein of Jordan. It was so hot in the night that I soaked a sheet in cold water and covered myself with it to cool down. I woke later, hot again, the sheet dried by the hot desert air and beginning to get damp with my sweat.
The proprietor was a man called Abu George, a charming anglophile who liked to tell the story of Montgomery meeting Rommel in the desert and finding that they were both whistling the same tune, Lily Marlene. He also told me about a fellow guest who I soon became acquainted with: a man called David.
David was from California, a business man with a crazy wife who thought that she was a reincarnation of Jesus. When she ran off with the hire car and all their money David was obliged to find work with a local construction firm – Palestinians who were building Israeli settlements in the desert. He was used to the LA heat, enjoyed the camaraderie of his workmates, and seemed to be having a great time. Sitting in the lobby in the evening with Abu George and David I felt that I was playing a small role in a quite well written piece of fiction – a BBC radio play maybe.
Other extraordinary people there included a Spaniard who spoke good Arabic and who convinced us that he worked for the French secret service. He took us to a wonderful oasis with cool water flowing out of the rocks into a deep pool. He put his few things in my bag and I discovered among them a cheap spy novel. I think it fuelled his fantasies.
I went back to Jericho in 2012 and it looked just the same: seedy, run down, characterless, and hot. But there was a new tourist attraction: a cable car running up to the monastery on the hill where Jesus had, apparently, been tempted by the devil. The Palestinian taxi driver who took us there stopped on the way and picked up two of his children and a grandchild and they had a day out with us.
11
Landscape and Memory-card
Flic and I moved to West Wales nearly twenty-five years ago and living so close to the sea was a novelty and a cause of excitement for a long time. We looked out at the water and at the curve of Cardigan Bay from many different beaches and clifftops up and down the coast. One time we were camping near Braich y Pwll at the end of the Lleyn Peninsula and we watched a sailing boat making its way through Bardsey Sound, the channel between Bardsey Island and the mainland. I wanted to be on that boat. A couple of weeks later I was given the chance to do just that – to join a crew sailing up the bay, through the sound and along the north coast of the Lleyn. We sailed for a few days and slept on the boat in harbours along the coast. I didn’t like it. I spent many hours looking back towards the shore, barely visible through the summer haze. One day I borrowed binoculars to try to catch sight of a particular house that held very significant memories for me. I couldn’t see it. But I came back with a title for a book, The Land as Viewed from the Sea. I spoke to Flic about it. What’s the story? she asked. I had no idea. It was five years later that I started on the first chapter.
The book turned out to be the first of three novels dealing with, as much as anything else, the subject of landscape and memory; about perceptions of place and about memories attached to places. I wrote, in those days, by hand, more specifically with a fountain pen on A3 layout pads. Big sheets of paper, illegible writing at the speed of thought – those were the days before I had Parkinson’
s disease. I knew my imagination had taken flight when my characters said things that I didn’t anticipate. But all the same I was rather taken aback when, towards the end of my third novel, one of my central protagonists, a certain Isabel Davies, came out with the words places don’t matter at all. People matter, it’s only people that matter.
To be fair I don’t blame her. She had spent a lot of time in the company of people talking about psychogeography, or psychoshit, as she came to call it. But I’m afraid I can’t leave off the subject. Sorry Isabel, if you’re out there (but of course you’re not). Here we go again.
It was William Faulkner who said The past is never dead. It’s not even past. Memories live on in us and make us who we are. But I think different people have different ways of dealing with time. When I told my sister Margaret that we were going travelling she said you will have such lovely memories. Wow, what a great combination of living in the future and the past at the same time. You will have memories. Everybody has their own way of dealing with past, present and future but Margaret’s is pretty special. I wanted to say that’s not why we’re going, we’re going for the present moment, just for the being there. And it was true. But of course Margaret was right, we do have wonderful memories and that’s why I’m writing this.
When we recover memories we give shape to them, just as the creative act of writing gives shape to our thoughts. At times like this I think of the year 1984. Nineteen-Eighty Four is the title of a novel by George Orwell that nobody reads anymore; a story of a future society under totalitarian government. When I read the book in 1975 the year 1984 was an impossibly distant future time, the stuff of science fiction. Now it’s history.
The Road to Zagora Page 8