Dunai To Jumla: Ghodakhor to Kaigaon
After a chilly wake up and tea we were off for the last thousand feet. I noticed the trail cut deep into the mountainside and followed with my eyes until it disappeared in a pine and oak forest that gave us shade for a while. The trees were covered in what I call Spanish moss but I doubt the Nepali call it that. The trail split a few times and it was difficult to differentiate the right trail but we followed the hoof prints and eventually popped out of the forest just below Balangra Lagna, (3760 meter pass). We met four men coming up in the opposite direction who dropped gifts of wood, ribbon and rock at the prayer flag gateway posts. The gateway is the end of one section of a journey and a rejuvenating point for a walker on a long hall. It naturally marks the beginning of the next section and that much closer to loved ones. The men were involved with a National Park relocation project of some animal species. I’m not mentioning the species for their own protection. Everyone has said there are bears but I haven’t seen one print.
From this point on all I can feel are my toes jammed into the front of my low-top trekkers. A high mountain bamboo grows amongst the underbrush, not tall like in northern Thailand, but more mid-range 10-12 feet. It looked like good fly-fishing pole material.
The hill took a really steep pitch and a 25 year-old teacher walking a white horse came down the mountain with his horses bell clanging as it jolted down over boulders and joined us. He and Krishna talked on for most of the descent while the rest of us maintained a slippery foothold on gravity. You could see Kaigaon but it was still difficult to get to. I’m glad Johnny Sparshatt from www.wildtrakadventure.com had previously spoken to some friends about the area. They concurred that one direction was better for trekking than the other one side of the mountains being noticeably steeper than the other. The trail we came up was loaded with plateau villages where you can stay. Coming up from Jumla to Dunai would be more straight shots up with little relief and nowhere to stay if you needed one. We had dropped over 1000 meters and tomorrow's pass is higher than we just crossed over.
Kaigaon was an interesting town with a Gumba (Buddhist Temple) up river from town. Behind the backyard of the hotel I could see the corn had been cut and the cows were free to graze. Between paddocks 8-10 foot marijuana plants stood listing with flowering tops. Apparently there were some French folks coming to do a dance and teach something the following day then trail us with their horses and porters to Jumla.
We sat in the kitchen with the proprietor and his wife not expecting an eye-opening evening. I don’t recall any beer but the Roxy was free and cups remained full. For the most part I sat and listen to the Nepali conversation and looked around the room at the seemingly traditional implication that you need one of every pot ever made and at least two full sets of cutlery. Everyone sat close around the stove as the man began warming two cups of marijuana seeds over one of the two openings in the top of the cast iron stove. I had to ask.
Okay so your dal-baht is already to go and most of the cooks make some variety of spicy paste that goes with it. Each cook is different but this is not the first time we had MJ paste but it’s the best time to talk about it because it led us into another subject. Recipe for MJ paste with rice:
Roast a cup or two of MJ seeds in a dry pan rolling them around for about 10 minutes.
Do not cool, go straight to the grinder and grind them into a powder.
Add finger shredded mint, garlic, s & p, red onion, and a pinch of diced tomato.
Don’t add too much tomato or onion because the liquid from the tomato and onion can exceed your need. Experiment. Mix to texture and warm. Put a dollop on your plate and mix it in the rice. Enjoy. Don’t take a UA, (Urine Analysis) anytime soon.
Johnny breached the question of hallucinogenic honey and ‘yatzegumba’. John and I had tried hallucinogenic honey about 5 months before to no avail. The man said he would have the honey next time John brought a trek through. It comes from a certain altitude where above and below might kill you but at a certain elevation the toxins are a little weaker. He also said he had some Yatzegumba. John’s eyes twinkled at me and translated with a smile. I had heard the question before but never this answer. The man half turned and opened a cabinet behind him and retrieved a jug of Yatzegumba and poured it into our half full cups of Roxy. I looked in the jug and saw 20 or more hairless caterpillars floating on the surface and a lot more on the bottom. Sporadically between them were off-white asymmetrical spheres the size of a small popped corn kernel. Yatzegumba is a caterpillar that gets infected with a fungus that grows out of its head in the form of an asymmetrical sphere and sells on the black market for 8,000 USD/kilo. The problem with selling Yatzegumba on the black market is keeping your money. When the BM sell goes down the seller puts the money in his pocket and heads on home in Nepal. On the way, knowing the seasons, pirates and small groups of men with guns hold the seller up, take his money and most likely cross back over the border giving some of the money back to the buyer and keeping a percentage or something like that. Legally it is sold for $3,000/kilo after government taxes. The Chinese are the prime buyers of this stuff. It is believed to rejuvenate you and of course it’s good for the ‘yang’. One caterpillar sells for $15 USD and the really long ones sell for more. There were 7 caterpillars in my Roxy and a couple rounds. We spoke of the illegal act of killing musk deer for their stomach lining. The Chinese smoke it. I want to know who came up with this stuff, who was the first hungry person that ate a stack of caterpillars with fungus growing out of their heads and felt youthful after a belly full and who started smoking Musk deer stomach lining. I can understand cooking a deer over an open fire and inhaling it as a beginner but still. This man also said the snow leopard is in trouble and way up the mountains at this time of year which makes them easier to find.
We woke and had tea watching the news about India, a democratic country, pressuring Nepal, another democratic country, with unofficial border closers for fuel and cooking oil among other commodities because India didn’t get the outcome it wanted in Nepal’s recent democratic voting process. Nepal is and has been dependent on India for almost everything and now they are feeling the squeeze. Let’s see if they form a back-up plan for their needs. It’s been a rough year for Nepal and unfortunately I’ve been here for the most part.
The Yatzegumba was free and did nothing.
