Dunai To Jumla Trek:
(Tripurakot to Ghodakhor)
Walking 40 kilometers the day before and landing at the base of our first pass was well planned. The village of Tripurakot was bigger than I expected with a few hotels and stores open to the transportation highway. Here we left the main trail because the horseman back at Chhepka and a few others said it saved going up and back down and just took you gradually up on the south side of the river and would reunite with the main trail above and after passing through the hillside village of Liku. We were at 2000 meters and our destination was 1400 meters above our heads, or close to a mile vertical. We set out but the sun was already on us due to the openness of the valley. Again we tackled switchbacks and chatted with transporters for tips of the trail. One man carrying a basket full of some trekkers gear turned part way without breaking stride and warned, “There are a couple bad spots.” The comment the porter made lead John and Krishna to ask more questions of others we encountered.
Of course we are still asking how long does it take but I have lost all hope in hearing a correct answer. Nepali porters don’t really use kilometers as a form of measurement because the Himalayas are not linear, as a crow flies; nor do I believe they take breaks much while walking so asking how long it takes is even worse. I resolved this dilemma by doubling those questioned estimated times and distances. A porter carrying 40 kilo would be more accurate than a mule train operator carrying nothing but a switch for his animals behind. We were a day ahead of schedule and in no particular hurry. Our breaks were leisurely and usually in the shade of a forest or a building.
As we climbed up to Liku the view and perspective behind us grew in all directions. We had noodles and tea and talked with the kids going to school and the adults milling around curiously. A man sat with us and asked to look through our binoculars and looked up the mountain and jokingly said in English, “Oh my brother is not home or where he’s supposed to be.” We all laughed and he returned to the table and back into the conversation about the new constitution that has just been put into affect by popular vote. His point was that the constitution is just paper with words on it and until the words become action and the country abides the constitution is nothing but a big roll of toilet paper. Considering everything I’ve learned over the last 4 out of 6 months in Nepal I agree.
The gentle climb out of Liku was mostly hidden in a pine forest and intermittently popped out into open hillside sloped fields many not terraced but with hedgerows of marijuana plants 7-10 feet tall and all flowering. We came to the steel bridge everybody kept telling us about. I took a quick photo op and off we went. We could see the proper trail above us on the adjacent ravine bank as we entered a series of waterfalls and a walnut tree grove following the contour of the ending valley. We all sat down and gathered a few and began cracking them open. They’re very expensive down in the villages but since we were there we had our fill and kept pushing higher. Everybody felt the day as our packs began to take on weight they didn’t show on a scale.
We were getting close to our destination and well behind the hourly estimate from the man in Liku. We entered a few crops with the false hope that we were there but we entered the village below it by a couple hundred meters but that wasn’t frustrating as the village was startling. The village of Bantari was eerie as any village I’ve experienced in my travels. This might be a good time to say that we hadn’t seen another foreigner in a couple days and were told that trekkers just don’t come this way and that’s good enough reason for us to do it. The children were covered in dirt and very scared of us. There were no hellos, no Namastes, no waves, just fearful eyed stares and worried looks. It seemed like they had been left alone for generations. We stopped briefly and took some photos and then moved on thinking we were upsetting the balance. Some of the young men followed along and pointed out information and led us to the next and last vertical blast up loose rock and meandering trails.
I’ll never forget one of the young men racing along behind us at a full sprint. As he passed he exclaimed, “My horses are eating my corn!” he flew by me without a bead of sweat or breathing hard. He should go to the Olympic trials. Twenty minutes later we heard his horses coming down the loose trail and we did our best to get out of the way. He passed me and he still wasn’t sweating or breathing hard. Thirty minutes later we crested into a small trail side series of buildings and knew we were in Ghodakhor and we had just cleared 3400 meters and still had some time to have tea and watch as the sun slid behind the mountains and the sun move rapidly up the mountainsides.
One hotel had one room with two twin beds and asked if we wanted to share it. Krishna and Pravesh talked with the other folks down the trail and found a hotel owned by a teacher and the woman said she wouldn’t charge us for the room but would charge meager prices for food and anything else we requested. We politely moved on down to this mud hut road house and saw a stack of blankets and we knew we were in good hands. Little did we know what was to come that night.
We put our bags in our room. There will still only two beds but one bed was a king or bigger and the other was a single. Once the sun went down it turned dark quick and the woman called us in to the kitchen where she passed out mountain tea. Mountain tea is not like others, it’s rather salty and I believe there’s Yak butter in it, it’s more like a broth. She said we were in luck because they had some goat meat leftover from the other night. That along with dal-baht and mountain tea we moved into position. I haven’t been able to cross my legs underneath me since a motorbike crashed into me in Bangkok so I sat with my legs straight out. It’s disrespectful to cross them at length but you can leave them hanging out, plus I’m a foreigner and don’t know any better. I had John explain it and she told her son to never sit with legs crossed and outstretched.
Three men came in and a few more kids as the temperature dropped with a mountain breeze pushing on the cracks in the walls and doors. One man was a jovial sort and sat next to the fire and the woman cooking. Another sat in front of Krishna and me. An elderly gent sat to my left and everybody made introductions and we got down to business. The jovial gent had brought a large jug of Roxy with him and we all got a glass that never emptied.
Of course I don’t understand Nepali but when the old guy sitting next to me started talking in his own language that no one in the room knew the jovial and the other said, “Don’t worry about it, no one understands him when he does this. He’s my uncle and I’ve listened to this gibberish for a long time.” John started asking questions of the youngest of the three and he turned out to be a national park guide, the one that interrupted two poachers after a snow leopard. These two didn’t get away like most of them. Two of the men agreed that the poaching was going to push the cat to extinction and that China was again the culprit in the poaching in the north and that there is little to no possible way to stop it except by luck.
The jovial one poured more Roxy in everybody’s cup and began to dance to Nepali music from my speaker and Pravesh was acting DJ. The food was hot and tasted great after the day we had and the Roxy kept on and the dancing kept on and the old man gabbing in my ear kept on. I responded in English and nodded a lot for no apparent reason. It was time for bed. We hadn’t gotten exactly to the top yet; we still had a couple hundred meters until the pass and then a short break before the next hidden pass and then a long down hill to Kaigoan where things really get interesting.
