Lower Dolpa and Phoksundo Lake
We didn’t have a proper guide and weren’t about to get one. John and I decided to try to get to Shey Phoksundo Lake hoping it wasn’t in the upper Dolpa region that cost $ 500 for a 10 day permit. I invited two Nepali friends along after paying for one boy’s high school fees for the next three years. I bought four smart phones and gave them to the children of the family I have been staying with for the last two months. They are for school so hopefully they can compete with the other kids in their classes. I also bought them a new ‘soccer’ ball because their old one had lost it’s covering and strings ran wildly as the ball rolled across their make shift field by the river.
I had trekked with John Sparshatt in Bardia National Park along the banks of the Babai River a couple of times looking for rare and endangered birds and animals in general, tigers, bears, leopards, crocodiles, vultures, Mottled Wood Owls, etc. The Babai is part of the Ganges river system with Gangetic Dolphins trapped but breeding behind a dam built by India with minimal research and even less concern for wildlife. What India got was hydropower and economic advantage in Nepal selling the power back to Nepal for more than they should afford. Power in Nepal is intermittent and loosely on a schedule that changes when needs be.
With recent events, earthquakes, banda (general strike), a fledgling constitution, and India’s unofficial blockade of fuel and goods coming into Nepal, it has been difficult to get around and prices are skyrocketing. Airlines are cancelling flights to Katmandu and Internet services, banks, and security services are feeling the pinch as tourists are as well. A taxi fare from Katmandu to Tamel used to cost 500-700 Nrp and now costs around 2000 nrp.
As a Yank we can only stay in Nepal for 5 months on a tourist visa so I split my stay here in two sections. I did 2 months on my way to Europe and 3 months on the way back to South East Asia. I volunteered some time helping John sort out some basics in the kitchen while the mysteries framed up a dining hall. The last month is mine and here we go.
John Sparshatt of Wild Trak Adventure, Krishna of Eco Resort, and Prabesh, a certified national park guide and myself hopped on a Tara Airline plane in Nepalgunj for the Dolpa region, (The spelling can also be Dolpo). Our flight was at 730 am and took us 2 hours to drive to the airport. This was the first ever flight for Krishna and Prabesh. The look on their faces as the plane took off was priceless.
The landing strip was on the side of a mountain at about 2600 meters. We watched as the plane turned around, reloaded and took off the way we came in. I had been at the edge of the jungle in the Terai region of Nepal for the last two months and now I was chilled for the first time with the dry conditions and the sun still warming the ground. We had breakfast at a tea house/ hotel on our way down the mountain. The owner was a knowledgeable chap who gave us some heads up about what we were about to do. Under our particular circumstances, the sky was the limit, at least as far as Shey Phoksundo Lake and some of the surrounding temples and historical landmarks. We didn’t know if it was considered upper or lower Dolpa until this moment when the gent said of course we could go. You have to pay $30.00/foreigner and all Nepali born are free. We flew here because there are no roads, just walking paths and mule and horse trails for transport to and from Tibet, China, the northern neighbor.
We walked down the mountainside through ripe and ready red chilies and newly flowering ganja. Ganja as I learned later was not just a weed bordering cornfields but a resource and in some villages used in food. As you walk on the hot dusty trails the smell of ganja vapors up in your face and nose. While smelling ganja I looked down at the steeply carved valley and up at the towering peaks overhead and realized I was in for something special, a lot of hard work but non-the-less special. The altitude isn’t that impressive but the trekking is proper. Many people prefer the more accessible trekking tours such as Annapurna and Everest base camps but every year groups of volunteers go to these sites and clean up the garbage left by tourists.
We all carried our own gear amounting to about 10 kilos. We planned to take advantage of the teahouses and small hotels along the way helping limit our backpack weight at altitude. Many of the longer treks into upper Dolpa need guides, porters, and mules or horses. I’ll be doing one of these next year when hopefully Nepal settles down.
As we dropped into the river gorge the sound of raging water filled our ears and the color of the water is a striking blue possibly due to ‘glacial flour’ in the water from higher up. The trail we were on is one of many ancient transport highways coming from Tibet, China. The trail is not easy with steep switchback ups and downs rounding bends high above the river and then back down. My body went into minor physical shock since I hadn’t trekked in a few months. I counted on a little muscle memory to pick up the slack.
We arrived at Sangte, (spelling varies from sign to sign), village at about 4:30 pm and pulled in for tea and a bed. The temperature dropped as the sun disappeared behind the high peaks. It was 500 nrp for 4 people. Most tourists that come this way come on a package and camp out at designated campsites sparsely placed along the river with no facilities. We went local meaning that the people bringing goods up or down with mules stay at the hotels and then there was us. We noticed that the government was installing a hydropower system near the town with a pipe heading steeply down a mountain and into the turbine housing. It should be on line in the near future. We sat on the floor in the kitchen and had Dal baht with the owners and some of the workers on the power system who were staying for another month or so.
For the first time in months I felt a chill in the air. It’s a far cry from the Tarai or London, Paris, Venice, Lisbon etc. We listened and John and Krishna translated foro me as the owner told stories of smuggling and exotic animal poaching in the Upper Dolpa blamed mostly on China looking for snow leopard skins, Musk deer and Yatzegumba, (A fungus that grows out of a caterpillar’s head). I’ll get back to this later. In the Tarai poaching is done by India for tiger, rhino, and elephant tusk.
We struck out around 7:30 and before the sun could find us in the valley and heat up everything. In the morning the wind blows down the river valley and once it warms up the wind is sucked up the valley with some strength. Hiking leisurely we slowly moved up the valley stopping in shady pine and cedar forests for breaks. We pulled into a riverside village named Rinchi for our second night. As you hike up into the valley the prices have a tendency to rise so things like a beer cost triple but they all make Jol (rice wine) and Roxy (Rice whiskey) and they cost next to nothing.
Nights get colder and we sleep in our clothes with sleeping bags and blankets. Dal Baht is a daily food choice with noodles and potatoes as your options changing marginally as you change hotels and cooks. We played cards and helped some of the locals with medicine for stomach ailments etc. There is no medicine on this route and it takes a huge effort for the locals to get needed medical attention.
We slept well and woke up early because we had a massive mountainside of switchbacks to climb up to the lake and I didn’t want to be the one that didn’t make it so off we went at 7. It’s cold out but still stripped down to a t-shirt and a pair of shorts we warm up quickly once on the trail and moving. We moved slowly through the switchbacks in the sun. Looking down I was impressed by the steepness of the climb. I also saw a woman carrying a young girl on her back followed by grandma. They sat with us during a break and then we all headed up to a circular lookout building and saw a shard of Phoksundo Lake and it’s bizarre blue color surrounded by hanging glaciers and waterfalls and rock.
We carried on up the mountain to a traverse and descended on the lake and Ringmogaon (village by the lake). The village is of another time where most families are subsistence farmers growing their own food and usually have one or two crops for sale for the items they can’t grow and are brought up by porter from above by yak, horse and mule or below. Yak don’t do so well at lower elevations and the government has been renewing bridges replacing wood ones with metal ones but with little or no research they found out after the fact that Yak don’t cross the metal bridges so in some places they are forced to leave the old bridges in as well. We found this out by meeting up with a small band of cool aid drinking volunteers putting in sustainable green power for the village and the monks in the gumba along the edge of the lake. We explored the lake just a little and returned to the kitchen for dinner and roxy and again listened to the stories from the owners. Apparently there is a lot of money being poured into this area because it hasn’t been affected by the earthquakes and the locals don’t really use petrol for anything.
Prabesh got brave and went for a swim after we did a bit of non-soap laundry at the edge of the lake. I hadn’t bathed in 3 days and wasn’t going to hop in this frigid water. We played cards and relaxed knowing we had a down day following where we could explore all day. I’m going to stop here because what happened the next day enlightened us and changed our course for the day.
