Underway

Tuesday, July 19, 2016

Underway

With two months of diving in Indonesia including the Raja Ampat Wicked Diving Expedition to Komodo and the Sardine Run in Port St. John behind me I sadly took off my mask and dive computer and headed out of South Africa via Istanbul to Katmandu, Nepal. I flew Turkish Airways and they are a good choice for long flights. When I got into Katmandu the hotel had sent a vehicle to come fetch me. A Scottish friend had already arrived from the Philippines and two others were on the crazy bus traveling for 20 some hours from Bardia National Park to Katmandu so we could get permits for a month long trek coming up but as per usual, there was a hitch but in this case, in our favor.

When we got to the Tourism Office they said we needed to go through an agent and bring a Mountain Trekking guide. My friend missed his mountain trek training because he was in hospital for recently fending off a tiger while trying to protect and extract a Dutch tourist from a life-threatening situation. The story is awesome and the teeth marks and claw scars on his leg and arm are a crazy deep reminder. With Jumla under early monsoon rains, plane flights being cancelled and flash flooding occurring, it’s for the best that we wait a month. The porters are all set and we are all set, it’s now up to the weather. Change of plans.

We hired a car to drive us early in the morning to Pokhara after setting up an agent to start the trekking permits rolling, oh they aren’t cheap, $50.00/day and we plan to be in a restricted area for 10 days so $500.00 USD per foreigner. Meanwhile we are getting last minute supplies and equipment for the up coming adventure. The drive was beautiful with the lush green vegetation and most of the rice paddies already replanted. Some were a little slower and were still plowing with their water buffalo and getting everything ready. The clouds lifted as we crossed over the mountain range. Our driver knew a ‘short cut’ that took us up through the residential area and we popped out on the highway almost at the pass with no traffic, very rare. The road down the other side shows recent landslide scars and continuing road works.

Once again I’m back at the Lotus Hotel and 50 meters from lakeside. The mountain peaks have been making an early morning appearance and then pretty much obscured by clouds and afternoon rain. We stayed an extra night because France was playing Portugal in the final match. In Pokhara the match came on at 0045 mostly behind closed doors but even security and police officers were on tippy-toes peering over the crowd to watch. When all was said and done Pokhara exploded into a cheering uproar for Portugal and then all went quiet.

We hired another car to take us to Bardia because we had too much expensive equipment with us and I prefer a little freedom when crossing a country like Nepal overland, eat when you want, get out and stretch your legs, take a pee, and take pictures when something strikes you. One of my friends decided to rent a motorbike and meet us in Thakadurwara in a few days. Now that is freedom.

We planned on rowing across the lake if the weather was okay but morning rains and a genuine lack of energy doused that. I wrote and played in the neighborhood with some storeowners I befriended on the last few times through Pokhara. We were heading for an early night while we had a beer at the hotel and than fate landed with two Basque ladies coming up the stairs and joining us for some conversation and another beer or two. They were great company and we said our good-byes early in the morning when our driver and jeep arrived. We taunted them to join us but they were running out of time and didn’t see everything fitting into their plan AND getting back to Katmandu in a timely fashion. We explained to them about the fresh water dolphin, Gharial crocodiles, tigers, bears, elephants, rhinos and we still couldn’t get them out of bed in the morning. I think they missed out.

We took the back way out of Pokhara due to road works and slides down near Mugling and we drove without incident through mountain gorges, passes, and onto the Nepal plain, the Terrai. The back way intercepts the East-West Highway at Butwall and then it’s pretty much flat for eight hours dodging cars, trucks, leaning buses, potholes, cattle, goats, sheep, water buffalo, and a multitude of people on push-bikes or on foot on the highway.

At dusk we came across a young Jackal trying to cross the highway without getting squished. It decided it wasn’t time and headed back into the cornfield and vanished.

When we got closer to Bardia we crossed a bridge with a few Ghariel, fish eating Crocodiles, resting in the shallows of the river. Now I know I’m back in Nepal. We drove through familiar sights and road chokes, intersections, where East-West meets North South roads. Our other friend was a day behind us on a motorbike stopping in a town along the way. We stopped in for dinner in a small town not far from the lodge and rolled in around 9 pm. The river we had to cross was low and in between flash flood water levels.

I haven’t left campus for a couple days with all kinds of weather and projects to look at and move forward. We dug a pond out and spread the silt out in the surrounding garden. The humidity is brutal. All I could imagine was Japanese POWs working in this heat and humidity in such places as Burma/Myanmar or Thailand, no wonder so many perished. Seriously, dehydration, heat stroke, sunstroke, cramps, Malaria, disease, dysentery and the list goes on. Kudos to all those WW II Vets that lived through such hardships and R.I.P. for those less fortunate. It’s hot and humid.

We drove over to Tikapur the other day to find the Gangetic Dolphin and it turned out they were finishing up their count of the dolphin meaning people spread out up and down the river and watched for dolphin and gave a count of each area. I can’t tell you the number because of politics. They want to be the first ones out with the news. While I was there for two days we saw three or four the first day and maybe two or three the second day. The rains were pressing so we worked around the dark gray clouds.

We drove back to Bardia National Park and the rains came and the pond filled up quickly. The power shedding and outages is a constant reminder of the areas remoteness. All calls to Jumla come back with the same result. The passes are still closed and planes are coming intermittently. We still have time to wait so I’m figuring out mu next move and not waste time. I’ll let you know.