Darjeeling, 14th April 2011
WM: So we’re back from our trekking adventure – aching of calf and gluteal muscles, extremely stinky (somehow wearing the same pants continuously, sleeping in your day clothes and not washing in the freezing water makes sense at high altitude), and extremely tired but happy. We found W anxiously squeezing his quads yesterday, saying, “These things, mum, they’re getting TOO big!” – have we been over-exercising our poor little boy? The WPs inevitably wished to have walked further, higher, for longer but are so grateful to our children that they are tough and adaptable enough to have made it up the Himalayas on foot aged 4, 7 and 9 at all, not something we’d have imagined possible earlier in the trip. Respect.
WD and WM had had some qualms about the trek – are we negligent parents (beyond even the negligence of bringing the children to India in the first place?) to take the children up into the mountains, carrying our essentials and kit? And it was the lack of kit, in particular waterproofs, that worried us. You are required to take a guide to enter the National Park – and there are multiple trekking companies that offer various packages (including the ‘Indian’ option of jeeping you up the track to the highest point – never, ever walk when there’s motorised transport available). Our trekking company lent us down jackets (WD was sceptical, but we ended up wearing them every day so they were essential), but we only had one pair of child-size waterproof trousers (a bequest from George) to see us through any potential wet weather. As it turned out, our guide, Navin, had an accurate sense for imminent precipitation and would steer us to the nearest tea shack for shelter and would then need some serious encouragement to let us back out into the slackening rain, even after we’d explained that we are British and used to being rained on... Navin had also brought his younger brother, Nitish, along for a post-exam ‘treat’, but I think mostly as an extra pair of hands in case children or bags needed a carry. Both of them were very sweet and gentle with the children, considerate of their pace (more than the WPs maybe?) and it was great for there to be alternative adults for the children to walk and talk with. It’s really noticeable how good and involved young men in India are with kids – something that’s become almost culturally unacceptable, or at least deeply suspicious, in the West which has to be a loss.
So, trusting luck and in the spirit of adventure, we left on Monday and took a car over some very rutted roads to a further staging post than the standard trail head (thereby avoiding a steep 800 m climb at the outset), although we did wonder which of us would be the first to vomit as we did hairpin bend after hairpin bend along juddery roads. We had to stop at various security points to fill in passport details – WD launched into massive self-explanation when the officer queried his research visa and how long we’d been in India (it turned out he was actually a forestry officer and a history graduate and was simply interested).
Having arrived at a very isolated and bleak corrugated shack-village (Dhotrey), we had some tea and cabbage momos (tasty) to set us up for the walk and walked out into sunny woods. We’ve hit the end of the rhododendron season at this altitude – but you still see the odd tree flowering or magnolia, but it feels very strange to see these cultivated ‘garden’ plants in their wild setting. Lots of flowering bamboo too – useful for cutting campaign walking sticks (a big stick is essential to W’s enjoyment of any hike). We got quite sweaty climbing up through the woods, or ‘jungle’ as Navin referred to it, and stripped off layers down to T-shirts and replaced woolly hats with sunhats. We failed to spot much wildlife - Black bears, Himalayan newts, Clouded leopards and Red Pandas are among the various endangered species of the region. Maybe that was lucky, because I am now so enamoured by the fluffy Red Panda (there’s something about their tails and the way they lie around on branches with their tongues sticking out, looking like overfed cats) that I would have been seriously tempted to pop one in my pack to illegally smuggle it home. We did however meet lots of gorgeous cows wandering along the same paths, with alpine bells jangling, grazing on bamboo.
WD: Climbing above the tree-line, we arrived at Tumlu (3070m), a windswept hilltop that made us very pleased that we’d brought the extra jackets. We quickly put back all the layers we’d shed on the way up and extra to eat our packed lunch at the ‘summit’. The border with Nepal is simply marked by a concrete block at the summit with Bharat (India) and Nepal written on each side: instead of wired fences and guards there are just a few brightly-coloured prayer-flags fluttering in the wind. No immigration, no security – and for the next few days, we repeatedly casually crossed the international border without any drama or visas. The children realised that in a week, they will have been in 4 different countries (Cambodia, Thailand, India and Nepal). How decadent is that!
We stayed in the small Nepali village of Tumling, in one of the two guest-houses on this trekking route; there were only about another ten houses in total along with a cowshed. Our lodge (run by the local school teacher) had a huge kitchen and adjoining living room where the night’s trekkers congregated to eat, try the Tibetan beer from a wooden tankard, and dry their socks by the fire, with a few dogs and a cat with frost-bitten ears for additional company. Our room was suitably basic: there were plenty of heavy quilts both to pad the hard beds, with hot water bottles and even the option of a very smoky fire in our room to really keep us cosy.
We woke before dawn on both days at around five o’clock hoping the sky would be clear enough to see the distant mountains in Sikkim: we were lucky on our final day. The WPs watched the dawn sun gradually light up the snowy peaks of Kanchenjunga while the dead-tired wolflings slept on.
On our first night, a large party of non-walking Calcuttans were staying in the bunk-room above us. Our guide was very worried and warned them to be quiet and not to disturb us! He had been to Calcutta once, and disliked the shouting and money-making. The other trekkers included seven young Czechs, who disgusted M by the amount they smoked, a party of four Britishers fresh from a Cambridge choir tour of West Bengal, and an American couple of teachers fleeing their home in Bangkok during the Thai New Year festival. L had an independent time sitting on a stool in the busy, smoky kitchen podding peas with Tibetan grannies and chatting to a French group and anyone else who was happy to listen to her tales. The food was plentiful and fortifying – fried Tibetan bread and porridge for breakfast and soup, egg curry, aloo-gobi and dal, plus the exciting extra of tinned fruit salad and custard for supper. Staying a second night meant we realised the menu repeats every night as almost nobody stays more than one night...
Everyone else was walking on along the well-marked path, reminiscent of a Roman road and rumoured to have been laid by the British across the hills to Sandakhpu, the highest point on the trail at 3600m where on a good day you can see Everest and other peaks in Tibet, Nepal, India and Bhutan. This stretch was too long to contemplate with the children and would have entailed at least two or three extra days’ trek (which the WPs would have loved). So we stayed another night in Tumling and, after a brief excursion to watch part of a day-long yajna (sacrifice) at the village temple, we set off for the next village of Joibari. The path ran either side of a low ridge marking the border, so we had a choice of rhododendron and bamboo woods in India or open hills (Nepal). No sign of large furry mammals but we watched some eagles circling high above; though they may have been the vultures we saw landing to feed the following day.
The sunny morning gradually turned grey and we reached Joibari before the rain started. We imagined we were staying for a brief cup of tea while the shower passed, little realising quite how many hours we would be sitting in a dark room watching the rain and hail outside. And what rain! The storm was right overhead for some of the time: great flashes of forked lightning, rumbling thunder and a torrent of floodwater down the muddy street. Noodles for lunch at 11.30 didn’t appeal much but they were very welcome at 1.30 when we were still trapped inside. Cows and sheep ran down the road looking for shelter, and two shaggy goats wandered in to get dry in our teashop (and were very cross when I dragged one out by the horns). After an hour sitting around a fire in a wheel hub, we were joined by about twenty Nepali school children who were on some sort of expedition, who abandoned their shattered umbrellas outside and flooded in, slipping on the piles of hail stones outside, giggling and passing round the brandy for ‘internal warming’. We felt quite well-prepared for bad weather by comparison with their flip-flops and shirt sleeves. The regular cups of tea were very nice. Less good was the location of the much-needed toilet, a small locked shack the wrong side of the flash flood.
WM: Amidst all this, M emerged from an excursion to the kitchen with two, month-old, quivering puppies that had appeared on the back doorstep, more waifs seeking shelter from the storm. She stuffed them down her down jacket and intensively mothered them. Quite how ‘lost’ they were remains a debatable question (Were we, in fact, puppy traffikers? “These foreigners turning up with their gortex and misplaced compassion, stealing our Nepali puppies – it’s outrageous!”). But they were undeniably cute and Navin decided to take one with us as he likes dogs and was quite happy to add another to his 3 at home already. He let us name them – WD came up with Parvati and Janaki, daughters of Nepal and the mountains. M was delighted (though sad to leave one behind), although less excited by the responsibility of clearing up after the puppy. There’s a campaign gathering momentum for a puppy when we return home. In the meantime, W is still definitely my little pup: unreliable toileting, an eagerness for snacks and a wet nose are canine features that spring to mind.
W: We found a dog. It was a puppy. And what was her name? Her name was Janaki. And when I runned, she runned after me and she licked us. She licked M and L on their faces. And mummy, she did dog torture on WD – she held dad’s hands, whilst she (the dog) licked his face. And she had a box as her kennel. The dog was a her. The puppy drinked milk. The big dogs runned after her. Bulls Eye (another puppy at the Lodge) runned after her.
And one side of the mountains was India and one side was Nepal. And Nepal had snow, well it was like snow but it was made of hail stones. We made Mount Everest out of snow.
We walked a long way. And then it started raining. When it quietened down, and was still raining, we still went for it. The worst thing about trekking was most of the days it rained.
I liked going trekking because we made up a Bear Song – M, and L and WM and me. [WM: I will publish this as an adjunct to the blog]
WD: We were quite relieved that Navin organised a jeep-ride back along the road as the rain and flooding had made it treacherous. Not that the ride was a delight on the very bumpy track in hideous weather, even in a Land Rover with legend, ‘The English Rover Yum-Yum’ emblazoned across the front.
WM: Yes, I had to have faith in British engineering, perched on the front seat (with W sleeping across my lap – how?) lurching up the track in four wheel drive. The visor windshield was steamed up with condensation and our driver obviously didn’t believe in (or they weren’t working) windscreen wipers to see through the driving rain and sleet, so it was guesswork where exactly we were relative to the edge of the track and the precipice. But it was the right call, however terrifying, as the storm rumbled around the mountain tops right to nightfall, and we felt for the soggy walkers finally making it up to the trekking lodge, dispirited after a first day’s walk from Hell. Despite not doing much walking, it had been an amusing day of adventures, interesting animal and people encounters and extreme weather in a startling beautiful place. It’s been hailing and stormy in these parts for a part of almost every day over the last fortnight – which is very unusual for this time of year – ‘a depression in the Bay of Bengal’, global warming, the Wolfgang effect, who knows?
Day 3 in the mountains brought a decent dawn – for those of us able to get up to see it – but the day swiftly clouded over and by 11 was hailing again. It was a 14 km downhill hike back to the trail head along the ‘standard’ path, with plenty of opportunities to dawdle looking at holy spots – water prayer wheels and shrines, stupas and prayer flags flapping in the emptiness, and popping into a Buddhist monastery to check out the 108 Buddhas and divine beings arranged in a pyramid (WD is on shaky ground with his Tibetan Buddhist iconography and is unable to satisfactorily answer my queries about who the Buddha or bodhisattva at the apex is – although he is the embodiment of detachment hence his complete indifference to the naked woman wrapped around him). We are convinced that this 14 km is ‘as the crow flies’ (rather than the zig-zagging down and down that we were actually doing) as WD and I felt we were all making good progress only to be told we’d covered a mere 3 km in 2 hours...
Janaki chased the children down the mountain side on her tiny legs, giving them huge pleasure and motivation to carry on walking. We sheltered in another tea stall for the worst of the storm (with chickens on this occasion) but this time were insistent that we continue on foot, which was a good call on our part as the sun came out and coming under the cloud into a sunny valley (with another Tibetan monastery) was a delight, despite a killer on the knees descending about 1000 m in a few short kilometres. The WPs reflect on aging – M skips down the hill, we notice new creaking in our knees and feet that weren’t there before. Still, you have to use it (or lose it) – WD pointed out an old Nepali lady porter toting 2 heavy rucksacks up to the attic at our hotel, one on her head, another on her shoulders, without breaking a sweat to make me feel, without question, inadequate. Everyone was happy to see Maneybhanjang (the trailhead town) coming closer and a car waiting to collect us, but sad that that meant the end of the trek. It would have been great to keep going – and end up in Sikkhim. All the children claimed to have had a great time. M, how did you feel about the trek?
M: I feel extremely proud of myself because I can feel that I walked for 3 days in the Himalayas, but I’m tired and achey. I want to do it again, only for 6 days and 5 nights next time. I wouldn’t mind doing it with my parents but not with the smaller ones, because they limited how far we went.
WD: But if we did this again, even W would be bigger and able to walk as far as you can now? Do you know this is the first time we can remember really physically wearing you out?
M: I’ve had 2 nights’ good sleep and I’m much less weary now. I think I’ll remember best going to Joibari and having that massive hail storm. I’ve always wanted a puppy, but I’d like one even more now.
WD: And L, what did you think?
L: Daddy, it was great fun. I liked having Janaki having around, so we could play with her and run with her and watch her little legs. I didn’t like her fighting with the bigger dogs or them stealing her food. I think she gave me fleas as me and Dad have got really itchy bites on our backs and our bottoms and they’re not mosquito bites for sure. I liked feeling that I was in the mountains, but whenever mum and dad woke up really early to see the summits, I couldn’t wake up and I stayed in bed.
The Shikkar Lodge was really fun because there were nice people who gave Janaki milk and there was a nice roaring fire near the kitchen.
When we got back, we were really, really tired and our legs ached a lot. We went out for a really good pizza and then ate cookies as well. I was hungry all the time when we were walking and we had to have lots of snack breaks.
WD: We gave all of ourselves a big physical challenge and we all (even the WPs) did just fine. Somehow mountain air, high vistas and lots of activity just fills you with a sense of wellness. Let’s do it again. It’s been a tremendous finale to the trip standing on top of the world with you all, looking out at some of the highest mountains in the world. The landscape was wild and empty which was a satisfying contrast to much of our subcontinent experience, and mountain culture and values seem happily different to the mainstream.
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