On top of the world
Wendy Driver heads for a remote Himalayan village and discovers how it feels to live...
IT’S 5.30am and I am woken by the sound of cocks crowing outside my window. I step outside on to t he wooden veranda to see the distant mountains silhouetted against a rose-pink sky. The rest of the village is already up and people are busy feeding their goats and pigs, while little children scamper off to the forest to collect fodder before school.
The tiny community of Teksingh lies among citrus groves in the foothills of the Himalayas. Houses huddle close together, with halfwoven bamboo baskets and sheaves of hay propped against their mudbrick walls.
Chickens strut in and out of the wooden- shuttered windows and clusters of maize cobs dangle from the overhanging eaves.
I am spending the night here as part of a seven-day trek organised by Village Ways, a tour operator working with isolated villages in the Sailung region. Villagers supplement their income by looking after small groups of tourists, taking it in turns to help with house-housekeeping, cooking and acting as porters. In return, guests gain an insight into their lives as they are immersed in local culture.
Few Westerners venture to this remote corner of Nepal. It is a seven- hour, bonecrunching drive on dirt tracks from Kathmandu to the village of Solambu where the road all but peters out.
This marks the start of our trek. Our guides, Karna and Ram, welcome us with marigold garland sand fresh mango juice at our first guesthouse. It is typical of our accommodation en route. Traditional two-storey buildings have been converted for tourists, each having three simple bedrooms and basic wetrooms. Solar lamps are provided at night, with hot-water bottles to warm the beds when the temperature plummets.
Solambu is scattered across a wide, terraced hillside where bullocks plough the strips of land and women harvest the sesame and sunflower crops by hand.
Several of the houses have been restored following the earthquake nearly three years ago and red chilies are laid out to dry on their new corrugated- iron roofs. ‘ We were totally cut off for 15 days,’ Karna says, ‘but fortunately there was plenty of food and some of the water supplies still worked.’
Strolling along the terraces the first afternoon, I am greeted by villagers who invite me into their homes. One lady with a gold orna- mentment in her nose insistsin that I taste her home- brewed ‘ rakshi’, an alcohol distilled from maize and millet which turns out to be 100 per cent proof.
Further on, Karna l eads me through his uncle’s orchard where pomelo trees are laden with what look like outsize grapefruits. He climbs up to pick a bunch, which we have for dessert sprinkled with crystallised honey and chilies. We live on local produce, and rice, dhal and curried vegetables become our staple diet. One evening I join our cook, Mina, in the kitchen to make chapatis. Sitting on the mud floor, I roll out the dough and toss them over an open flame.
Our days soon fall into a routine. We start out at 7am to make the most of the cool of the early morning and hike for about seven hours, arriving in the next village for a late lunch. I am horrified to see elderly women porters heaving our luggage on to their backs until Karna explains they are used to carrying loads at least three times the weight.
The scenery is sublime. We walk through dappled pine forests and across wobbly chain bridges over deep ravines. Ram leads the way, slashing through the dense vegetation where giant ferns cascade down mossy banks. We pick our way over fast-flowing streams and clamber up mudslides where the
monsoon has washed away the steps.
Brilliantly coloured butterflies warm their wings in the sunshine and exotic scarlet and emerald-green birds flit between the treetops. I learn to identify the jungle sounds. The loud cackling I thought was monkeys fighting turns out to be laughing thrushes calling lli each other, and the constant barking is not made by dogs but a small deer. The mountain paths are mostly deserted. Now and again we join locals lo laden with hay bales or come across pilgrims making for Shiva Cave, a holy site hidden away in a beautiful limestone gorge. At the full moon in December it is teeming with thousands of Hindus, but when we visit, we are virtually alone. Macaque monkeys swing from the trailing vines obscuring i the entrance, and high above a I spot what appear to be b black holes in the cliff. They T turn out to be huge hives suspended from the crags and swarming with bees. I enter the dark interior, lit o only by butter lamps. All I can hear is the clanging of bells and strange guttural noises. I soon so realise the sound is coming in from a shaman, dressed bizarrely bi in a black suit, who is seated se cross-legged on a ledge in one of the recesses.
HE APPEARS to be in a trance and is shaking in frenzied convulsions, body bouncing up and down on the rock. He must be exhausted and I find it an unsettling experience. It is a relief to come out into the sunlight.
As we climb, the views are more spectacular. Trudging along a rhododendron ridge, I don’t know where to look, with endless ranges of hazy hills on one side and colossal icecoated pinnacles on the other.
Our guesthouse at Pasiban has been built specifically for tourists and it is easy to see why. It stands isolated on a grassy promontory commanding a panoramic view of the high Himalayas.
There are more jaw- dropping sights to come at the culmination of our trek. Muffled in a jacket, woolly hat and gloves, I plod, panting and breathless, up the final slope to Sailung Peak in the moonlight.
Karna plies me with hot masala tea as I wait for dawn beneath rows of fluttering prayer flags, stamping my feet on the frozen ground to keep warm. With my bird’s- eye view, I watch mesmerised as the first rays of the sun illuminate the shimmering, snow-crusted peaks stretching from the Annapurnas almost as far as Everest. It is a moment I won’t easily forget.