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Holy yak poop! Where to start? Some things have been entirely unexpected. For instance, it boggled my mind to see yak poop with hand prints in them stuck to the wall. Why would people do this? Little did I know that yak poop is actually a really good fuel to keep a low fire burning.
I also did not know that the first couple of days on the trail, we would encounter a frequently occurring stream of donkeys, but of course, this is the most efficient way to transport goods to places where cars cannot go. As a result on the first couple of days on our trail there was an almost constant presence of the faint or not so faint aroma of donkey crap. This is something you can get used to though. Mostly by blocking it out. What is harder to block out is the ever penetrating whiff of acidic donkey urine which thankfully comes up a lot less frequent, but is guaranteed to grab your attention each and every time it does.
While I breached the subject I may as well continue down this road. Why would you want to read about anything else anyway? Spending three weeks on squat toilets punched less of a hole into my reading time as it usually would thanks to there being nothing else to do but sit around the fire, eat, talk, play cards or read. I managed to do quite a lot of all of that. Oh and between all this I fit in about four to six hours of walking a day, this last bit done while carrying a 14 kilogram backpack.
Why did I do all this? It is a question that has come up many, many times. Along with: Why are we climbing uphill if we're only going down again? How long have we been walking now? What is the purpose of specific Buddhist rites when all is emptiness? DONKEY PISS! How much longer until lunch? How can people live this way? Are we there yet?
Of course, these questions are very self-defeating and I considered it a blessing when the battery in my watch failed due to the cold. Half of the questions my mind managed to throw up were invalidated. That left me with the other half and at some moments I was simply too overwhelmed by the input of my senses for these silly notions. These moments when there is nothing but the landscape around me in its full, blazing magnificence. Reality amplified.
At other times I just had to focus on my feet. One in front of the other. One step at a time. Looking up would not only cause me to stumble on the rocks below, but also break my spirit by the sight of the climb still to make. Having the concept of time would only add to that misery.
Okay, I'll back up little bit. How did I get into this? After six months of "Same same, but different." the change of scenery offered by Nepal was magical. This is a different world entirely. Kathmandu seems like India light. There's a charm, a magic and definitely a madness here. A madness which was thoroughly left behind once I went into the Himalaya regions. Once the ever present beeping of car horns and whispering men are happily left behind and the traffic is replaced by porter, donkey, horse and yak a sense of peace arises.
I knew I wanted to go trekking, but I had never heard of Manaslu until Jonathan brought it up and I thought: Why not? See it as fate or just another chaotic link in the chain of random events, but this is what makes travel interesting. Go along with opportunities when they present themselves.
Only recently is has become possible to do this trek without dragging along camping gear and an army of porters. The permit fee has been lowered so even backpackers like me can afford it. Looking for authenticity, right about now, Manaslu is in the thick of it.
What felt even more remote and basic was our detour into Tsum Valley and back. Traversing the trail felt like traversing time. Each day we traveled seemed to take us back centuries. Somehow managing to be both enchanting and sobering at the same time.
One of the reasons why I travel is to gain different perspectives. I am not sure if I picked those up. With my outside perspective I found the life here extremely limited. Mind-bogglingly so at times. How have people still not figured out that you keep the warmth of a fire in the room by closing the door? Is there really nothing else that will grow except for rice, water spinach and potato? Minor things to which I still have not found an answer and probably never will. That is okay. I understand this is more an indication of my naivety, my simplistic ideal of the noble savage, but I found this way of life severely lacking in romance, in spirituality. If anything it is dominated by a frustrating lack of innovation.
I feel like I should insert a positive note here and I will. Many encounters along the way were truly charming. However, I do believe the way some of these people live is truly miserable. The results of the hard lifestyle is very much apparent and not only to the outsider looking in.
The place where all this pulled together was Samdo.
The plan was to go to Samdo, acclimatize, then have a three hour walk to Dharamsala, stay the night and then leave at 5:00 am in order to cross the pass before 10:00 am when it could get very windy and unpleasant.
Along the way we picked up more and more rumors of closed guest houses. Optimistic as we were, we just pressed on. For me my main motivation to ignore this bad news was the threat of having to ride the bus back from Arughat. (This was the worst bus ride of my life and almost warrants a story of its own if I wasn't attempting to banish this memory to the very depths of subconsciousness. Let's just mention an overcrowded bus without any space for Dutch legs, add a lot of sweat and dust and finish it off with a road both bone shaking and fear inducing.) We figured we'd work something out. And we only met two groups coming back. Not because of closed towns, but because of their physical conditions.
No one could bring any certainty on these rumors. Well, almost no one. As luck would have it, we met the cook from Dharamsala on our way up. Less lucky was the fact that he was on his way down. It was lonely and cold up there and he got sick of it. He decided to leave his post early and we could not persuade him otherwise with either reason or money.
In Samdo, the guest houses were closed, but there was a man with a key, just out now, chopping wood. He would be back around 17:00. It was before noon when we arrived and we could have some lunch. Then we would figure out how to cross the Larke pass. We could have lunch at a home and were grateful for it. In hindsight it wasn't very surprising. The lady of the house left her door open for whoever happened to pass by. Would it be trekkers looking to kill some time, literally all the children of the village (of which only half were hers) or any dog who fancied to steal the food out of her child's rice bowl. The sound of crying children only drowned out by the venomous, yet profitless, screams of the lady of the house, who was mother only to half of these children.
After several hours of walking around town, playing cards, trying to find a solution for our dilemma our spirits were pretty much dragged down by these surroundings.
Oh Samdo, with your unwashed population. Samdo, where people do not burn their trash, but throw it off the hill. Samdo, where digging a hole in the ground to function as a toilet is a technology still undiscovered. Samdo, where chopping wood apparently means getting piss drunk on rhaksi, the vile local brew. Samdo, which by its unpleasantness instilled the motivation to go over the Larke Pass with only four hours of sleep.
We depart at 3:00 am, the moon lighting our way. Jonathan I was least worried about, until he found he had a stomach bug and our three hour leg of the journey turns into a five hour one. Here we are forced with a decision: Either we turn back to Samdo or we press on. The charm of Samdo is sufficiently repelling, so we press on. After all, it is only two and half hours of gradual ascent to the top of the pass. Once we reach that point all that is left is a three hour descent to Bhimthang. Tough, no doubt, but manageable.
In reality, those two and a half hours doubled. It started with a gradual ascend as we were told. What followed was something different entirely. This was glacier, landslides and rocks. A wasteland as I've ever seen one.
Discouraging cannot begin to describe it. But what could be done? One step at a time. Don't look up. Eventually I reach the top of this big heap of rubble. Victory! But then I look onward and I am greeted by the sight of another heap of rubble exactly like the on on which I am standing. This happens hour after hour. I stop seeing my surroundings, because all I see is the wasteland. Rubble, dust and rocks. Looking up means tripping up. Not only that, but is better not to see how much more climbing is in front of me. It is better to keep my head down and stare at my feet and where I plant them. Don't think. Just keep on walking.
But when I almost reach the top of that next heap I gain hope. Hope to see the landscape changing. Maybe to see grass again. Or something more resembling of a path. But once I get to the top of that one what is staring back at me is the exact same pile of rubble I have been looking at for the last couple of hours.
I feel like I am in limbo. This will last forever. Somewhere, maybe four or five climbs back, my body is lying there. My increasing heart rate wasn't just caused by the altitude. Something worse has happened. I keeled over and died. My body is laying there and I think I am still walking, but it never ends. This is limbo. No, this is hell already. This is my eternity. One pile of rubble after the next. This wasteland. My skin will sunburn, I have no water left and there is none within reach. My throat will be dry as the dust underneath my feet. I am tired, no... exhausted, but somehow I keep on going, because turning back will be worse. Will it? Doubt enters my mind. Maybe I should turn back. There has to be and end to this, right? There simply has to be. (And think of the bus at Arughat. Think of Samdo. Move forward, never backward.)
I am not sure of anything anymore. This could last forever.
But at some point the landscape begins to change. There are flags in the distance. That would be the top of the pass. There is hope, but I am exhausted. I am stumbling along the rubble, losing a trail which keeps dissolving into rocks and I am clambering back to where I came from. This happens a couple of times until I hear a whistling... Bibek! Our guide. He is showing me the trail. Not only that, as I come closer he offers to carry my backpack. There is no vanity. No pride involved. No falsehoods. Not even a pretension of saying he doesn't have to do that for me. Because if I have any hope of making it through this day, this is exactly what he has to do for me. All I feel is gratitude and I slide off my backpack. He starts carrying it up. How relieved I am in every sense of the word. My shoulders feel liberated. My step is lighter. Hope enters my mind. We will make it.
Once we reach the top, all of us are exhausted. There is no water for at least another hour, but there is optimism. The worst is behind. Sliding down the hills and attempting to keep my balance is nothing compared to what I have just been through. Going down all I can think of is that the worst is behind. Still there is no path, but I know as we continue it will come up eventually.
And we make it. It was supposed to be three hours to the village and it took us four, but that doesn't even matter. We find water again and we take rest. Then we walk on. Jonathan went ahead and returns to tell us the next village is nothing like the pit called Samdo. It has modern built guesthouses. They are clean. There is a comfortable living room with a stove for heating. We have arrived and this is where we decide to stay another day. The most comfortable guest house we have seen so far on the day it mattered most.
Nothing can bring us down now. We crossed the pass. The obstacles are gone. It's all downhill from here and in this case that is a very good thing. I welcome the feeling, the relief. The ease of everything is remarkable.
The next day Jonathan is sick again, so we are forced to take another day off. No matter, we are in Bhimthang. There is comfort and the food is good. Only two more easy days to go and we are at the end of our journey. These are two comfortable days. We take it slow. The road is easy. The sights are beautiful. The sense of relief never leaves me and then we reach our destination.
It has been an incredible experience. Along the way there were times when I swore I would never do anything like it again, but looking back I must say it was unlike anything else I have ever done. The good heavily outweighs the bad and even the bad provides me with a sense of accomplishment.
So will I ever get myself into something like this again? Hopefully not too soon, but probably, yes.
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