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| Headed down to Muktinath |
Muktinath - Hotel Bob Marley in Ranipauwa after descending the 1800 meters from Thorung-La – sweet relief. I’d been wearing the same pants for nearly a week, and my skin felt like it was covered with seven or eight layers of sweat (who wants to take cold showers in 40 degree weather? Not me!).
So I peeled the stuff off, and huddled under a hot, blasting shower, and let it haul the grime out of my pores.
Afterwards, I hurried out onto the hotel’s roof deck, and downed a couple of drafts with my fellow trekkers. It was a heavy brew, and I’d been avoiding alcohol for the entire trek (it can exacerbate altitude sickness). The trek had gotten me into great shape, but after ten days of hard walking, the long descent, and the high mountain air, I had about as much tolerance as when I was 17.
The draft went straight to my head, so after just half an hour I crawled to bed and blissful sleep.
Ranipauwa, which sits adjacent to Muktinath, (Nepal’s second most important holy site) sits on top of a natural gas jet tucked behind a small natural fountain. Ages ago, someone lit the gas jet (which is housed in its own shrine), and now, if you listen carefully, you can see and hear the water rushing past the small azure flame.
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| Hotel Bob Marley |
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| Some of the 108 fountains with animal heads in Muktinath |
Muktinath is also the home of two other temples – one Hindu,
the other Buddhist. (Tibetan prayer flags cover a hill a huge swath of hill above
the shrine like massive, technicolored spider webbing.)
I spent the morning after the descent wandering through
Muktinath. Yuvash hopped on a jeep (a road runs all the way from the site south
to Naya Pul and beyond) to Jomsom, and from there, flew to Kathmandu.
But I
wasn’t done trekking just yet.
In Paraguay, I’d met a former PC Nepal volunteer who’d told
me that Kagbeni, just after Muktinath on the western side of the pass, was “heaven
on earth.” It was high praise from a guy who’d spent two years in Nepal and so
it was there that I headed, three Belgians in tow.
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| The view of Kagbeni from the wheat fields |
We took a back road south to Chyang, past a series of
irrigated rice fields that appeared out of nowhere in the still barren
landscape. (The mountains that I’d passed through and around shield the whole
region from rain.)
In Chyang, I saw the ancient wattle-and-daub fort of a dynastic
prince, and an excited local stopped us to pepper us with questions about where
we were going and how long we’d been trekking. And then he pointed at a
decrepit looking tree just left of us.
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| The road to Kagbeni. Unreal. |
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| Kagbeni, the oasis. Note the silver riverbed to the right. |
From there we continued up the barren trail. The landscape
remained stubbornly weird – shades of Utah’s Bryce Canyon – long, brown
hills, huge, curving into the deep canyon to the south. Gusting blasts of wind spat
pebbles into my cheeks and felt as if it might lift me off the ground, and all
around were the gnarled mounds of stratified rock, the play-doh sculptures of
some infant god.
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| Street view of Kagbeni |
The hike, which was supposed to take two hours, lasted
almost four. It turns out we’d taken a wrong turn and headed off the map, to
the very border of forbidden Upper Mustang, a prohibited area in northern Nepal
where foreigners have to pay a $500 fee just to enter the region.
A little pricey for my non-existent post Peace Corps salary.
Finally, we came to a long line of bluffs overlooking a huge
riverbed. (Nepal is a tiny country, but the natural hugeness is disconcerting
and almost disturbing.) North, the canyons opened into Upper Mustang, while
below us, Kagbeni, an oasis of barley and wheat fields surrounded by barren
fields of salt flats and and sand.
The village felt impossibly old, a maze of twisting
corridors, mangy yaks, and high walls. The Belgians and I stopped at “the Red
House,” owned by a guy named Tenjin Thakuri. The structure was 350 years old,
with original paintings adorning the walls of the dining room. Tucked around
the corner was Thakuri’s personal temple, a hidden room sheathed in red curtains
and rugs, with flickering gold lamps and a 10-ft-tall Golden Buddha.
(Unfortunately, he asked me not to take photos.)
Thakuri said life in Kagbeni had been changing recently. “Not
that big of a change, but it’s a change,” he said. The road came to the town
four years ago, bringing with it more luxurious guest houses, Illy coffee, and
other tastes of the outside world. “And the types of tourists have changed,” he
said. “before, we had different types of tourists, people on long treks. Now
these people come for short treks” [usually by flying from Jomsom and walking
for just a few days,] he said.
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| Looking into Mustang |
Tractors ply the riverbed. (Mustang is a special construction
zone, whatever that means). And after the pass, the Belgians and I were alone
in Kagbeni, (but for the most zonked out stoner I have EVER laid eyes on – a wastrel
with long hair and a ratty mustache – and his altogether-too-sweet-c’mon-chica-you-can-do-better
girlfriend.)
Thakuri, told me a little about life in Kagbeni, looking out
of place – but stylish – in a black leather jacket and scarf.
Three mayors run the place, he said, rotating every year. “he
[the acting mayor] chooses a council, look after the fields and tell when to
plant, and harvest… If anything happens (like a crime) we go to his house. He puts
butter lamps out every day at the temple.”
The Belgians and I wandered through the city, at one point
cutting through lime green fields of barley (and then hopping a wall to escape
a thuggish looking mastiff).
The next morning, I shouldered my pack (growing ever lighter
as I finished munching my way through the massive bag of trail mix and
chocolate bars I’d brought with me), wishing I had a day or a week more to stay
in Kagbeni. One of the Belgians and I walked to Jomsom, where the news startled
us that a small plane had crashed earlier that day – we saw the wreckage in the
hill above the airport.
We might have kept trekking if there hadn’t been a road. But
motorcycles and buses kept zipping by us, destroying the magic of farther north
(and higher up). Worse, we checked the internet. Suddenly, our plans to continue
farther south on foot seemed ridiculous. We hopped a bus and traveled to the
town of Marpha (famous for its Tibetan settlers and apple cider.)
We spent the night devouring pizza and curried mutton and
drinking (semi) dark Ghorka beer. The next day, it was time to leave.
I hung out the next morning waiting for a bus, then jolted down the
mountain for nine agonizing hours, finally arriving in Pokhara at 1am.
And then, a night’s sleep, a glorious shave, and a hot and
sticky ride back to Kathmandu and civilization.
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