May 2010

 

Emails sent during May 2010

• (Les textes français sont ici.)

• Mail from 13 May 2010: Annapurna Trek, Pokhara
• Mail from 24 May 2010: Tansen, Kathmandu

Subject: Annapurna Trek, Pokhara

Date: Thu, 13 May 2010 13:39:03 +0545

Dear all,

we're are now back, a couple of days later than we thought, from the
Annapurna Base Camp trek (also called Annapurna Sanctuary trek because
it leads deeply into the heart of the Annapurna massif). It was again
a nice trek (but short: 13 days) though the weather was much more
mixed than in the Everest region (the area around Pokhara gets the
most yearly rainfall in all of Nepal: more than 3000mm). Still, we had
clear mornings almost every day (yes, nice photos) and the rain and
(quite impressive) thunderstorms normally started only at 1 or 2pm,
when we were already home and dry in a lodge;-)

The trek itself was hot and very, very sweaty (even now, in Pokhara,
it's in the mid 30s and quite humid), though at 4130m up in the
Sanctuary, surrounded by icy ridges and snowy peaks, it felt quite
cold. We were again lucky, like 1995 when we did the Annapurna
Sanctuary the first time, to actually see something, as the fog and
clouds completely lifted at 5pm to reveal an amazing panorama of
mountains: in the sanctuary you are literally surrounded by glaciers
and high peaks. Many people were not so lucky, either because they had
not enough time or they were too impatient.

The walk-in to the Sanctuary is also through quite attractive
territory: a very narrow and deep gorge, with the Modi Khola
thundering sometimes a few 100 meters lower than the trail and
sometimes at the same height as we. The entrance to the gorge is
guarded by a famous mountain called Machapuchare (this means Fish Tail
because the double summits look from a certain angle like a fish
tail).

There are also many high and camera-defying waterfalls, lots of sheer
rock faces (in winter and spring the approach trails are avalanche
territory: the only major trek in Nepal with this danger). And there
are birch forests and bamboo groves (and now, in May also bloodthirsty
leeches, Vero caught one), there are butterflies so big that in the
first moment you think they are birds... it's nature at its best.

Well, now we're back in Pokhara for a few days, where reality has
caught up with us: Cameron is PM, Euro/Greek problems, oil spills in
the Mexican Gulf... In fact, one aspect of trekking in Nepal we forgot
to mention in our first mail is the complete absence of "reality" on
the trek. There are no newspapers, there's no CNN and no BBC, no
internet and no radio (other than Nepalese...).

We have our own problem now here in Nepal: on 2 May the opposition
Maoist party has called for an "indefinite" general strike (called
bandh here). We will write more about bandhs on our website, but a
bandh means basically a complete standstill of the country: no public
transport (planes generally will fly, though), no private cars, all
(yes, all) shops are closed and nothing happens. Even in touristy
areas everything's closed (restaurants open for a couple of hours for
lunch and dinner) and the best place to be is in the hotel (or,
indeed, as we were, on a long trek). The Maoists enforce the bandh by
patrols and threats which after a long and bloody civil war are taken
very seriously by the shop owners and companies... It's not at all a
nice thing as you can imagine.

This bandh has been called off after 6 days of total paralysis, but
the problem is that there may be another strike almost any day as the
situation is pretty volatile. No one knows anything definite and this
being Nepal, everything is possible.

We wanted to return to KTM via a town called Tansen, but whether we
can do that now is not clear: no one wants to be stuck in small-town
Nepal with a bandh going on and a plane to catch (the longest bandh on
record lasted 19 days). But we'll keep you posted;-)

So the next mail will come from KTM, one way or another.

All the best

Vero + Thomas

Subject: Tansen, Kathmandu

Date: Mon, 24 May 2010 12:06:26 +0545

Dear all,

just two days to go, and we will return to Europe. We have been in
Kathmandu for a few days now and, for a change, are taking it easy,
relaxing at the nice hotel of our good friend Mukhyia (see 
https://www.hotelganeshhimal.com ), trying to enjoy those last Nepalese days.

In fact, we did much of the same (relaxing) in Pokhara: the shores of
Phewa lake are a pure invitation in this respect. And the worries and
troubles caused by the recent bandh (general strike) have evaporated:
it turned out that in the public eye by paralysing the country for 6
days the Maoists hurt themselves and their cause a lot more than they
hurt the main government parties. They even apologised to the business
community and the "intelligentsia" for calling an indefinite strike in
the first place. People are now really fed up with a "political
process" which, frankly, is just an utter joke. For years now,
politics in Nepal has been an elaborate but ultimately fruitless
charade.

But at least for the time being, the tensions have mostly subsided and
the parties are at least talking to each other. There are just five
days left and then the preliminary Constitution drafted a couple of
years ago is at the end of its regular term. So either the politicians
engineer an extension to the drafting of a "final" Constitution or
they produce another fudge or muddle through somehow. However, the
thirst for trouble-making or even violence seems to have been largely
vanished on all sides. Then again, this is Nepal and nothing is ever
certain...

So we did the take the risk and returned via Tansen, now a small and
relatively unknown town but a former important kingdom in the middle
hills south of Pokhara. There are some nice walks to be had (to
blood-stained temples and derelict palaces) and although we had been
there before, we really enjoyed the unhurried, relaxed atmosphere. We
were more or less the only tourists which is always a good sign;-)

It's getting hotter and more moist by the day now; yesterday we had an
impressive evening thunderstorm with buckets of water coming down. The
monsoon is clearly on its way, but as far as we're concerned it can
wait another few days. At any rate, the incredible amount of rain
we've seen during the last days has finally cleared one mystery:
public walkways in Nepalese (and Indian) cities and towns are
sometimes up to half a metre above street level which makes walking
quite difficult (of course, this is a good training for the
mountains). Till now, the reason escaped us. But seeing the huge
floods which run down the streets during and after a thunderstorm we
quickly realised that the walkways have to be a lot higher than the
streets. Otherwise, during the monsoon, they would be called
swimways...

Another feature of the rains is that they form the main clean-up
operation as far as rubbish is concerned: everyone simply throws the
stuff (as well as other bits and pieces like dead animals, human waste
etc.) into the next river or brook. The stink generated by the
resulting dark-brown sludge announces a river even a hundred metres
before you actually see the sad thing. So during the dry season, all
rivers degenerate to rubbish dumps, until the monsoon comes: this is
the big cleaner (though the places further downstream may not see it
like that...).

Another bonus is that more water means more flow in the rivers which
in turn translates into more electricity: most of it is created in
hydropower stations. This means that the infamous load-shedding (see
our website for an explanation:
https://trvl2.com/Nepal10/background/Load_Shedding ) is getting less
severe now. In theory, we are still on the old
12-hours-per-day-without-power schedule (imagine that: scheduled power
cuts for 12 hours per day), but in practice KTM now gets about 15 to
18 hours of electricity per day.

Adding to the power problems is the fact that there's a severe
shortage of drinking water in the KTM valley. We have seen long queues
of women loaded with empty buckets waiting for water everywhere. Most
public wells are reduced to a trickle or even shutdown for most of the
day, so they often have to wait for six to nine (!) hours until it's
their turn to get perhaps 10 or 15 litres of water (whose quality, to
make matters worse, is at best questionable: KTM water has an
unhealthy yellowish tint, though we drink it (after boiling...!)
without bad effects, so far). Well-off people can buy fresh water by
the tankful and have it delivered to their huge rooftop tanks; of
course, hotel guests luxuriate in the stuff: another crying injustice
in a country where injustices are the norm.

Life is hard in this country (we talk about the locals not tourists!)
and it seems to get harder all the time. The decline started in
earnest in 2001, the year most of the Royal family was killed and it
has not really stopped since then. And for the first time since our
first visit in 1994 we have detected desperation and hopelessness in a
people that used to be cheerful and smiling no matter how adverse the
conditions. The Nepalese grow palpably impatient but they have no idea
what to do about electricity problems, water shortages and the
political mess: in principle, they are not unlike Iranians -- no one
is happy with the current situation but no one has the slightest idea
what to do.

Again, this is not something most tourists will necessarily come into
contact with: big hotels, being in a group and often also a certain
general ignorance shield them from what for most Nepalese is a harsh
reality. Trekking, paragliding, rafting, sight-seeing continue as if
this were a paradise. And it is, for some select few. Don't get us
wrong: tourism and the dollars it's bringing are clearly part of the
solution and not of the problem.

Icelandic volcanoes willing, we will leave Wednesday evening for
Bahrain and should land in LHR on Thursday morning. There will be a
lot more about this trip once we're settled back into the good old
routine -- mostly many new pages and photos on our website. We'll keep
you posted!

All the best

Vero and Thomas

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