Longing for the Annapurnas

While Seamus Heany and Annie Dillard come back from witnessing nature's wonders with inspired pens to compose their poetry and prose, I've neglected to give even a short synopsis of the marvelousness that was Nepal. Perhaps I have known that my words will do so little justice to a landscape that only one's own senses can appreciate. Or maybe I am still mourning the loss of my camera which had 300 photos of Pokhara, the Himalayas, and Kathmandu (it was stolen out of my checked baggage on my flight back to Bangladesh). A last excuse for my post-Nepal silence may be the most likely: I think I left a bit of myself there, and very possibly it was the bit of me that knows nature as home. Back in the city now, it's difficult to recall the words that swam through my mind as I put one foot in front of the other along the trekking trails of the Damphus region, catching the intoxicating views of the Annapurnas.
With three other teachers, I flew from Dhaka to Kathmandu on the 4th of May. The guidbooks say that the best trekking times in Nepal are September to November and March to May, so we had arrived at the tail end of the season, which to me was just perfect. This meant that in order to catch the best mountain views we had to wake up earlier than in the pre-rainy season (around 5 a.m.), but this little sleep sacrifice was well-worth the quietness on the trails. We didn't encounter the crowds of foreign trekkers on the trails that I'd expected (and dreaded). My brothers and I love hiking the New England Appalacians in May when snow still dots the landscape, because we often find ourselves the sole adventurers on the trail. Having come from the most densely populated country in the world, I was ready for some relative solitude in nature. And this was certainly the case, as each of the lodges we stumbled upon in the evenings of our three-day trek were mostly vacant and eager to put us up for $2 per night (see guesthouse below) and feed us their Nepali rice and lentils.
Our trek, the Ghandruk loop out of Pokhara, was all-too-brief, owing to some visa problems that required one of us to get back to Bangladesh a couple days before our week-long vacation ended. But even in those three days, I saw more mountainous glory than I had ever anticipated. The small taste of Himalaya was enough to seize me - heart, soul, body - and extract a promise that I'd return.


Stone walls lining the trails seemed to echo the French countryside in ways that I would not have expected to see in south Asia. But the terraced rice fields and water buffalo were always close at hand to remind us that, although yak cheese and coffee were reminiscent of the Camembert and espresso I can imagine dining on in the Alps, this land was not France or Switzerland. The chilly sunrise temperatures, too, would easily deceive me into believing we were much farther from my humid Bangladeshi home than we were.

Although the challenging climbs and breath-taking views were undoubtedly the apex of my week's vacation, the other major highlight included the time of rest at the Hotel Courtyard in Kathmandu. Run by a wonderfully generous couple named Pujan and Michelle, the Courtyard is truly a place of homecoming for weary travellers and teachers alike. Tanja Cesh had stayed there on and off for a month last October and highly recommended it to me. When I walked in and told Michelle, "You know my friend Tanja," she immediately welcomed me like a sister. Tanja was a popular guest here, for obvious reasons. Accomodation in Nepal is unbelievably inexpensive. We could have stayed comfortably in the heart of the busy tourist district Thamel for just a few dollars a night. Although with the Courtyard you pay more (came to about $28 per night per person), it was and is worth every penny. A true oasis in a smoggy developing-world city. Also, they have a lovely dog.

Our last evening in Kathmandu, we had planned to celebrate my friend Alyssa's birthday, but she was feeling a little under the weather. Pujan mentioned to me that another guest at the Courtyard, Chris Beale (British mountain photographer and 27-year Nepal expat), was to give a slideshow of the landscape and cultures of the Annapurnas. I replied that it sounded like a good way to enjoy Alyssa's birthday, and Pujan immediately insisted that all we needed to do was show up at the slideshow, and "the grilled steak, champagne, and birthday cake" would be his treat! One thing I should mention, that ties into all this, is that Alyssa has read Jon Krakauer's Into Thin Air about five times, and was re-reading it while we were in Nepal. That very evening in the cozy library at the Courtyard, with a thunder storm accompaniment to a delicious Austrailian steak meal, we ended up dining with three Everest summiteers. The most prominent of these was Argentinian Willie Benegas (of the Patagonian Brothers) who has summitted Everest 10 times and has completed all of the Seven Summits at least twice. His identical twin brother Damian had once personally funded and undertaken a rescue operation on Everest when a woman posted on the internet that she had not heard from her father in a few days since he'd ascended that ruthless height. Alyssa had read this story in the New York Times in 2008 and happened to remember the name Benegas, so sharing birthday cake with Willie was a pretty fantastic and serendipitous birthday gift.

Nepal.

In Kathmandu people had told us, "You don't come here just once. You'll come back."

Well, if my third conjecture is true -- if indeed a part of me is still somewhere in the Himalayan foothills -- then yes, I believe she will summon me again to her bask in her light and rest in her shadows, and I will gladly accept.

p.s. Photo credit to John Stanlake, and many thanks for the donation.