A Short Walk in the Himalayas and a Brief Spin to Darjeeling
November 12-December 20, 2001
The End of the Trip
We acquired a couple of trekking companions in the form of Juli, an American woman I had met at Everest Base Camp, and an acquaintance of hers, Wind Song. After only two days of lavish fruit-waffle breakfasts, pizza lunches, lasagna dinners and endless pastries inbetween to keep up my strength, we found ourselves in taxis to the suburbs of Kathmandu. Audie and Saakje have a deep dislike of local buses, so the appeal of Helambu was that we could walk right out of Kathmandu to the mountains and almost all the way back without a long bus ride. Soon we were trudging steeply uphill through a small forest reserve. My legs felt a bit spent; cycling muscles are different from walking muscles. I took it easy, stopping for birdwatching and photos of the pretty villages we passed through, but I was still faster by far than Wind Song, who rapidly fell far, far behind. She soldiered on bravely, but we could tell that she would never be able to keep up. She told us to go ahead and she would catch up; this worked on the first day, but she didn�t make it to the second day�s rendezvous and we didn�t see her again until we got back to Kathmandu. Juli felt guilty at abandoning her, but relieved that she could go much faster with us.
The first few days featured tough, steep climbs through the Shivalik range, the mid-sized (up to 3500 m) foothills south of the Himalayas. We would toil uphill for hours in the heat, only to plummet down the other side and start climbing again. Most of the time we were in areas that weren�t brilliant scenically, but the bird life, the forests and the hillsides terraced from top to bottom made up for the lack of mountain views. Occasionally, though, we would come to the top of a ridge and see huge stretches of the Himalayas in front of us, stretching from Annapurna to Gauri Shankar (near Everest), a payoff for all the climbing.
After a few days, we left the foothills behind and began a long ascent to the sacred lakes of Gosaikund. We walked through rhododendron forests that seemed out of The Hobbit: moss entwined itself around twisted tree trunks in a mist that lent the whole scene an unreal appearance. We looked for impayan pheasants, the national bird of Nepal, but only Saakje, Audie and Serge were lucky enough to catch glimpses in the underbrush. We joined forces with a great Dutch couple, Ramon and Karen, whose steps we dogged all the way to Langtang. They were good company, full of stories and puzzles, and Ramon was a good card player. Cards played a key role in our trek, along with my little backpacker guitar, books, chess sets and binoculars for birdwatching. For once in our (no longer so) short lives, we were having a relaxed trek, walking short days and spending time sitting in the sun relaxing or using our toys. It was wonderful.
After a day of undulating endlessly up and down, past the site of a famous Thai Airways crash and the area where an Australian trekker got lost and survived in the woods for 43 days on one Mars Bar, we finally arrived at Gosaikund. The lakes were lovely, a series of large blue ponds trapped behind glacial debris, with the Himalayas a lovely backdrop in the distance. In August the lakes are flooded with Hindu pilgrims, but now, in late November, they were almost deserted. We spent most of a day relaxing by the lake, after the obligatory Hazenberg polar bear dip (in which we were joined by Ramon). The views from the top of a nearby ridge were the best yet.
The next day we wound our way down, down, down from the lakes at 4100 metres to a pretty ridgetop village, Syabru (1800 m) at the mouth of the Langtang Valley proper. The area we passed through is famous for red (lesser) pandas, adorable little raccoon-like critters that I�ve only seen in zoos. We didn�t see any, although that may be because we got lost and missed the panda reserve that�s been established lately. The woods were lovely anyway, we saw a couple of huge mongooses instead of pandas, and we were reminded of the fact that, compared to the most popular trekking areas in Nepal (Annapurna and Everest) the Helambu-Langtang trek is mostly through forest and wilderness, not cultivated fields. For a nature fix, the walk was wonderful, especially the next section up the Langtang Valley.
We dropped as low as 1400 metres before climbing steeply and steadily to Kyanjin Gompa at 3800 metres. The Langtang River is geologically young, having grown up with the Himalayas as they arose. Unlike the valleys of mighty rivers such as the Karnali, Kali Gandaki and Arun which flow right through the Himalayas from Tibet to the Indian plains, the Langtang valley is short, narrow and steep, and the river itself hardly seems capable of having worn away such a deep trough in the mountains. The steep gradient of the river means that in a day and a half of walking, we went through a cross section of most of the ecological regions of Nepal: lowland hardwood forest, full of big-leaved sal trees; pine forest; tall, straight rhododendrons; higher-altitude moss-draped twisted rhododendrons, and then open mountain pasture, wider and drier and flatter than the areas downstream. The river was impressive, a huge bed of enormous rounded boulders with water cascading steadily over them. One bank of the river, exposed to the sun, was much drier and more desert-like than the other. On a high overhanging rock face, we spotted a huge complex of beehives clinging to the cliff; local �honey-hunters� descend cliffs on precarious vines and ropes to smoke out the bees and obtain the honey, a seemingly insane risk to take for a bit of sugar to add to the diet. Langurs (leaf monkeys), the spitting image of the Hindu god Hanuman, frolicked in the bushes. Life was good for us during the day and a half it took to reach Kyanjin Gompa.
Kyanjin Gompa was a tiny place, just a Tibetan Buddhist monastery and thirteen guesthouses scattered among a giant�s playground of huge boulders. We spent a couple of days there sightseeing, gorging ourselves on the local cheese and psyching ourselves up for the Ganja La (yes, that�s really its name), the 5000-metre pass that we planned to go over to return to Helambu to avoid a long backtrack. The valley was ringed by 7000-metre mountains that were impressive (Gang Chenpo, Morimoto Peak, Goldum and Langtang Leru), although not in the same league as Everest or K2 or even Shisha Pangma, the huge Tibetan peak that was lurking just out of sight behind the Langtang peaks. Serge was unwell with the same symptoms of gastric distress that had plagued me in China, so I gave him some of my supply of my new favourite wonder drug, Cipro (good for dysentery as well as anthrax). Juli, a bit worn out by trying to keep up with a bunch of long-legged quick walkers, decided to stay on in Kyanjin Gompa and return back down the Langtang Valley to the �road� that joined the mouth of the valley with Kathmandu. Ramon and Karen were headed the same way, so we said our goodbyes and prepared to set off over the pass.
We had heard that the Ganja La was the most difficult and dangerous of the commonly-used Nepalese passes, and it lived up to its reputation. We climbed up from Kyanjin Gompa fairly easily, up onto a huge boulder pile of a moraine, and past a climbers� camp; the trekking (ie relatively low and relatively cheap) peak of Naya Kang lies beside the pass, and we could see 2 Westerners with their Sherpa guides climbing for the summit, 4 tiny dots on the white expanse of the upper slopes. We pushed on and found ourselves 100 metres below the pass, clearly visible above us because of its prayer flags. The last 100 metres were awful, three steps up followed by two sliding back down as the loose scree and larger loose boulders contained in it slid away under us in small rock avalanches. It was nerve-wracking, hard work, and it took over an hour until we all sat atop the pass looking back at the Langtang peaks and Shisha Pangma, my new favourite mountain, looming in the sky to the north. The descent was even worse, trying to avoid an out-of-control slide downhill and testing each foothold to see if it would slide. We did about 50 years� worth of erosion on that downhill, eventually coming out on a desolate boulderscape below a huge glacier. A late lunch and another steep downhill led to a beautiful campsite beside a clear, rushing stream. We were tired but happy.
Twenty four hours later we were tired but unhappy. We descended a long, deep valley all day, staying high up on the side of the valley on a pretty but waterless ridge. At this altitude, all surface water runs into the ground, emerging again as springs far, far below. We couldn�t find any water, and we also didn�t know exactly where we were since our maps and guidebooks were so inaccurate that we wondered if the cartographers and writers had ever been over the Ganja La. We climbed over a series of high, steep ridges, always hoping to find the endless descent to Helambu and always disappointed. We camped waterless and hence foodless atop a ridge.
Even the wonderful views towards Gauri Shankar, the Rolwaling Himalayas and the Khumbu region couldn�t lift our mood the next day. The BBC World Service brought news of a huge Maoist rebel attack in the Solu region, practically in sight of where we were, and of a state of emergency being declared in Nepal. We were almost out of our rationed drinking water, and Serge and I were weak and lagging behind, he because of his dysentery, and me from having absolutely no energy reserves in my body after the rigours of cycling across Tibet. We finally found the downhill into the Helambu, and, despite getting lost again in dense fog, we found water and slaked our parched bodies. I stayed behind to cook a vast lunch to try to revive my body while the others went ahead to look for the village we could clearly hear below us. I slithered downhill after them, getting lost again and ending up on a goat track that plummeted down into the fog. I eventually found the village and the others in Tharkegyang, the most picturesque village of the trek. A funeral was going on, providing a glimpse into the Tibetan Buddhist rites of the local people. I wandered around, watching yuhinas and tits and laughing-thrushes flit through the trees, and feeling more human for having wolfed down cookies and chocolate and Fanta and litres of water.
The walk out to the road was gentle and pretty, every descent bringing more warmth and more luxurious food, and in a couple of days we found ourselves walking out towards Kathmandu along the dirt track that served as a bus road. We flagged down a tourist bus returning empty after dropping off their travellers, and for a dollar each got a private bus ride to Dhulikel where we lunched lavishly in the same restaurant I had eaten in three weeks earlier on the day I had ridden into Kathmandu. The views over the Himalayas were hazier, but now the peaks were old friends that we had been observing from different angles for weeks, and it was good to bid them farewell over beers and curry.
Back in Kathmandu, the city was transformed under a state of emergency. Every day brought news of fresh bomb blasts and battles in the hills between the army and Maoists. A curfew was in force and nightlife in Thamel ended at 9 pm. We lingered a few days but Audie and Serge were itching for warmth and beaches and headed to Thailand as soon as possible, and Saakje headed back to Switzerland. I put new tires on my bike and rode off towards Darjeeling and Sikkim to put the final touches on the year�s biking.
The ride south out of Kathmandu was a grind, endlessly uphill to the famous Himalayan lookout of Daman. It was shrouded in cloud all day, so I didn�t get any scenic payoff for the 42 km of climbing to get there. The next day it was still cloudy as I swept downhill into the lowland plains of the Terai, the southernmost strip of Nepal along the Indian border. I rode for three long, dull, flat days across the Terai, enveloped in fog the entire time, the extensive forests the only compensation for the effort I was putting in (days of 140 or 150 kilometres). On the third day I found the Koshi Tappu bird sanctuary and spent an idyllic (if expensive) day bird-watching from a small boat propelled by poling. I saw 36 different species, mostly waterbirds like cormorants, ibises, egrets, ducks, geese, herons, storks and kingfishers, along with grassland species like larks, harriers and orioles, and my first-ever barbet, a wonderful blue-and-green-tinted woodpecker clone. It was a good break from some dull cycling.
One more long, flat day (155 km) brought me into India. For the first time in 11,000 km (I passed that landmark early in the morning) I met bike tourists going the same way as me, and I had someone to chat with as I rode. Patrik and Lorraine had ridden all the way to Nepal from Switzerland, with the exception of being arrested in western Tibet during the great eviction of foreigners in the aftermath of September 11th. We swapped advice on Central Asia and eastern Tibet, and I was sorry to leave them behind at the border as I raced the setting sun to get to Siliguri, the strip of transport chaos that serves Sikkim and the hill country of West Bengal. I spent a day ill in Siliguri, got my travel permit for Sikkim, and then set off into the hills.
The ride to Kalimpong was physically easy most of the way, but the heavy traffic along the main road made it unpleasant. I most enjoyed the steep climb out of the river valley up to the town of Kalimpong sprawled untidily along a ridge. There were poinsettias in bloom all along the road, and flowers everywhere, giving a soft, gently feel to the forests I was cycling through. Kalimpong itself was a bit of a nothing, but I did find the Hotel Himalaya, the old genteel Raj retreat where Heinrich Harrer penned Seven Years in Tibet after his flight from Tibet in 1951.
The fog finally lifted for me the next morning and I caught my first views of Kanchenjunga, at 8598 metres the third highest mountain on earth. The downhill that morning was beautiful and a great wake-up call. I rejoined the river valley and entered the state of Sikkim, the least-populous state of India and one of the cleanest thanks to a ban on plastic bags that the rest of the Third World would do well to emulate. The last 27 km to the state capital of Gangtok were a stiff climb, especially the last 10 km, endless switchbacks through the sprawling outskirts of the city. The city was nothing special, and seemed to be drowning in chronic traffic jams. I sat in a park outside the Institute of Tibetology (a huge construction site) and read Patrick French�s biography of Sir Francis Younghusband. He had led the British invasion of Tibet in 1903-4 through Sikkim, and it seemed an appropriate place to be reading about him. That evening I heard of the terrorist attack on the Indian Parliament and thought that it might presage yet another war between India and Pakistan.
More Kanchenjunga views the next morning as I raced back downhill and backtracked towards Siliguri before turning off at Singtam. I climbed for 36 km, reaching the top at dusk and descending in pitch blackness into Namchi where a kindly restaurant owner found me a hotel room and fed me royally. I needed that food the next day as I climbed the steepest paved road I have ever seen up to Darjeeling. I rode through endless tea estates, switchbacking up a narrow jeep track that was, mercifully, completely paved. If not for the asphalt, it would have been impossible to make it as I would have spun out. As it was, even with the pavement, I spun out a couple of times. I was pretty exhausted by the time I suddenly popped over a ridge and found myself in the city of Darjeeling. I checked into a hotel, ate ravenously and crashed, happy to have finished the last great hill climb of my entire year-long trip.
I spent two lovely days doing very little in Darjeeling. One day I spent all day on the hotel roof, reading, writing and staring out at Kanchenjunga, immense on the horizon. Of all of the world�s 14 mountains that top 8000 metres, Kanchenjunga is possibly the broadest and bulkiest, with Shisha Pangma, Nanga Parbat and Dhaulagiri coming in behind. It was the last of the 14 that I had seen and photographed, and I had a sense of closure on the trip and on my Himalayan peak-collecting. The second day I bestirred myself to go out to the surprisingly good zoo, full of Himalayan species like snow leopards (if there�s a more beautiful predator on earth, I�ve never seen it), red pandas, Himalayan black bears, Tibetan wolves, markhor and barking deer and blue sheep and various different types of pheasants and partridges with spectacular plumage. I made a pilgrimage to the Himalayan Mountaineering Institute with its displays on the history of climbing Everest and the grave of the first man to stand atop it, Tenzing Norgay, and ended the day in the Hot and Stimulating Caf�, a great travellers� hangout with great jazz and blues tunes. It was more or less the last real day of my bike trip, and I was melancholy, realizing that I�d never return to most of the places I�d biked through over the past year.
The ride down to Siliguri would have been easy if not for the fateful decision to take a scenic detour. Instead of sitting back and coasting all the way down to the plains, I climbed, descended and undulated through beautiful forests of Bhutan cypresses, immense and regal trees reminiscent of Nikko in Japan, before finally ripping down to Siliguri and across the Nepalese border. I had done 116 km and it felt good to have done an honest day�s cycling for my last full day of the trip.
The last day of riding involved 30 flat kilometres to Bhadrapur Airport, then a spectacular flight to Kathmandu that gave me an awe-inspiring view over the entire Himalayas from east of Kanchenjunga (I think I saw Jomalhari, the sacred mountain of Bhutan) to Annapurna in the west. It was fun to identify most of the peaks, old friends of mine now after so many weeks among them. Kanchenjunga, alone and immense, was far more impressive than Everest, surrounded by a clutter of other peaks. I was sad that we had to land in Kathmandu and couldn�t keep flying west looking at mountains. I rode into Kathmandu and put my bike into storage at my hotel. The final odometer reading was 11,586 km from Kota Kinabalu, Malaysia to Darjeeling, a decent year�s work, in my opinion.
A day of shopping and errands in Kathmandu, a night flight to Abu Dhabi and on to London, a couple of hectic days in England, and I was in Switzerland, phoning my mom from the train station and finally resigned to the fact that my year of adventure was at an end. Already, though, I was looking forward to 2002�s adventures: the Silk Road, climbing in Kyrgyzstan, riding through Iran. The world beckons; so many places, so little time.
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Some Retrospective Thoughts by Graydon
Previous Travelogues
Oct. 20-Nov. 9: Lhasa-Kathmandu
Oct. 10-20: Lhasa-tude
Sept.5-Oct.9: Cycling to Lhasa
July 20-Sept.4: China by Train
June 29-July 19: SW China
June 27: Laos
June 20: Northeast Thailand
June 19: Cambodia Trip
May 27: Ko Tao to Bangkok
May 25: Diving the Similans
April 25: Southern Thailand
March 28: Kuching, E.Coast Malaysia
Feb. 28: Riding Across Borneo
Feb. 18: Brunei
Feb. 9: Diving Sipadan
Feb. 4: Exploring Sabah
Jan. 24: A Mexican Interlude