I've always wanted to do that, I really think I can, if ever there was a chance to try it,it was here and now but with sandals and baggy hippy pants in a remote town; I may be better off living with, thinking I can rather than discovering I can’t with this particular experience.
Then there is the longest suspension bridge in Asia,
It’s just stupid stuff but it’s really fun, it’s the unexpected sites and the spontaneous actions that make this element of travel exciting in a dumbed down kind of way. If foreign travel is a fair ground we are riding on the dodgems not the wall of death.
More juvenile that motorcycle travel but with less responsibility needed, means less to lose. When losing my balance will only mean losing my camera. As opposed to my Kazakhstan River crossing where I was lucky to only lose my camera.
And having the right travel companions is a plus too. The sort of people who climb off a suspension bridge like it’s the most natural thing in the world to do, which I suppose it is if you’re a manic street preacher. I'm not sure I would have considered doing it at all if I was here alone.
Obstinate travel, insolence in the face of recommendation. My 4th hand guide book is over 10 years old. It’s great. There are now more places to stay, more restaurants and better roads and services. Ok the prices have gone up but expectations are exceeded when you travel with information from the past. Wi-Fi was never a service back then, some things remain the same. If we had know the European government websites said ‘Don't go, it’s too dangerous, boarders are closed without warning, road blocks of burning tyres and sudden strikes the entire country stops, buses crash all the time and there are NO survivors.’ then we would still be here, just a little more appreciative of how easy the travelling and bus catching is. We happily ride on roof tops of the public buses, (depending on the type of crash this may be the safest seat) to National Parks where empty mud hut guest houses have reduced prices due to the majority of tourists having done research from this century and taking heed. More tigers for us, more rhinos.
Less travelled paths, off season, off the beaten track, off the radar.
‘You have come from India today?’
‘No, Mahendranagar’
‘Oh you came from India last night?’
‘No, 4 days ago’
‘Are you ‘aving a laugh? No one stays in Mahendranagar for 4 days’
‘We did, that's how come I can pronounce it’
I don't need a guide to show me round Buda’s birth place; but on a 13 hour walking jungle ‘tiger’ safari without him, I wouldn't have even noticed the tiger footprints let alone the tiger.
Its starts with dung, I really find it hard to get excited about shit, regardless of what bottom it came out of. The footprints in the sand stirred my enthusiasm a little more. But cynically I thought that it was not inconceivable that some ranger came this way this morning with a special walking stick that made big cat prints in the soft sandy soil, just to keep the tourists intrigued. Without the patients of the guide I would not have seen the hippos. Well I would have seen them I just wouldn't have known.
‘To the left of the island’ he kept saying
‘What the black island?’
‘What black island? No the grassy island, to the left of it’
‘Yeah, what? By the black island?’ Then the black island moved, it was hippos.
Out guide was fantastic. I knew it last night when he came and introduced himself. He was so softly spoken, like his trade required, his whole persona was quiet, calm and stealth-like and with his moustache, bucked teeth and visible cheek bones how can you mistrust anyone who looks like Freddy Mercury. When he is too old to be a guide, he has the perfect demeanour to work in a tiger museum.
He sat attentive for a while whilst I shuffled my uncomfortable arse in the sand. Then I watched him lean back and close his eyes, ‘Oh yeah’ I thought ‘the act is over now, sleeping on the job, I suppose this is a cat nap.’
Then the monkeys screeched from the trees. Freddy spoke monkey and knew exactly what they were saying. They were saying ‘Fuck me; there’s a tiger down there!’ they’re so bad. Freddy instantly translated and understood. He sat up and with excitement but no sound, he beckoned us to look. And one of only 14 Royal Bengal Tigers in an area of nearly 1000 square KMs, walked out of the bush and my cowardly sarcastic cynicism ran away.
His mussels heaved and his stripes looked like black tattooed flames on his rippling torso. Knowing he was the hardest bastard in the vicinity he nonchalantly walked into the river.
Slowly and fully alert he submerged himself up to his neck.
This wasn’t a tail disappearing into the undergrowth sighting; it was a 20 minute viewing of Mr. Tiger taking a bath. He yawned and looked around and slowly he exited the river on the other bank, our bank.
When the guides high five each other you know you’ve seen something rare. They only were flip-flops but they all have iPhones to record the event and tell each other where to be and what to see there.
Duly elated, the monkeys and barking deer, elephant evidence and python hangout was no match for our stripy sighting.
The heat stayed after the adrenalin had worn off and I was hanging like a monkey form a tree. Dragging my feet for the last tired walk out of the jungle and back to our mud hut home. This doesn’t bode well for the Himalayan hike to come.
An old Austrian couple complained that in 5 hours (they were too fat to do the full day) they only saw 2 rhinos and a tiger. I guess they wanted it all and they wanted it now. We sat with Freddy, viewed our photos on the laptop, drank a beer and talked tiger into the night.
Out here in the Western Terai, the locals greet you without a ‘rupee please’. It’s just ‘Namaste’ and it’s free of any request other than saluting the god in me.
Mud huts and thatch, homesteads of means but not excess. Cleanliness and order, neatly stacked logs, and hay, goats tethered, buffalo watered, children schooled, and bicycle is the only sight and sound of transport.
Its basic, simplistic and its lives up to the time that it stands in.
Every ditch has clear mountain water flowing through it. The rivers too are fast flowing with clear warm water; that is good for cattle, fish, bathing and laundry. All of which combine an element of recreation.
It doesn’t look like poverty it looks like survival and then some. No thrills, no excess, no needs not met. That's what it looks like to me, it’s what the smiles confirm, the friendliness ensures. It’s the impression I'm given and it’s what I take with me. Walking through the villages as the sunsets, heading to the elephant sanctuary; we were not treated as intruders nor tourists, just passing through and accepted.
You’ve got to watch those cheeky little elephantlets, they offer their trunk to shake your hand, and if you give them more that a finger they wrap their trunk round ya wrist and pull you towards them. They my only be babies but they are big and strong and to my elephant ignorant mind they are unpredictable.
On to the roof of another bus. The long, sun baked, wind dried, roof rack surfing journeys that my travel insurance company doesn’t know about. The trip only becomes uncomfortably hot when the bumps stop at another army check point and there is no breeze to take the heat away. It was Nepalese New Year, 2068, due to their months being Luna and not longer, never thought I’d make it to 2068. Everybody’s happy everybody waves, ‘Happy New Year’
Culture can look so appealing in a book. The temples of forgotten, the ruins of time which are the birth place and palaces where Buda spent his first 29 years. With oppressing heat and long walks, we saw what was essential and left the rest for the enlightened and the appreciative.
‘Let’s build a concrete square prison-looking building over the remains where once was the tree where Mrs Buda gave birth.’ Couldn’t she have gone up into the foot hills where it’s a bit cooler? Would’ve kept the flies off the afterbirth.
‘Let’s make it the least spiritual design we can come up with. A cube, a square concrete block. With scaffolding here and there.
And then let’s invite other countries to build a temple of their own within this complex of world unity.’
Some did, the French and Germans, (famous European Buddhist countries) not the British though. Perhaps we could contribute a railway, like we introduced to India, a little Nepalese lite rail to take the half hearted from temple to temple. Maybe with the profit we make from hosting the Olympics we can do that. It is for world unity after all.
In last night’s twilight, from the bus I saw the magnificent profile of sculptured elegance. It was the World Peace Stupa. It was the last site to see.
White concrete and marble steps. Now I'm not stupid, I've seen stupas’ before, but somehow due to its immense size I thought it just has to have an inside. But no, it was solid and so as we hurried round the burning floor trying to find shade to rest out blistering feet (out footwear obediently left at the entrance)
I wondered just why I couldn’t have been content to have just viewed world peace from a distance.
Mosquito infested room and no electricity, hot stagnant air. Heat at its peak before the monsoon breaks it. I stand in the shower waiting for the boiling water in the pipes to run cool but the plumbing is flawed and it never flowed. We don't want to spend another night here, when the power stops the fan turning, its too hot to get under a sheet and so with no turbulence the mozzies come and feast on your sweating flesh. Bugger that. Culture is cool but mountains are cooler we decided to elope from our enlightenment and 3 more busses, 3 more roof tops took us to a hill station for the night.
The tease of the hazy Himalayas is over we enter the misty little mountain town of Tansen. It consisted of narrow steep twisting streets of dark open fronted shops, usually with a sewing machine or primitive loom stood in the area of the dim dying day gloom. This is a weaving town. Ware the wresidents of weavers wrighteously wun their wittle wentures. They make the fabric that the hats are made of that most Nepalese men wear. Like tartan, it’s same same but different.
Being foreigners we were given the trusted room above the bank. ‘Quieter at night’ we were informed. We had our own private balcony and everything, well that was about it really. It was, I decided it was the perfect balcony to cut my fingernails off of. Later whilst waiting for my friends to use the ATM I realized I was right beneath out balcony and looked at the ground to see if I could spot little bits of me. I was lost in this ridicules diversion of awareness when a mature western couple walked past with and inquisitive ‘Hello?’ Sometimes it’s just not suitable to explain your actions as an introduction.
Being the coolest temperature I have experience since I left home it seemed appropriate to sample the local whiskey. A process I was doing surreptitiously in the restaurant, pouring said liquid into my tea and getting away with it nicely. Until, that is, the cup jumped from my hand and spilt its contents all over the table. The waiter must have known full well what I was up to, when his cloth mopped up the spillage of alcoholic fumes. Oops.
And then after 10 days of being the sites, we take a 6 hour roof top ride into the valley, Pokhara, back to where the westerners go.
Time to unpack the back pack and do what backpackers do, pizza and apple pie, essential fodder for the imminent Himalayan trek.
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