As a child, I never associated Nepal with the Himalayas. I thought of Nepal as a small part of Northern India which I had gleaned from reading the information box on the menu at ‘Monty’s’, our local Nepalese restaurant. Mount Everest, on the other hand, was a single gigantic entity – God only knew where it might actually be - which the odd, exceedingly brave and/or stupid, person attempted to climb, and would then invariably show off their black, frostbitten fingers on Blue Peter if they managed to get to the summit.
Throughout my formative teenage years, Nepal’s capital, Kathmandu, was completely synonymous with the 1960s Hippy Trail, notably through Janis Joplin’s line ‘You know you might think the road don’t end in Detroit…honey, the road don’t even end in Kathmandu…” . Even my parents, who had always pretended to be groovy hippy types in their youth, didn’t make it to Kathmandu. It was a legendary place (probably somewhere near the poppy fields of Afghanistan?), where you could surely smoke Nepalese Temple balls to your hearts content, get into meditation and ‘find yourself’, before dying prematurely in a bathtub, or wherever.
As a result, Nepal never really seemed real,
until a few years ago when my good
friend, Sanjini, was posted to Kathmandu with an NGO, and met and eventually married a Nepali, Ganesh. Through them, Nepal emerged as more than a myth; as a real bona fide mountain kingdom, where the people are very distinct from India, or nearby Tibet, and where the Hindu and Buddhist religions remain so strong that everywhere you go there are shrines and other reminders that here is a deeply spiritual place. The hippys came and went (and a few of them linger on in Kathmandu’s ‘Freak Street’) but of course the Nepali people remain.
Writing this, in the shadow of Nepal’s Manasulu, the eighth highest mountain in the world at just over 8000 metres, and Annapurna 2, another giant at over 7000m – (Everest trumping the lot at 8882m and rising), it feels like the peaks and valleys of Nepal have been left surprisingly untouched compared to other places. Although the environmental impact of tourism – mainly in the form of over a million water bottles left by thirsty trekkers as they walk one of the many trails around the Himalayan foothills – is palpable, the lodges are still basic, electricity a luxury (we’ve had two days without, out of 6 so far), and an extensive menu featuring anything but potato or lentil curry all but a distant memory.
All this on one of what is supposed to be a very over-developed 'apple-pie' trail called the Annapurna Circuit trek. Not only is the scenery here awesome, the levels of comfort are just enough to get us through 2 long weeks of daily trekking, particularly given the first two days of solid rain. If you like camping and hate seeing other Westerners, maybe the Annapurna is too easy. For us, struggling up the mountainside in the sunshine, trying to get over landslides, waterfalls and such like after days of heavy rain at the beginning of our journey, it feels just about as far off the beaten track as I like to get.
