"This place is amazing..it's like a wired up contraption full of bits and pieces that plug in and heaven knows what they all do. I've just spent twenty minutes wondering why the music was still going with the t.v....please angels and god like things - help me not to blow up this place ....
Have loads of fun on your holiday.....Take me next time."
Five metres into the trek. So far so good.We drive to Besi Sahar where we begin our Himalayan trek. Now on foot, we leave the road and head down a small path by the side of a creek. We cross the creek and soon we are on a dirt road which runs along a fast flowing river.
It is a rural area with plenty of trees and long grass. Small houses are surrounded by fields that mostly have corn planted. The young stalks are about a foot tall. It is a hilly area but there are no mountains in sight yet.
This is the start of a nineteen day journey through the Annapurna ranges. We will spend a week following the river up northwards. We will swing west to cross the Thorung La pass - our highest point at 5,416 m. Then we will descend another valley in a south-west direction. Finally we will head south east, away from the river, climbing over a ridge and descending on the other side to complete about seven eighths of a circle.
Some of my companions comment that they have never seen anything like this before. I am reminded of rural areas of Vietnam, China, Thailand, India and to a lesser extent, Samoa, the Rift Valley, the Amazon jungle and the Andes.
But as I fall back into the rhythm of walking, I am mostly reminded of my trek to Everest base camp fifteen months ago. I remember similar landscapes, similar villages, similar people. It feels like a continuation of my previous trek.
A small bus approaches us on the dirt road. It is chock-a-block full of young men. Men are also riding on the roof of the bus. They are flying Maoist flags and cheering and waving like excited school children.
I wonder if they are headed for a demonstration, a riot or a summer camp. I imagine for some it is rare for them to be so far from their village.
The river runs wildly through the valley. Jo says it reminds her of ice and I agree. It seems to be carrying a chalky white dust and it is reflecting the blue of the sky. This gives it a pastel blue colour, like staring deep into the ice of a glacier. The water flows up and down over rocks and obstacles keeping the same shape, the peaks and troughs staying in the same spot. It is both still and in motion.
Two more crowded buses pass us with revellers singing and cheering and shouting to us "Namaste! Namaste!"
We leave the road and travel on a footpath running between the fields. We come to a small village where a small boy greets me cheerily, "Namaste chocolate."
Further along three small girls aged somewhere between about two and four approach me as I sit by the path. "Sweets? Sweets?" they ask as they touch their hands to their mouths. I have no sweets for them. Instead we play a word game. They mimic me as I touch parts of my face and I tell them the English words for eyes, nose and ears. They enjoy this well enough.
We arrive at our accommodation. A colourful picturesque compound with a large garden area and an outdoor covered eating area overlooking the river. We relax in the afternoon with alternating activities - sometimes talking or reading, playing cards or spending time with the river.
The river, the river. It flows wild beauty. It is Gaea's vein, carrying life and nutrients to her body, raising forests from the earth, carrying sustenance to lakes or returning to the deep ocean, the womb of creation, where the sun - the great fiery engine, the heart of our animistic universe, the centre of our scientific universe where any point can be appointed such - radiates, bestows its energy like a blessing, excites the molecules of water and exalts them into the blue sky, into the wind to carry them again to the peaks of the Himalayas or a suburban shower.
I find time to go down to the river and walk out onto the rocks. I climb carefully onto a large rock and watch the power of thousands of litres sweeping around me and I think of Siddhartha by Hermann Hesse and how our lives are like rivers, always moving from one point to the next but always existing in its entirety from beginning to end.
And you and I and I are all here together even if we are in different places or different times.
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