Halfway through my trip seemed a good time to collect some of my thoughts on travelling. And Thailand "of all places, backpacker central, land of the beaten track" is the perfect location to do it in.
The Beach by Alex Garland is a backpacker classic. Underwhelmed by the standard destinations that have been "spoiled" by "too many tourists", a group of travellers set up an isolated beach camp on a protected island. Richard, the novel's narrator, is told about the beach by a man who then commits suicide in their Bangkok hostel, and sets off to find it with a French couple he's just met. The novel charts how they gain the paradise they've been searching for, then rapidly lose it as the camp descends into violence and madness.
I arrived in Bangkok at the beginning of week ten of my trip. It was the first time I had landed in a new country and didn't feel the "sudden warm swell of happiness [wash] over me". All I felt was very tired. Two days in hectic Bangkok didn't do much to restore me, so I headed north to Chiang Mai looking for some respite. Like the French couple in the novel, I did what people do in Chiang Mai; I trekked, I rafted, I visited the elephants. And to my horror, I started to show signs of becoming a bit like the kind of travellers that set my teeth on edge when I first started this trip.
First were the know-it-all travellers, the ones who have been everywhere and done everything. Like Bugs, one of the original founders of the beach camp, who
"had an irritating competitive streak. If you'd watched the sun rise over Borobudur, he'd tell you that you should have seen the sun set, or if you knew of a good place to eat in Singapore, he'd know of one better."
The jaded traveller is a close relative of the know-it-all. They've been wandering for so long that they've already had every 'experience' possible and are constantly comparing the present moment with some past, and usually superior, event. Which is fine, if they would just keep their thoughts to themselves. Travel supposedly broadens the mind and helps people to lay aside their preconceptions. Lots of the 'long term' travellers I've met haven't been more open-minded and open-hearted though, they've been cynical and egocentric. I've found it difficult to understand why they're still on the road.
Yet as we trekked through the jungle near Chiang Mai, I was still trying to process everything I'd seen and done in the past few weeks, and unfavourable comparisons crept into my conversations. I knew that I wasn't taking in or appreciating what I was doing; like when Richard is "more interested in finding a soft spot on [his] backpack to use as a pillow" than looking at the islands when they first arrive, I stood outside our bamboo lodge, watching a rainstorm roll in over the Thai mountains, and just wanted to go to bed.
From Chiang Mai, I took the winding road to Pai, a chilled mountain village. In an attempt to get myself out of my rut, and in the interests of embracing the travel 'experience', I decided to do as the backpackers do, and went for a big night out. I drank rum from a bucket, I talked drunken nonsense with virtual strangers, I ate a suspect toastie from 7-Eleven at 2am. And woke up the next morning feeling wretched. I suddenly understood why the people in my hostel in Chiang Mai hadn't seemed interested in exploring, and just sat around all day watching films; they were all hideously hungover. I started to wonder what the point of it all was, what could make 'travelling' like this more than a colossal waste of time and resources.
At first I thought that Thailand itself could be responsible for my loss of travel mojo. The Beach was published in 1996, and there has been plenty of time since then for the "tourist hordes" to get their Lonely Planet-guided feet on the path blazed by the "travellers" years ago. I've met more than one person who's feeling a bit disappointed by the firmly established backpacker subculture here; at times Pai seems like a CentreParcs. It feels like there is nothing left to discover here. As Etienne laments,
"[E]verybody wants to do something different. But we all do the same thing... We come for an adventure, but we find this."
The opportunity to meet new people on the road is also lost on an introvert like me. There is no shortage of friendly people to chat to when you feel "starved of conversation and company" as a solo traveller. But most conversations never get past the initial Big Five questions (What's your name, where are you from, what do you do at home, how long have you been here, how long are you travelling for?) and I find all the small talk exhausting. The people living on the Beach epitomise the strange nature of the traveller 'community'; even after months at the camp, Richard realises that he knows "nothing about the past lives of [his] companions, except their place of origin".
The Beach doesn't offer much wisdom on what makes travelling worthwhile. Richard's "primary goal" when he starts to travel is "collecting memories, or experiences", seeing and doing exciting things that will sustain him in his normal life at home. Yet he soon tires of this, and is disappointed when the beach doesn't provide "an ideology or something. A purpose." He's horrified at the suggestion that he's just on "holiday", but can't articulate what makes 'travellers' different.
I think a sense of purpose can be more easily grasped by moving away from the language of 'travelling' and drawing on an older model: the pilgrimage. A great article by the sociologist Zygmunt Bauman articulates the difference between the tourist and the pilgrim. The pilgrim is concerned with building their identity through their journey, telling their life as a "'sense-making' story" in which "each event [is] the effect of the event before and the cause of the event after". In contrast, the postmodern tourist has a horror of being trapped in a single overarching life story, and leaves their "real face" at home, demanding and consuming isolated and episodic "experiences".
Richard's only clear philosophy is that "escape through travel works". But surely there's more value in seeing time away not as an escape from your "real life" but as a chance to step back, reassess and figure out how to make "a whole out of the fragmentary". You are part of the place you're in, and if it isn't serving your desire for "experience", it's at least as much your fault as your location's. I'll most likely go home and realise that the best souvenirs from my travels aren't great photographs or memories of cool "experiences", but the things I've learned about myself that I hadn't spotted before (some good, some not so good...) and being a few steps closer to the answers to questions I've been wrestling with. As well as the key realisation that those answers never lie in the bottom of a bucket of rum.
***
Bauman, Zygmunt, 'From Pilgrim to Tourist - or a short history of identity'
Garland, Alex, The Beach (1996)
Wednesday 29 May 2013
Sunday 19 May 2013
"Ineffable grace in the midst of squalor": India
Of all the countries I'm visiting on this trip, I had the most preconceptions about India.
There were the scary ones, with high profile news stories leading me to the conclusion that every Indian man would be out to attack me, and people raising eyebrows at my choosing to come here at all ("Alone? Why?!"). And there were the idealised ones, the assurances that I'd find it magical, seductive and life changing. Waiting in Kathmandu airport, reading The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel - a novel about a group of British pensioners who can't afford their retirement at home and move to Bangalore - I couldn't predict which kind of traveller I'd be; one "who would surrender to [India's] allure" or one "who would be baffled and distressed".
On my first day in Delhi, armed with my best '**** off and leave me alone' face, perfected in three years as a Londoner, I steeled myself for the onslaught of the streets. It was disconcerting at first that, like Evelyn in the novel, I found that "always, everywhere, eyes were upon [me] - people wanting to serve [me],to sell [me] something, people simply wanting to accompany [me] in a desire to be helpful." But though it could be "somewhat wearing", it was never threatening.
It's off-season for tourists, so my tour group was just me and two Canadian girls. As we moved out of Delhi into less touristy areas, we attracted a fair amount of attention. It was like being a celebrity followed by very polite and complimentary paparazzi. Everywhere we went, so many people seemed genuinely pleased to see us. After the evening worship ceremony at the ghat in Haridwar, the old lady sitting behind me took my arm and thanked me profusely, for what I still have no idea. When our guide and I crashed the graduation party of a group of Allahabad anaesthesiologists in our hotel, I was welcomed with open arms and installed in the centre of the dance floor. When a group of men turned up at our campsite, staring at us ominously and muttering in Hindi, it turned out that they'd just been daring each other to speak to the white girls, and all the one brave soul who did had to say for himself was "Have a nice day!".
Our tour took us down the the Ganges river, hitting some of the holiest spots in the country on the way. For the first few days, I wasn't getting the spiritual vibe. Our first stop was Rishikesh, yoga central, filled with spacy-looking, unwashed Westerners in silly trousers. In The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel, Evelyn's daughter Theresa is one of these pilgrims, travelling from one ashram to another for the spiritual "high", trying to "find the love that had so far eluded her" by visiting the "Hugging Mother" swami (rather than her own mother just a few miles away). At the beautiful evening aarti ceremony by the river, I found myself judging the white people meditating in Indian dress, wondering why they couldn't find this kind of spiritual contentment in their own context, their own communities. I wondered if it was true that Westerners always "romanticise" India, taking "what we want from it" then getting "the hell out".
From Rishikesh we took the train to Agra, and I ticked a key point off my travel bucket list: the Taj Mahal. After an overnight train to Allahabad, we drove back to the Ganges for a leisurely two day sailing trip. When I woke up after a night's camping on the river bank, and paddled in the Ganges at dawn, drinking a cup of chai tea, I started to feel the spirituality of India getting under my skin.
Life of Pi, Yann Martel's novel about an Indian boy who survives a shipwreck in a lifeboat with a tiger, makes the bold claim to be "a story that will make you believe in God". I started reading it in our next destination: Varanasi, the burning city, home of the largest Hindu university (which made me think of it as the Oxford of India) and second on Pi's list of cities to visit before he dies. Martel's hypnotically rhythmic description of Pi's Hinduism describes the overwhelming "sense impressions" of being in Varanasi, and helped me begin to understand the underlying pulse of Hinduism for the first time:
"I am a Hindu because of sculptured cones of red kumkum powder and baskets of yellow turmeric nuggets, because of garlands of flowers and pieces of broken coconut, because of the clanging of bells to announce one's arrival to God... because of the fragrance of incense, because of flames of aarti lamps circling in the darkness... because of foreheads carrying, variously signified, the same word - faith."
Pi's easy acceptance of being a Christian, a Muslim and a Hindu simultaneously made me take a fresh look at the "sweaty, chatty Son" of my Christianity and consider some questions I hadn't really thought about before. The juxtaposition of dead bodies burning by the Ganges with children swimming just a few metres further up and hundreds of people worshipping a few metres further down made me wonder whether our horror and sanitisation of death is really the best response. I don't believe in Fortune or Karma, but maybe Western culture's metanarrative of unimpeded ascent and insatiable progress (surely formed in part by our Christian history) doesn't account for the random cruelty of life, and the fact that not everyone has the resources and good luck to be successful. I don't believe that desire is the root of all suffering, but walking around Mahabodhi temple, built in the place where the Buddha is said to have achieved enlightenment, I thought about the amount of pain the gap between what we want and reality causes, and how much it might be eased if we did live fully in the moment.
As Alain de Botton has put it, the most boring question you can ask of a religion is "Is it true?". I'm not converting to a different faith any time soon, but maybe there is room in our understanding of life for more than one story. Maybe the story with the animals is the better story. In India, I started to see that everything can have "a trace of the divine in it" and "anything can be holy".
Then I spent nine hours in a station waiting for a train that never appeared. And sat on the platform with a beggar whose foot was so infected that it was swarming with flies and people were giving him money to make him go away. That seems to be the paradox of India: being reminded of the great potential of the spiritual world, where your heart soars and you think anything could be possible. And being brought back to earth with a bump, because the trains don't run on time, and for all the spiritual glory, a poor man can't get his foot fixed.
***
Martel, Yann, Life of Pi (2001)
Moggach, Deborah, The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel (2004)
There were the scary ones, with high profile news stories leading me to the conclusion that every Indian man would be out to attack me, and people raising eyebrows at my choosing to come here at all ("Alone? Why?!"). And there were the idealised ones, the assurances that I'd find it magical, seductive and life changing. Waiting in Kathmandu airport, reading The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel - a novel about a group of British pensioners who can't afford their retirement at home and move to Bangalore - I couldn't predict which kind of traveller I'd be; one "who would surrender to [India's] allure" or one "who would be baffled and distressed".
On my first day in Delhi, armed with my best '**** off and leave me alone' face, perfected in three years as a Londoner, I steeled myself for the onslaught of the streets. It was disconcerting at first that, like Evelyn in the novel, I found that "always, everywhere, eyes were upon [me] - people wanting to serve [me],to sell [me] something, people simply wanting to accompany [me] in a desire to be helpful." But though it could be "somewhat wearing", it was never threatening.
It's off-season for tourists, so my tour group was just me and two Canadian girls. As we moved out of Delhi into less touristy areas, we attracted a fair amount of attention. It was like being a celebrity followed by very polite and complimentary paparazzi. Everywhere we went, so many people seemed genuinely pleased to see us. After the evening worship ceremony at the ghat in Haridwar, the old lady sitting behind me took my arm and thanked me profusely, for what I still have no idea. When our guide and I crashed the graduation party of a group of Allahabad anaesthesiologists in our hotel, I was welcomed with open arms and installed in the centre of the dance floor. When a group of men turned up at our campsite, staring at us ominously and muttering in Hindi, it turned out that they'd just been daring each other to speak to the white girls, and all the one brave soul who did had to say for himself was "Have a nice day!".
Our tour took us down the the Ganges river, hitting some of the holiest spots in the country on the way. For the first few days, I wasn't getting the spiritual vibe. Our first stop was Rishikesh, yoga central, filled with spacy-looking, unwashed Westerners in silly trousers. In The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel, Evelyn's daughter Theresa is one of these pilgrims, travelling from one ashram to another for the spiritual "high", trying to "find the love that had so far eluded her" by visiting the "Hugging Mother" swami (rather than her own mother just a few miles away). At the beautiful evening aarti ceremony by the river, I found myself judging the white people meditating in Indian dress, wondering why they couldn't find this kind of spiritual contentment in their own context, their own communities. I wondered if it was true that Westerners always "romanticise" India, taking "what we want from it" then getting "the hell out".
From Rishikesh we took the train to Agra, and I ticked a key point off my travel bucket list: the Taj Mahal. After an overnight train to Allahabad, we drove back to the Ganges for a leisurely two day sailing trip. When I woke up after a night's camping on the river bank, and paddled in the Ganges at dawn, drinking a cup of chai tea, I started to feel the spirituality of India getting under my skin.
Life of Pi, Yann Martel's novel about an Indian boy who survives a shipwreck in a lifeboat with a tiger, makes the bold claim to be "a story that will make you believe in God". I started reading it in our next destination: Varanasi, the burning city, home of the largest Hindu university (which made me think of it as the Oxford of India) and second on Pi's list of cities to visit before he dies. Martel's hypnotically rhythmic description of Pi's Hinduism describes the overwhelming "sense impressions" of being in Varanasi, and helped me begin to understand the underlying pulse of Hinduism for the first time:
"I am a Hindu because of sculptured cones of red kumkum powder and baskets of yellow turmeric nuggets, because of garlands of flowers and pieces of broken coconut, because of the clanging of bells to announce one's arrival to God... because of the fragrance of incense, because of flames of aarti lamps circling in the darkness... because of foreheads carrying, variously signified, the same word - faith."
Pi's easy acceptance of being a Christian, a Muslim and a Hindu simultaneously made me take a fresh look at the "sweaty, chatty Son" of my Christianity and consider some questions I hadn't really thought about before. The juxtaposition of dead bodies burning by the Ganges with children swimming just a few metres further up and hundreds of people worshipping a few metres further down made me wonder whether our horror and sanitisation of death is really the best response. I don't believe in Fortune or Karma, but maybe Western culture's metanarrative of unimpeded ascent and insatiable progress (surely formed in part by our Christian history) doesn't account for the random cruelty of life, and the fact that not everyone has the resources and good luck to be successful. I don't believe that desire is the root of all suffering, but walking around Mahabodhi temple, built in the place where the Buddha is said to have achieved enlightenment, I thought about the amount of pain the gap between what we want and reality causes, and how much it might be eased if we did live fully in the moment.
As Alain de Botton has put it, the most boring question you can ask of a religion is "Is it true?". I'm not converting to a different faith any time soon, but maybe there is room in our understanding of life for more than one story. Maybe the story with the animals is the better story. In India, I started to see that everything can have "a trace of the divine in it" and "anything can be holy".
Then I spent nine hours in a station waiting for a train that never appeared. And sat on the platform with a beggar whose foot was so infected that it was swarming with flies and people were giving him money to make him go away. That seems to be the paradox of India: being reminded of the great potential of the spiritual world, where your heart soars and you think anything could be possible. And being brought back to earth with a bump, because the trains don't run on time, and for all the spiritual glory, a poor man can't get his foot fixed.
***
Martel, Yann, Life of Pi (2001)
Moggach, Deborah, The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel (2004)
Wednesday 1 May 2013
"The Road goes ever on and on": Nepal and The Lord of the Rings
The Road goes ever on and on
Down from the door where it began.
Now far ahead the Road has gone,
And I must follow, if I can,
Pursuing it with weary feet,
Until it joins some larger way,
Where many paths and errands meet.
And whither then, I cannot say.
***
I wasn't able to find any novels set in Nepal, and since most of my time here was to be spent trekking, I decided that I should read some sort of quest narrative instead, preferably one involving mountains. It seemed the perfect opportunity to read The Lord of the Rings trilogy for the first time. There's also the added bonus of the nine-hour movie marathon when I get home.
After the craziest taxi ride of my life from the airport - the road not being fully built yet apparently isn't a valid reason not to drive on it - I met my trekking group in Kathmandu. We were a merry crew: not wizards, hobbits, elves and dwarves but seven sherpas, four doctors, two guides, a pharmacist, a nurse practitioner, a trainee lawyer, an environmental planner, a salesman, a social care worker, a biochemist, a chemical engineer, a librarian and one unemployed vagrant (me).
We spent a few days sightseeing in Kathmandu, and then headed to Pokhara, a seven hour bus ride away on the Nepalese 'highway'. By the time the first day of the trek arrived, we were all itching to go; like Frodo leaving the Shire, we felt like walking and couldn't "bear any more hanging about."
The first few days were challenging as we got used to the constant climbing and descending (as our guide kept reminding us, there's no such thing as 'flat' in Nepal). The landscape more than made up for the hard work. We wandered through rhododendron forests, where it looked like a giant had splashed magenta paint all over the mountainside. We scrambled up boulders with babbling streams running over our feet. We picked our way down muddy slopes, with rain water dripping from moss hanging like old men's beards over jagged rock faces.
It was such a great setting in which to be reading The Lord of the Rings. Tolkien manages to find words for settings that seem too vast to describe, with so many "white peaks glimmering among the clouds". The others all knew what I was reading - it was hard the miss the thousand-page paperback that a poor porter was carrying up the mountain for me - and every so often one of the boys would come up behind me whispering "Shi-ire... Bagginses..." in their best impression of Gollum.
Each day I tried to pick a little mantra to keep me going when I got tired. Sometimes it was Psalm 121 ("I lift my eyes up to the mountains, where does my help come from?") and sometimes it was the Buddhist mantra 'Om Mani Padme Hum' ("Make your life as beautiful as the jewel on the lotus" - which seems difficult when you haven't had a decent shower in four days). More often than not it was some classic Tolkien wisdom:
"There is a seed of courage hidden (often deeply, it is true) in the heart of the fattest and most timid hobbit, waiting for some final and desperate danger to make it grow."
On the sixth day, I needed all the courage I could muster. The morning started well enough. It was raining, but the climbing was easy and the line of people in dark cloak-like rain ponchos ahead of me in the fog made it feel a bit like a Lord of the Rings theme park. Then the snow began to fall. I couldn't help but wonder if maybe the Himalayas hadn't been the best place to begin my trekking career.
I've spent a lot of this part of my reading journey identifying with Samwise Gangee. Like him, I'm fairly attached to home comforts, and constantly paranoid that I've forgotten something I'll need later. I also now share his opinion that "[s]now's all right on a fine morning, but I like to be in bed while it's falling." Last year I fell while skiing, and fractured my leg. I hadn't realised that being back on snow would be such a big issue for me. But after I slipped down a steep drop in the path and had to be held back from the edge of what seemed to be a rather large cliff, I started to feel really frightened. The slope rapidly became my very own Mount Doom. Ever tortured by my imagination, I had visions of having to cut my trip short and go home in plaster, and of being stranded in a teahouse for days, running out of food and water, and of my parents holding a funeral with no body because I was under one of the avalanches rumbling on the other side of the valley.
We finally made it to Machhapuchhare Base Camp where we were due to stop for lunch. I had a total meltdown. Like Frodo, I felt "very small, and uprooted, and well - desperate". Luckily, my wonderful companions were on hand with hugs, tea, and an all important Mars bar. I'd been convinced that there was no way we could continue that afternoon to Annapurna Base Camp, our ultimate destination. But our guide said yes, of course we were going, and anyway the Sherpas were already there with our bags so we had to follow. Though it looked "from afar... that the mountain was covered with storm", we pressed on.
After lunch, everything changed. Within a few minutes we were above the clouds, and the snow stopped. Everything was blinding white: the sun, the sky, the clouds, the mountains. The sharp cliff edges disappeared, and the worst that could happen was falling into a cushion of spongy, powdery snow. Annapurna South, all 7,219 metres of it, rose up majestically from a bed of cloud with the sun blazing on it. It was beautiful. I could have wept with joy, if I hadn't been dehydrated from all the crying earlier and worried about getting altitude sickness. We reached Base Camp, exhausted but euphoric, and had a celebratory pizza. Maybe it wasn't as epic a quest as the Fellowship of the Ring's, but I felt pretty proud of myself.
After the snow day, the last few days of our trek seemed easy. The biggest challenges were the unfamiliar creatures blocking our path. My Balrog was a massive water buffalo, with mean looking horns, wedged across the steps ahead of me when I was walking alone. Our hoard of Orcs was a herd of fifty goats, all staring at us good naturedly, but in no hurry to move as we battled our way through them.
After a much needed hot shower in Pokhara, we returned to Kathmandu, and my new friends departed. Now I'm spending a few days away from the noise of Kathmandu in Bakhtapur, a beautifully preserved medieval city. With no fixed plan, I intend to spend lots of time with my feet up, moving from cafe to cafe drinking copious amounts of tea, and finding out if Frodo ever manages to get rid of the Ring. After ten days of intense activity, it's a relief to potter around for a while. After all, "not all who wander are lost."
***
Tolkien, J.R.R, The Lord of the Rings, (first published in one volume 1968)
Down from the door where it began.
Now far ahead the Road has gone,
And I must follow, if I can,
Pursuing it with weary feet,
Until it joins some larger way,
Where many paths and errands meet.
And whither then, I cannot say.
***
I wasn't able to find any novels set in Nepal, and since most of my time here was to be spent trekking, I decided that I should read some sort of quest narrative instead, preferably one involving mountains. It seemed the perfect opportunity to read The Lord of the Rings trilogy for the first time. There's also the added bonus of the nine-hour movie marathon when I get home.
After the craziest taxi ride of my life from the airport - the road not being fully built yet apparently isn't a valid reason not to drive on it - I met my trekking group in Kathmandu. We were a merry crew: not wizards, hobbits, elves and dwarves but seven sherpas, four doctors, two guides, a pharmacist, a nurse practitioner, a trainee lawyer, an environmental planner, a salesman, a social care worker, a biochemist, a chemical engineer, a librarian and one unemployed vagrant (me).
We spent a few days sightseeing in Kathmandu, and then headed to Pokhara, a seven hour bus ride away on the Nepalese 'highway'. By the time the first day of the trek arrived, we were all itching to go; like Frodo leaving the Shire, we felt like walking and couldn't "bear any more hanging about."
The first few days were challenging as we got used to the constant climbing and descending (as our guide kept reminding us, there's no such thing as 'flat' in Nepal). The landscape more than made up for the hard work. We wandered through rhododendron forests, where it looked like a giant had splashed magenta paint all over the mountainside. We scrambled up boulders with babbling streams running over our feet. We picked our way down muddy slopes, with rain water dripping from moss hanging like old men's beards over jagged rock faces.
It was such a great setting in which to be reading The Lord of the Rings. Tolkien manages to find words for settings that seem too vast to describe, with so many "white peaks glimmering among the clouds". The others all knew what I was reading - it was hard the miss the thousand-page paperback that a poor porter was carrying up the mountain for me - and every so often one of the boys would come up behind me whispering "Shi-ire... Bagginses..." in their best impression of Gollum.
Each day I tried to pick a little mantra to keep me going when I got tired. Sometimes it was Psalm 121 ("I lift my eyes up to the mountains, where does my help come from?") and sometimes it was the Buddhist mantra 'Om Mani Padme Hum' ("Make your life as beautiful as the jewel on the lotus" - which seems difficult when you haven't had a decent shower in four days). More often than not it was some classic Tolkien wisdom:
"There is a seed of courage hidden (often deeply, it is true) in the heart of the fattest and most timid hobbit, waiting for some final and desperate danger to make it grow."
On the sixth day, I needed all the courage I could muster. The morning started well enough. It was raining, but the climbing was easy and the line of people in dark cloak-like rain ponchos ahead of me in the fog made it feel a bit like a Lord of the Rings theme park. Then the snow began to fall. I couldn't help but wonder if maybe the Himalayas hadn't been the best place to begin my trekking career.
I've spent a lot of this part of my reading journey identifying with Samwise Gangee. Like him, I'm fairly attached to home comforts, and constantly paranoid that I've forgotten something I'll need later. I also now share his opinion that "[s]now's all right on a fine morning, but I like to be in bed while it's falling." Last year I fell while skiing, and fractured my leg. I hadn't realised that being back on snow would be such a big issue for me. But after I slipped down a steep drop in the path and had to be held back from the edge of what seemed to be a rather large cliff, I started to feel really frightened. The slope rapidly became my very own Mount Doom. Ever tortured by my imagination, I had visions of having to cut my trip short and go home in plaster, and of being stranded in a teahouse for days, running out of food and water, and of my parents holding a funeral with no body because I was under one of the avalanches rumbling on the other side of the valley.
We finally made it to Machhapuchhare Base Camp where we were due to stop for lunch. I had a total meltdown. Like Frodo, I felt "very small, and uprooted, and well - desperate". Luckily, my wonderful companions were on hand with hugs, tea, and an all important Mars bar. I'd been convinced that there was no way we could continue that afternoon to Annapurna Base Camp, our ultimate destination. But our guide said yes, of course we were going, and anyway the Sherpas were already there with our bags so we had to follow. Though it looked "from afar... that the mountain was covered with storm", we pressed on.
After lunch, everything changed. Within a few minutes we were above the clouds, and the snow stopped. Everything was blinding white: the sun, the sky, the clouds, the mountains. The sharp cliff edges disappeared, and the worst that could happen was falling into a cushion of spongy, powdery snow. Annapurna South, all 7,219 metres of it, rose up majestically from a bed of cloud with the sun blazing on it. It was beautiful. I could have wept with joy, if I hadn't been dehydrated from all the crying earlier and worried about getting altitude sickness. We reached Base Camp, exhausted but euphoric, and had a celebratory pizza. Maybe it wasn't as epic a quest as the Fellowship of the Ring's, but I felt pretty proud of myself.
After the snow day, the last few days of our trek seemed easy. The biggest challenges were the unfamiliar creatures blocking our path. My Balrog was a massive water buffalo, with mean looking horns, wedged across the steps ahead of me when I was walking alone. Our hoard of Orcs was a herd of fifty goats, all staring at us good naturedly, but in no hurry to move as we battled our way through them.
After a much needed hot shower in Pokhara, we returned to Kathmandu, and my new friends departed. Now I'm spending a few days away from the noise of Kathmandu in Bakhtapur, a beautifully preserved medieval city. With no fixed plan, I intend to spend lots of time with my feet up, moving from cafe to cafe drinking copious amounts of tea, and finding out if Frodo ever manages to get rid of the Ring. After ten days of intense activity, it's a relief to potter around for a while. After all, "not all who wander are lost."
***
Tolkien, J.R.R, The Lord of the Rings, (first published in one volume 1968)
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