"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)