...
I spent three weeks walking in the foothills around Annapurna. During that time I met a large number
of fellow trekkers. I seldom spent more than a few days with the same people. Sometimes this was by choice
when I felt that I wanted to explore at my own pace. Sometimes unfortunately it was as a result of illness.
It was during one brief bout of illness that I asked our lodge owner in Chame for a porter. Nimi
She had been born in Tibet and her family had left there because
of the Chinese invasion when she was ten. They had walked for twelve days over the mountains
behind us and set up life in the Marsyangdi valley. Several of her uncles ran lodges in the valley
and many of her cousins were working as porters and guides. I was impressed by their energy
and enthusiasm. Nimi herself continued to tell me about all the best lodges in the valley
(run by her family of course!) all the best places to get porters and guides (at her families
lodges!) but I managed to get her off the sales pitch to talk about other matters and
we compared our family background and homelands. We stopped at here sister's house to shelter from a rainshower and they offered me tea.
For the first time that day I began to relax and look around me. The reality of where I was struck me.
The house was very small, no more than three metres on a side. It was made of wood,
lined with newspaper and had a small hole in the roof to let out the smoke from the fire.
It reminded me of pre-famine shebeens I had read about in early nineteenth century Ireland.
It contrasted starkly with the lodges I had been sleeping in for the past few nights. It was
real Nepal and for the first time I was close to it. The misfortune of illness had a lighter side in
that it exposed me to people and situations I would not have experienced otherwise. |
