one of the houses, where a group of villagers gathers round the carcass of a recently slaughtered buffalo – a bubbling mess of steaming guts and liquid spilling into the harvest stubble. A wall-eyed man with a simple grin and kukri knife in hand has sliced open its belly, while his audience offers advice in the way it’s offered all over the world by those least qualified to give it. The butcher stands bare-legged astride the carcass, his light brown skin spattered with blood. Already he and the onlookers anticipate the taste of fresh meat. It will last them for days.
When the Tibetan salt trade was in full swing, Jagat was a customs post where taxes were levied, but since 1959 cross-border trade between Nepal and Tibet has officially ended, and its reason for existence has changed. Drying racks of sweetcorn cobs now stand above fields where children chase one another in a game of tag. One child trips, sprawling head-first into the stubble. As he explodes with tears a girl I take to be his sister picks him up and swings him onto her back. She can be no more than five years old, but accepts responsibility for his welfare without question.
The valley is little more than a gorge now, the scenery wild, intimidating, and the way ahead apparently blocked by boulders that swallow the river. But when we top another steep rise, before us lies a broad, flat plateau, on the far side of which the toy-like houses of Tal are dwarfed by soaring mountains, as alluring as Shangri-La. This is Buddhist country, and as if to emphasise the fact peace settles over us. A crow barks as it circles overhead, making only a brief intrusion. In the breeze comes the far-off boom of a waterfall, but the breeze is inconsistent, the sound falters, then shuts off completely. Peace settles once more.
Tal’s wide street is lined with shops and lodges, and with ponies tethered to a rail the place has a Wild West appearance – externally, at least – but once we book into a lodge all that changes. We’re back in a medieval world that attempts to ape the 20th century.
A bright-faced woman in a wrap-around chuba entices me across the street to study the bangles, earrings and pocket-sized mani stones on display in her tiny sentry-box of a shop. Her hair is coal black and glossy and hangs halfway down her back. Teasing me for my grey beard she calls me ‘Baje’, so I show her photographs of my wife and daughters and assure her I can wait a while before becoming a grandfather. Calling softly behind her, a beautiful little girl presents herself. She’s gorgeous, like her mother, and smiling sweetly returns my ‘Namaste’.
In Pisang, a spartan village of stone-walled houses at well over 3000 metres, there’s a long mani wall fitted with a row of prayer wheels, each stone in the wall carved with the Buddhist mantra ‘Om mani padme hum’ (‘Hail to the jewel in the lotus’). Cylindrical prayer wheels are likewise etched with manis, and as each wheel is spun it scatters the prayers contained within it, ‘Om mani padme hum’. Strips of cloth bearing the mani imprint hang from long wooden poles, and as we pass through archways, known as kanis, a gallery of Buddhas fades in the shadows of time. The faith lingers on...‘Om mani padme hum’.
Here in the Himalayan rain shadow the Buddha’s timeless prayer is like an electrical charge – unseen, unheard, but felt in every stirring breeze.
Our journey adopts a deeper meaning. It’s more than a walk through an ever-changing landscape – a pilgrimage, perhaps? There’s a cultural intensity as we slip into a very different world that works on our emotions. Alan senses the change too. Having known each other for so long, we have no need to articulate what we feel about the places we explore. Often we’ll wander at our own pace with thoughts undisturbed. Only later will a word or phrase be spoken that conjures a moment in time or a place spirited from memory.
This morning Alan wakes with a streaming cold and a hint of fever. ‘The dry air will be good for it,’ he says. ‘But I’ll see about hiring a porter for a couple of days.’ Within minutes we are joined by a neat-looking Magar with a quiet smile and a name that sounds like ‘Mahdri’. He has no English, and the few Nepali words Alan and I have gathered make for very limited conversation, but smiles count as much as conversation on this winding trail.
It’s cold in our Pisang lodge when evening falls, but the table where we sit eating daal bhaat is located over a shallow pit in which a brazier of hot coals warms us while we eat. Mahdri squats beside the cooking fire with the didi, his hands held in the smoke, fingers splayed, but a Danish couple in their early 30s who share our table complain about the cold. In a thick Icelandic sweater the woman looks mournful and gives an involuntary shudder. ‘Boy,’ she says in near-perfect English. ‘If this is autumn, how bad is it in winter?’
‘Why don’t you put some more clothes on?’ I ask.
‘I’m wearing everything I have.’
‘Really? No down jacket?’
She shakes her head. ‘We did not know it would be cold like this. We have never been to 3000 metres before.’
I wonder then how far they intend to go, but the boyfriend answers my unspoken question. ‘We want to cross the Thorong La,’ he says. ‘Will it be cold like this?’
Almost 2000 metres higher than Pisang, the Thorong La is the pass which leads to the Kali Gandaki. ‘No,’ I say. ‘It’ll be much, much colder than this.’
Seen from our lodge Upper Pisang is like a series of swallows’ nests high above the river. On this crisp November morning a cocoon of blue-grey smoke embraces the village, each house wearing a prayer flag that hangs limply against its pole. Having slogged up the path to it, we pause to catch our breath and appreciate the sight of Annapurna II across the valley, its summit crest blistered by the afterglow of sunrise. The main trail to Manang remains below, but an alternative path heading northwest wins us a view through the valley where organ pipes of rock have been sand-blasted by the dry winds of high Asia. Mahdri is just ahead, a grey turtle with the faded blue shell of Alan’s rucksack concealing all but his legs. Together we wander among juniper and pine trees above a small green tarn, then slope down to another mani wall, cross a stream and come to a fork in the trail.
With a vague twitch of his head Mahdri gives directions. ‘Hongde’ (indicating to the left), ‘Ghyaru, Ngawal’ (uphill). The nasal sounds of ‘Ghyaru’ and ‘Ngawal’ hang in the air like an adjunct to ‘Om mani padme hum’. In this land of other-worldly encounters Alan and I are attracted by these sounds. So uphill it is.
It’s a steep climb, and wheezing with his head-cold Alan suffers, but all the effort is forgotten as Ghyaru gathers us into a long-distant past. This ancient village of flat-roofed houses crowds the hillside with an outlook onto a wall of glacial mountains – Lamjung Himal, Gangapurna and the north face of Annapurnas II and III. Notched tree trunks serve as ladders up which locals climb to their living quarters, while yaks are stabled on the ground floor. Once again, prayer flags adorn every rooftop, and now the air is stirring they gently slap against their poles.
Mahdri suggests a tea stop, takes us into a walled enclosure, then up a ladder, where he removes the rucksack and ducks through a low doorway to be swallowed by the darkness of the room beyond. Following, we’re struck by a cloud of acrid smoke, and it’s clear that whoever is in this room is burning dried yak dung. ‘This should clear your sinuses,’ I murmur to Alan.
As we grow accustomed to the gloom we’re directed by the man of the house to make ourselves comfortable. He appears to be old, his face rutted with high altitude wind and sun, a woollen hat pulled tightly over scalp and ears, his teeth broken where his lips part in a wordless smile of greeting. There are no seats so we use the floor, sitting cross-legged on a rug in front of the fire that burns on a stone-slab grate. A blackened pot of tsampa is being stirred, and moments later the clay-like substance is offered first to Mahdri, then to us. I decline, as does Alan, but Mahdri accepts without visible sign of gratitude, as is often the way in this land where acceptance of a gift adds karma of the giver. He who gives should be grateful. The man of the house laughs at me, aware no doubt that the tan-coloured goo is not to a Westerner’s liking, but nonetheless scrapes a lump from the pot with a stick and holds it across the fire. Our eyes meet. He nods. I accept the offering, take the lump with my fingers and pop it into my mouth. It tastes just as it looks… The old man laughs again, turns to Alan and asks in pantomime fashion if he is father and