The Long Way Down

Incidentally, Muktinath is fairly close to Heaven, according to Hinduism and Buddhism. The holy temple of Lord Muktinath is an important place of pilgrimage for followers of these two religions. What makes this place so special is to me the amazing quality of the apples, but pilgrims come here to see the place where you can find fertile soil, springs of boiling water and an eternal flame from methane gas coming out of the heavenly Himalayas. The pilgrims seemed mainly to consist of two groups: 1)Indians who devotes a part of their life to walk from their local village up here, wash their feet and walk quite happily back down again. 2) Japanese hobby-buddhists, on a weekend package holiday, going by plane to Jomsom and doing the rest of the trip sitting on a donkey, photographing Muktinath from all angles, complaining about the rice and getting out of there as fast as possible. I don't know what to say about the place. To be honest, the spring, the fire and the temple wasn't impressive in any other way than being 3769 meters above sea level.

As a sharp contrast to all this holiness is the local chapter of Hell's Angels. They don't have large Harley Davidsons, but they certainly are horsepowered. The Japanese customers have created a huge market for horses, and when the boys in the hood aren't out transporting pilgrims, they race the horses back and forth in the street, uhm... it's more like a path, actually, of Muktinath. Apart from making the path all muddy, this is their way of impressing the local young, unmarried women of the village. It works very well, there were many children to be seen everywhere. Another rather unholy thing are all the guesthouses, in particular the Bob Marley Bar, where they play reggae only, for both the two hours of electricity they have each day. It's just about enough electricity so that I could charge my electrical shaver again. I think my perfect shave each and every morning must annoy the other trekkers, who most often choose to let the hair in their face grow while they're in the wilderness. Oh well.

Due to tired feet and heavy rain, I spent a day resting in Muktinat, before leaving with Yvonne and Esther from the Netherlands. My feet definitely were in a Dutch-walking mood. The walk between Muktinath and Jomsom is possible the most beautiful one on the whole circuit. There are huge, open, barren plateaus with deep canyons and beautifully rounded mountains with lots of caverns. I expected to see Djengis Khan and a thousand riders coming against me at every turn.

We had lunch at Hill Ton Hotel in Yekle Bhatti. Hot chocolate. Yummy. The trek from Muktinath and down is called the Apple Pie Trek because of all the uhm... non-exotic cafes and bakeries on the way. This particular one had very interesting signs:

This also meant there were a lot of tourists in town, not being able to fly out. So, most of the guesthouses were full. Still, we managed to find a brand new guesthouse, Lomanthang Guest House, paying 185 rupis for three beds. And we were just about the only people there. The reason was that they hadn't made the roof waterproof yet, so after last night's rain, everything was wet. We turned the beds around in strange angles to find a place where it wasn't dripping on them and slept very well. Oh, and there were no electricity, so the showers were short and cold, but still exactly what I needed, somehow.

The next day we covered almost 20 kilometres, getting to Koketani, a tiny village close to Kalopani. Actually, we thought it WAS Kalopani until after we had settled in a guest house there. We took the wrong turn somewhere. Yes, there are very few signposts in Himalaya. It was a nice place, but a proof that this place wasn't on the main trek route could be found in the chocolate they sold; It was so old it had turned green.

As everywhere else, the surrounding mountains were stunning, during the day's walk we could see Dhaulagiri (8167m), Tukuche (6920m), Nilgiri (6940m) and some of the Annapurna peaks (about 8000m). But the banks of the river weren't a pretty sight. For several reasons, erosion is moving a lot of soil down the rivers continuosly. The path goes on the edge of more ground ready to fall into the river, and many places we had to climb a bit, to get past landslides of varying sizes. We walked past a lot of revegetation project fields, but most of them were already in the middle of the river or obviously destroyed in other ways.

The next day I left the Dutch, as they wanted to slow down a bit and wait for some German friends. This meant I walked far that day, guided and pushed forwards by all the good things I'd heard about my destination: Tatopani. More and more often I was met by horse/donkey caravans, bringing supplies up into the mountains. Not everything is carried by horses. Actually, I think most is carried by men. Especially large items, like panels and boards for housebuilding are carried on their backs, with a strap over their forehead. It looks impossible, but it isn't.

The villages from Kalopani and down were of a different standard than the ones I had seen earlier on my trek. They seemed much more developed, the houses had glass windows and they even had roads covered with flat stones. In Ghasa I was told I could get to Tatopani in about 5 hours of walking. I decided that I would not go to bed without eating something with meat that day, and so I had to get to Tatopani. Three and a half hours later I was there, and got the last available room in the village at Namaste Hotel, at 60 rupi per night. It was a very nice room. It had walls going almost to the floor and the ceiling, and there were just a few holes into the room next to it. The best thing about it was the view, as I could see straight into the common shower from my window.

The feeling I had, coming to Tatopani was a bit like the feeling I had a couple of years later, when I arrived in New York City after some days in Iceland. All of a sudden there was so many manmade things to see. There was electricity, 24 hours a day, infinite amounts of running water, even hot water if you were willing to pay. Coca Cola signs. A laundry shop (no machines, though). And the room was just about as clean as the hostel I stayed in in New York City. #:D) But most important, I got chicken for dinner. KaliGandaki Fried Chicken was just about the best chicken I had had in a loooong time. Well, of course it wasn't, but after more than 2 meatless weeks, it certainly felt great.

I had now come close to the end of my trek in the Himalayas, but there were a lot of adventures waiting for me further on.