この記事は昨年の９月〜１１月に友人のrobert clark氏がネパールの村を訪ねた様子が書かれています。外国人が立ち入るのがむずかしいエリアだったのでとても貴重なレポートです。
許可をいただいての転載です。
ヒマラヤンマテリアルの製品に使っている手紡ぎの糸や布はこの村で作られています。
以下転載 ＊かなりの長文ですが興味のあるひとはじっくり読んで見てください。
Nepal Travelogue - September 25 through November 15
Within twenty minutes of the Kathamandu airport my buddy Mark had us ensconsed at the Pashupatinath ashram blasting chillums and drinking bhang-infused milk tea with the ash-covered Naga Babas. What a contrast with the somber hempen religious rituals of China, Korea and Japan! This was the third day of the nine day Dasain Festival. After four days in Kathmandu we drove to Jyoti’s parental home near Pokhara for the final days of the Dasain celebration. As we climbed the four steep kilometers of ancient and beautifully maintained trails ranging from flat flagstones and cobblestone ramps through shallow rock stairs to steep carved and fitted stone staircases, soon it became dark and began to lightly rain. Walking with a head lamp on a moonless night provides quite a sharp view, but at a very limited range, against the absolute black of deep night. The wet stone steps of schist-like granite smoothed by generations of feet glimmered silvery pink and mauve in my LED headlamp like a mother-of-pearl stairway to heaven. I could smell the strong distinctive aroma of ripe Cannabis in the still night dripping with their aromatic nectars as I fell asleep warm and comfy to the melody of splashing raindrops against a mesmerizing backdrop of steady rain.
It was not until sunrise that I realized Jyoti’s house was surrounded by vast hillsides of huge flowering ganja (marijuana) trees standing sentry near almost every home and garden. Soon I was seated beneath the spreading arms of a four meter tall beauty with the smell of burning charas (hashish) surrounding me and an incredible view of the sun rising above the frozen and fractured glassine ridges of the nearby Anapurna snow mountains.
Our next destination was Rolpa District where much of the hemp yarn and cloth produced in Nepal for commerce originates. The mountainous districts of far western Nepal are strongholds for the Maoists who have been waging a rebellion against the monarchy and trying to establish a socialist/communist government for 11 years. The Maoists have always relied on rural support (both willing and coerced) and their uncanny ability to melt away into the local landscape and populace. Presently, the country is in a ceasefire and the people are trying to make a new representational parliamentary government.
The mountainous regions of Western Nepal present a puzzling patchwork of various jurisdictions dotted with National army or police outposts, Maoist camps and checkpoints staffed by varying factions presenting delays to travel. The word “Royal” has been blocked out on all signs. White truce flags or red flags emblazoned with the white ‘hammer and sickle’ or the Maoist white star in the upper left corner with a white fountain pen pointing diagonally at the star waved over each camp. The major tenants of the Maoists include equal education for all and abolition of the ‘untouchable’ class. As we entered the Rolpa region the Maoists required us to purchase a 5000 Rupee ($70!) pass “good for one year in all Maoist areas”. Outrageous, but I wonder if the receipt will qualify as a tax-deductible political contribution…
Along the road we encountered several groups of conscripted youths only 14 or 15 years of age toting a wide array of automatic weapons many of which I had never seen. No matter how friendly and smiley they appeared, the situation was still extremely disconcerting. Razor wire, automatic weapons, camouflage uniforms and sand-bagged bunkers is not really how I pictured scenic Nepal. Pretty soon it became disconcertingly apparent that it was very difficult to determine who was on which side, although the apparently National government troops sported an even wider range of munitions and wore better shoes – but were not much older than the Maoists, and much more uptight.
While the region was at interim peace we seized this timely opportunity to launch a research expedition to document the relict traditional hemp cultures of Nepal. Darchula District offered me a golden opportunity. The western Nepali Himalaya is the only region I am aware of where a single Cannabis crop is utilized for all three of its major products – seeds for sowing and food, fiber for spinning yarn, making cordage and weaving cloth and psychoactive resins, e.g. ganja or charas. This demonstration of the archetypal multiple uses of one of humanities earliest cultivated plants represents the subsistence cultivation of Cannabis as it was likely carried out across much of Eurasia just a few centuries before. Tales of legendary Cannabis cultures producing high quality hemp cloth brought me to Darchula like a moth to a flame. (Please see my upcoming research article on Nepal, as well as many other fascinating articles about Cannabis, by subscribing to the ‘Journal of Industrial Hemp’ available twice yearly from the International Hemp Association in Amsterdam iha@euronet.nl or contact me directly.)
For a decade, this region has been ‘de facto’ off limits to foreigners and government officials careless enough to stray there. The already overstressed rudimentary infrastructure has decayed to an even worse state with extensive trail damage and the majority of village water taps dry.
We had already been stranded by our first set of porters and after sleeping outside of a local home were relieved to hear the low grumble of an approaching lorry. The first provision lorry following the monsoon rains bounced its way along the winding rocky road skirting precipitous canyon slopes. We either rode crammed into the colorfully painted Kali the Destroyer theme family cab with half a dozen others or atop piles of rice, cooking oil, salt, tea, etc. as the 1950s vintage Indian Tata groaned up the steep switchbacks making frequent stops at each tiny local shop to collect on last spring’s bills and haggle over the price of new inventory. As we crawled along, Mark and his oldest son flew a kite from the lorry roof while a pair of laborers walked ahead and cleared away rocks from fresh landslides and piled small rock cairns to mark crumbling stretches of the shoulder.
By the end of the day I wished we had walked instead. The road was a work in perpetual repair and terribly unstable for a heavily loaded old lorry. The Himalayas are a geologic “Caution: Work in Progress” zone. As the earth’s tectonic plates crash together the Himalayan range slowly grows taller and sloughs off its fractured stone facade. We made countless stops to make repairs to either vehicle or road, unload cargo or take on even more passengers. Frankly, I could have walked the distance faster, albeit in the broiling sun. This was the last in a long string of rides stretching over 1100 kilometers from Kathmandu to the far northwestern Darchula District along the Indian and Tibetan borders. This was to be the last motorized vehicle and the last wheels we would see for almost a month. That afternoon we found two more porters and walked to a school a few kilometers away where we slept the night on the second story classroom balcony.
Let the walks begin! For the next four days we walked with Mark and Jyoti and their four children (ages 2, 4, 7 and 9) arriving each night at very dark inns along 50 kilometers of derelict roadbeds abandoned after the deforestation of the region decades before. We finally reached Darchula town on the Indian border and I hobbled in on a sprained ankle tortured by the constant uneven footing. Over a week of driving and walking to reach a border town that can be driven to on the Indian side along surfaced roads – but only Nepali and Indian citizens may cross here. The real trekking was yet to start. On the Indian side of the border the time is 15 minutes earlier on the 18th of October 2006, while here in Nepal it is the 31st of Asbin 2063. Go figure…
We sat exhausted in the candlelight and stared across the river dumbfounded by high tension electric lines, bright lights and late model automobiles gliding along smooth roads. This was the height of the Depawli “light festival” and the contrast between brightly colored electric bulbs and soft orange flames made the dichotomy between India and Nepal strikingly clear. Worlds apart! I used to think it harsh to call Nepal “medieval”. If the Nepali countryside had a few horse or oxen carts clattering along the cobble streets it would be more “medieval”, but as it is today, it seems almost prehistoric.
Sitting below the “guest house” in the morning calm I had my first real look at India, so close across the river I could easily toss a stone to the other bank. The Indian side is much more populous and the houses are generally built from cinder block with concrete roofs and painted plastered walls rather than stacked stone with slate roofs. Jyoti and the kids crossed the narrow suspension bridge into India and made the three day drive back to Kathmandu. I tried to rest my ankle for a couple of days while we provisioned and looked for another porter and a local guide. Although my ankle was still wonky, we decided to set out and see how things progressed, expecting to spend only a week or so (which became two weeks) exploring the upper Darchula region.
Immediately the trail rose sharply once again from the riverine banana, sugarcane, citrus and rice belt well below 1000 meters and reached a pass above 2000 meters where hemp, wheat, maize and potatoes predominate. As we topped the first pass we stepped into this tiny wayside village of flagstone walkways lighted by myriad Depawli candles placed along the rock walls – such a heart-warming and comforting site. Here we had the best food (as usual beans and rice) and accommodations (a raised plank bed with a carpet and blanket and a clean enclosed communal toilet) of the trek and enjoyed a morning visit by a troop of curious black and white monkeys.
The mountain people here appear to be of Tibeto-Burman heritage with stocky build, dark skin, broad rounded faces rather then the more typically Indo-Aryan Nepali lowlanders of taller and thinner build, lighter skin and narrower angular faces. The elderly sit and watch as filthy curmudgeons scrabble in the lanes before tiny candle-lit shops. Livestock and pedestrian traffic share the rocky trails between homes. Houses are usually of two levels and made of stone walls plastered with mud with a flat slate stone roof – the livestock locked safely below at night and the family sleeping above. The simplest homes were only of one room, but many had an attached kitchen and a grain threshing and storage room where families sat and shucked corn late into the night by the light of a single candle.
As we approach a dark home where we sought lodging we called out and a heavy wooden plank shutter swung open. A woman with a small boy poked her head out of one quarter of the small cross-barred window. In her hand she held a flaming splinter of wood as a small torch and the light across her weathered face cast a long shadow across the whitewashed mud wall. She threw open the heavy plank door and invited us up several stairs onto the threshing room floor where we slept for the night. Dawn’s glow enhanced the beauty of the soft curves of the house. Reminiscent of mud huts in West Africa – although rectilinear rather then circular – the smooth rounded curves of the doorways, eves, arches, stairways and steps lend soft edges to a largely harsh existence.
Trails ranged in slope from disused engineered roadbeds of flat to moderate rise and relatively consistent slope (rarest, easiest and longest routes); up to 30 degree rises with short switchbacks barely a foot wide snaking up and down 45 degree slopes of loose rock. Trails barely half a meter (19 inches) wide carved and constructed across sheer cliff faces crossing above and/or beneath overhanging rocks along the verge of precipice – climbing ever upward tracing the path of the cataracts far below. Gaps are spanned with near vertical walls of stacked rocks – the same mortarless construction as the buildings – an active landscape of stacked rock paths, walls, steps, aqueducts and buildings. Pack trains of stubborn mules, broad-shouldered yaks and long-legged goats and sheep – carrying life’s necessities to shops higher up – rule the trails and it is best to step aside well up hill when possible to allow them to pass.
Carrying old style metal umbrellas down a super steep and exposed, narrow switchback trail in the rain, with thunder cracking immediately after the lightning flash was terrifying for me and exciting for Yan Xia. However, the most fearful vertigo experience for me was traversing across the face of a cliff hundreds of feet above thundering river rapids where the edge of the trail had collapsed and was replaced by a series of narrow wooden planks spanning empty space – my right foot walked the loose ‘terra infirma’ while my left walked the plank, with a swimming green-tinged view straight down the cliff between my feet – not at all a comforting feeling.
Yan Xia, my Chinese rough travel companion of many years was not the least bit fazed by the circumstances and just pirouetted along like a ballerina providing encouraging coaching all the way. On the narrowest and most exposed trails I try to focus only on my feet and the trail immediately ahead of my leading foot. I even get shaky crossing modern iron suspension bridges – suffering from acute agoraphobia as I do – choosing to cross them alone and slowly, focused on the horizon of the other side. She, on the other hand, loves to pound across them at a full run just to see how much flex she can generate for a full body rush. While she is totally convinced that no ill accident will befall her, I am constantly aware that a simple misstep could mean certain death! (Notice the inverse in our ages – she 35 and me 53 – and that she is a naturally fatalistic Chinese!)
All through our search for the major hemp growing and charas rubbing regions we were repeatedly regaled with tales of the Land of Marma – just up the trail a few more days – where everyone grows Cannabis and they have for eternity, blah, blah, blah. Nonexistent on even the most recent maps and rapidly becoming even more mythical, after a week we finally reached the destination of our cosmic pilgrimage. As we crossed the final 3000 meter (10,000 foot) pass into the Marma region we were presented with a wide panorama of high snow mountains framing picturesque white-washed villages each surrounded by fields of ripe Cannabis tended by friendly locals. Ahhhh…
During the next few days we visited many households collecting various traditional hemp products and learning about the local cultivation and processing techniques. The locals were very friendly and sharing. A good time was had by all. I took jillions of photos and collected a few really fine hemp artifacts with copious smiles along the way.
I had been anticipating the worst for days on the way back down as we approached the feared stretch of planked trail. A traverse of the narrow river gorge was seemingly unavoidable. I even considered a blindfold and a leash! Then, as Yan Xia and I descended we became separated from all of our porters and our companion Mark at a previously unnoticed fork in the trail before the “Planks of Death”. As I sat performing the perfunctory herbal meditations wishing all my fears would abate, Yan Xia noticed an elderly woman beckoning us from high above the narrow river gorge. She was ancient in appearance, thin as a rail and wearing in a long red dress – bearing a huge basket of firewood and a five-gallon oil tin. The second trail appeared steep and long and we had not traveled it before, but hell, if it meant missing the ‘Planks of Death’, I thought to myself, “If the old crone can do it, why can’t I?”! Well, our octogenarian angle saved my butt and several hours later, after climbing and descending major steep switchbacks, we rejoined the main trail below the feared obstruction. All was well…
Privacy was extremely rare and convenient personal hygiene was always difficult. This situation was even harder for Yan Xia as we usually ate and slept at trailside shops and she was often the only woman in sight. Drinking water must be boiled, there is never enough hot water for a bath, and people shit everywhere. There is no toilet paper for sale in the shops and I am unsure if they follow the ‘Wipe with the left, eat with the right’ convention. When we would asked, “Where is the toilet?”, the most common answer was, “There are toilets everywhere!” accompanied by a broad smile and a wide sweeping gesture encompassing the whole rocky watershed above the village. Great, NOT!
During the vast majority of our time in Nepal we ate nothing but beans and rice (or occasionally chapatti/roti) with boiled green leaf vegetables (saag) giving way to white root crops (potatoes, radishes and turnips) and the ubiquitous spicy hemp seed chortney condiment. The Maoists had prohibited alcohol manufacture, sale and consumption. During our trek we saw no internal combustion engines, wheeled vehicles, television, printed signage, glass bottles or windows, no electricity save for small solar panels and dry cell batteries and no tourists. We drank no alcohol, ate no meat, eggs or cheese and only had milk in our tea. Essentially vegan, but the only real bummer was no green vegetables at high altitude. Needless to say we all lost weight!
I expect you have had a wonderful holiday season. May we all enjoy our lives to the fullest!!
One Love,
Rob
許可をいただいての転載です。
ヒマラヤンマテリアルの製品に使っている手紡ぎの糸や布はこの村で作られています。
以下転載 ＊かなりの長文ですが興味のあるひとはじっくり読んで見てください。
Nepal Travelogue - September 25 through November 15
Within twenty minutes of the Kathamandu airport my buddy Mark had us ensconsed at the Pashupatinath ashram blasting chillums and drinking bhang-infused milk tea with the ash-covered Naga Babas. What a contrast with the somber hempen religious rituals of China, Korea and Japan! This was the third day of the nine day Dasain Festival. After four days in Kathmandu we drove to Jyoti’s parental home near Pokhara for the final days of the Dasain celebration. As we climbed the four steep kilometers of ancient and beautifully maintained trails ranging from flat flagstones and cobblestone ramps through shallow rock stairs to steep carved and fitted stone staircases, soon it became dark and began to lightly rain. Walking with a head lamp on a moonless night provides quite a sharp view, but at a very limited range, against the absolute black of deep night. The wet stone steps of schist-like granite smoothed by generations of feet glimmered silvery pink and mauve in my LED headlamp like a mother-of-pearl stairway to heaven. I could smell the strong distinctive aroma of ripe Cannabis in the still night dripping with their aromatic nectars as I fell asleep warm and comfy to the melody of splashing raindrops against a mesmerizing backdrop of steady rain.
It was not until sunrise that I realized Jyoti’s house was surrounded by vast hillsides of huge flowering ganja (marijuana) trees standing sentry near almost every home and garden. Soon I was seated beneath the spreading arms of a four meter tall beauty with the smell of burning charas (hashish) surrounding me and an incredible view of the sun rising above the frozen and fractured glassine ridges of the nearby Anapurna snow mountains.
Our next destination was Rolpa District where much of the hemp yarn and cloth produced in Nepal for commerce originates. The mountainous districts of far western Nepal are strongholds for the Maoists who have been waging a rebellion against the monarchy and trying to establish a socialist/communist government for 11 years. The Maoists have always relied on rural support (both willing and coerced) and their uncanny ability to melt away into the local landscape and populace. Presently, the country is in a ceasefire and the people are trying to make a new representational parliamentary government.
The mountainous regions of Western Nepal present a puzzling patchwork of various jurisdictions dotted with National army or police outposts, Maoist camps and checkpoints staffed by varying factions presenting delays to travel. The word “Royal” has been blocked out on all signs. White truce flags or red flags emblazoned with the white ‘hammer and sickle’ or the Maoist white star in the upper left corner with a white fountain pen pointing diagonally at the star waved over each camp. The major tenants of the Maoists include equal education for all and abolition of the ‘untouchable’ class. As we entered the Rolpa region the Maoists required us to purchase a 5000 Rupee ($70!) pass “good for one year in all Maoist areas”. Outrageous, but I wonder if the receipt will qualify as a tax-deductible political contribution…
Along the road we encountered several groups of conscripted youths only 14 or 15 years of age toting a wide array of automatic weapons many of which I had never seen. No matter how friendly and smiley they appeared, the situation was still extremely disconcerting. Razor wire, automatic weapons, camouflage uniforms and sand-bagged bunkers is not really how I pictured scenic Nepal. Pretty soon it became disconcertingly apparent that it was very difficult to determine who was on which side, although the apparently National government troops sported an even wider range of munitions and wore better shoes – but were not much older than the Maoists, and much more uptight.
While the region was at interim peace we seized this timely opportunity to launch a research expedition to document the relict traditional hemp cultures of Nepal. Darchula District offered me a golden opportunity. The western Nepali Himalaya is the only region I am aware of where a single Cannabis crop is utilized for all three of its major products – seeds for sowing and food, fiber for spinning yarn, making cordage and weaving cloth and psychoactive resins, e.g. ganja or charas. This demonstration of the archetypal multiple uses of one of humanities earliest cultivated plants represents the subsistence cultivation of Cannabis as it was likely carried out across much of Eurasia just a few centuries before. Tales of legendary Cannabis cultures producing high quality hemp cloth brought me to Darchula like a moth to a flame. (Please see my upcoming research article on Nepal, as well as many other fascinating articles about Cannabis, by subscribing to the ‘Journal of Industrial Hemp’ available twice yearly from the International Hemp Association in Amsterdam iha@euronet.nl or contact me directly.)
For a decade, this region has been ‘de facto’ off limits to foreigners and government officials careless enough to stray there. The already overstressed rudimentary infrastructure has decayed to an even worse state with extensive trail damage and the majority of village water taps dry.
We had already been stranded by our first set of porters and after sleeping outside of a local home were relieved to hear the low grumble of an approaching lorry. The first provision lorry following the monsoon rains bounced its way along the winding rocky road skirting precipitous canyon slopes. We either rode crammed into the colorfully painted Kali the Destroyer theme family cab with half a dozen others or atop piles of rice, cooking oil, salt, tea, etc. as the 1950s vintage Indian Tata groaned up the steep switchbacks making frequent stops at each tiny local shop to collect on last spring’s bills and haggle over the price of new inventory. As we crawled along, Mark and his oldest son flew a kite from the lorry roof while a pair of laborers walked ahead and cleared away rocks from fresh landslides and piled small rock cairns to mark crumbling stretches of the shoulder.
By the end of the day I wished we had walked instead. The road was a work in perpetual repair and terribly unstable for a heavily loaded old lorry. The Himalayas are a geologic “Caution: Work in Progress” zone. As the earth’s tectonic plates crash together the Himalayan range slowly grows taller and sloughs off its fractured stone facade. We made countless stops to make repairs to either vehicle or road, unload cargo or take on even more passengers. Frankly, I could have walked the distance faster, albeit in the broiling sun. This was the last in a long string of rides stretching over 1100 kilometers from Kathmandu to the far northwestern Darchula District along the Indian and Tibetan borders. This was to be the last motorized vehicle and the last wheels we would see for almost a month. That afternoon we found two more porters and walked to a school a few kilometers away where we slept the night on the second story classroom balcony.
Let the walks begin! For the next four days we walked with Mark and Jyoti and their four children (ages 2, 4, 7 and 9) arriving each night at very dark inns along 50 kilometers of derelict roadbeds abandoned after the deforestation of the region decades before. We finally reached Darchula town on the Indian border and I hobbled in on a sprained ankle tortured by the constant uneven footing. Over a week of driving and walking to reach a border town that can be driven to on the Indian side along surfaced roads – but only Nepali and Indian citizens may cross here. The real trekking was yet to start. On the Indian side of the border the time is 15 minutes earlier on the 18th of October 2006, while here in Nepal it is the 31st of Asbin 2063. Go figure…
We sat exhausted in the candlelight and stared across the river dumbfounded by high tension electric lines, bright lights and late model automobiles gliding along smooth roads. This was the height of the Depawli “light festival” and the contrast between brightly colored electric bulbs and soft orange flames made the dichotomy between India and Nepal strikingly clear. Worlds apart! I used to think it harsh to call Nepal “medieval”. If the Nepali countryside had a few horse or oxen carts clattering along the cobble streets it would be more “medieval”, but as it is today, it seems almost prehistoric.
Sitting below the “guest house” in the morning calm I had my first real look at India, so close across the river I could easily toss a stone to the other bank. The Indian side is much more populous and the houses are generally built from cinder block with concrete roofs and painted plastered walls rather than stacked stone with slate roofs. Jyoti and the kids crossed the narrow suspension bridge into India and made the three day drive back to Kathmandu. I tried to rest my ankle for a couple of days while we provisioned and looked for another porter and a local guide. Although my ankle was still wonky, we decided to set out and see how things progressed, expecting to spend only a week or so (which became two weeks) exploring the upper Darchula region.
Immediately the trail rose sharply once again from the riverine banana, sugarcane, citrus and rice belt well below 1000 meters and reached a pass above 2000 meters where hemp, wheat, maize and potatoes predominate. As we topped the first pass we stepped into this tiny wayside village of flagstone walkways lighted by myriad Depawli candles placed along the rock walls – such a heart-warming and comforting site. Here we had the best food (as usual beans and rice) and accommodations (a raised plank bed with a carpet and blanket and a clean enclosed communal toilet) of the trek and enjoyed a morning visit by a troop of curious black and white monkeys.
The mountain people here appear to be of Tibeto-Burman heritage with stocky build, dark skin, broad rounded faces rather then the more typically Indo-Aryan Nepali lowlanders of taller and thinner build, lighter skin and narrower angular faces. The elderly sit and watch as filthy curmudgeons scrabble in the lanes before tiny candle-lit shops. Livestock and pedestrian traffic share the rocky trails between homes. Houses are usually of two levels and made of stone walls plastered with mud with a flat slate stone roof – the livestock locked safely below at night and the family sleeping above. The simplest homes were only of one room, but many had an attached kitchen and a grain threshing and storage room where families sat and shucked corn late into the night by the light of a single candle.
As we approach a dark home where we sought lodging we called out and a heavy wooden plank shutter swung open. A woman with a small boy poked her head out of one quarter of the small cross-barred window. In her hand she held a flaming splinter of wood as a small torch and the light across her weathered face cast a long shadow across the whitewashed mud wall. She threw open the heavy plank door and invited us up several stairs onto the threshing room floor where we slept for the night. Dawn’s glow enhanced the beauty of the soft curves of the house. Reminiscent of mud huts in West Africa – although rectilinear rather then circular – the smooth rounded curves of the doorways, eves, arches, stairways and steps lend soft edges to a largely harsh existence.
Trails ranged in slope from disused engineered roadbeds of flat to moderate rise and relatively consistent slope (rarest, easiest and longest routes); up to 30 degree rises with short switchbacks barely a foot wide snaking up and down 45 degree slopes of loose rock. Trails barely half a meter (19 inches) wide carved and constructed across sheer cliff faces crossing above and/or beneath overhanging rocks along the verge of precipice – climbing ever upward tracing the path of the cataracts far below. Gaps are spanned with near vertical walls of stacked rocks – the same mortarless construction as the buildings – an active landscape of stacked rock paths, walls, steps, aqueducts and buildings. Pack trains of stubborn mules, broad-shouldered yaks and long-legged goats and sheep – carrying life’s necessities to shops higher up – rule the trails and it is best to step aside well up hill when possible to allow them to pass.
Carrying old style metal umbrellas down a super steep and exposed, narrow switchback trail in the rain, with thunder cracking immediately after the lightning flash was terrifying for me and exciting for Yan Xia. However, the most fearful vertigo experience for me was traversing across the face of a cliff hundreds of feet above thundering river rapids where the edge of the trail had collapsed and was replaced by a series of narrow wooden planks spanning empty space – my right foot walked the loose ‘terra infirma’ while my left walked the plank, with a swimming green-tinged view straight down the cliff between my feet – not at all a comforting feeling.
Yan Xia, my Chinese rough travel companion of many years was not the least bit fazed by the circumstances and just pirouetted along like a ballerina providing encouraging coaching all the way. On the narrowest and most exposed trails I try to focus only on my feet and the trail immediately ahead of my leading foot. I even get shaky crossing modern iron suspension bridges – suffering from acute agoraphobia as I do – choosing to cross them alone and slowly, focused on the horizon of the other side. She, on the other hand, loves to pound across them at a full run just to see how much flex she can generate for a full body rush. While she is totally convinced that no ill accident will befall her, I am constantly aware that a simple misstep could mean certain death! (Notice the inverse in our ages – she 35 and me 53 – and that she is a naturally fatalistic Chinese!)
All through our search for the major hemp growing and charas rubbing regions we were repeatedly regaled with tales of the Land of Marma – just up the trail a few more days – where everyone grows Cannabis and they have for eternity, blah, blah, blah. Nonexistent on even the most recent maps and rapidly becoming even more mythical, after a week we finally reached the destination of our cosmic pilgrimage. As we crossed the final 3000 meter (10,000 foot) pass into the Marma region we were presented with a wide panorama of high snow mountains framing picturesque white-washed villages each surrounded by fields of ripe Cannabis tended by friendly locals. Ahhhh…
During the next few days we visited many households collecting various traditional hemp products and learning about the local cultivation and processing techniques. The locals were very friendly and sharing. A good time was had by all. I took jillions of photos and collected a few really fine hemp artifacts with copious smiles along the way.
I had been anticipating the worst for days on the way back down as we approached the feared stretch of planked trail. A traverse of the narrow river gorge was seemingly unavoidable. I even considered a blindfold and a leash! Then, as Yan Xia and I descended we became separated from all of our porters and our companion Mark at a previously unnoticed fork in the trail before the “Planks of Death”. As I sat performing the perfunctory herbal meditations wishing all my fears would abate, Yan Xia noticed an elderly woman beckoning us from high above the narrow river gorge. She was ancient in appearance, thin as a rail and wearing in a long red dress – bearing a huge basket of firewood and a five-gallon oil tin. The second trail appeared steep and long and we had not traveled it before, but hell, if it meant missing the ‘Planks of Death’, I thought to myself, “If the old crone can do it, why can’t I?”! Well, our octogenarian angle saved my butt and several hours later, after climbing and descending major steep switchbacks, we rejoined the main trail below the feared obstruction. All was well…
Privacy was extremely rare and convenient personal hygiene was always difficult. This situation was even harder for Yan Xia as we usually ate and slept at trailside shops and she was often the only woman in sight. Drinking water must be boiled, there is never enough hot water for a bath, and people shit everywhere. There is no toilet paper for sale in the shops and I am unsure if they follow the ‘Wipe with the left, eat with the right’ convention. When we would asked, “Where is the toilet?”, the most common answer was, “There are toilets everywhere!” accompanied by a broad smile and a wide sweeping gesture encompassing the whole rocky watershed above the village. Great, NOT!
During the vast majority of our time in Nepal we ate nothing but beans and rice (or occasionally chapatti/roti) with boiled green leaf vegetables (saag) giving way to white root crops (potatoes, radishes and turnips) and the ubiquitous spicy hemp seed chortney condiment. The Maoists had prohibited alcohol manufacture, sale and consumption. During our trek we saw no internal combustion engines, wheeled vehicles, television, printed signage, glass bottles or windows, no electricity save for small solar panels and dry cell batteries and no tourists. We drank no alcohol, ate no meat, eggs or cheese and only had milk in our tea. Essentially vegan, but the only real bummer was no green vegetables at high altitude. Needless to say we all lost weight!
I expect you have had a wonderful holiday season. May we all enjoy our lives to the fullest!!
One Love,
Rob
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