NEPAL: Kathmandu and Chitlang

After our trek, we spend a little more time in Sikkim enjoying, as the Israelis say, "Da Nature". Sikkim is a wonderful place full of Israelis. Actually, India is full of Israelis. I have met more Israelis in India/Nepal than I met in Israel. It is a shame I didn't do this India trip before the internship in Israel because I would have had so many more Israeli friends. "Why like dis?"

Moving on, after Sikkim we spent a few more days in Darjeeling and then headed for the Indian/Nepal border at Kakarvita. The trip to the border was uneventful, just a few shared jeeps and a unpleasant stop in Siliguri. The bus ride from the border to Kathmandu is where the real fun lies.

There is no "tourist" bus from that border to Kathmandu. Tourist bus means that you pay a little more and the bus has mostly tourists and stops less. Oh, it also doesn't have bags a rice piled up in the aisles. Our bus was considered a local bus. We were seated second row from the back. Never sit at the back of the bus in Nepal and India. The buses and the roads are so poor they combine to an extremely bumpy ride. More bumpy than any bus ride you have ever taken. The bus was really dusty, we had a argument about our bags been locked under the bus, the bus stopped all the time, bags of rice in the aisles that Randy used as a foot rest because he is a giant in this country and can't fit and more and more. The distance between the border crossing at Kathmandu is 600 KM. They tell you the bus should take 12-14 hours which is already twice as long as it would take us in Canada to go that distance. We were stuck on the dirty, smelly bus for 17 hours. Travel takes forever in Nepal. At one point the bus stopped and a family came on. This old, skinny man sat next to me. After a bit, the owner/manager (?) of the bus came to the back to discuss something, probably money. They got in a big argument with yelling and some arm pulling. I have no idea what the problem was but it was all happening right beside me. Then, after the lights were turned out, I saw the old man reach across me with a bottle full of liquid and pour it out the window. I know for a fact he had finished the water out of the bottle earlier. Unfortunately, my mind went straight to urine being poured out the window over me. I still think that's what it was.

We finally made it to Kathmandu and we were greeted with a mob of hotel owners and taxi drivers trying to get us to go with them. This happened when we got to Pokara too. It is extremely unpleasant especially after 17 hours on that bus. They just keep bothering you to take their hotel or taxi. It is one of the worst things about Nepal. We ended up leaving with someone to get out of the mess of people.

Kathmandu was a surprising relief from Indian cities. It is still dirty, noisy and dusty but there are a lot less people. Somehow it felt calmer. Also, there is so much to buy in Kathmandu. There is trekking gear, crafts, jewellery, clothes, counterfeit musc/movies, and anything else you can think of. It is overwhelming to the point where I bought very little. They also have live english music every night with a few places offering live Nepali bands. This was exciting at first because we were used to the 9 o'clock curfew in Sikkim. It soon became a bit obnoxious as the set lists did not change and all the bars were close enough that you could hear competing music trying to overpower each other.

After too many days in Kathmandu we decided to go to this small village we had heard about from some other tourist. It was almost a secret Israeli tourist spot as they all tell each other about it. Anyway, this village is called Chitlang and the man with the home-stay has a goat cheese factory. This Israeli girl, Raya, who we had been running into all over on our travels, accompanied us to the village.

It was a small farming community up in the mountains but within a valley. When we arrived, they were just finishing a week long religious celebration. A holy man was in the village to celebrate and the entire village along with neighbouring villages were all together. We were quickly ushered into the big tent where people were dancing and the holy man was chanting. We were urged to dance and had a nice time trying to copy the Nepali dance while being stared at by 300 people many of which don't see many white people.

After a little time, we left and went for a nice walk through the fields and hills. We found ourselves in wheat fields that sparkled with the sun. The whole area was beautiful. We had a lot of fun wondering around.


We returned to find that the party had moved out of the tent and there was a dance circle outside which we got dragged into. The girl dancing with Randy is his future wife.


Although it was a lot of fun, it was nice that it was the last day of the festival so we could have some quiet and do other things.

We were only there two nights yet we managed to experience a lot. The man, Oshuk, who invited us into his home was amazing. That first night, after a bit to drink, I suddenly experience something I have never done before. I became really dizzy and upon my trip to the bathroom I fainted. This man came running when he heard the bang and carried me into the room to lay me down. I was completely fine once I was lying down but he was so caring. He kept hugging me and kissing me like a father and not like a person I had met 10 hours before. It was suggested that I have some sugar so he went running and came back with a handful of sugar. I politely refused putting a handful of sugar in my mouth but accepted the cookies and water he brought. It was such strong love for a stranger that really blew me away.

As mentioned, Oshuk has started a goat cheese factory through a cooperative with a French organization. One of the tastiest things we ate was a platter of fresh garden vegetables covered in soft goat cheese. I don't normally like tomatoes but when this platter came out I could not resist. I now will eat tomatoes.
The factory was very simple. Only four rooms with little inside. The family made the cheese everyday. We ate a lot and he even made us some Lavne, Israeli soft cheese spread, which tasted more like cream cheese but was exquisite. He even had Zatar from some Israeli visitor. Most of the cheese was sold to expensive hotels in Kathmandu. I don't think there is another goat cheese factory in Nepal.

The second day, we had another unique experience for city kids. Oshuk brought over a goat and tied it to a post next to the house. My suspicions were confirmed when I saw them sharpening the knife. They brought the goat over to a log, one person held its back legs, the other held the rope around its neck, and Oshuk held the knife over his head.

Randy took some very graphic photos of the whole event. Some of the less graphic ones can be seen on Facebook. We watched the entire process from the beheading, to the draining of the blood, to the cleaning and sorting of the meat. They eat almost all of the goat in some way or another. We were treated to some of the fresh goat meat in our next meal. Some of the meat was tough and we had no idea which part of the goat we were eating. I don't eat meat much but after watching the whole slaughter process, eating the goat was essential. At the same time, watching the process and truly realizing the complete disconnect we have from our meat has made me even less interested in eating meat. That goat was alive just a few hours before I ate it. I watched it annoyingly poop on the porch where it was being tied. And then I ate it. That connection and realization to our meat has been lost in our society and there is something wrong with that.

Anyway, the next morning, Randy and I went on a long walk to see a lake in the area. It was about a 3 hour walk both ways and we were planning on going back to Kathmandu when we got back. The walk was nice. We walked through villages then forest, then next to rivers. We eventually made it to this spectacular lake.

While we were sitting, we noticed that a group of school children were canoeing across the river. This must have been there daily route to school. We spent too much time sitting and wondering around this lake that we had to hustle back.

Chitlang village with certainly remain in my mind, not just for the different experiences, but for the warmth that was shown to me as a guest. A truly magical place.

Avidan

Goecha La Trek - Sikkim, India

After a long, comfortable stay in Darjeeling, we took a shared jeep to Sikkim; another province in India. I have spoken about the shared jeeps before but you are packed in like sardines. Anyway, because of bad planning, we were forced to go to a different town first. This place is called Pelling but it is just a road full of hotels. Not much character to the place and the spectacular view is not available at this time of year. We had our eyes set on Yuksom.

Yuksom is another small town where one leaves to go to the Goecha La trek. Yuksom has a quiet, village feel to it. Also, the province of India, Sikkim, has some very interesting rules. This meant that at 9:00 PM a policeman walks the street blowing a whistle and all the restaurants have to close or at least bring everyone inside. Sikkim is a much stricter place. We were required to get a free permit to go to this province and my passport has more stamps in it from Sikkim than all the times I went to Israel. It has some very positive non-bureaucratic rules too dealing with the environment. They have created a culture there completely opposite to most of the rest of India: they don't litter. It is extremely frowned upon and plastic bags are banned. Monitoring the tourists like they do is in order to limit the garbage brought in and limit the erosion of the beautiful Sikkim landscape. The problem is they don't have the same power with South (more south than Sikkim) Indian tourists who do not need a permit and throw their garbage out the window without a second thought.

Another requirement in Sikkim (only for non-Indian tourists) is to go on the treks with a guide, porters, and yaks.

As you can obviously see from the picture, these animals are not actually yaks. Yaks can not live at such low altitudes. These are Juang (most likely misspelled), a mix between a cow and a yak. Anyway, being required to have these things made the trek more comfortable in certain ways. All our food was cooked for us, all our stuff was carried for us, the camp was set up for us, and we were guided. Nonetheless, we still had to sleep in tents.

We organized the trek with this nice women who, with her husband, ran and owned the guesthouse we were staying at. There were five of us: Randy and myself of course; another Toronto guy, David; this girl from California, Lisa; and this Israeli girl we met, Sivan. For the five of us we had two guides, 5 yaks, 3 porters, 1 yak guy, and a cook.

The trek started through these beautiful forests up and down the hills walking down to valleys to cross amazing rivers and waterfalls. Then it turned to a steep part that ended with us at a place called Choka at 3000 metres. We spent an extra night acclimatizing to the altitude before we went on. The day after, we continued up a steep part through a Rhododendron forest. For those that don't know, a Rhododendron tree blooms in the spring and has the most beautiful, big wildflowers. The highlight is the amount blooming at the same time and the different colours of the flowers.
By the end of the day, we were walking above the tree line looking out at the cloudy sky with bits of mountain peaks in between. We crossed over the peak and went down a bit lower to Dzongri at 4050 metres. Many people just trek to Dzongri because the view is spectacular. We woke up the next morning, early, for the sunrise over the snow-peaked mountains. The bonus was the snow that accumulated the night before. It started as hail and moved to wet snow that made our campsite look somber yet exciting.

Another interesting part of the trek was the mountain dog/dogs that follow trekkers up and down the mountain. We named ours Yoda because it was wise to the ways of the mountain. In Dzongri, it managed to squeeze its way into our tent and slept at the foot of my mattress. It was very cold outside and the dogs have no shelter.

The next day, our plan was only to walk maybe 5 hours and stay at a similar altitude. It felt a lot longer because of the altitude. It is hard to breath up there so usually easy walks or ascents can be difficult. This day we continued to walk above the tree line in these big open fields with next to nothing but shrubs growing (the Yak picture from above was taken during this day). The day ended with an extremely steep decent to a strong river and a surprisingly tough walk to our campsite. This was our first of three super cold nights.

In these mountains, after about 1-2pm, there is complete cloud cover and the wind picks up making it extremely cold. During the morning, the sun hits the top of these snow covered mountains and lots of the snow evaporates to forms these clouds. This happens in the early afternoon and makes the place freezing. A stark contrast from the morning sun.

The following day, day 5, we only walked 1.5 hours over flat ground to another campsite. A the same cold day as the day before and waited for dinner so that we could crawl into our tents after dinner and keep warm. We had an even earlier night then usual as we had to wake up before sunrise to climb to Goecha La. Another lucky night where we had a snow storm that covered the ground with fresh snow.

Goecha is a mountain peak and Goacha La is the pass between the Goecha peak and the other side. So, our sixth day of trekking and we woke up at 4am to walk. The first part passed a quiet lake and rose into the mountain pass just beyond the lake. We were walking up to 4500 metres so the going was slow. The amazing view of Kanchendzonga (third highest mountain in the world) made the breathless walk worthwhile.

This first view point was not the actual pass. This was another 1-2 hours away. The walk took us over a dried lake bed (which wasn't dry 10 years ago) making it seem like we were on some kind of glacier expedition. We then started our climb up to 4800 metres. It was a tiring trek up the side of a ridge. At the top, the first thing you see looking down is Green Lake. This beautiful lake unfrozen in the mountains. Then you look out at an even closer view of Kanchendzonga and some other peaks including Goecha.

As I was sitting at the view point, I could hear cracking and rumbling coming from some of the smallish glaciers on top of the mountains. After a lot of cracking sounds a tiny piece of the glacier broke off and fell almost into the lake. It was interesting to witness. The noise was incredibly loud for the seemingly small piece that broke off.

We then began our descent back to our last campsite. In total, our day was about 10-11 hours long, walking at over 4000 metres. A well deserved rest at the bottom.

The next morning, we began our serious descent. It took us 6 days to get to the peak and it would take us two to get down (this includes a bit of a short cut). Anyway, we continued our descent through the results of another substantial snow storm. Despite the snow, it was sunny and we soon stripped off our warm clothes.

Randy took some excellent pictures as you can see. The day took us through all for seasons. We woke up to winter, the walk through the melting snow - spring, summer happened later that day after we got a bit further and the sun was at its peak, and fall appeared once we had finished for the day and the clouds came out again and lowered the temperature a far bit. It was a great day with a consistent up an down over hills. For the most part, we still had a great view over the trees of the mountains. Despite the different route back, we arrived at the same campsite as the first night.

That night we had a "party" which consisted of a small amount of whiskey and rum and a delicious chocolate cake made by our cook over a gas flame that said "Happy Trek" on top. Our guide seemed to get a bit drunk every night but this night he had even more and, with his increasing comfort with us, began to do a lot of talking. For one, he basically bragged about how the Himalayan Mountains, his mountains, were better than the mountains in California where Lisa (member of a group) worked. He was a weird guy once you got to know him and not all that nice either.

The alcohol that our guide, Nima, usually drank was called Tongba. This is fermented millet that is served in a big bamboo glass with a bamboo straw. The millet looks like tiny red balls. You refill by pouring more water over them. We drank a lot of these too. Tastes a bit like the Japanese sake.

The final day, we walked back to Yuksom, retracing our steps from the first day of the trek. We stopped for lunch under a bridge that was crossing a waterfall and river. Nice place to eat lunch.

For more pictures, look at Randy's facebook page or his flickr account which is more selective. http://www.flickr.com/photos/46723117@N06/

Avidan