The Mantra of Avalokitesvara

How does a denizen of the Nepali Himalayas become affluent in a non-touristed region? Join the Indian army. Send the money home to your devoted wife, who purchases a TV and satellite dish, solar panels, Tibetan carpets, thangkas, and various adornments for the shrine. A large poster of an English manor and flower garden...true paradise. A sink and an improved hearth. Copper pots. A comfy bed. And a high quality sound system.

Thus it was that I found myself in a surprisingly clean and well-managed tea house in the non-touristed Ganesh Himal. In the early evening, hail pounded down on corrugated metal roofing, a good time to slurp Tibetan tea and rakshi.

At 6:00 AM, I was blasted out of a cozy sleep via the above Mantra of Avalokitesvara, piped directly into the sleeping quarters. The reaction was irritation. I paid good rupees for my sleep. Those feelings dissipated quickly. The sky was clear, the Himalayan foothills green, prayer flags flapping in the breeze, and the villagers were an hour into their routines. This rendering of the Mantra is mind-blowing, as far as I'm concerned.

Some folks, mostly Westerners, describe this take on the Mantra as "new-agey" or "inauthentic" or "over-produced". You wouldn't have heard this melody wafting out of Himalayan gompas 15 years ago, much less a century. The instrumentation is not entirely Tibetan. That doesn't stop lay Buddhists, and even some Hindus, from dropping the cassette into cassette players (no iPods as yet) as they trod through the mountains, rewinding every 23 minutes and 55 seconds. The tune, if it can be called that, emanates alongside juniper and pine incense from shops in Boudhanath, Thamel, and elsewhere in the Kathmandu valley. I feel a tinge of pity for anyone who fails to be transported.

Mera Peak, Trekking, Maoists in Nepal

Above is my favorite pic from a trek in the Everest region. For a few more nice, if unexceptional, pics, click here: http://s219.photobucket.com/albums/cc143/ngong/trekking1/?action=view&current=b63d4c70.pbw

The initial plan was to climb Mera Peak, perhaps the 2nd highest non-technical (i.e. no serious climbing skills required) summit in the world. Aconcagua in South America is probably 1rst, though the distinction between "technical" and "non-technical" is, naturally, fuzzy.

Unfortunately, we were hit with heavy snow after just one day of trekking. You can trek on rock, you can trek on heavy snow, you can trek on ice (with crampons), but there's no easy way to trek a steep, rocky, snowy, icy trail. Our porters clearly didn't want to continue.

We settled for an "ordinary" trek in the Everest region. Having done it before, it was a bit of a disappointment. I was mentally and physically primed for a fairly serious challenge, a new experience, and a first hand view of the amazing postcard pics of Mera that initially inspired me. On the other hand, it's difficult to complain about this part of the world...you've got to be awfully dense to be un-amazed simply because you've seen it once before. I remember very little of the initial trek 15 years ago. I guess that's a blessing.

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While we were trekking, Nepalis were voting. The mountain folks were glued to their scratchy-sounding radios for a number of days (results poured in slowly). When things were sorted out, the Maoists had won a plurality of parliamentary seats, against most Western predictions.

I'm puzzled by the Maoists, and those who voted for the Maoists. Prachanda and his disciples are supposedly responsible for 13,000 deaths over the last decade. I've spoken to folks who have lost relatives via a Maoist's kurkri knife to the neck. I've spoken one-on-one to a Maoist who sought to eliminate religion, the opiate of the masses, from Nepal. Just below, in my previous post, you'll see an ancient mani stone defaced with Maoist graffiti. Though trekkers weren't killed, they were forcefully asked for "donations" (typically around $100) in the days when Maoism was more underground.

So how could the Nepalis vote Maoist? Some have claimed a "Stockholm Syndrome" of sorts. Others claimed voter intimidation...though Jimmy Carter and friends monitored the election in big cities, the myriad smaller villages were supposed hotbeds of manipulation. Less conspiratorially, it seems that the Maoists simply offered better slogans, were better funded, more motivated, and more PR-savvy. And they offered bigger promises, right on up to a $3,000/year standard of living. That's awfully hard to deliver in a country where the average income comes in at about a sixth of that.

Finally, the Nepalis dislike their King. Polls showed that this dislike was limited to roughly 50% of the population, but you've got to wonder about the accuracy of such a poll in a country where, not so long ago, anti-monarchists were persecuted. This time, none of the four major parties supported anything other than a ceremonial monarchy, but the Maoists were clearest on this issue...they seek to remove the King from the palace and dismantle the monarchy in its entirety. There seems to be some debate as to whether the King should receive some sort of yearly stipend or not.

In any case, I didn't meet a single Nepali who seemed horribly concerned about the result. Perhaps that's because, in terms of promises/policy/platform, this "Maoism" seem to have little
in common with historic Maoism. You know, MAO Zedong, government control of land and wages, loony agricultural policies, cultural revolution, suppression of human rights/religion/voting, one-party state, etc. The Nepali "Maoists" have yet to show the slightest inclination toward totalitarianism, socialism, etc. So either the Maoists really have nothing to do with Mao/Maoism, or the Nepali people will be seen to be the victims of a supreme con. Or something in between. We'll see.

The tendency is to suspect a Chinese hand behind all this. The Nepalis deny this, and there aren't any known links between Prachanda and the Chinese. On the other hand, I was surprised to run across Chinese folks on trails and buses. I have no memory of ever meeting a Chinese national in my previous travels to Nepal. Perhaps I'm just seeing the result of increased Chinese affluence and the freedom to travel beyond Chinese borders. Perhaps not. Even if there's no Chinese version of the CIA manipulating events in Nepal, it'll be interesting to see if Prachanda and crew attempt to strike deals with China in an attempt to raise the living standard in Nepal.

Shambu Gurung

Last year around this time, I was planning for another foray into the Himalayas. Hoping that my old porter and friend Shambu would be game for more trekking, I e-mailed the trekking agency where he worked. Here's the response:

Sorry to tell you that Shambu Gurung who live at Pokhara and was working with us (Mandala trek) is dead 4 years before by heart attac in mid night in his house at Pokhara near airport. Please you can contact us at address below (mandala Trek) if you need more information .

This sucked. I'm not one to get melodramatic, or reflect on the afterlife, but it would be nice to immortalize the guy a bit...so here goes...

We met 20 years ago in Pokhara, Nepal. I was looking for a porter, and he happened to be around, dragging a cheap cigarette. He was 19 at the time. That means he was about 35 at his death.

So we did the Annapurna circuit. It took about a month. Shortly into the trek, he pointed out his village...wayyyy up one of those terraced hills. There was nothing there for tourists, and the village was slowly withering away cuz the young people preferred life in Pokhara city. But those were his roots...a "gurung" somewhere between the city and the deep Himalayas.

His English was good, and he enjoyed talking philosophy. He didn't seem to hold any special respect for the Tibetan Lamas, or formal religion, but he was impressed with the spiritual attainment of his bosses at Mandala Trekking....he said, "you can feel it".

Along the trail, we befriended a number of folks. Most casual trekkers have about the same pace, so you wind up seeing them in the guest houses night after night. Mostly, there were the Japanese...nice people, all of them. One was named "Shingo Awaji". There was a European couple whose travels paralleled ours for a week or so. They would have loud sex at late hours. At one point, Shambu pounded on the "wall" (if it could be called that) and I muttered some epithet about Germans. The response: "veee are not Germans, veee are Austrians". One wonders how their bodies were entangled at that exact moment.

There was a nutty, marijuana-smoking woman on one of the stops, babbling away in English, French, and German. I decided to sleep in a little hut outside the guest house, and Shambu got pissed at me for that. But why?...it's not like there were dangerous animals or humans at that particular, isolated place.

That woman claimed she was going to climb the Annapurnas solo. We never saw her on the trail again...speculating on her whereabouts became a running joke for us.

At the Thorong-La pass, he got altitude sickness, so I carried the backpack. He didn't protest at the time, but I never let him, the professional porter, forget it. Still, we got in a game of gin-rummy at the top of that pass (we played gin rummy constantly).

When we made it to the guest house, there were two Tibetans having a heated discussion. It was all in Tibetan, with the exception of an occasional "sense" or "nonsense". Shambu explained they were debating the meanings of these English words. It was hilarious, actually, if you can imagine the setting.

At some point, he got married. It was a bit odd...she was maybe 8 years older, of different caste, and with a child via some previous relationship. I'm not sure what the real story was there. He alluded to another woman he impregnated along that trail (in Manang, perhaps), so maybe he has a child.

I returned to Nepal in 1995. I wanted to go to Everest with him, but he had some kind of hangup with Sherpas, and never ventured into that region. So he hooked me up with his friend "Issing". Issing was an excellent porter, though his lack of English and his traditional ways meant that there wasn't much communication.

After Everest, we did a short trek to the Annapurna sanctuary. There's no need to speak of the wonders of trekking in the Himalayas....you can read that elsewhere. But it was good to experience that stuff with a guy like Shambu. It was his job, of course, but there's no doubt he understood that he lived in a special place, and there were facets of his life that were charmed.

We also went to Lumpini, where the Buddha was born, with his wife. His father and brother lived in that area, renting wood that was used for concrete forms. It was actually a decent living. His family somewhat disapproved of his low-status job, so I loaned him a big wad of rupees, and we played "high-stakes" rummy with the whole family looking on aghast.

Of course, I only saw a small piece of his life. He mentioned his friends/customers in Taiwan fondly. He also mentioned one situation (near Manaslu, I think) where he worked all night to free up a snowy trail for his clients...he repeated that story a number of times...it must have been a big deal. I mention all this on the off-chance that one of these folks stumble across this blog.

I had thought that we would meet every 10 years or so. We'd be 75 years old, drinking rakshi, and talking about whatever. We might even hobble into the mountains for a short trek...I never considered that it might work out differently.

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I wrote the above in April of 2007. Upon arriving in Nepal in May, it was pointed out to me that it's not entirely implausible that Shyambu is alive and well, and his former bosses were lying about his death. He did speak about quitting the agency and starting his own, in which case his employers may have "disowned" him. There would be some potential financial incentive in fibbing about his death, as I might then be inclined to pay Shyambu's former agency for trekking services.

Most likely, he's dead. But there's a bit of a mystery now, and perhaps I can look into it on my next visit.

Increased Happiness for Trekkers

It occurs to me that a couple of my experiences in the Himalayas could be of benefit to a handful of people who might actually plug the proper keywords into a search engine. So here's today's meager contribution to world happiness:

I've had Achilles tendonitis for a number of years. Not a huge deal...at worst it forces me to hobble, and to refrain from high-impact sports for fear of exacerbating the problem. Most of the time it goes unnoticed. When considering a jaunt into the Himalayas last year, the Achilles was my biggest worry. You don't want the tendonitis to flare up when you're a week's trek away from any transportation.

I'm happy to report that the Achilles was a total non-factor in two weeks of fairly intense trekking. I even wonder if the trekking was somehow therapeutic...a year after the trek, the tendonitis seems less problematic than ever. Some non-medical advice based on one guy's experience: don't let a mild case of Achilles tendonitis inhibit a Himalayan adventure.

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About 15 years ago I busted up my knee in a motorcycle accident. The PCL and ACL ligaments were severed, and the MCL torn. Surgery ensued. A year later, I was back in the Himalayas. Favoring my weak knee, I quickly incurred a fairly nasty case of "trekker's knee" in the strong knee. Worse than the pain was the frustration and humiliation of having to hobble through this amazing region. After three weeks in this state, I stumbled into a clinic located just a day's trek from Everest itself. The doctor, a Westerner, supplied me with ibuprofen for the inflamed joint.

I want to report that the result of taking this commonplace, over-the-counter drug was downright miraculous: within 30 minutes, I was walking normally, with only a dull reminder of the pain that had been stifling me for weeks. World-happiness-enhancing advice #2: bring plenty of ibuprofen along for any extended trek. Even if you're fairly confident in the ability of your knees to endure a pounding, you'll probably run into other folks who have a clear case of trekker's knee.

I can recall one case where I offered up the drug to some gimpy dude who had wrapped a t-shirt around his bum knee. Perhaps my enthusiasm for the miracle-inducing powers of ibuprofen was too intense, though, since he shunned me like a smack dealer ("I don't do that"), and hobbled away to another two weeks of pained trekking.

Of course, avoiding trekker's knee would be preferable to dependance on any drug, no matter how innocuous. The obvious advice would be to enter the trek with well-prepared knees. Less obvious is the following: take it easy on the downward slopes, particularly on the early stages of the trek. There's no need to rapidly bound from stone to stone, incurring repeated impacts to the joints, even if gravity seems to be on your side. If you have a history of weakness/injury in one knee, try to be mindful of whether you're favoring the stronger leg or not.

In terms of preparation, there are a lot of suggestions on the web. My own wisdom, for what it's worth, is to mimic trekking as closely as possible. If your preparation is restricted to the fitness club, don't assume that the stairclimber approximates the real thing. You'll be taking big steps in the mountains, stressing your gluteus maximus far more than you do on the stairclimber. You'll probably find that the cycling machines, set with high resistance and a low seat, do a much better job of stressing your glutes.

Your knees will take a pounding in the mountains. Question is, will a pre-pounding help "innoculate" them from various maladies (e.g. trekker's knee), or are you better off sticking with low-impact routines in the fitness club? I'm not sure about the medical literature, but there does seem to be anecdotal evidence that a pre-pounding might be worthwhile. In that case, don't avoid the treadmill. You want to give your knees repeated jolts, something they won't get on the stairclimber or cycling machines. The problem there, or course, is that you could injure your joints. With that in mind, you could begin to lay off the really heavy impact routines as your flight to Kathmandu draws nearer.

The Ganesh Himal

Above is a clip from a 2007 trek in the Ganesh Himal region of Nepal. It's a fairly obscure trek...we didn't see any foreign faces for almost 2 weeks. The locals told us there were a couple of Japanese dudes a few days ahead of us on the trail.

The Ganesh Himal is sandwiched between two more popular destinations, Langtang and Manaslu. You lose a bit in terms of challenging trekking (we never got over 14,000 feet) and spectacular views, but you do get the chance to experience Tamang culture that has had very little exposure to foreigners. Some of these areas are accessible by bus...we found ourselves crossing over dirt roads on a couple of occasions, which does diminish the sensation of being utterly isolated. On the other hand, adventurous travelers could cover a lot of ground via mountain bike in this region of the Himalayas, something that would be near-impossible on the more popular treks (Annapurna, Everest, Helambu, etc.).

Opening the trekking guides, you see some very well delineated travel plans for particular regions. That's nice, but the truth is that the mountain villages are hugely interlinked via trails, and there's usually no reason you can't espy a particular location in the distant mountains, go there, and then plot a new route back to Kathmandu. It's all subject to time limitations, your trekking permit, and safety considerations, of course.

Shots from the Ganesh Himal

If you'd like to see a slideshow of more pics from the Ganesh Himal, a rather offbeat trekking destination in Nepal, click here

In the future, I'll upload some video clips of the trek, which do a good job of explaining this little adventure without additional prose.

This particular shot might be the best of the lot, though. Those two girls are carrying chiseled rocks, used for roofing. There's a sense of desolation, though you'd probably catch the distant reverberation of a mallet if you were there.