Day 70 (post 1)

Wednesday 6th December

Lucy and I have an impeccable sense of timing.

Since the first tourists arrived in number back in the 70’s, the major trekking routes in Nepal, namely the Annapurna Circuit and the Everest Base Camp route have been, as far as I’m able to gather, entirely open and free to any visitor with a Nepalese visa. The only restrictions one may potentially face were purely the time of year, the length of your stay, the weather and the difficulty of the route in relation to your ability.

The result of this freedom has meant that for many years, in an admirably fair and egalitarian manner, people such as us: long-time-travelling, independent and relatively penniless young people have had an opportunity, in our own small way, to enjoy the spectacle of the Himalaya and its inhabitants as much as the well heeled 8000m peak-conquering mountaineer dripping with equipment, porters, cooks and guides.

From October 1st of this year however, a mere and infuriating month before we intended to trek, the Nepalese government in conjunction with the TAAN (Trekking Agencies Association of Nepal) decided to implement some changes. The changes, according to the advocates, have been introduced to safeguard the trekker, protect the rights of porters and quash all the illegal trekking operations that exist in the country. Unfortunately, the effect of these changes I think will be felt not by the large groups for whom money is no real concern and who will trek through a registered agency anyway, but mostly by people like us.

Quite simply, it is now necessary to obtain, through only ‘trekking agencies registered with the Government of Nepal’, a TRC (Trekking Registration Certificate- price Rs250) and at least ‘at least one field staff of the concerned trekking agency’ (price between Rs500- Rs700 per day). Added to this already quite considerable expense is the agency’s administration fee as well as insurance for your compulsorily acquired porter. But this is of course, in looking at the price of the TRC and not its overall value, a rather cynical attitude to the changes. In principle the laws look well-intentioned and preferable to the unregulated state that existed previously.

Before the TRC, guides, porters, cooks, etc. could be picked up off the streets and, in their vulnerably penurious state, be hired at abusively low rates, the level of their desperation often competitively driving down the rate at which they’d sell their services.

Porters accompanying trekkers and mountaineers have also been documented as contracting hypothermia, frostbite and even dying due to their ill-equipped state before setting off. It’s now obligatory for agencies to ensure that all their employees are adequately equipped and offered health insurance for the duration of the trip.

Also, the surprisingly frequent disappearances of lone trekkers (although relatively tiny- be still our parents’ beating hearts) as well as muggings, thefts and other sorts of banditry may be averted by having an accompanying Nepali man by your side.

And, in a broader sense, it’s going some way to redressing the imbalance of affluence between us Westerners and the Nepalese citizens that provide such a welcoming, friendly and cut-price vacation.

There are some difficulties however, a number of which we witnessed over the two and a half weeks. Firstly, the relationship between consumer and supplier appears to have been complicated by the introduction of a middle man. In a direct exchange, there is direct accountability. A bargain is struck and as long as the two parties remain true to the obligations of the bargain i.e. the supplier must provide his service to the satisfaction of the consumer and the consumer must duly remunerate the supplier, then they leave happy. The promise of pay at the completion of these obligations provides the supplier with the incentive to perform well. If he doesn’t then the consumer can look elsewhere.

With the agencies’ introduction though, the porter or guide is paid not directly by the trekking party but by the agency from an all-inclusive lump sum paid in advance. The porter or guide is therefore accountable ultimately to the agency and has no great incentive to provide a service to the trekker beyond the bare minimum. Consequently, as we saw on our walk, some trekkers were being led around in a stunningly rude manner.

In one instance, a couple, who had been given a particularly pushy guide as well as an utterly needless porter, was walking the first few hours of their morning itinerary. After a meager breakfast, they began to feel hungry after only a couple of hours and talked between themselves of the possibility of stopping for a bite to eat at one of the many lodge-filled settlements before the one designated by their guide as ‘lunch-stop’. Their requests were met with a curt assurance that they would soon reach their ‘lunch-stop’ and to look out for a waterfall which was a feature of the area.

After a further period, they became increasingly impatient and asked again how much longer it might be before they could sit down and eat, to which the guide replied in the manner of an exasperated parent: ‘What did I tell you? Do you see any waterfalls? Well do you?’ and continued to walk.

In this situation, I think my blood would have boiled over at the impertinence of the bugger and I’d have shouted him off a cliff. Why the couple didn’t I can only guess at- perhaps, without the power of the promised wages, they didn’t want to displease the fully-paid up man who was supposed to be guiding and protecting them on their journey across a remote and foreign territory; perhaps they thought the added expense was needless and that it was better to wait until the ‘lunch-spot’ where they’d receive their inclusive food; or perhaps they were just rather un-confrontational. Whatever their reason, they conceded to wait, remain a few paces back and mutter frustratedly to one another.

The same couple also complained of their porter’s behaviour as they arrived as a foursome at the most treacherous point of the entire trek: Thorung La, the highest mountain pass in the world. The pass is close to five and a half thousand feet high, an altitude that will always be cold, but by virtue of being its being a pass it also provides a handy channel for some horribly biting winds. The combination of the cold’s effects were enough to seriously concern the woman in the couple who looked to her porter to ask his assistance in carrying her small rucksack to a less cripplingly cold elevation. The porter however was nowhere to be seen. He too had decided the cold to be a bit much and bombed down the other side to thaw out. This to me is a dreadful dereliction of his paid duty. He, as an experienced porter, should anticipate problems at what is arguably the most crucial and difficult point on the trip and, if not offer assistance, at least be sure that the couple is well. Perhaps though, as he knows his wages are safe, he regards his actual job as being little other than just carrying what he’s been given and cannot really be seriously reprimanded. If he was awaiting his pay directly from the couple maybe he might have shown greater concern over their well-being.

Anyway, our organization was different. After trawling internet forums on the subject of the TRC before we left England, we noticed a particularly passionate and articulate contributor called Becky.

Becky, in her late thirties I believe, runs an agency in Kathmandu and has done so for a full 12 years. She has worked all that time in tandem with a Nepalese man called Nar, her first guide on her first trek in Nepal. She employs only inhabitants of Nar’s village and rotates the employment fairly and widely across a number of the villagers. She asks for an office fee of $3 a day each to cover both the insurance for the porter as well as administration costs- buying tickets, TRC etc. and for the porter’s fixed fee of Rs500 a day to be paid directly to the man as and when he needs it.

We were initially reluctant to pay anything when considering the needlessness of anyone accompanying us on a really rather simple route that hundreds of thousands of people had completed in the past without any assistance besides the detailed guidebook in their bag but, of the options available, Becky’s organisation’s seemed the most sensible. So it was that we found ourselves sat in the foyer of our hotel on the morning of the day before our trek being introduced by Nar to a young man from his village. ‘This’ he said, ‘is Arjun Kumar Rai. He will be your porter for the next eighteen days’.

Our Porter

Meeting Arjun after many weeks of imagining who our porter would be and what he’d be like was very much how I imagine a blind date to feel (I’ve never actually had the pleasure of experiencing one). I was shocked to discover that when the moment of our introduction finally came I felt rather nervous. This person was about to become our almost constant companion for a full eighteen days. We were, over this quite considerable length of time whether we liked it or not, going to become inescapably well acquainted with this person- almost intimate. What if he was an obsequious, fawning little lapdog who would never leave us alone? What if he was cold, indifferent, demanding and difficult? Perhaps a hysterically hyperactive and giggling idiot who liked nothing more to ply you with endless questions about England and your favourite football player- eighteen days! Oh god- I can’t bear being in the same room as someone I dislike for more than five minutes- how can I expect to tolerate eighteen days with a total stranger?

My first impression after a few minutes of discussion over the itinerary was favourable. He was quite a small lad of around 18-20 (he himself is, incredibly, uncertain of his age- Nepalis aren’t apparently concerned by the passing of birthdays), a stocky build of about five foot five and a remarkably wide jaw. He had an intelligent, thoughtful and humble expression that was quick to smile but showed control. He too was evidently rather nervous.

It turned out that Arjun, like Nar, was from the Khumbu, a region around Everest. His family, like 70% of Nepalese, is a farming family and maintains a large mixed farm that grows, among other things, millet, sorghum, maize, potatoes, cabbages and radishes and also keeps a quantity of livestock including a number of cattle, goats and chickens. Arjun however was pursuing a different path. He had moved to Kathmandu and worked variously as an electrician, a cook and occasional porter whilst at the same time studying English so that he might one day become a fully qualified trekking guide. For the moment his English was basic.

It also dawned midway through our discussion that this person was our employee. I’d never employed anyone before, nor, I thought, had Lucy. Perhaps it’s of little real significance but the way in which Arjun was playing the acquiescent card reminded me of our differing roles. I was interested in how Lucy and I would respectively respond to this newly acquired power.

The first morning of our trek and the bags were packed. Arjun was to carry the majority of our belongings in my 70 litre bag; I was to carry Lucy’s 50 litre; and Lucy our 20 litre day pack. As soon as Arjun had tried on the bag, I felt a squirming discomfort. The bottom of my bag reached the back of his knees and the top loomed monstrously over the top of his head. It looked impossibly huge and, to (literally) top it off, he had to strap his own bag of belongings to the lid. He puffed conspicuously as he tried it on.

At the lodge later that evening in the privacy of our room, Lucy and I had a discussion over the apportioning of weight which was rather revealing. I was of the attitude that as Arjun was a porter and as we were employing him as such, he should carry the majority of the weight regardless of how silly he looks. Lucy was not so sure. His diminutive size and weight-bearing ability seemed unmatched to the load we were giving him to carry- it seemed unfair. I pointed out that it was his job- he was used to it- and if you were to think of an equivalent situation at home, say with the employment of a removal man, you didn’t look worriedly at the person you’d paid to carry your wardrobe if he appeared a little on the small side. Lucy’s compassion (lucky for Arjun) was unmoved and she insisted on his carrying the 50 litre bag while she would strap a few more items to her 20 litre. I was landed, a little huffily, with the largest of the bags.

In retrospect, now that our journey is complete, we are both very glad of the assistance he provided. Though we could have carried our bags individually, they would have been much heavier and the walk would have become more a test of physical endurance than the pleasantly strenuous stroll that it actually was. His knowledge of the circuit from a trek he’d assisted on two years before was also useful as was his limited ability to interpret when we arrived at villages. He also acted as a sort of butler. Whenever we arrived at a lodge he was always prompt to remind us that should we require anything we shouldn’t hesitate to knock on his door and he’d do his best to oblige. He would bring us tea now and again, serve our food if the lodge was a few hands short, fight for our seats on buses and make a handy third man for our enjoyably competitive nightly games of contract whist. He was, like Phileas Fogg’s loyal manservant from Jules Vernes’ Around the World in Eighty Days, our very own Passepartout.

The Trek

After the first few hours of the first day, I began to feel increasingly apprehensive.

On the bus ride to Kathmandu, we’d reluctantly reneged (me much more so) on a firmly made, mutual agreement that we’d walk the Everest Base Camp trek regardless of how much time or money it might take to complete. It’s expense was really going to put the rest of our journey out of joint. Instead, due to the vastly reduced cost of doing the Annapurna Circuit, we opted to walk that instead.

It seemed entirely wrong to come all this way, perhaps never to return, with a long-harboured dream of seeing the highest peak in the world and then toss it aside due to a few measly pounds. The Everest trek was also, as I understood it, generally at a much consistently higher elevation, home to a much harsher and barren sort of landscape and consequently proved less enticing to the casual trekker which meant, crucially, less tourists and less lodges.

The Annapurna Circuit however played host to tens of thousands of trekkers every single year who trudged through its mostly tightly clustered settlements all of which are finely primed to ensnare the tourist rupee. I really didn’t want to spend two weeks walking along a factory-line trek and emerging feeling as if I’d been cleverly led at my supposed pleasure but actual expense.

The first day did nothing to assuage my suspicion. Within the first few kilometers we’d been ordered into the ACAP (Annapurna Conservation Area Project) office and the TRC hut and duly penned our credentials in their ledgers before, like docile cattle, being herded back on to the designated trekking channel.

After a certain distance, we arrived at a flat, hill-crowned, green plain. I drew myself up, stretched out my stride, resolved to do away with this silly sense of oppression and get on with enjoying the trek when out of a ramshackle hut on my left rushed a middle-aged Nepalese man walking as fast as he possibly could without appearing manically desperate. He cut off our path and inquired with a breathless, ingratiating smile if we could sign his register: a dog-eared and grubby A5 children’s exercise book with a brightly-coloured cartoon-character on the front. We warily accepted the book from the man and began to add our names to the list when the inevitable request for donations came, in this instance for ‘maintaining the path’, though what exactly he was doing to maintain a flat, narrow and centuries-old dirt track I couldn’t quite discern.

We offered considerably less than others preceding us had and insisted on receiving something in return which led to a rather unpleasant squabble but eventual success in the form of a couple of bamboo staffs which, incidentally, survived with us right through to the end.

Added to this sense of harassment, in my peeved state I couldn’t help perceiving the surrounding countryside as relatively unimpressive when bringing to mind the other areas of the world in which we’d walked: the West Highlands of Scotland or Wilson’s Promontory in Australia. This was supposed to be the mighty Himalaya- where were the sodding mountains?

As we finally arrived at a peaceful-looking lodge for our first evening’s rest, we sat down hungrily to our menus and looked over what was on offer. As expected, a section was devoted to Thukpa (a sort of Tibetan noodle soup) and momos (a steamed or fried pastry-cased filling) as well as the Nepalese staple diet of dahl bhat (rice with a few different accompaniments). Much more space was startlingly devoted to pizza, spaghetti, macaroni, mashed potato and apple pie. Arjun informed us that throughout the walk we could expect to see the same sort of fare displayed in the same way as all the lodges had, for the sake of fair and unanimous pricing, been recently regulated by the Tourism Management Committee. It was beginning to feel a little like the Disneyland of Trekking.

The first few days below 2000m followed in distressingly similar fashion. Images I’d seen of the lonely, soaring peaks in the Everest region flitted through my mind and brought surges of frustration and regret.

After this period however, the scenery and settlements began to take on a more satisfyingly dramatic aspect. The tended order of the terraced fields bordered by lushness gave way to random, rocky scrub; the plain-looking livestock were replaced by doe-eyed buffalo, shaggy yaks and elaborately-horned Himalayan goats. The inhabitants too appeared increasingly Tibetan as did their villages which were announced by sometimes ornately painted arches depicting Buddhist figures and stories, lines of spinning prayer wheels and primary-coloured prayer flags whipping wildly in the ever-stronger winds. The 8000m+ peaks of Manaslu and Annapurna silently nudged their way over the plainer hills and brought with them an authority that dominated the pathetic-looking human habitations and made mighty man look risibly insignificant.

By the time the first week had elapsed, my anxieties were all forgotten.