Himalayan
Challenge
for
Whizz-Kidz
|
||||||||
Indian
|
||||||||
|
Himalayan
village en route to Thadkot… |
Log 6 November 3rd
Sleeping at
altitude was a contradiction in terms…
…not that it
wasn’t expected…and we were all afflicted to some degree…but I think I
survived mostly on a few short snatches of oblivion that surfed on a nightly tidal
wave of adrenaline.
Despite my
Thermarest, and the nights of preparation on a rock-hard bed, the ground was
unforgiving…I just had to try to relax, lie at peace and wait…
…and that
first morning, despite being deliciously warm inside my sleeping bag, I was also very wet…
…the hot
water bottle had leaked.
|
…precariously placed. |
||||||
|
Outside it was very cold, but there was tea…and the
campfire still burned…Two of the guys had spent most of the night there,
unable to sleep…keeping vigil over a wolf that lurked in the shadows on the
fringes during the early hours. Breakfast was porridge with cardamoms and sultanas,
omelette, toast and fresh fruit…and you ate as much as you could, purely for
the fuel needed just to keep going…Not difficult for me…where food’s
concerned I don’t do small…and this was delicious… There was no packing up to be done, as we were to be
returning to the same campsite that evening…so just the usual early morning
tasks of visiting small rooms…brushing
teeth…taking anti-malarials…filling the platypus… and washing…of course. By 8.30am or so we had donned boots and backpacks, hats
and smiles and set off with our walking poles…
Traditional accommodation |
Early
morning campfire after the long night of the wolf…
…and keeping
warm |
On a cloudless and truly beautiful Himalayan morning we
trekked upwards towards Sun Pass, over a beaten track much used by shepherds…I
thought our route the previous day was steep…I was wrong…it had been nothing
more than a gentle slope… And as the sun climbed in the sky we could well have
toiled in unbearable heat, had it not been for the shade afforded by the
forest areas through which we increasingly gasped for breath… They say that only the best is bought at the cost of
considerable pain…and if I’d ever doubted it, this trek only served as a vindication
of that claim… ...for me, perhaps no more so than today. After a very stiff climb, we came upon a village… ...and people appeared, waving from balconies and
verandahs…children ran, shouting and laughing, from their houses to meet us… And quietly standing in little family groups, or in a
line beside one another, they put their hands together, as if in prayer, and
offered us their traditional greeting of ‘Namaste’… ‘I see the God
in you’
|
||||||
|
|
|
|
|
|
||||
|
|
|
|
|
|
||||
Of course,
that wasn’t all…
We visited the
Marie Gold school…a modest tribute to a bygone age…in its simplicity, its
sheer lack of modern facilities, and most of all in the children who attended…The
classrooms were small and bare, with no seats or desks…only one tiny, rickety
table for the teacher and a blackboard on an easel… and the floors bore faded
Indian runners for the children to sit on.
We gave them
balloons and little party gifts…they were ecstatic…We took photos of them and
they were intrigued with our cameras…They came up to us quietly and politely,
extending their hands in greeting…just wanting to say hello and talk to
us…They were well-behaved and respectful…gracious, innocent, and entirely
unassuming…
Their
clothes, though perfectly clean, were shabby, worn a thousand times and
repeatedly mended…and the children were as unselfconscious about this as they
were about everything else…
I was overwhelmed…and for a while had to stand back
quietly just to observe and wonder at this tiny snapshot of these children’s
lives…so utterly basic, uncluttered and very hard by our standards…Yet there
was such happiness…and caring…Despite the distractions of the day they still
looked out for one another…and, boys and girls alike, walked around with arms
entwined, or around each other’s shoulders…They were boisterous and excited,
like any children…but not once did it get out of hand…
And not a parent or teacher in sight…
It was impossible,
for very long, not to be actively involved once more...for the scene they
created was engaging, their joy infectious and the aura they emitted
all-pervasive…
Before we
left, I was taken back into one of the classrooms…On the blackboard had been
chalked a set of complex long-multiplication and division sums…not remarkable
perhaps, except that the average age of the children was about six or seven…
From the
path at the rear of the school, I watched the last few children running
towards us, laughing and waving…ending a journey that, for most, would have
been two or three hours…no cars, no bikes, and for some, no shoes…
Not exactly
a cakewalk either…
Certainly
tough food for thought… as I was forced to reflect on whether our own
offspring, born with the silver spoon of modern science and technology in
their mouths, were in fact ultimately ‘deprived’…and these children, definitely
deprived by received western standards, were in reality the richer…
And would it
ever be possible to balance the books?
|
||||||||
The final ascent
to Sun Pass was enormously steep and very tricky…in fact two of the team had
to turn back…so it was with some relief that we cleared the summit around
lunchtime and could slither down to a convenient resting place…once more to
gorge ourselves on rice and pasta…
The descent
that afternoon towards the Thadkot river was very long…and liberally
sprinkled with waterfalls and plank bridges…and one shower of rain (the only
one throughout the whole trek)…
And it was
hard on the knees…much harder than walking uphill, when all you had to worry
about was whether your heart would stay put, your lungs could do quadruple
time…and why your head was on fire…
|
|
But there
were benefits…as we trekked through the terraced fields of this beautiful
valley…passing through tiny settlements, where time seemed to have stood
still…and the lives of the inhabitants could not possibly have changed for
centuries…
Here,
agriculture was by hand or bullock…sheer effort and hard work…the only way
they could survive.
Time and
again we passed shepherds with small flocks of goats…or old, wizened men and
women, bent double with huge bundles of dried crops on their backs…
By late
afternoon we came upon a road…and piled into the back of our waiting lorries…a
jumble of rucksacks, poles and dishevelled bodies…
|
||||||
For an hour
or more, we bounced, bumped and lurched along the road back to camp…It was
particularly hard on the nether regions…the trip seemed eternal…and we were
well scrambled by the end of it…
But nothing
that a mug of hot tea, a quick brush-up, dinner, rum punch…and a Himalayan
sunset…couldn’t banish in a trice.
|
||||||||
Logs: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
Back to Intro
Back to home page
|
||||||||
