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INTRODUCTION

Like most leisure pursuits, I guess, trekking doesn’t make much sense unless you’ve become addicted to it. I mean, it’s only going for a walk, for goodness sake! You can do that just about anywhere – down the street, around the block or over a nearby hill; it’s not necessary to take a month off work, draw out your savings and fly halfway across the world just to place one foot in front of the other day after day.

And yet, every year thousands of otherwise sane individuals do just that.

You see, trekking is addictive!

I knew that long before I ever went to Nepal, and more than 20 Himalayan expeditions later I have no reason to change my mind.

But how can the simple act of walking in another country for weeks on end bring so much pleasure? For it certainly can. And it does – especially in Nepal, where those steps take you into some of the most dramatic landscapes on Earth, and you become enriched along the way by a people whose friendliness and hospitality is legendary, and whose cultures have developed at a different pace and in a different direction from our own.

Yes, meeting different cultures is certainly a large part of the appeal. For it’s good to be taken out of our own cosy environment, where values have been shaped into familiarity over countless generations, and sample for a few all-too-short weeks of the year a different way of living.

It’s good too to be challenged physically – to be tested by the bare-earth paths that act as Himalayan highways climbing through remote valleys and over lofty passes, trading one heart-stopping view for another, gaining the only riches that count. The riches of memory that last for ever and can never be taxed.

Travel provides a fertile ground of experience from which a harvest is ready to be gathered, and trekking among distant mountains provides daily opportunities to do just that by personal contact with a world of extremes. Every laboured breath, every doubt, every hard-won upward step confronts us with the reality of Now. This moment in time is all that matters. And when we stop and look around, the rewards are there on every ragged horizon. That harvest of experience may be gathered along the trail moment by moment, day after day.

The very name of Nepal has an exotic ring to it, inspiring visions of great beauty – not just the ice-crusted mountains and tumultuous glaciers, but the valleys through which milky-blue torrents rush and roar; the wrinkled foothills with their terraces of rice and millet, buckwheat and barley. There’s the scent of frangipani; bougainvillaea splashed across a hillside; gentian and orchid; forests of rhododendron and magnolia; and poinsettias two metres tall. There are houses of wattle and thatch overhung by bananas. Faces too – smiling faces in villages and on the trail; faces that look you in the eye and offer an unforgettable greeting. Prayer flags and mani stones; monks in claret robes blowing conch shells or clashing cymbals under the eyes of the Buddha; prayer wheels turned by water whose mantras bless all who pass. There are gods that reside on summits and in the most seductive of icy arenas, while the cry of ‘Namaste’ accompanies every Nepalese journey.

Of all the journeys I’ve made in the Himalayan regions, the narrative that follows concentrates on just eight in Nepal. That’s not to suggest for one moment that none of the other dozen or so treks was worth recording. Far from it. But the eight chosen for this book describe in chronological order my first-time experience along the most popular routes, as well as in other less-travelled regions right across the country. These eight very different treks offered a variety of challenges and experiences, all of which were immensely rewarding, in spite of taking place during two decades of unprecedented political and social change in Nepal.

In 1990, less than six months after my first visit to the country, King Birendra was forced to introduce a form of parliamentary democracy, but a combination of ineptitude and corruption followed, leading to a violent, so-called People’s War being fought with the aim of ending the rule of the monarchy. Over a 10-year period, Maoist rebels gained control of rural areas by attacking army and police posts, resulting in the deaths of many hundreds of Nepalis. It was during this time of upheaval and instability that almost the entire royal family were wiped out in a drunken shooting spree by the king’s own son, Crown Prince Dipendra. Birendra’s surviving brother, Prince Gyanendra, took the throne, but five years later the new king’s political power was curtailed by Parliament, Gyanendra relinquished the throne, the monarchy was abolished and in 2008 Nepal became a republic. Since then, however, democracy has been in a state of flux, with one government after another failing to break the cycle of mismanagement and corruption.

Surprisingly, such profound upheavals had only a limited effect on trekking and played no part in the outcome of any of the journeys described here. It was some of the other changes that were introduced during the same period that were of more significance to those of us aiming for the high mountains. One was the bulldozing of dirt roads into valleys that had previously never known a wheel; another was the development (still ongoing) of ‘luxury lodges’ in the most heavily trekked regions, and the establishment of basic lodge accommodation in areas where all treks in the past had of necessity relied on the support of porters carrying tents and all equipment, expedition-style.

Although these developments now affect several routes that appear in this book, they came after my first experience of them, so are not mentioned here. But the most welcome change for those who are lured by the less-travelled way has been the opening of remote districts, such as those of Manaslu, Dolpo, Mugu and others in the far west, that had formerly been classified as restricted to foreigners because their high valleys suggested easy access into forbidden Tibet. Being among the first to journey there has been a privilege to savour.

Throughout my time in the country I developed an intimacy with Nepal, one which began with a head full of dreams and turned into a down-to-earth reality as I trekked with commercial groups, organised and led private treks for friends, travelled independently using basic teahouses to sleep in, researched routes for guidebooks, and made a journey of exploration with just a Sherpa friend and a handful of porters. Experiences gained on all these travels may have revealed a less romantic vision than that which I’d imagined when I first went there, as jealousies, frustrations and blatant attempts at corruption rose to the surface, but being aware of perceived failings in others only served to remind me of my own. Trekking into the heart of the Himalaya has been an education, for I’ve discovered several aspects of Nepal which have changed my own reaction to it and enabled my love for the country and its people to mature. It’s when love matures that it gains true value.

This, then, is a celebration of Nepal and the high Himalaya, inspired by the simple act of placing one foot in front of the other. It’s not mountaineering, where a summit is the goal. No – trekking is about going for a walk, a long walk through a land of extremes. It’s all about the journey, and what happens on that journey, that counts. For the pilgrim it is not only the merit that accrues on reaching the abode of the gods, but how that sacred place is gained that has value.