Pokhara – The Ghurkas (16/11/09)

The Ghurka Museum, just down the road from the British Ghurka training station

I have described our arrival at the Kathmandu international terminal. Today we were departing from the domestic terminal. Security involved sending our suitcases through a large device as soon as we were through the door to the terminal. I think this process was a placebo: many people were coming and going; officials in their worn, wrinkled uniforms would talk or remonstrate with a few people who were walking in and out seemingly in ignorance of the need for security, but the remonstrations seemed, again, for show. A shrug, and then they resumed the air of vigilance they had cultivated to satisfy their superiors, perhaps: not as if to show they were doing a good job, but as if to say they were doing the best job they could, under the circumstances, and were screening most of the passengers, anyway.

Inside, we checked in on Buddha Air. I wondered if the mode of transportation was going to be yogic flying, but in the end our airplane was very modern, the flight attendants very professional and friendly, the pilot clearly competent. Once we had our boarding passes we went through another security check – manual, this time, men one channel and women another: one of the formal proprieties of Nepalese Hindu life which no one explained. The waiting room inside was quite a mélée, and a cacophonous, disorganized one. The room was low-ceilinged, there were a couple of rows of benches and chairs. Occasionally there were announcements that were impossible to hear, a reality that the airlines recognized because after each announcement an official would stride through the room repeating the information at the top of his voice, gathering behind him a trail of travellers like the pied piper, depositing them at the gate where, again, men and women went to their planes through different doors. Two screens flickered with flight information, updated every thirty seconds or so. All the flights to the environs of Everest were cancelled – it was snowing heavily, apparently. Trekkers and their gear stood forlornly watching as yet another flight was cancelled. We were safe from that eventuality: Pokhara was in the same valley as Kathmandu, and it was a sunny, warm day.

Seated next to Joan was a young woman reading Breath by Tim Winton. I happened to be reading the same book, and asked her how she liked it. It turned out that she was Swedish, returning from a furlough of a couple of months in Australia to a town in the lowlands of Nepal, close to the Indian border. She worked for an NGO there, mediating disputes that were labelled political but which were more often simply personal or commercial: people feuding, trying for commercial advantage, settling old scores, under the cloak of political differences. Her phone rang, and she started a rapid conversation in French. Joan and I marvelled at her expertise in languages, since she obviously spoke at least three fluently (including her native Swedish). It was her boyfriend. She grimaced. Her NGO frowned on “couples” working together; I suppose it created complications if they wanted to separate them.

Flying to Pokhara, we found clear skies, and our first glimpse of the Himalayas. A week later I would have been able to name some of these peaks, but for now they were simply anonymous and overwhelming. The driver who met us at the Pokhara airport was cheerful and young; he took us to Fishtail Lodge, a well-appointed lodge to which you were transported by means of a small ferry barge, built on metal drums, and propelled by a ferryman who tugged steadily and rhythmically on a heavy rope attached to the opposite shore.

We had a day with our guide in Pokhara, and certainly the highlight was the Ghurka museum. The Ghurkas represented, for young Nepali men, a ticket out, an escape from the numbing life of hardship and poverty in the mountains. Every spring the British army vetted the applicants, all of whom would have trained to perform physical feats of weightlifting, dexterity and endurance consistent with the reputation the Ghurkas have always had for incredible toughness, bravery and loyalty. The reigning Rana clan, during their century long authority in Nepal, were strongly pro-British, an affinity that remains by and large to this day. The Ghurkas fought in the British army in nearly all their fierce engagements for over a hundred years, including desperate operations as far back as the Sepoy Rebellion in India, Gallipoli in the First World War, and so on. Much of their activity was in India, and after India achieved independence in 1946 the Ghurkas were also divided between the British army and the Indian army, so that now there are two armies that seventeen year old boys can aspire to. On our way back to Fishtail, our guide told us that he had been such an aspirant, but hadn’t competed successfully with the other trainees; his consolation prize was to show people like us around. He probably was in the top 5% of wage earners in Nepal.

That night we treated ourselves to a fine dinner looking out over the lake, just slightly nervous about our trek which would start in the morning. It was a modest trek, only four days, and only to a height of about 10,500 feet. In the Annapurna region, rather than the Everest region, it probably has a longer history of mountaineering than Everest. We had bought hiking boots for the occasion, had the right clothing, and we were physically fit. In the morning we would pick up any other necessities – flashlight, for instance. We were ready.