The 11 rules of walking

Carsten Smith-Hall | October 20, 2024

I started walking the hard trails about ten years ago. I was young and strong, unmarried, with an independent source of income from my small café and shop on Swotha Road, selling hot coffees and antiquities. The former to locals taking a break and tourists escaping the bustle on Patan Durbar Square, the latter to domestic and foreign collectors. I specialise in old coins but also have a range of other artefacts I have found on my walks, like a Tibetan trumpet made of a human thigh bone and decorated with silver, an ancient piece of eye-shaped agate, and a heavy paper scroll with gold characters handwritten on a glossy black panel. I started walking because I wanted to see the remote corners of my country, the nooks and crannies beyond the dirt road network spreading like mycelium from the lowlands into the high valleys. And because my cousin Yash disappeared on a walk in the mountains. That was the first time death touched me, making me think about time and loss, ending my youth. But I shall not bore you with those thoughts.

And then there is Vini, the ghost at my core. No point in talking about her either.

I never plan any of my walks. A place takes my fancy, and I go there. The villages like pearls on a string in the Tsum valley on the Tibetan border, the shimmering green jewels of the glacial lakes going up to Lakya La, the forgotten Phu village guarding the end of the world, the towering trees touching the twinkling stars in the abandoned wooded uplands of lower Mustang, the lost and isolated meadows of the Api-Namba. Mountains and forests, rocks and ice, glaciers and rivers. My interest is nature. Not people. If there are too many people around me, I become reticent and bored. When a group of trekkers, out of kindness and because they think their own preferences are universal, try to include me in their talks in one of the small lodges on a trail, tiny beads of liquid start to form on the skin of my arms, no matter how cold it is, and it’s like I can’t fill my lungs with air. Nature has the opposite effect. I’m at ease in the wild. In a meadow, in the exquisite company of a few watchful yaks, I can breathe. Warmth suffuses my body, my mind is weightless, the bright petals of the trailing bellflower are bluer than anything else on earth. I have no desire or need to talk. I embrace solitude as a responsible act of being, enabling me to better taste each day.

Sajan is one of my regular customers. Today he came to sip a cappuccino and inspect the one mohar silver coin from 1910 I had put aside for him. It was flawless, and he was happy to hand over the agreed 30,000 rupees. He likes to gossip and small talk; I exercise my well-developed ability to listen with an attentive look while my thoughts are busy elsewhere. But in his endless stream of words, I detected Langtang, and I reeled in my mind to focus on his outpouring. His son had just returned from a short trek to that national park with a couple of friends, mainly to get out of the house and drink beers, but ended up seeing a red panda in the mountain forest.

“It was sitting in a tree by the trail. Less than five metres away. Wonderful photos.” He waves his phone at me, showing a small creature moving down a tree trunk headfirst. Orange coat and black legs. I have never seen one in its natural habitat. Apparently, it’s the only true panda; the big black and white ones are bears.

“What a rare beauty,” I say, “delicious to look at.” He messages me one of the photos. Then he starts on his favourite fantasy, finding a good quality gold mohar coin he can afford. Sometimes a villager stumbles on a cache; if only he could get to such a find before the police claim it as government property.

I let him talk, making coffees for the steady stream of customers. Half of my eight tables are occupied throughout the afternoon. Not bad. Langtang National Park is close to Kathmandu and pretty crowded, so I haven’t been there – no reason to go somewhere full of people when there are plenty of empty, pristine places. But I look at the photo on my phone; it’s a sign, time to go. One week is enough to get there and back; my younger brother can look after the coffee-part of the café in my absence. Like half the young men around here, he studies for a bachelor’s in business management and has ample time on his hands.

*

Two days later, I exit the half-empty local bus in Syaphru Besi, the small town clinging to the sides of the narrow valley where the water gushing down from Langtang joins the Trishuli River. Altitude: around 1500 metres. It’s early March, and there are few people around, the large number of small hotels are waiting for the spring season to start, happy that the Covid-19 madness has ended. Looking for a place to spend the night, I walk beneath the leafless giant kapok trees dispersed along the road, displaying their bright red-to-orange flowers. I spot a rock pool down on the river shore, but the sun is setting, making the faraway snow on the high eastern hills glow like the kapok flowers for a few minutes. Instead of river bathing, I walk into one of the hotels, get a room facing the river and have an early dinner. I’m the only guest. In bed, I hear the first cricket of the year, above the echoes of the water rushing south. Spring is coming.

The next morning, before heading up the valley, I grab a latte in the only open coffee shop. Bad idea. It’s called a latte, looks like one, and sets me back a small fortune. But all I get are sour weak notes of coffee and a suspicion that the milk has been around too long before it was steamed. I make a mental note to drink only tea the next week.

I walk down to the suspension bridge and cross the Trishuli River. An empty truck rumbles past me, cloaking the road in a fine dust cloud. Before it can settle, another truck feeds the cloud. A little further on, in a gaping and growing hole in the ground, a Chinese track excavator is busy filling trucks with sand, gravel, rubble and boulders. Construction workers mill around among metal rods rising from a cement platform. Their yellow helmets stand out in the grey landscape. I can understand micro-hydropower schemes but not the construction of these big dams – won’t they have to be dismantled in a decade or two when energy becomes squanderable abundant through solar fuels or clean and safe self-contained small-scale nuclear reactors? Won’t we say, “Gods, why did we ever scar our country like that to create energy?” Well, what do I know, I flog coffee and coins.

The noise of development is soon behind me. The new road becomes an old trail, passing through empty terraced fields, hugging the river where it can. The up-and-down climbing starts, worn stone stairs taking me up through the shadowy forests on the steep land in the valley, and back down to the river as soon as there is some level land suitable for agriculture. I’m alone on the path, taking my time, feasting my eyes on the fresh red rhododendron flowers. Most buds remain unopened, but a few courageous trees show the way, sharing their floral treasure. I walk past bamboo clumps and through patches of alder, the bark sometimes gleaming like silver, sometimes hiding in shades of green.

I climb a vertical kilometre the first day, passing through a couple of small villages; they are quiet, most houses and lodges padlocked. The only other trekkers I see are a small group on the other side of the river, navigating a narrow trail, probably mostly used by herders. It looks like tough going; the path is broken up by numerous small landslides.

An old woman serves me a filling lunch of rice and lentils in a sunny garden next to the tumbling river, the water gushing among great wet boulders. While I eat, she sits in the sun, unconsciously using a wooden drop spindle to spin yarn. Muscle memory at work, a lifetime of spinning. I nap on a wooden bench, sip milk tea, and watch the fluttering prayer flags.

A little further up the valley, I spy wild honeycombs on the vertical rock face on the other side of the river, a few like golden-brown half-moons full of sweet promise, but most are old and black. They look harvested and unreachable at the same time. Three hours later, I get a room at the Hotel Jungle View. The name must be inspired by the surrounding oak woods or the towering spruce and silver fir forests on the other side of the river. Waterfall Valley Lodge would be a better name; there is falling and roaring water everywhere, thunder rolling up the cliff sides where the river works on expanding narrow passages through the rocks. The grey langurs seem to like it; twice I see them, on the small sandy beaches and in the nearby young trees, resting or plucking juicy leaves. They cross the river on the new aluminium bridges.

I unpack my sleeping bag to air it and read a few chapters in my book, about Mallory’s search for Everest, while there is still sufficient light. The cold comes with the sunset. I head down to the hotel’s common room. An older man feeds firewood to the cast iron stove, closing the door with his fingers. The skin on his hands must be thick as leather. People sit on plastic chairs around the stove, in thick fleeces or down jackets. There’s a group of four men in their forties, friends from Kathmandu, and two foreigners, a young couple, his hand on her arm, talking in English. A small child sits on the floor, rolling a rubber ball between her hands, watched by the woman taking dinner orders. I smile and find a place in the corner, ask for dalbhat. The room is heating up fast, and I can feel my muscles relax.

“I had no idea it was that orchid,” says the young black-haired woman in a low voice, wrinkling her brow and looking at the floor.

“Nature deficit disorder,” says the young man, agitated, in a Scandinavian accent, “that’s what you suffer from. Italy is the most urbanised country in the world. Spending all your life in a city has shrunk your senses. The wild should be left alone, not converted into order, the regularity of fields and pastures, the blessings of roads and buildings.” He lets go of her arm, sips what is probably tea. “That was a Neottia chandrae. How could you not recognise those pale green flowers? Such exceptional early flowering. And you pick it.” He shakes his head. “What’s next? Accepting the online trade in red panda tail hats? ”

“What’s next? A boyfriend with fewer police genes and a bigger heart.” There’s a sharp edge in her voice that should make the Scandinavian nervous. The woman goes through the wooden door into the kitchen, returning with a pasta dish that she eats at a table by herself. Even in her anger, she has one of those oval faces that caress me, deep soft eyes, a small mouth with full lips, a straight nose, high cheekbones. Her agitated friend doesn’t go to sit with her, instead leafing through a guide to Himalayan flowers.

The four guys don’t seem to pay attention to the foreigners; they are drinking Gorkha beer and talking about equipment, hard versus soft boots, the annoying type of headlamp where you need a small screwdriver to change the battery, to use trekking poles or not, the best layering of clothing for moving up the valley. They look at me several times, giving me the opportunity to join their talk. I smile but don’t say anything, focusing on my Langtang map and enjoying the food. The pickled chillies are pretty good. The well-padded little girl on the floor wobbles over to me, steadying herself by holding on to my chair, and starts counting to ten. I smile and tell her how clever she is. The mother approaches, relaxed; it’s a good evening, paying and courteous customers, satisfied with the food and heat.

It’s not that I padlock my inner self; I just like to be alone. I escape to my room before I get cornered by the mother or the four guys. The sounds of the rushing river take me to sleep instantly.

*

The young couple is up early the next morning, moving off down towards Syaphru Besi, holding hands. I watch them disappear as I munch on Tibetan flatbread and curried vegetables. The kid wakes up, making babbling sounds behind the partition where the family sleeps in the common room. Friendly people. The wife recommends a lodge with panoramic views further up the valley. Outside, the world is in shadow; it will be a few hours before the sun is high enough to look into the valley. I’ll need to wear a fleece when I start walking. One of the four guys arrives, letting in a gush of cold air when he opens the door, asks for tea, roti and omelette, and sits at my table.

“What a nourishing sleep and what a promising day,” he says, looking at me. “We saw you yesterday, climbing on the other side of the river. You walk fast.”

“Do I?”

“A two-legged mountain goat. That’s what Santosh said, no offence.”

“I never thought about that. I just walk.” The guy, his name is Bir, keeps talking. They are a bunch of colleagues, working at the university in Kirtipur, enjoying a few days off in the highlands. But I’m not listening to the details; I’m thinking about my speed. Maybe I do walk fast, even if I always feel slow, sometimes struggling to put one foot in front of the other. Perhaps I shouldn’t compare myself to the adroit locals but to other trekkers. At some point, Bir falls silent.

“Thanks,” I say, “I think your friends are breakfast ready.” I can see them getting together outside, one of them smoking a morning cigarette. “I’ll start on the trail. Maybe I’ll see you guys higher up later today.”

“Happy vertical translocation of your mass.”

Leaving the lodge, I climb up through the oak wood. Clumps of bamboo sway in the morning breeze, emitting the clucks of hidden junglefowl, joining the ever-present drum of the river, fed by the clearest streams tingling from the jagged cliffs, while electricity-carrying sleek and shiny aluminium poles stand like foreign tree trunks among the gnarled oaks, whose thick branches are black against the blue sky. The air is saturated with the sweet damp notes of wet soil. Lichens splotch discrete colours on the tree trunks and yellow moss tries to cover the grey boulders dotting the forest floor. Cows graze in the occasional openings in the canopy, next to the low stone walls of abandoned homesteads, ignoring the sound of axes and the sweating young men portering planks on their backs, mindless of the sun and shadow chasing each other on the trail beneath their feet, except where a landslide has erased the forest, nature’s own axe at work.

The streams keep my water bottle filled. Around lunchtime, the climb eases off, pines and fir start to dominate the woods, and the high snowclad mountains have moved closer. Black, white and grey dzo graze among scattered ruined houses, their curved horns and long fur making them look more yak than cattle. A little further on is a new village. A sign says “Thangshyap, 3200 m”. There is ice on the small pools in the shade between the buildings and snow among the trees on the other side of the river. All the houses have blue aluminium roofs, some adorned with solar panels. The balmy scent of resin permeates the village, from the thousands of boards and planks drying in the sun and stacked behind the houses.

A woman sits on the ground in the sun, removing tiny pieces of stone from the rice. I hear the sound of things being pounded in a nearby kitchen. I take my dalbhat outside, watched by a suspicious dzo. It disappears the moment the lodge owner emerges to ask if I need more rice.

I bask in the sun, my stomach full, nap for an hour. The trekkers from Jungle View don’t arrive. Perhaps that guy, Bir, was right; maybe I do walk fast. I suppose there are many ways of walking, things that can slow you down or make it easier to get from A to B. For sure, one step at a time will take you to where you want to go. Don’t think about the next steep climb, that’s in the future, and the future doesn’t exist. Stay with yourself, with the only thing that is real, the step you are taking right now. Even Everest is climbed one step at a time. Maybe this understanding is what enables me to live with the ghost inside me; if I focus on one step at a time, I will arrive where the real Vini is. Isn’t that so?

Of course, it’s important to look where you put your foot down – there is always a choice. That is true for every single step. Avoid loose rocks and cracks and don’t take strides that are too long or too high. Never place your foot lower than previously when going up; then you’ll lose strength, gravity sucking the joules out of you. Learning to put your foot down in the right place will save you great amounts of pain and energy. The more, the longer your trip is. If you’re new to walking, learn from walking behind an experienced guide and paying attention to the pattern of foot placement. Not that I have tried that myself. When Vini left me, it made such a huge impression that I had to get up and start walking immediately; there was no time to look for a guide. First, my body started walking, then my memory. You know what I mean? Memories shift location and shape with the passage of time. It’s long since I lost track of what happened and why. And it doesn’t matter. The basic fact of my life is that love never ends; it just changes; I live in it and change with it. I don’t want to be cured. I trek after love itself as that is where Vini lives.

In the afternoon, the narrow and densely wooded waterfall valley opens up into a gently sloping wide valley, with small clustered villages, large meadows dotted with yaks and dzos, and naked birch forests waiting for the frost to disappear, all dwarfed by magnificent peaks of rock, ice and snow. Many houses are new, but the way of living looks old, with dry-stone walls protecting the empty barley, buckwheat and potato fields in and between the villages, the livestock roaming freely. Though modernity lurks everywhere like it’s about to burst out of confinement; the odd satellite dish, someone on their smartphone, the electric lightbulbs, the insulated pipe moving glacial lake water into a small powerhouse.

The trail takes me across a gentle grey slope of loose gravel and crushed rocks, more than a kilometre wide, with almost no vegetation. I walk above the old Langtang village, buried 20 metres beneath zillions of tons of stone. At noon, on 25 April 2015, the mountainside above the village left the mother massif to resculpt the valley below, stripping the land of all life and manmade structures. Now 243 people sleep forever among the rocks in the deep, children, women and men, entire families. There is not a single sign there was ever a village here. The sheer force of the wind pushed away by the plunging mountainside flattened every single tree on the slopes on the other side of the valley.

In the mountains, our insignificance is absolute.

The walk through the altered landscape, the carelessly strewn boulders, the grey emptiness a visible memory, fills me with anxiety and tenderness, makes me stop, out of schedule. Take regular breaks is one of the things that keep my body strong, like ten minutes every hour, not giving in to the temptation of skipping a break. I sit on a flat rock painted with the name of a lodge in the rebuild village a little further on, a few roofs visible in the distance, sip water. Usually, I prefer to rest where there is a water source to refill my bottle. I close my eyes and let the pain of the place seep into me, almost audible echoes emerging from among the stones, stirring the veil hiding Vini, connecting me to this resting place and the caressing breeze. I survive because I’m able to hold onto the wounds she gave me. The quick passage of time heals nothing.

I trek the last bit to the new village, feeling the scratching of Vini’s nails on the inside of my skin. Don’t let pain detract you from your walking. If your feet, legs, back or soul start nagging for attention, go into one of your gardens. We all have many of these tranquil places where time doesn’t exist, and you can look at something, good or bad, from every possible angle, to your complete satisfaction. Vini is my largest garden. When I go there, whether to contemplate what my beloved might be doing at this very moment, or why she doesn’t answer my letters, or my inability to comprehend her claim to love me one day but not the next, I find myself at my destination in no time. This is even better if you don’t let details detract you. Keep walking. There is always an excuse to readjust your backpack, relace the boots, put on sunscreen, stop to take a swig of water. Forget about these things, do them during your regular break, don’t procrastinate. When you walk, walk.

*

“There’s a small peak you can climb from here, the Kyanjin Ri,” says Santosh. “It’s less than 5000m, and there shouldn’t be too much snow. We start after lunch.” He and his friends are also staying at the last lodge in the last village, with sweeping views of the white valley and peaks to the east. There are also two other trekkers, a couple of young guys, but they are not going anywhere, one of them in bed with symptoms of altitude sickness. No vomiting, but headache, insomnia and a complete loss of appetite.

“Maybe I’ll go too,” I say. “I just want to get some yak cheese first. I saw a small shop in the village.” Of course, I want to climb the K Ri. There are two routes, a steep upper one and a more pleasant side valley. I plan to take the one they don’t take.

“Feel free to join us,” he says. “The guys are pretty witty. You’ll like it.”

I pack a light backpack, just some biscuits, nuts and water. Great to leave the heavy stuff in the room. Only bring what you need. And that is not a lot, whether on long or short trips. Sometimes I see people with backpacks bigger than themselves, an expression of fear and an inability to make decisions. The basic rule is to bring only what you can wear. Exceptions: one book, a toothbrush and a few of your favourite snacks. I like salty almonds, even if they tend to leave my mouth somewhat dry. And always carry your own stuff. Don’t entertain the illusion that anyone can carry it for you.

From my window, I watch the four guys walking off to the right, two trekking poles per neon coloured jacket, into the side valley. I check my water bottle is full, slip on the small backpack, and head up the steep climb. I know trekking poles are good for conserving energy and sparing my knees when going down, but I never use them. If necessary, at least in the wooded valleys, I can usually find and cut a piece of bamboo.

The trail zigzags up the slope covered in some shrub the yaks don’t eat. My breathing becomes deep and laboured. I look for my rhythm. Walk at your own pace. Your body will tell you what that pace is. Find it and stick to it. Your pace is your friend. Anyone wanting to change it is not. And keep walking, as I already said, that’s the key, then you get to your destination.

After an hour, I rest, sip some water and eat some almonds. Far below to the right, I see the four neon dots moving up along the small stream in the side valley in fits and starts. Looks like they are in for a long day. I continue up. The mountainside belongs to itself. I’m a guest among the scattered juniper shrubs, the watchful yak and the creaking snow, the boulders and stones releasing their scents in minute parts as the cold and wind transform them, each century but one breath for the mountain. The grace of the meadows and peaks, the promises of the slopes and glaciers, the uncompromising sheer rock faces and ice walls, the silvery lines of streams and the crystalline air, all enable me. The need for money, the scheming and dealing in the shop, the impositions of people and the city, all disappear below the horizon. Where they belong. I am clear and clean, mobile and alive.

I keep climbing. Soon, I’m in the white fields. Occasionally, I see tracks from yaks or the wild mountain goats. Where there is shade, I walk on top of the snow; where there is sun, I sink in knee-deep, exhausting. It would have been better to start in the dark. But I take one step at a time. And I never look up, the summit or the destination will not arrive faster. It is where it is; you are where you are, no need to invite despair in. As my steps get shorter and slower, I visit the Vini garden. She’s sitting on a bench, reading Chekhov. What has rearranged inside her, making me into something not precious enough for her to cherish? When I saw her last – she does sometimes agree to see me – for a quick lunch, her thoughts left before her body did, her attention on the phone before the taxi leaves the curb, releasing an acidic sap in each of my cells. That was 75 days ago. That’s more than 100,000 minutes. I have faith in the unpredictability of existence. I trust my heart. That prevents me from leaching into the ground, bit by bit, minute by minute. My body and I stay together, and we keep walking.

At the summit, there is a small rock cairn. I free the snowed-under prayer flags; the sharp wind is flooring the peak, making it possible to move around without sinking into wet snow. I am where I want to be. Far below me, I see the frozen lid on the lake feeding the power station, the empty long trough left by the retreating glacier, yaks searching for grass and moss, four tiny neon-coloured dots. Above are the soaring peaks whispering my name. There is change and freedom in the air, almost tangible, the possibility of engaging with life in a different way, a door opening into a place where I can free myself from the chains of my successes, the business and my ability to achieve what other people want. I step to the north edge of the peak and look into the sheer vertical drop, a thousand metres down to the ridge of rock debris deposited by the glacier. Life is as fragile as it is precious. What would happen if I died in my café from a heart attack, and they did an autopsy? Could they cut through the layers of guilt and the crust of regret? Would they find the central chamber in my heart where Vini lives, see the harmony of her pale face and black hair? Would the knife release the sadness stored in my heart’s anteroom, an aggressive hissing as my body deflates? I don’t want to become accustomed to old pain, inspecting the size and shape of my scars, indulging in contemplating my misfortunes. I want life pumping in my veins, every minute every day, surrounded by my own positive choices, people and places and possessions, all of which I can leave without regret because I’m doing what I’m supposed to do. Is that too much to ask, to be open-hearted and curious, able to assume responsibility for myself and my actions? I don’t think so.

I descend down a long grassy slope to the side valley to avoid going back the same way. It faces south, and I’m soon out of the snow, passing suspicious but satisfied-looking yaks. Below me, the four neon dots are also moving back towards the village. I rest on a rock, eat coconut biscuits, drink water, and watch a nearby yak with a black body and a white face looking for juicy things among the brown grasses. Its square frame, long shaggy hair and short sweeping horns make it look at home. Solid, fearless and in control. A villager appears, cutting branches of juniper bushes and carrying them in a small bamboo basket. I know the juniper is fragrant when it burns. I offer him a biscuit, and he sits with me. His name is Lhakpa.

“Is that your yak?” I ask. He starts laughing.

“That’s a nak, not a yak. Only the males are yaks. This one is ghau.”

“What? You name each nak and yak?”

“This is the most beautiful animal in the world. We name them after their looks. So colourful! The ghau is the nak with a black body and a white face. If it’s a yak looking like that, he is kawa.” He points down the slope. “See that one with the white body and black stripes? That’s sapta, whether it’s a yak or nak. And that one over there, with the white hooves, white horns and white face, that’s ngja. Yaks with a dark black body are rokpo; the similar naks are rungmo. If they are more brownish, the yaks are dejé, and the naks are semo.”

“What if they are half-yaks or half-naks?”

“We use the same names. It’s about colour and beauty.”

For some reason, knowing this makes me feel rich. The world is a mysterious and wonderful place. When I get back down to the village, I’ll buy some nak cheese. We finish the biscuits, and Lhakpa goes off to find more juniper branches.

On the next slope, a few hundred metres away, I see a group of six tahrs, their fur golden in the sun. I should have brought my binoculars. The mountain goats move slowly down the slope. So do I. Above the village, I catch up with the four neon guys. We share a rest; they had been just a hundred meters from the summit but had chosen to turn around to make it down to the lodge before sunset.

At the lodge, I try the vitamin-packed seabuckthorn juice. The liquid is a bright sun caught in a glass. I talk to the young trekker, his friend is better now, able to get out of bed. It also turns out that Sonam, the lodge owner, has some old Tibetan coins, including a silver tangka from 1791. I buy them all. Afterwards, I get hold of a piece of soap and a bucket of warm water and scrub myself down as it gets dark. I feel clean, warm and relaxed, spending the evening in a corner of the common room, reading my book and enjoying salty Tibetan butter tea. I wake up during the night and need to go out to empty my bladder. The sky is an endless carpet of jewels. I forget about these when I live in the city. How can they be so bright? So plentiful? So large? So close? I can almost pluck them. Some stars pulsate and change colour, from white to blue or red to orange. Again, a sense of richness comes to me.

The next day, I explore the unwinding upper river valley, full of frozen waterfalls, vertical rock walls and glinting peaks under the blue sky, the occasional yak and tahr watching me, the crooked and naked birch trees making it up to around 4000 metres. The red pandas are in hiding, but the mountains are on the move, closing in from both sides. It’s only a few hours to the Tibetan border, but the wet snow slows progress. It gets worse as the sun climbs higher, releasing the valley from the frost’s embrace. I move up the south-facing slope, where there is less snow and an abundance of low wintry rhododendron shrubs, along a small stream. The water tastes of soft crystals and moss. Don’t get lost, and stay dry. That’s basically how you stay alive in the wild. The challenge in this good weather is slight. I can always follow the running water, that will take me to the river and out of the high mountains. And my feet are still dry, the gaiters keeping the snow out of my boots. I avoid cheap boots, it only takes a few wet weeks to make them fall apart, and they encourage the rich growth of fungi-between-toes. Jeans are also problematic. I wore those when I started walking years back; they never dry and gift red itchy splotches on my inner thighs. Unnecessary and unwanted fellowship.

I meet no one. The day melts away. I regret not having brought a tent and a bit of food, then I could stay longer, alone in this rare wilderness, whispering to eternity, feeling part of something vast and invisible and slow, an erosion of body and an exaltation of soul.

The winding yak trails take me back to the lodge, above the soft melting late afternoon snow in the valley bottom. The closer I get to the village, the more trash I see along the trail, individual pieces or piles gathered by the wind in small hollows. Garbage attracts garbage. By physical processes as well as human choice. I have seen that on many walks, people prefer to drop their waste on top of other waste. And there is such variation in the trash. Discarded noodle and biscuit wrappers, wrecked plastic bottles, rusty tin cans, shiny tin cans, pieces of glass, broken bamboo baskets, flattened cigarette boxes, odd cardboard remains, bits of frayed rope, flapping plastic bags caught on branches, like ignored flags of warning dotting the trails. The rubbish is as colourful as it is common. I remember a photo in the Kathmandu Post, a piece of plastic waste found in red panda scat. Modern human life has arrived in the high mountains, but old ways of disposal persist. Materials changed; habits didn’t.

*

More people are arriving in Syaphru Besi, both climbers and trekkers. It has only been a week, but the weather is getting warmer, and the spring season is starting in earnest. I sit in a nice nook under a tree, resting against the trunk, close to the bridge across the Trishuli River. It’s warm here in the lowlands, even in the early morning, and I enjoy the breeze on my bare arms. One group after another passes by, heading up into the lower wooded tracts of the Langtang valley, a mix of Nepalis and foreigners. Domestic tourism has picked up a lot in recent years. I watch three young guys pass by in apparent silence. They are in their early twenties, wearing identical thin black jackets sporting the outline of a ragged mountain and the slogan “go for it”, white pods sprouting in their ears. The guy in front is fiddling with his phone. I marvel at their choice. Don’t they want to listen to the wind in the pine trees, how their breathing becomes laboured on the steep slopes, the crimson-breasted woodpecker looking for food, the cooing of the rock pigeons, the helicopter-buzz of a horned beetle, the songs of the river? Stay unplugged, take the consequence of your choice and be where you are. The only exception is if you need to go to one of your gardens.

A woman passes my resting spot, against the flow of moving bodies, crossing the bridge, going up into the town. Her attention is on the two large cones she is carrying, one in each hand. She blows air between the seed scales, turns the cones around, inspects them from different angles, stops to get a closer look at some detail. What a smile. She must have found them up in the valley, in one of the pine forests on the lower slopes. I watch her climb the hill on the other side, her orange t-shirt and black pants making it easy to follow her. She disappears between the houses on the ridge top.

Half an hour later, I’m in my room, picking up my backpack. I wait for the Kathmandu minibus by the roadside in front of the hotel. There is no more than a house row or two on either side of the road, all the shops in the front row, open for business. A mechanic is working on a bike, oil on his hands and lower arms, two women are squabbling over the price of turnips, a motorcycle with three people on it passes, leaving dust in the air, then my bus comes. I get in and put my backpack on the overhead luggage rack, look for a place to sit. There’s the orange t-shirt, shoulders covered in hair like the blackest of nights. That smile. White teeth and a full lower lip. The bus starts rolling.

“What will you use those cones for?” I sit down in the row opposite her. Only the narrow aisle between us. Her lips are moving, but I can’t hear what she is saying; all my attention is on her smile, flowing like a tenderness into me. The bus becomes a precious confined endlessness. Her smell touches me, citrus and vanilla like lying down in a field of poppies. I hear a creak, like something wooden in my basement is shifted around. I leak, my past dripping like viscous oil onto the road disappearing behind us.

Maybe Vini won’t follow the trail from the high mountains.

 

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