A Nomad in Nepal and the Lands Next Door

By Mary Jane Walker

With links to blog posts containing colour photographs and videos, 'A Nomad in Nepal and the Lands Next Door' describes Mary Jane's three trips, so far, to Nepal and the Himalayan region.

A little over a decade ago, Mary Jane knew almost nothing about the region. Since then, she has learned a lot. Delving deeply into Himalayan history, 'A Nomad in Nepal' is also a mine of useful firsthand experience about guiding and trekking pitfalls and the politics of the region, all while describing epic treks in Nepal and visits to Sikkim, Dharamshala (Himachal Pradesh), Sringagar (Kashmir) and the exotic Chitral region of Pakistan as well, hard-up against Afghanistan, where the local Kalash tribe is menaced by the Taliban.

'A Nomad in Nepal' describes three mountain treks in detail: the trek to Everest Base Camp, the Annapurna/Manaslu Circuit, and the Three Passes route. Mary Jane also describes her experiences climbing in the Hindu Kush mountains of Chitral.

Mary Jane stayed on a houseboat on the city lake of Srinagar, and was shown around the region by the family of a guide who calls himself Raj on the plans of India and Yaqoob in the mountains. In Chitral, she stayed with an erudite professor and his family, all the better to discuss the local situation.

For a change of scenery, Mary Jane also visited the Chitwan National Park, in the steaming lowlands of Nepal, where tigers and the little-known Indian Rhinoceros abound, along with other curious creatures such as the sloth bear, which resembles a giant badger and carries its babies on its back.

Mary Jane has won two writing awards so far and has been a finalist in two other competitions: see her website, a-maverick.com

• Language: English
• Publisher: Mary Jane Walker
• Release date: Jul 6, 2021
• ISBN: 9780473582180

Mary Jane Walker

Mary Jane Walker is the author of two recently published Travel books, A Maverick Traveller and A Maverick New Zealand Way.Mary Jane decided on writing her first book, A Maverick Traveller based on a compilation of her travels and experiences around the globe. She now has a total of 8 books, with her second just published on Kindle, A Maverick New Zealand Way.In A Maverick New Zealand Way, Mary Jane sets out on over 55 walks around New Zealand. Laced with history, detailed maps and stunning photographs it highlights the lesser known walks as well as adding intriguing perspectives to the more popular.Mary Jane is an avid hiker and enjoys spending time in the outdoors, rain or shine. She has spent time involved in politics and is a supporter of Green Peace and Bird & Forest. She holds a Masters in Politics as well as a Degree in Journalism. Aside from her newfound love of writing about travel, Mary Jane has been involved in property development and teaching.She is a self-proclaimed ‘Maverick’ or free-spirit, someone who steps wanders outside the box. In doing so she has encountered 50 Cent – the US rapper outside a backpackers, spent two years sailing oceans naked on a traditional Chinese boat and climbed to the summit of Mont Blanc.

Book preview

From Reviews of the previous edition

★ ★ ★ ★

‘An Interesting Travel Memoir’

A Maverick Himalayan Way by adventurer and author Mary Jane Walker is a very interesting travel memoir. The Himalayas and the Indian Subcontinent has a rich culture, unique tradition, glorious past, heritage monuments, magnificent forts & palaces, beautiful temples, rippling sand dunes, wildlife sanctuaries & national parks, traditional villages, palace hotels, heritage hotels, excellent hospitality and of course generous people. Traveling in different cities and tourist destinations of this royal and imperial land would be a unique lifetime experience.

‘Piaras’, 24 May 2019

★ ★ ★ ★

‘A maverick Himalayan way, way too short’

". . . I now answer the question most prospective readers would like to read: is this book worth reading?

My answer is yes. If I found this book a good read even with my intimate knowledge of two of the three countries covered, people not familiar with these countries should find it even more engrossing.

Venky Iyer, conclusion of review, 4 August 2019

A NOMAD IN NEPAL

And the Lands Next Door

Mary Jane Walker

Author’s Dedication

I would like to dedicate this book to all the cultures of the Himalayan region – you are many. Thank you for inviting me into your homes. It has been a journey I hope to continue.

Mary Jane Walker is a writer of historically well-informed travel narratives that come with an autobiographical flavour.

Like all Kiwis, Mary Jane was raised on tales of Sir Edmund Hillary's climbing of Mount Everest alongside the Sherpa Tenzing Norgay, and of Hillary's subsequent good works among the impoverished Sherpa community in Nepal.

But she never felt the urge to go to the Himalayas herself, until friends persuaded her to go with them on a cheap trek up to Everest Base Camp, in Nepal.

What the heck, she thought—let's go! But if she was going to go to the Himalayas, she wasn't going to confine herself to the Everest region, or even to Nepal.

In A Nomad in Nepal and the Lands Next Door, Mary Jane updates A Maverick Himalayan Way, the earlier edition of this book. She describes her adventures in several parts of upland and Himalayan Nepal: the Everest region, Manaslu, Annapurna, and the Kathmandu Valley. In the Chitral district of Pakistan, bordering Afghanistan, where the Hindu Kush mountains continue the Himalayas westward. In Sikkim, a once-independent principality east of Nepal. And finally, once more in Nepal, in the low-altitude, subtropical, Chitwan region.

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The author in front of Ama Dablam, a peak in eastern Nepal

a-maverick.com

Published 2021 by:

Mary Jane Walker

A Maverick Traveller Ltd

PO Box 44 146, Point Chevalier, Auckland 1246, New Zealand

www.a-maverick.com

Email: [e-mail]

ISBN: 978-0-473-58219-7 (mobi), 978-0-473-58217-3 (softcover POD), 978-0-473-58218-0 (epub), 978-0-473-58220-3 (digital audiobook)

© 2021 Mary Jane Walker. All rights reserved. Except for the purpose of fair reviewing, no part of this publication subject to copyright may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or any information storage and retrieval system, without prior written permission from the publisher.

Disclaimer

This book is a travel memoir, not an outdoors guide. Although the author and publisher have made every effort to ensure that the information in this book was correct at the time of publication, the author and publisher do not assume and hereby disclaim any liability to any party for any loss, damage, or disruption caused by errors or omissions, whether such errors or omissions result from negligence, accident, or any other cause. Some names have also been changed to disguise and protect certain individuals.

Notes on Images

All maps have north at the top and have been drawn for this book by Chris Harris unless otherwise credited. All photographs in the book are the property of Mary Jane Walker unless otherwise credited.

Covers and Fonts

The front cover includes a NASA public domain satellite image of Nepal on 27 October 2002 from Visible Earth imagery via Wikimedia Commons, the author credited as Jacques Descloitres, MODIS Rapid Response Team, NASA/GSFC. The fonts used for the title on the front cover and spine are Impact and Impact Condensed. The interior text of the print edition is typeset throughout in Garamond.

Author’s tip: How to see images from this book in colour and at higher resolution

Each chapter of this book links to blog posts on my website, which contain the images in the chapter and additional images and videos in some cases as well, in colour and at higher resolution.

There’s plenty more on my website too!

a-maverick.com

Contents

Front matter

Introduction

Chapter 1: Himalayan History

Chapter 2: Arriving in Nepal

Chapter 3: Flying into the Mountains

Chapter 4: Everest Base Camp

Chapter 5: Manaslu and Annapurna

Chapter 6: The Three Passes

Chapter 7: Strategic Sikkim

Chapter 8: Chitral and the Hindu Kush

Chapter 9: Adventures in Kashmir

Chapter 10: Dharamshala

Chapter 11: Mixed-up Mountaineering Guides

Chapter 12: Batons for the Beasts

Conclusion

Acknowledgements and Thanks

Other books by Mary Jane Walker

Rear Cover

Introduction

A Map of Nepal and surrounding lands in the Indian subcontinent

T

EN years ago, I really knew nothing about Nepal, its neighbouring lands, and the great Himalayan mountain range they share.

I knew that Sir Edmund Hillary and the ever-smiling Sherpa, Tenzing Norgay, had been the first to conquer the mountain we call Everest. And that was about the sum of my knowledge.

Most of what I know now is what I have learnt from going to these lands in the years since.

When I was in a hiking club, sometime around 2010, I sat through a presentation on the Himalayas. I sat in front of a screen where photo after photo of great peaks such as Everest, Annapurna and Ama Dablam were projected. And the people I saw in these photos were different from Tenzing.

Nobody was smiling. People were suffering from either altitude sickness or frostbite, and they looked miserable. There was talk of yak poo on the trails, and of staying in tents. Goodness, I thought. Why would anyone even bother to go there? It did not sound appealing.

Hiking presentations did nothing to make me want to go to Nepal. I had spent a good part of my life trekking in New Zealand, and I didn't see the point in going to Nepal. That is, until a couple of friends invited me to join them on a group tour. The tour sounded ridiculously cheap, only $1,500 for seventeen days plus $1,150 for the return flight (American dollars, that is; though New Zealand has its own currency, all references to dollars in this book are to US dollar prices). I hadn't been out of New Zealand in a while. Suspecting that I have a wanderlust gene in me, I thought I might as well spend six months away. So, I asked, why should I confine myself to Nepal?

The tallest Himalayan peaks lie in Nepal. But the mighty mountain range traverses five countries in a sort of belt with mountain forests just south of the higher peaks, and the more arid lands of China’s Tibetan autonomous region (Tibet) and Xinjiang province to the north.

The ecology of the Himalayan belt is rich and diverse. On the front cover of this book, you can see a section of the belt consisting mainly of parts of Nepal along with Tibet to the north and the Indian plains to the south. But the distinctive Himalayan belt runs all the way from Pakistan in the west, where it becomes the Hindu Kush range, to Bhutan in the east. Here is a wider view, from the same source as the image on the cover, which extends as far as the confluence of the Ganges, known in Bangladesh as the Padma, with the Brahmaputra River at bottom right. Both of these important rivers have their sources in the Himalayas, as does the Indus, the most important river in Pakistan.

‘The Himalayas’, NASA public domain image via Visible Earth, with north (Tibet) at top approximately. Nepal is in the middle, and Bhutan at right. The Himalayan belt shown also continues westward into the Indian state of Uttarakhand, and, to the left of the picture, into the Indian state of Himachal Pradesh, the divided lands of Jammu and Kashmir, and northern Pakistan including Chitral. NASA image reference details Nepal.A2002300.0505, taken 27 October 2002, credit to Jacques Descloitres, MODIS Rapid Response Team, NASA/GSFC.

I decided that if I were to go to that part of the world, I would go to as many parts of it as I could. So, I went to Sikkim, which used to be a separate country until India annexed it in 1975. I went to Chitral in Pakistan, to Kashmir and to Dharamshala, in the Indian state of Himachal Pradesh. And I’ve gone three times to Nepal, so far. (Tibet and Bhutan are still on my to-do list.)

I saw and learnt a lot in Chitral. The Hindu Kush mountain range is majestic, and the scenery is breathtaking. The people are lovely – they're hospitable and peaceful. It's just a shame to see what the war in neighbouring Afghanistan has brought about.

I certainly enjoyed Kashmir, a territory divided between Pakistan, India and China. I was enchanted by Sufi Islam and how its followers practised their religion by celebrating music. It was quite different from the more austere kinds where women can't dance, and music isn't celebrated.

And it was a special experience to visit Dharamshala, in the nearby Indian state of Himachal Pradesh, where the Dalai Lama is based.

Nepal was wonderful, so much so that I visited more than once. I love the Tibetan Buddhism which the Sherpas practise, and their view of life. I love the smiling children – the children smiled a lot! But not so much the smiling Sherpas, because life there isn't much about smiles right now. The movie Sherpa highlights the hardships they face, brought about in part by the death of many males in that community. These days, the people of Nepal, including the Sherpas, are being devastated by Covid-19. If the more prosperous countries insist on fully patent-protecting their vaccines and don’t roll them out cheaply to the rest of the world, the politicians of these countries will have blood on their hands and will be setting their own populations up for further outbreaks and the evolution of new strains, as well.

I have had my share of disappointments in Nepal, and I have had uplifting moments. I have been to the bases of some of the world's highest peaks and seen some of the most majestic landscapes on the planet.

I absolutely loved Sikkim. It was a magical place. I celebrated Gautama Buddha's birthday there and attended a funeral, getting a taste of everyday life. I saw beautiful sights and met wonderful people.

Statue of Tenzing Norgay at the Himalayan Mountaineering Institute, Darjeeling, India. Photo by Colin Ashe (2006, cropped by Pplecke), via Wikimedia Commons, CC-BY-SA 3.0

Buddhist Prayers creating a ‘Mani Wall’, near Mount Everest. These have to be passed on the left side, in order to respect a sacred principle of clockwise movement as viewed from above.

Buddhist prayer wheels at Rumtek Monastery, Sikkim. These are rotated clockwise as well, as viewed from above. I saw similar ones at Tengboche, and smaller prayer wheels were very common. Photo by Sivakumar (2012), CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons.

Wayside Shrine (top) and Mountaineers’ Memorial (below), both in the Khumbu region, near Mount Everest

In all these places, I felt safe most of the time, though I am the kind of woman who can feel unsafe in the centre of Auckland or Queenstown at night when it is not well lit. I think it is about how someone approaches these things; it's about how people travel and where they travel. I have always lived my life the way I wanted to and so I have done my fair share of travelling. The Himalayan region forms a strong part of my travel experience, and I would suggest that people go there.

Having said that, in the second-to-last chapter I describe some unpleasant guiding experiences based on real first-hand knowledge. The quality of trail guides in Nepal is quite variable, and although the guides and porters have very legitimate grievances (which I go into in Chapter Six), at the same time, the trekker can be taken for a ride, or even propositioned, as I was.

Someday, I would like to trek on the Great Himalaya Trails – to travel this formidable mountain range from one end to another. You can't get enough of the Himalayas!

The Great Himalaya Trails (branded as such) run most of the length of Nepal: from Kanchenjunga, the world's third highest mountain, on the border of Nepal and Sikkim, westward to western Nepal. There is a high trade route and a low (cultural) route, though the word ‘low’ is relative here.

Life is in the mountains. They say that people force themselves to live in the moment by climbing mountains. Do we want to touch God? I have no idea.

Yet not all of Nepal is in the mountains! The capital, Kathmandu, is 1,400 metres above sea level (4,600 feet), but I travelled down from there to the Chitwan National Park on the border with India. Chitwan is an area of meandering rivers that is only about 200 metres or 600-odd feet above sea level. The national park is a famous wildlife preserve, literal tiger country. I talk about Chitwan in my final chapter, ‘Batons for the Beasts’, after the batons we were given in case we needed to fend off wild beasts!

I highly recommend the great many videos that are now on Youtube, and elsewhere, as the next best thing to being there wherever ‘there’ might be, and as essential preparation, these days, for going there!

Finally, make sure that you get all the relevant travel advisories, vaccinations, and insurance!

Web versions of content (blog posts with images and videos), and chapter notes

Here is a website version of this Introduction:

a-maverick.com/blog/introduction-to-a-nomad-in-nepal

Each successive chapter also links to one or more blog posts on my website in a similar fashion. These often contain more photographs than the same chapter in the book, in colour. And the blog posts also contain embedded videos in some cases.

If there are any notes intended to clarify chapter content, these will follow the website link for each chapter.

CHAPTER ONE

Himalayan History

Where East met West, and India collides with the North

T

HIS book is about my journey across landscapes renowned not only for their beauty but also for their cultures and religions. I went to Nepal because I was encouraged by friends to go on a group trek, and I found myself in love with learning. That is, with learning about the interrelations between nature and the peoples who had come to depend on their local environments, whether historically or in modern times.

The discoveries of diversity within the natural environment, cultural heritage and religions that I made during my trip