Old is Gold

“Old is Gold” was printed in fat letters on the windscreen of the vehicle that was standing in front of our hotel in Kathmandu the next morning.

While feeling slightly mocked by this statement, this slogan wasn’t helping to instill more confidence in me about travelling in Nepal.

There is the common misconception, that hiking on the mountain paths of the Himalaya is dangerous. The mountains are safe (may be with the exception of the very high altitudes), the real danger here is found on the roads and in the air. Nepal has one of the worst road traffic accident statistics and I was more concerned about the six hour journey (which then turned out to take nearly nine hours….) to the mountains in this giant steel tin, than about the whole hiking trek ahead of us.

Thankfully the discomfort from my infected tooth had settled and , pumped full with a cocktail of medication and with encouragement from hiker friend and dentist Graham and his daughter Angela in the UK, I had finally decided at least to give it a try and to go for a couple of days into the mountains, before coming to the ultimate decision to continue or to turn.

Leaving everything that I didn’t want to carry over the next 18 days at the Royal Singi Hotel, we – a team of British and Canadian hikers, together with our Nepalese guide – were setting off.

Taking one of the seats in the front of the bus, I noticed, that we were under the protection of both Hindu deities Ganesh and Kali.

In addition to this, each seat was fitted with a depiction of a pair of hands in a praying position. What could now possibly go wrong ?…

I have to admit that the reassurance resulting from this, convinced me less than the sizable “Volvo“ sign at the front of the bus.

Trusting that at least the vital parts of the chassis of the vehicle had its origin in Sweden – the interior fittings definitly had not……- we started slowly rolling out of the city, heading West towards Pokara.

The eternal traffic jam out of Kathmandu had not only the effect that our journey took much longer than expected, but the advantage that we were driving past abyssmal drops next to the road with an agreeable speed, especially while our driver was busy having extended conversations on his mobile phone (with Ganesh ?!…..).

Finally we turned off the main road and the direction changed from West to North – towards the deep valleys of the Himalaya.

Steel and rubber were now stressed and strained at their utmost and I pittied the old diesel engine while the bus laboured uphill on untarmaced roads.

Here, another definitley non-Scandinavian retrofitted feature of the bus came into its own : a multitone church organ, which sounded the first few tunes of “Happy Birthday to You” ahead of each turn we took on the mountain roads.

This, together with a firm belief in Darwin’s law of the survival of the fittest (or largest), ensured that we avoided any head on collision with any (bigger) vehicles and we finally arrived unscathed at the trailhead.

Our adventure to round the Manaslu Himal could finally start.