Arrival in Lho

What awaited us in Lho, was a truly medieval scene:

On the unpaved road we walked in a mixture of drenched soil and mule dung. Chickens, cattle, dzos and an ownerless horse were blocking our progress, as the rain was just starting to fall in heavy drops like lead from a grey sky.

The eyes of small children with dirty faces were following us from a safe distance, from unlid living quarters above low stables in the basements of ramshackle dwellings.

Various bones and a discarded mumified yak skull were littering the road.

It had been a long hike today. Starting at the small hamlet of Ghap on the Manaslu Circuit Trail, we had trekked along the steep banks of the Budhi Gandaki River in the heart of the Himalaya. With the help of precarious suspension bridges, some of which showed signs of severe battering from falling rocks, we had crossed the river a few times.

Walking into the centre of the village, we passed a white stupa, where dried juniper twigs were smoldering on a small fire. After enjoing a few final meters of solid pavement, we finally arrived at our destination, the somewhat misleadingly named “Hotel” Tasidele.

Here our room for the night consisted of two beds, four walls, a not consistently working power socket and at one end of the room there was a small window, that was so dirty, that it was impossible to look outside. At the other end of the room, the window consisted just of a pair of closed shutters, with the rest of the window missing all together.

However, the place was occupied to capacity and once entering the dining hall on the first floor, which appeared like stitched together by planks of wood and single glazed windows of various shapes and sizes, one was enchanted by the warmth of the central fire place and by the cacophony of English, Nepalese, Korean, French, German and of all the other languages that are spoken on the great hiking trails of the world.

Soon a bottle of the local beer and the customary Dhal bhaat appeared on the table in front of me and the day finished in lively conversation coupled with a sense of belonging to a community of likeminded hikers and travellers. Despite the material shortcomings of the place, here was something that is so often missing in our digitally controlled and regulated, but socially sterilized modern world.

On the next morning, the weather had changed and while the sun was rising on a cloudless sky, the village awoke being surrounded by snowcapped mountains. A few villagers were attending the central giant prayer wheel

and once again the smoke of burning juniper branches was engulfing the stupa.

Looking up at the hill in the West, there was a tryptichon of the local monastery, framed on each side by the golden summits of Naike and and for the first time of Manaslu .