Nepal Revisited 8
Onwards to the Mustang Region
Tattapanni to Ghasa
We set off early for Ghasa, our next overnight stop, knowing we were going to have to walk for about 7 hours that day. We were horrified to hear from the lodge owner, the previous evening, that they were currently building a road right through the sanctuary from Pokhara to Jomsom. This will not only destroy the beauty of the place but will wipe out the trekking industry in that area and with it the livelihoods of thousands of people who depend on trekkers for their income. I don't know what the rationale behind it is - whether the-powers-that-be think they are going to make more money out of busloads of tourist who want to see the beautiful Annapurnas but don't want to have to walk to do it. All I can envisage happening is the displacement of huge numbers of people and the abandonment of villages who have relied on the trekking industry for over 50 years.
Road to Ghasa
Things move very slowly in Nepal, especially in the mountains where everything has to be done by hand, but the road-building was evident almost as soon as we got out of Tattapanni and sections of the road are already completed. The old footpaths are now in very poor condition, parts of them have fallen away completely and at some points we were scrabbling along the sides of the mountains, grabbing onto whatever we could to keep ourselves upright.
Dodgey bridge and collapsed footpath on far side
During the day we came across several building crews, hacking away with hand-tools. At one spot they were knocking holes in the hill-side to plant sticks of dynamite - we'd only passed and were having lunch about a mile away when we heard the series of explosions as they blasted away the mountainside.
We arrived into Ghasa feeling quite despondent and the village itself didn't help - it seemed like a ghost town and I don't think I saw a single person the 10 minutes it took us to walk the length of the village to our tea-house. That was a depressing, purpose built, concrete building and bloody freezing. The heating system in the main-room was one that had been copied from Japan and consisted of large pans of hot coals placed under the large central table that had benching running around it and a heavy table cloth draped over the top and down the sides. The idea is you sit with your legs under the table and the heavy tablecloth traps the heat underneath. Of course this means your legs are roasting and the rest of you is like ice.
Despite the grimness of it all, we had a pleasant enough evening. Ian taught the local kids how to build castles out of playing cards and I chatted to a really nice American woman who was the only other 'guest'. We'd bumped into her the previous day in Tattapanni and she'd been telling us how she'd first come to Nepal in 1987, doing research for her PhD thesis and had been coming back regularly ever since. We finished off the evening with a couple of hot-whiskeys to keep out the chill and went to bed early, planning to get out of Ghasa as quickly as possible.
Ian looking decidedly nervous crossing the suspension bridge outside Ghasa
Tattapanni to Ghasa
We set off early for Ghasa, our next overnight stop, knowing we were going to have to walk for about 7 hours that day. We were horrified to hear from the lodge owner, the previous evening, that they were currently building a road right through the sanctuary from Pokhara to Jomsom. This will not only destroy the beauty of the place but will wipe out the trekking industry in that area and with it the livelihoods of thousands of people who depend on trekkers for their income. I don't know what the rationale behind it is - whether the-powers-that-be think they are going to make more money out of busloads of tourist who want to see the beautiful Annapurnas but don't want to have to walk to do it. All I can envisage happening is the displacement of huge numbers of people and the abandonment of villages who have relied on the trekking industry for over 50 years.
Road to Ghasa
Things move very slowly in Nepal, especially in the mountains where everything has to be done by hand, but the road-building was evident almost as soon as we got out of Tattapanni and sections of the road are already completed. The old footpaths are now in very poor condition, parts of them have fallen away completely and at some points we were scrabbling along the sides of the mountains, grabbing onto whatever we could to keep ourselves upright.
Dodgey bridge and collapsed footpath on far side
During the day we came across several building crews, hacking away with hand-tools. At one spot they were knocking holes in the hill-side to plant sticks of dynamite - we'd only passed and were having lunch about a mile away when we heard the series of explosions as they blasted away the mountainside.
We arrived into Ghasa feeling quite despondent and the village itself didn't help - it seemed like a ghost town and I don't think I saw a single person the 10 minutes it took us to walk the length of the village to our tea-house. That was a depressing, purpose built, concrete building and bloody freezing. The heating system in the main-room was one that had been copied from Japan and consisted of large pans of hot coals placed under the large central table that had benching running around it and a heavy table cloth draped over the top and down the sides. The idea is you sit with your legs under the table and the heavy tablecloth traps the heat underneath. Of course this means your legs are roasting and the rest of you is like ice.
Despite the grimness of it all, we had a pleasant enough evening. Ian taught the local kids how to build castles out of playing cards and I chatted to a really nice American woman who was the only other 'guest'. We'd bumped into her the previous day in Tattapanni and she'd been telling us how she'd first come to Nepal in 1987, doing research for her PhD thesis and had been coming back regularly ever since. We finished off the evening with a couple of hot-whiskeys to keep out the chill and went to bed early, planning to get out of Ghasa as quickly as possible.
Ian looking decidedly nervous crossing the suspension bridge outside Ghasa