Go to Trekking in Gorkha

Kathmandu passes me by as I sit on the steps of the photo shop, waiting for the internet to awaken after an 8 hour scheduled power cut. It is a lovely afternoon, about 3.30, cool in the shade as a breeze stirs the big, round leaves of the Pipal tree. They seem to be waving at the people below. The branches touch buildings on the second and third floors on two sides of the chowk (junction). It sits, being a tree as the honking, dusty flow of city blood trickles and rushes past. Walking and on 150cc motorbikes, in rickshaws and pick-ups, filth-belching buses and fruit-laden Indian bicycles. Life is on the move, But I am not. I am still these days, floating ever downwards to find the ground, the earth, from where it is possible to take aim at the next destination. I clean my body, mind, eyes, ears and heart of the west. It is vital to do so, if one is to make a home of Asia for a while. And soon, very soon I will set my sights on the massive human chain-reaction of India, which exists for me only in anecdotes, furnished me by the various travellers that I meet. Crowded, filthy, poor but extraordinary. So here I gather my strength and resolve very calmly.

Daydreaming, I wonder what Kathmandu was like some hundreds of years ago in more glorious times, and the buildings and vehicles vanish in my mind. The slanted sunlight lies upon me and a quiet, spacious landscape opens up. I see the hills all around, thick dark forest and far away, clear white summits. Strange looking people in embroidered clothes, Nepali, Tibetan and other mountain people I recognise, but the phones, face masks, bike helmets and tourists disappear. Here is a mystical confluence of massive spiritual energy. Temples in the open, fresh, rarified air tinkle among groves of Sal trees and lush fields. Crows, caw and buffalo, groan. Pilgrims, merchants and mule trains flowing from high up in the mountains to the Indian plains and back again, each pausing to add a little energy to the holy place.

It is so quiet, only birdsong and the temple bells audible, since I am sitting some way from the centre of the village. But the past and present seem to merge for a moment and then it is 4pm. Almost immediately the traffic reappears, thickens, the noise rising as the nearby chowk is clogged to a standstill. The dust rises, a truck edges forward to compete with the others, exhaling plumes of particulate-rich carbon monoxide, and I squeeze my eyes, mouth and nose shut. It is time to go, the power is back and computers fire up inside. Time to communicate with the world.

It is a month since I returned to Nepal. The first days were very strange. I recognised so much, the people, my old room, my dusty bike that brought me from Tibet. But I had changed. Such a lot happened during my stay in Europe, that strange interlude within this bicycle journey. I saw almost every friend of mine in England, Switzerland and France. I stayed in Zurich, London, Paris and San Sebastien, surfed naked at Zarautz in Basque Spain (not something unusual in actual fact, on a nude beach), sweltered under the mid-summer sun at the street-theatre festival in Aurillac, sat under the stars at dawn in Plum Village and on a snow-covered hill in a chiltern valley.

Soon I wondered what was journey and what was interlude. Perhaps it was all journey, asiatic or occidental. Perhaps all was and is, one's life, whatever we think we should be doing. Whatever plans hang over us as we struggle to mean something. But there are two very different worlds and if you want to live, you have to choose. They do not mix well, as I realised when I went home. The real and the planned. I stumbled into a mess and lost a great friendship, partly because I brought my version of an eastern attitude and it didn't fit well back in the west. When you know you are supposed to be somewhere else, your sense of responsibility can change.

Eventually I extricated myself from the troubles and moved, finally able to prepare to go back to sitting on a bicycle, to pedal past the world. And here I am, after some extraordinary experiences. I saw my nephew growing up, ducked into tubular waves, ate peaches straight from a tree, drove thousands of miles with the sun on my arm and the radio on, as the market system faltered, and fear mushroomed, to become the daily soundtrack to millions of peoples' lives. Chance meetings and traumatic farewells. For me, falling from grace, turning away from enlightenment and towards blindness. So extraordinary, and all that while I was waiting to come back here to something that didn't actually exist anymore. Back to a past, now an illusion.

But here, something new is growing out of the ashes of regret and pain. Sometimes we forget that the fire that levels the forest will bring forth green shoots. And so it is.

Go to Trekking in Gorkha

Within a couple of days, I was back on one of Nepal's infamous and dangerous buses to meet up with Badri and Kiran who were travelling around the hills and mountains preparing more projects for 2010. 7 days of tough walking ensued which defy description, to be honest, though at the end I felt as if my ankles were cracking from the inside.

Go to Trekking in Gorkha

Up and down the winding stony and dusty trails we walked. Still higher, to cross over a mini pass flanked by silent Rhododendron trees in the fog, and then down to the village of Laprak. I was stunned to see this landscape once again. How was it possible to ascend from the river bed and keep ascending? To look up at a village a mile above you and the next day look down, the village now a half mile below? The scale is unbelievable, staggering in its hugeness. And for me it was a struggle to haul my pack up and down. But what beauty! And what sweet people. The friendly simple villages and good-natured children carrying wood down from the forest.

We inspected landslide areas and Pushpa, a shiningly intelligent American whose self-stated destiny is to overhaul the entire country's education, agricultural and social systems, expounded his philosophy for development quite convincingly. Led by 'Guru-ba', an ex Nepal army Gurung, we traversed rainforest and moon-scape on the way to the river valley that snakes all the way to the Terai. On the fourth day we ate a breakfast of mixed bean and grain flour prepared by Guru-ba. And we hiked. An hours hard descent proved too much for me and my mind caved in, in sympathy with my agonised feet. I sat and despaired, but after a rest, kept going. After a desperate lunch of noodles, as food was hard to come by at short notice, Dhal Bhaat needing to be prepared, I felt strangely disturbed. Badri was in a hurry to get back to his village with Pushpa to meet with some government officials, and Kiran and Santos seemed only to wish to relax and go slowly. So I had tried to keep up with the fast ones and soon enough, though we waited, we left the others behind at the descent.

After leaving the somewhat frosty-feeling village we rounded a cliff to encounter a truly awesome sight. The ground fell away vertically and the huge valley swept away from view into the haze, the river shining on the valley floor, 5, 10 miles away. My spirits lifted, but my feet stumbled and still my head was cloudy.

'I feel wasted', I exclaimed to Pushpa.

'Me too. That's probably something to do with the flour we ate for breakfast', he answered.

'The flour? What are you on about? The beans and seeds?'

'Oh there was plenty of weed in it too.'

'What! That's why I'm spaced out! Why I can't walk!'.

I was furious, but 'ke garne?' ('what to do?') I know well enough that to smoke or eat cannabis ruins my ability to walk in the mountains. I feel tired and weak, let alone slightly paranoid and weirded-out. I had been spiked, not intentionally, even though they all knew that I wasn't partaking, since I refused when offered a smoke. But thankfully the view was so incredible, and there were some wonderful people on the trail, that I soon left it alone. As we paused at a bend in the trail, also resting was a mother and child. All of 18 years or so, the sight of her breast-feeding with this monumental valley behind her, her richly coloured dress vibrating with himalayan energy, was awesome. I was too shy and respectful to make a portrait picture, but the one in my mind beats them all. We were approaching a lovely village clinging to the mountainside, beneath a plateau, out of view and well above us. Nicolas, a Tamang Christian on his way to the village, said that he could climb straight up to the plateau in an hour. Four for me, then, I thought to myself.

Go to Trekking in Gorkha

So after attending to a young child in the village with a couple of boils on his face, I lost the others, who disappeared round the corner into the sunset. I played murzunga to a group of children, who followed me some way and then as the sun set I started to descend even more, into a wood and down, then still down and on and on for two hours in the dark. Following Badri's distant whistle, I finally made it down to the house that was to be home for the night. In the end I stayed two days while the others went on, as the punishing walk had rendered me immobile, but after a couple of days walking, then two days in Badris village and a bus, I was back in Kathmandu.

Go toSukaura 2009

It was a pleasure to see everyone in the village and surprise the children by returning. They had grown, the new-born goat I had named a year ago had been eaten, but though things change, swimming in the river was as pleasurable as ever. The whole trip was beautiful and stunning, but my motivation was growing by the day; to get riding and cover some distance into India before the heat and monsoon. Somewhere out there is Kyrgyzstan, Iran and Europe. And so here I am.

I plan to photograph a brick kiln and also the old peoples' home at Pashupatinath before I leave. Pashupatinath is a very strange and wonderful place, the holiest Hindu temple complex in Nepal and each year frequented by hundreds of thousands of devotees during the festival of Shivaraatri. The night of Shiva's marriage to Parvati is amazing. Saddhus stream in from India and a fire is kept burning for the whole night up at the Shiva temple. This year I got down there a little late, to tread gingerly across the stinking, dirty Bagmati river with other festival goers. The crowds were heavy and I left my bike at a restaurant and walked in past the disabled beggars and peanut sellers.

Go to Shiva Raatri 2009

A dog sat disconsolately, seemingly waiting to die, eyes black and empty while a monkey's corpse was rotting only a metre away. The jovial young men climbed up the far bank and soon I was heading into the temple complex, with its wooded hill and the bridge over the river where people are cremated every day.

Go to Shiva Raatri 2009

Lines of Saddhus made and sold joints, since Shivaraatri is a night of hedonism for followers of Shiva, with plenty of chilams smoked. Bizarrely among all ways to earn some money, an old man charged 2 rupees for the use of his weighing machine, which seemed to read differently each time the disk inside it jammed beneath the weight of the person being weighed.

Go to Shiva Raatri 2009

And further on, by the bridge, a crowd of young men rushed to and fro in a mad hysteria, as they taunted a saddhu, shouting 'Baba! Baba!', the calm, dreadlocked saddhu suddenly rushing at the men goading him, with a copper sword outstretched in a theatrical show of comic aggression.

Go to Shiva Raatri 2009

I walked along to watch a beautiful ceremony of music and singing, a line of men consecrating the air with incense and some unusual racks of tea lights and then ascended in the dark to the top temple where saddhus sat next to the white shiva temple, tending the fire to the sound of a beating drum and a bell ringing.

Go toShiva Raatri 2009

The atmosphere was primal and ancient, deeply impressing. Monkeys screamed and freaked out in the dark among the other supernatural looking temples and ruins. But I worried for my bicycle and soon it was time to leave this other dimension, and I wended my way through the dusty wood to the road and back over the bridge and into thick traffic to my bike. Shiva seemed to come with me that night, as I cycled fearlessly in the dark without lights, weaving in and out of the traffic, and afterwards I felt as if I had truly arrived in Nepal.

I was lost in the beginning and doubtful. But once I had seen two poles, two faces of Nepal so far apart, the town and country, I felt as if I knew my place on earth a little bit better. The ancient and timeless Vedic culture, the thousand temples and deities in Kathmandu, every pair of sacred trees standing on centuries old stone plinths along the paths in the hills, the living history within the people who came from the Tibetan plateau centuries and decades ago, their food, villages and mani walls, the eyes of The Buddha, of Shiva looking down on me, on the others, on all of us, reassures me, as time passes. I wonder what will the coming months bring? I have no idea, but we will see. It is an exciting time, and I send my hearty greetings to you all.