My first field trip was the most physically and emotionally challenging week of my life. I wanted to cry, I wanted to vomit, and I’m sure I very nearly passed out a few times. So welcome to Gorkha District, Nepal, viewers. There’s no red team, there’s no blue team. Just one uncoordinated white girl being laughed at by the locals.
We left Bharatpur early in the morning on Sunday, and for the first few hours had ‘blacktop road’. I will never again complain about the potholes on Mounts Bay Road. Our first stop was for breakfast/lunch, where I sat watching a guy blessing his car engine- including tikka, food offerings and incense. I then noticed a woman doing the same to a sewing machine. RP explained to me that today was ‘Kanya Sankranti Day’ (OK, I looked that up afterwards), and that people worshipped the ‘mercenary’ (I figured out as the day progressed that he meant ‘machinery’). So, the guy at lunch was worshipping the engine of his car, because it is ‘the heart’ of the machine. Another interesting view was of offerings spread out in front of a box of car lubricant. These guys are definitely grateful for what they have, and it made me think about how much we in Australia take all of our ‘machinery’ for granted. Perhaps we should have ‘iDay’, because I’m sure there are a lot of people out there whose lives would cease to function were their iPhone to give out…
After about 3 hours, we hit Gorkha Bazaar- which meant no more blacktop road. Which didn’t phase me to start with- I’ve been on dirt roads in Australia- but this wasn’t just a dirt road- it was a mud/boulder road! I bashed my head on the roof of the Land Rover several times, and thanked god that I’d worn a sports bra- this was intense! On one side of the road was a cliff face, and on the other a VERY steep drop- so when the car tilted towards the outer ‘road’, you instinctively closed your eyes and held on tight.
At one point we had to stop whilst the boys ‘built’ some more road for us…
Alas, this was in vain, for within 10 minutes we had hit a patch of mud so horrible that we had to turn back. Luckily, a local bus came past, and we madly scrambled onto that. We figured the (4WD) bus had a better chance of clearing that section of road than the Land Rover did. We were wrong. However, at least on the bus there were a heap of employees there to dig us out with pick axes and such, and eventually we were on our way again!
After about 4 hours on the ‘dirt’ road, we hit the river. We jumped off the bus, crossed a bridge made of sticks (I tried not to think about the ‘safety factor’ employed there…) and got to Arukhet. RP announced that we were in great luck, instead of walking for 5 hours, we could get a jeep first, then we’d only have to ‘walk’ (he used this term a lot before the field trip, a total lie) for 2 hours. This is what I saw when we approached the jeep:
This threw me a little. But then someone shut the driver’s side door and I saw the ‘sentence’ in full…
Phew. We'd found some hardcore Nepali Christians who run a jeep company.
So we hopped in the jeep and set off. Again, really not convinced this was road. Pretty sure most of it was creek bed, and it wasn’t dry enough yet to be defined as anything other than a passage of flowing water- which we were trying to navigate in a car. At one point we actually drove over what I would call the base of a waterfall… I have a great video to show when I get back, but for now, here’s a photo of that bit of ‘road’… we drove perpendicularly across the flow too.
Then, hurrah, we arrived at the end of the road. RP ran off for a few minutes and came back with a porter (actually not a porter, a local who was a beneficiary of the NEWAH project) to carry my bag. That should have been my first warning.
We walked across a terrifying swing bridge over a ravine, and again, I tried not to think about the engineering design (I was especially unconvinced that the chicken wire attaching the bridge to the rail would hold my weight if I tripped).
Then. It. Began.
Within about 5 minutes of crossing the bridge I had figured out that we were going straight up the side of the mountain (in Nepal they call it a ‘hill’, but if King’s Park gets to be called ‘Mt Eliza’ then I stand by my ruling that this was a mountain). It was like a never-ending Jacob’s ladder, except instead of stairs there were just rocks to scramble up. Then it started raining. That of course made things easier…
Every 5-10 minutes we had to stop whilst I caught my breath, tried to stop the shaking in my legs, and leant over the edge in case I vomited (very likely). I swore that I would never eat another Pringle
Then came the ‘hard’ part. RP told me not to look down or up, because I would be too afraid. This part of the trail had been blasted out of the cliff face, because the locals used to climb a rope ladder up this bit (ha!! If there had been a ladder there I would have quit the whole thing for sure! Worksafe SAM would have spotted that hazard, assessed that risk and made the changes- getting the hell out of there- pretty bloody quickly). Once we finished that bit RP told me that we couldn’t come back down the way we’d climbed up because it was ‘too dangerous’. Remember that.
It was getting dark by the time we got to the top of the cliff, but to my delight we only had to walk on a 45 degree slope towards the villages. It had been 2 hours and I was dead on my feet. My legs were shaking, the earth was shaking… actually, it turned out there WAS an earthquake just then. The others felt it, but in my state I just assumed it was the trembling of my own muscles doing that to the rock.
And as it got too dark to see one foot in front of the other, 2 hours and 15 minutes since we’d crossed the swing bridge, we reached Tallo Semrang. I wanted to die. And when you’re absolutely exhausted from climbing 1km vertically, there’s nothing better than filling your drink bottle up, treating it with chlorine so you don’t get diarrhoea, and waiting for 30 minutes to have a drink. Finding out that your house doesn’t have a toilet is also a highlight after that journey- as day one came to a close, I wasn’t feeling overly positive about the whole experience…
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