The Other Annapurna

Another unsuccessful entry in a travel writing competition - this time with a 1000 word limit:

THE OTHER ANNAPURNA

The boy pulled up his shirt.  The Nepali sun gleamed off his skin.  The scar, half a metre in length, ran neatly down the centre of his breastbone.  I placed my ear flat against his chest, just to the left of the scar, and in the space between the third and fourth ribs.  Regular steady normal heart sounds with no extraneous noises.  A quick glance at the veins in his neck showed that his heart was working under normal inflow pressures, just like a smooth hydraulic pump.  He was healthy.  I handed over a fistful of Nepali rupees.  This was the first consultation I had ever given that I had paid the patient for, but his mother pleaded the need for money to pay the fees for his checkups.  Somebody, possibly in Kathmandu, had done a workmanlike job on repairing his heart.  Mother and child walked on, twice as fast as we, up the steep steps of the slabs past the holy pipal tree, where the path led to the next village up the mountainside.

In this same village of Tanchowk there is a museum which is adorned with the implements of village life of the past, but there is little difference between yesteryear and today.  Subsistence agriculture means producing millet, corn, rice, milk, fruits, and harvesting honey from the beehive in the hollow log that hangs from the eaves above.  Wood, brick, and whitewash, noodles drying on the roof, bamboo poles and prayer flags are the remembered elements of every Nepali house.

If Everest is your goal, then nothing will dissuade you.  Prepare for rock and ice, barren landscapes, and the silent fastness of the Khumbu.  If you value a more pastoral beauty at every step before you enter the world of ice, the chance to feel the pulse of the community, to walk close to and even into the homes of the local people, then go to Annapurna.  On your way you will meet the man with forty chickens in cages on his back, the man with eighty cans of Everest lager, or the man with fifty dozen eggs.  Even heavier loads are carried by the mule trains.  Herds of goats will follow you down the track.  Glittering mica in the stones, and more mundanely, glittering foil wrappers of discarded snuff or chewing tobacco will catch your eye.  Always above you will be the incomparable and sacred, unclimbed mountain, Machhapuchre,  ‘the Fishtail’.  Like the twisting tail of some plump trout, the double summits separated by a fin of razor sharp arête are ever before you.  Purple at dawn, the twin peaks are incomparably white during the day; golden, and finally blazing orange, red, and soft pink at sunset.  As you reach your final destination, Annapurna base camp, the basin of the aptly named Sanctuary will open before you.  The only way in lies behind you to the South East, and around the 360 degree compass of your vision stand the collective Annapurnas.  The prayer flags fluttering in the chill wind and the stone with the names of those who lie within the icy walls of this prison will add to your involuntary shivers.

Nowadays you do not have to take the bus from Kathmandu to Pokhara.  You may fly with Yeti, Buddha, or Gorkha airlines.  Fly west from Kathmandu, with the Himalaya on your right hand, its peaks higher than your aeroplane.  But soon; soon after Pokhara, the noise of the jet or car engine will be gone.  You will be left only with the silence, to think your own thoughts, and to learn from the simple but profound philosophies where Hinduism meets Buddhism, and a gentler way of life prevails.  Physically hard it may be, but the simplicity that lies in constant muscle movement, the sweat of one’s brow, the seemingly endless time for thought, provides a gentle and hypnotic distraction for the mind.  When you lift your head from the trail, to the rhododendrons, to the clumps of twenty metre high bamboo, and finally to the peaks above, there is another sort of distraction; a distraction that bewitches and cleanses the mind.

I expressed doubts about trekking in the Himalaya.  ‘I’m sure it was beautiful when Chris Bonnington was there, but surely it’s not now?  Don’t they call it the toilet paper trail?  Aren’t the teahouses very primitive?  What about the Marxists?’  But here we are, doubts soothed by an Englishwoman called Rachel, who works for an American company.    The era of disfigurement of Annapurna is over.  Apart from the ubiquitous discarded snuff wrappers, there are only a few meals on paper plates lying on the pathway.  These are gifts left for the departed during the festival of Diwali.  Tents and informal camps are discouraged.  The local people gain more income by letting their rooms.  The trail is not particularly crowded, though it has been discovered by the Japanese.  All Japanese seem to walk in trekking outfits that make them look like Michael Jackson, white faces smothered with cream, and every inch of skin covered, including gloves so that the sun’s rays can’t reach them.  We take five days to walk up to the 4100m of Annapurna Base Camp, in shorts and T shirts in the warm daytime sun, and huddled together in down jackets around paraffin stoves in the communal fug of the tea houses in the evenings to keep out the sub zero cold.  Descending in three days we arrive back at the lodge above Birethanti.  A large English lady is sitting on the verandah, bewailing her sore and swollen feet, and her inability to follow her group upwards into the sanctuary.  I dump my rucksack on the grass and exchange greetings.  She beckons.  In a confidential manner she whispers:  ‘You can’t see it at the moment, but behind that cloud there is a very beautiful mountain.’  ‘Thank you,’ I say.  The most famous remark of Maurice Herzog: ‘There are other Annapurnas in the lives of men’, should of course include fat ladies.

Word Count: 999

The Somme Battlefields

Yet another post in the Just Back 500 word travel writing competition.  This visit was in February 2011.

SOMME February 2011

France.  A still misty February morning.  Rolling, deep ploughed fields.  The Somme.  Immaculate Portland limestone.  The name reads ‘Captain A.B. Tough’.  Reminiscent of the names of heroes in the comics of childhood, Captain Arnold Bannatyne Tough lies in Queens Cemetery near Serre, a tiny hamlet in northern France.  In silent rows the stones bear witness to the worst single day in British military history, which seems the more unrealistic this morning in Picardy, where nothing moves except a solitary bird and the waves of plough-turned earth around us.   The hero’s end of Tough is known from contemporary descriptions in July 1916, but we know little of his companions who lie near him.  Down in the prosaically named ‘Railway Hollow’ lie others of the ‘Accrington Pals’ of the Great War, including the seemingly literally named ‘A. Goodlad’, who we know something of from his last letter home containing the words which appear on his memorial – ‘The French are a grand nation – worth fighting for’.  The ability of the men in the trenches to make normal the surroundings of the Somme is uncanny.  Just along the tiny road is the track cut in chalk which was named ‘White City’.  A little further along is the village of Auchonvillers, or ‘Ocean Villas’.  Near La Boisselle we find the ‘Sausage’ and ‘Mash’ valleys.  When we journey along Mill Road up to the Thiepval ridge, with its enormous Lutyens memorial to the missing – 73,000 names inscribed on its pillars, the next farm called Le Mouquet was known to the Australian troops as ‘Moo-Cow’ farm, and the British as ‘Mucky’ farm.  Along we go, our car now lastingly caked with the mud of the Somme, the abiding memory of so many who survived.  At the Canadian memorial park in Beaumont-Hamel, on a sunny afternoon, the beautiful fresh face of a young Newfoundland university student is an extraordinary contrast to the tale which she tells as we walk down through the pitted shell holes and the remains of the trenches to the front line of the Y-ravine.  At this spot as at so many others the Germans were so well dug in they survived even the Hawthorn Mine, obligingly detonated at 0720 hours on the morning of July 1^st 1916, thus giving 10 minutes of warning and recovery for the opposition prior to the slow march of the Newfoundland regiment across this 300 metres of cratered ground. The result was predictable.  The world now knows that 19,000 allies died on the first day of the offensive.  The French themselves have moved on – as would anybody with no choice but to continue to earn their living from the richest soil in Europe.  But as we drive from Amiens to Corbie, and onwards to Albert, I can’t help but wonder whether French bureaucrats can appreciate the irony as their large sign advises of the dangers on this road: in English it reads – ‘Attention!  On this road in the last 5 years there have been 5 deaths and 56 wounded’.

The Missus' Dales' Diary - the Yorkshire Dales

This like many others of my travelogues, was an unsuccessful entry in the Daily Telegraphy Just Back travel writing competition.

THE MISSUS’ DALES DIARY

The skeletal shapes of the arches, pillars, and empty windows of Bolton Priory silhouetted against the gathering dusk provoke an involuntary shiver on a May evening.  This was a utopian settlement of simple agriculture and religion until it fell foul of Henry VIII in the 1530s.  It is our first memorable sight of the Yorkshire Dales.  ‘Let’s do our bit to support British tourism,’ I said to my wife in late March as she poured over brochures of blissfully sunny walking holidays in Spain.  ‘We could do the

Dales Way

.  It’s supposed to be the easiest long distance walking route in Britain.’  The honeymoon period, lasting two days in the sunshine, walking through grassy pastures of sheep by the tranquil peat brown river Wharfe, climbing stiles over the dry stone walls, is about to come to an end.  ‘It must look beautiful when it’s not raining’, I observe cheerfully to our silent driver as the taxi from Dent to Sedbergh splashes through Dentdale on a subsequent morning.  ‘Not really’ he responds morosely, ‘Just the same without the rain’.  This is definitely a glass half empty sort of fellow.   From Grassington northwards the Wharfe becomes a smaller, faster stream, rushing through tiny hamlets.  Clumps of white anemones nestle beneath the sparse trees.  Dippers and sandpipers flit between the rocks.  Wilder scenery brings wilder weather.  The rain, initially a fine misty drizzle, develops into horizontal sheets of penetrating water.  Up on boggy Yockenthwaite moor, this water is uncertain whether it’s forming the Wharfe or the Ribble.  We are uncertain too.  Raindrops falling from my hat stand an even chance of ending up in Lancashire or Yorkshire.  The majestic outline of the Ribblehead viaduct appears dimly through the cloud as we reach a road.  Soaked and bedraggled; sense of humour failure; bickering discussion.  Drawing on years of hitchhiking in the 60s I eventually insist that we must thumb a lift to Hawes.  My wife points out that no-one would consider taking us.  Amazingly however a car stops to pick us up.  ‘Nah, no worries mate’, says the Australian driver.  ‘It’s a hire car, gwine bick termorrer!’  Next day, struck by the proud way the French dub their tourist spots we name Dent ‘Un des plus beaux villages d’Angleterre.’  But it’s empty.  Daunted in Dent; bleak and muddy on Blea Moor; dribbling along the Ribble; lunatics on the Lune; we gradually make our way towards Lakeland, the end of the route.  The foothills of the lakes are formed by seemingly endless ridges.  We are moving forward, but not into broad, sunlit uplands.  Finally the Langdales and the Old Man of Coniston loom blackly in the distance above the turbulent surface of Lake Windermere.  We march down into Bowness, past the plaque announcing the end of the 83 mile trek.  The

Dales Way

guidebook says: ‘Few there by the lakeside will know what you have achieved.’  Short of shouting it to the swans who are oblivious to the rain there is nobody to tell anyway.

Word Count:  500

Oman

This post was an entry to the 500 word Daily Telegraph Just Back competition.  The reference to BP in the final line should be read in context - this visit was some months after the catastrophe of the Deepwater Horizon spill in the Gulf of Mexico.

Just Back – Oman

‘The pale crystals are the best.’  Although they look like rough cut gemstones the beautiful aromatic smell drifting across the dark alleyways of the souk tells us that these are crystals of frankincense.  Nasser, our Omani guide, has shown us how to nick the bark of the tree to start the resin flowing, but it’s a long job to collect enough.  No wonder frankincense was prized in antiquity.  Outside we blink in the fierce sunshine and 42°C heat beneath the crenellations of the mud walls of Nizwa fort.  Omani forts all look as though Beau Geste moved out yesterday.  Inside the redoubt we pass below the murder holes where the defenders poured boiling asil (date juice) onto the heads of their attackers, and climb to the roof. The date palms of the Wadi, fed by a Falaj or water conduit scatter the gravelly river bed.  The apparent uniformity of the palms is deceptive.  Hidden in the soil between them, behind moisture retaining walls, grow every manner of crops – corn, papaya, mango, citrus fruits.  To the north are the arid grey shapes of the Hajjar Mountains.  Wilfred Thesiger visited this frontier town in 1948.  His description sounds like Dodge City with more guns but without Wyatt Earp.

Further south, in Bediyyah, Nasser, who every morning emerges in a newly pressed immaculate dishdasha, the pattern of the tassel of which to the knowing eye betrays his origin from the Wahiba sands, pulls off the road next to a shop sign entitled ‘Lovely Perfumeness’.  Surprisingly, a mechanic appears with a pressure line.  Moments later, tire pressures as low as we dare, the Toyota begins careering across the desert.  Thirty kilometres of rolling soft sand later we lurch to the right and crest a dune.  A scary descent of ‘black run’ steepness in schuss brings us to our desert refuge: an open Bedouin style meeting tent and other sleeping tents.  Relaxing in the tranquil landscape, the desert at sunset becomes a quiet and magical place, colours painting the endless folds of the dunes in reds and browns before the moon rises and washes the sands with silver.  A soft breeze deletes our footprints, as if to emphasize our impermanence.

Back in what now passes for civilization, for our last night in a luxury hotel on the Gulf of Oman; we lie on sun loungers and gaze at the infinity pool.  The late summer wind blows gently off the warm Arabian Sea.  A hotel muzak version of ‘Summer Wind’ is playing.  It sounds like Cliff Richard imitating Frank Sinatra, so it must be Michael Buble.  The sea is warmer than the pool, which is chilled to make it tolerable.  Wrinkly brown German ladies on the sunbeds look as though they would be more comfortable in Freikörperkultur mode, but retain their clothes because this is Arabia.  Inside the hotel, a sign on a luxury meeting suite advertises ‘BP – Wellhead Management Master Class’, which is timely, overdue, essential, or bitterly ironic, depending on your point of view.

500 words

To Svalbard on Stormy Seas

This post was the winning entry in the Daily Telegraph Just Back competition and can be found at:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/travel/travel-writing-competition/4979145/Just-back-To-Svalbard-on-stormy-seas.html

Just back: To Svalbard, on stormy seas

The latest winner in our travel writing competition is Andrew McLeod for his account of a sailing adventure in the remote Svalbard archipelago off Norway.

Sailing down the Isfjord, or Ice-fjord, which is actually ice-free 

By Andrew McLeod

10:40AM GMT 13 Mar 2009

Comment

"Advice to persons about to marry: don't." The same could be said for ocean voyages, at least in anything under the size of, shall we say, the Oriana.

We are three men in a small boat, with no dog, and exploring the Barents Sea instead of the Thames. We are sailing from Tromsø, Norway, to Spitsbergen, the largest island in the remote northern archipelago of Svalbard.

It is late July, the temperature is slightly above freezing, and within an hour the wind is near gale force, with showers of sleet. We can only proceed safely with a storm jib, and eventually find shelter in a small cove for the night. "Night" here is a term determined only by the time; it is not dark in the Arctic.

The next day, still within coastal waters, the wind builds to severe gale strength (Force 9). Despite fully reefed sails, the boat needs full engine power to give us stability and prevent us being knocked flat. I spend as much time as I can steering because it is the only way I can minimise seasickness. The steel wheel chills even through two pairs of gloves. The horizon is invisible; there is only grey storm cloud and grey heaving sea.

We eventually reach the tiny harbour of Torsvag at the end of the Norwegian coast, surfing down the waves with little control, dark jutting rocks on either side. The only fuel available is designed to fill commercial vessels holding thousands of gallons, and swamps our fuel filler tube. Although we do not realise this at the time, the bottom of the boat is now awash with raw diesel fuel.
The next two days are of unbroken seasickness, but I still have to serve my turn on the wheel aloft. When helming the boat one's brain adjusts to the bucking seas and shifting horizon and the sickness subsides marginally. Another job is to tip slops of diesel and seawater overboard. The last place on earth (or at sea) to be when feeling seasick is inside a small boat cabin with diesel under the floorboards. Clothes, gloves and sleeping bag are all saturated with fuel. Our only company is an ever-present fulmar gull, circling the boat, searching for small fish in our wake, no matter how bleak the weather.
A brief stop at Bjørnøya (Bear Island), paradoxically to refuel, and then we are off through the fog, and ultimately into serious drift ice off Spitsbergen. A 34ft piece of Tupperware, as one of my fellow crewmen calls it, is not the ideal receptacle to sail into the ice with. So we have to retreat, go west, and then north again. An exhausted kittiwake lands on our stern for a free day's ride. The final approach to the main town of Spitsbergen, Longyearbyen, is down the 60-mile Isfjord, or Ice-fjord, which is ice-free. The scenery is stark, magnificent and unforgettable. Go there – but not in a small boat.

Cricket in Barbados

This post was written for the Just Back competition after attending two one-day Internationals at the Kensington Oval, Bridgetown, Barbados in March 2009.

Caribbean Cricket

The curvaceous girl in the next seat at the Barbados cricket ground taps me playfully on the arm and says something in Bajan patois which I don’t understand.  I smile back, noting the pile of Banks beer bottles in front of her.  She repeats it.

‘Oh!  Yes, of course!  Greenidge and Haynes stand on Friday.  The noisy girl behind us breastfeeding the baby.’  She smiles acknowledgement.  Sunday is baby’s day off, perhaps nursing a Banks beer hangover.  Admittedly the baby had a lot to celebrate on Friday.  Chris Gayle’s brief innings included eight sixes.  The match finished so early that we even had time to get to the beach for a swim.  Perhaps we’ll get better value today in the ‘Three Ws’ stand.  My new found lady friend remains irrepressible throughout the day, as the pile of empty bottles grows steadily.

On my left is an England cricket fan in an Arsenal T-shirt.

‘Do you go to many Arsenal games?’  I ask him.

‘Not really, I can’t afford a season ticket what with all the cricket as well.  You going on to St Lucia?’

‘No.’

‘Were you in Guyana?’

‘No.’

‘New ground.  Miles from anywhere.  Not safe to go out at night.  Hotel wanted a fortune for dinner in the restaurant.’

‘What did you do?’

‘Rang up Pizza Express and they delivered to our room.’

There is plenty of savvy travel advice from this seasoned cricket supporter.

‘In Bridgetown it’s easy to find a cheap hotel within walking distance of the ground, and there’s a good atmosphere in town after the game.’

Back to the cricket.  Harmison is eating a banana and guzzling a sports drink.  England have been on the field forty minutes and he’s only bowled one over.  Daisy Anderson  (‘Days ‘e turns up and Days ‘e don’t’) is bowling.  If Gayle hits one down to deep long on he’ll find Harmy with a mouth half full of banana.  The ball is likely to clear Harmy by about fifty feet the way Gayle hits it, but that’s not the point.  If only Sir Alex Ferguson were managing this lot.  Harmy would find his boot kicked for six before you could say ‘Wayne Rooney’.

‘Harrmy, if ye canna get yersel’ up at six and get some porridge doon ye, ye can starve on the ****** park.’

            Now it’s warming up, and so is the play.  England are bowling and fielding well.  Flintoff and Collingwood take great catches in the deep.  Then it rains.  It pours.  Over in the Party Stand nobody seems to notice that there isn’t any cricket being played.  The Flintstones have turned up.  And the Pirates of the Caribbean.  No Keira Knightley though.

            Long interval.  England have a reduced target and reduced number of overs.  Strauss plays a captain’s innings and we win.  We go off to take advantage of the helpful travel advice – a bar where the rum punches are five dollars instead of our hotel’s price of fifteen.  Caribbean cricket – there’s nothing like it!

500 words