DAY 7

Marpha (2680m) to Kagbeni (2840m)

The wind was blowing furiously in more ways than one today. One way I can explain with the use of terms like geo thermal air, the other way, well, diet I should imagine, too much daal baht. The walk out of Marpha is into a new environment, it looks like the surface of Mars, dry red stone everywhere with small scrub bushes dotted around. The wind is cold but the sun soon warms us. We walk on, with not much to see, and stop after two hours in Jomsom.











This is our final destination, but before we fly back to Pokhara in three days, we are going to walk up to Kagbeni next to the Upper Mustang area, where you can see Tibet and then onto the pilgrimage site, Muktinath. But for now in Jomsom we stop and refuel on tea, chocolate croissants and seabuckthorn juice.

At Jomsom airport after 10 am the wind becomes too strong for the light aircraft that fly in and out, so the airport only operates between 6 and 10am. The morning is also when there are no clouds. Clouds are critical in Nepal. Pilots don't fly into clouds. In Nepal there are mountains inside the clouds.

We walk on, and cross a wide river bed where you can find ammonite fossils. Up at 2700m, high in the Himalaya, this was once the ocean floor. The Tethys ocean separated the Indian and Eurasia tectonic plate. They were slowly pushed together and the Eurasion plate rose up and formed the Himalayas. The peak of Everest still moves around 6cm each year. I spent two hours searching in the pebbles for a souvenir and found nothing but by lunch time we had reached our final destination, Kagbeni.














Kagbeni, another school trip town, with a medieval/Dark ages flavour. The houses are built from dry stone, mud and timber and have been thoroughly beaten by the wind. Chickens, donkeys, goats, dogs and buffalo wander slowly around the streets, like tourists looking for their next meal. An open river runs down through the towns streets where women wash their clothes. The best restaurant in Kagbeni award certainly gets awarded to: YakDonalds; they have painted the restaurant in the McDonalds bright red and yellow colours and served the McYak with a slice of Yak cheese.



We walked around town and talked to the shop owners from Tibet. Being English, we were praised for some recent events in the media. Our countries efforts in mobbing poor Konnie Huq and disrupting the Olympic torch had gone down with approval from these exiled Tibetans. On the outskirts of the town we looked up the valley to Upper mustang which requires a permit to visit. The hills in the distance are Tibet, currently totally closed to all foreigners.



We had a tip-off from a German trekker we passed earlier, the Red House hostel had new on-suite bedrooms for 1.20 rather than the normal 80p. We headed off to find such a rare treat, willing to splash out the extra 40p. Nilgiri North was magically illuminated by the last rays of the sun as we stood on top of the roof of our guest house. We disappeared into the restaurant to eat mo-mo's a sort of dumpling that people really talked up. I tried them a couple of time but my experiences were they tasted nasty, so I soon got back on the normal pasta.

The last sound of the day was one of my highlights of this trip. When it became dark someone in the village started playing some sort of horn instrument, I couldn't work it out but I'm sure it used a reed. We stood on the roof with the stars above, a couple of lights blinking down in the town, a light breeze blowing cold, enveloped by the sounds from this invisible musician who played for the town. It was exactly the right mood for the town because it made you feel like you were in the middle of nowhere, which was exactly where we were. In the background the dogs barked and sometimes a cow chimed in, on the cow bell of course. Then another musician joined in with his horn type instrument and they started harmonizing, the light breeze twisted the amplitude up and down and it sounded incredible. Being a sound engineer it all got very exciting. it was the perfect end to the day.

Cooper Out

Love Dan & Kat