4WD to the Mountains – I’ve Arrived!

Do you know what 4WD means? It means a vehicle that can be driven by all four wheels and you have to be a big nob to ride in one. Well hello world because that is me and I rode in one all the way from Pokhara to Arughat with my mate Bhim who is guiding me for a fortnight up to one of the highest passes in the world. Larkya La at 17,000 feet. And down the other side. And when we are up we are up, and when we are down we are down. And guess where we are if we’re only halfway up. Yeees you’re right. We are neither up nor down. Bhim looks a bit like Freddy Mercury with weight. They had a new baby six months ago and he’s just accepting guide assignments now.

We had a driver too, ex military called Krishna. He picked me up at 7.30 and took off like the clappers. The bumpy road suddenly became bumpier. We headed back in the direction of Kathmandu and after a couple of hours turned north towards Ghorka, the centre of the district where the Gurkhas were recruited from. The legendary fighters, only little blokes mostly, but if they drew their swords then they had to draw blood. Served and still serving us well.

The weather had been cloudy but it brightened up, which was a blessing as the road from Ghorka to Arughat was featured on a French programme on the world’s most dangerous roads, and monsoon rain would have been terrible. As it happened it wasn’t that dangerous and, although conditions were grim in places, we didn’t have to abandon the car and walk. That happened to Bhim last time and he arrived in Arughat in the dark at 9.30 at night.

We arrived at a very respectable 12 noon and Krishna dumped us off and headed back for Pokhara. We had planned to stay in Arughat but I suggested to Bhim that we have lunch and start walking to Soti Khola, our next stop. We had lunch and started walking to Soti Khola. I should listen to my wife more. At one stage she suggested an umbrella and I poo pooed it. She was right. I might not have needed to buy feckin (word of the day) waterproofs.

Feckin hot, the sun was vicious, it was intensely humid and there was no breeze. One of those that within five minutes you’ve got a buzzing in your head and your ears. There are taps along route feeding off mountain springs and we kept filling up our bottles. I was sweating more than my own body weight with the rucksack. Bhim keeps offering to switch rucksacks as his is lighter but I need to get mountain fit. I’ll swap when I need to. This first section wasn’t too steep, following the valley up past rice fields fed by more water than you can shake a stick at.

Looking back down the valley at the distance we covered,and from higher land, as we tracked up the into the highlands, the view was stunning.

There was still a road of sorts and buses were passing us, but halfway to Soti Khola we hit the first real landslide which had wiped out the road, and they offloaded their passengers for a hundred metre clamber to a few buses on the other side. These were marooned on the short stretch of road to Soti Khola. This was becoming waterfall territory, fed by the monsoon, from which we were having a brief respite.

It was also becoming mule territory, as the means of supplying the small villages along the Gandaki river valley. Which was shortly to become a ravine.

I waded through knee high rivers which cut across our track, as it took so long to take my boots off and put them on again. The deeper ones had pedestrian bridges which looked quite safe, apart from this one which was caught up in a landslide and which Bhim believed was damaged. Health and safety gone mad. He quoted another bridge where the same thing happened and folk ignored it and got fecked. Feck!

Just a few more miles, past a small but lovely waterfall, and there we were. Soti Khola. Soti was the nearest village to the epicentre of the Nepalese earthquake which killed 9,000 people and made 3.5m homeless only four years ago. They’ve done a good job on restoration.

Dinner, in bed by 8 reading my book, asleep by 9.

Night night.