Mount Disney

More and more distance is growing between us and the snow capped mountains. Now they loom like a line leading to the clouds rather than as an explosion of power popping up under our feet. The more we descent the more that plant, animal and human animal life rises. Today the forest opened out into terraced hills, villages filled with more than just lodges for trekkers but with a more traditional foundation: Based not on seasonal and unstable tourism but on agriculture and trade. Buddhist Chortens marked the tops of hills – a peaceful counterpart to the eerie caravans of the illegal Israeli which mark the hilltops of the Occupied Palestinian Territories. I kept passing young attractive men holding Khukuris, until one of them walked (ran) past us later, directly us to his guest house. When we finally arrived I took a warm shower in a unlit shed while being dried cold by the wind. We ate next to a wood oven and in the company of a Belgium man who spoke no English, and his Nepali Guide who spoke excellent French.

Trekking creates an interesting situation where new issues intersperse with forgotten thoughts as together they circle the mind during its hours of walking meditation. Trekking itself carries enough development issues to keep one preoccupied for kilometers at a time, while every issue debated is compounded by ones own role in the equation: The commercialisation of rural communities; the tensions it creates among old neighbours and the new business men and women it brings to remote and arid lands. Lodge owners fight for customers, leaving you feel like you have arrived in a popular backpackers suburb rather than a remote mountain village. Farmers ask you to sponsor their children so that they can fulfill their dreams of attending an expensive private schools. They ask determined to provide an 'opportunity' they only dreamed of and they ask despite the economic and social sacrifices it will demand as children leave and never return, or return with unfilled ambitions and frustrations.

Lines of porters sweat their way along the trails, providing imported food for foreign mouths which perhaps the local land could not afford to nurture but which leaves a smell of cultural imperialism and the globalisation of the remote Himalaya. Guided groups of up to thirty people trek by, all with their own porter carrying their bag of 'essentials' including a panel of solar panels and too many changes of clothes. The parties remind me of Reinhold Messner's recent dubbing of Everest as 'Mount Disney'. And yet 'these people' are just enjoying the nature, no different from 'me'. In fact they are bringing more economic development to these rural areas, and to these generations of porters, but again I am reminded of a comment made by Appa Sherpa – A Nepali sidhar (chief Sherpa) who holds the record for his 18 summits of Everest but when asked acbout his 'achievements' replies that he climbs so his sons won't have to. A BBC documentary, Carrying the Burden features the life of a Nepali porters, who often comes not from the mountains of the Sherpas but from the city of Kathmandu. Even the Sherpas are naively viewed by trekkers as partially superhuman; as small strong men, able to walk though wind and snow while carrying a basket filled with a ruck sack weighing 50 kilo and wearing nothing more than passed on clothes and collected odd shoes. The International Porters Protection Group (IPPG) works for the protection of porters rights, by demanding access to medical care when they suffer from what can be deathly altitude sickness or frostbite as well as proper shelter and food and equipement: It is all to common to see groups of porters camping around a fire, cooking the food they have carried as well as the bags of the trekkers who sit inside a warm lodge eating pasta and drinking bottled beer.

The French Speaking Nepali guide in the lodge told us that guiding was indeed his preferred profession. In 2003 the fighting between the Royal Nepalese Army and the Maoists had reached such a level that the dollar bills of the tourists had left the Nepali hills. Wages from sons who had travelled to the cities to work in the tourist resorts had dwindled, and with few young people left in the villages, farming food from the arid land was becoming harder and harder for those who had remained. Families who had built their livelihood around the seasonal income of the trekkers were struggling. The guide himself had no alternative but to borrow money from his friends and family to pay for a plane ticket to South Korea. He worked in a weapons factory alongside many other Nepalis. The factory was supplying the USA. The work was hard but the money was good and much to his relief he managed to pay off his loans and save some money but as soon as peace returned to his country, so did he. The guide explained he was relieved to be back in the mountains; in his home land and doing a job he loved. Business was still slow, but it was enough. Working aboard had helped him to pay the bills when his own country was failing, and had also provided him with a warm company coat, which he was still wearing with the logo of the weapons factory printed on the breast pocket.

We were joined by the attractive khurkuri wielding man who had lured us to his guest house earlier. The guide explained that the man was about twenty years old. He had left school during the fighting in order not to be conscripted by the Maoists who at that time were taking over schools and forming their own army of 'Youth Cadres'. Without an education and with limited English, Mr Khurkuri helps his mother run the guest house. Today he had walked over two hours up the hill to cut a mountain of leaves to feed the family's buffalo. His mother is a big woman who has eight children and who clearly runs the show. Her eldest son is hoping that all of his brothers and sisters will finish their education. I cannot help but wonder the value of this 'idealised' Western ideal.

I wonder where all the husbands are: South Korea? The Gulf? Singapore? Apparently it is easy to divorce around here – you just have to 'cut' the knot tying the wedding string around your wrist, and there is no problem for a woman to remarry.

The final days of the trek seemed to condense all of my previous meditations. The trails were filled with litter from both tourists and locals. Large painted signs advertised Coca Cola and trekkers with their porters leading the way, drank from newly purchased bottles of water. A lovely lady from Cuba asked me if the plastic in the bottles was bad for her health? Why else she wondered, would I prefer to drink boiled water than buy another bottle of plastic? Guides from Kathmandu discussed between themselves the correct route for day two of their two day trek, as it was also their first time in the area. An entrance fee for a national park left me feeling infuriated as biscuit wrappers continued to litter the paths and the park wardens themselves supplemented their salary by setting up a small stall full of shiny packets at the entrance.

Mountain tourism is tricky. Rural people want the same opportunities as those in the urban areas, while trekkers from the urban areas want the same luxuries and are prepared to pay ridiculous amounts for it without regard for the cultural or economic implications. Infrastructure needs to be developed in a way which benefits the local community and protects the fragile mountain ecosystems. Tourists need to realise that money cannot buy them a Shangri-la; if they try it will come at the price of the wilderness and the culture rich lives which it supports.

Internationl Porters Protection Group