no longer raining, but the sun is struggling to emerge from behind the sea of \u200b\u200bclouds at the moment covers the view of snowy peaks. At times, however, the heavens open. Matter of seconds. Then, the thick blanket of clouds monsoon covers all again.
I hurry to overcome the hight of three thousand. The clouds, in general, if they are lower. Over three thousand, even during the monsoon, you can see the sun. And with the sun, the blue sky and mountains.
Kishan reappears out of nowhere not even a quarter of an hour after Ghasia. On the shoulders no longer wears the tires that the two had yesterday. Approaches me and makes me sign if that makes me want a backpack. I do not need, but Kaiku, a village an hour from Ghasia, I propose to take Goma Kishan. The porter are overloaded, I say, and a person would allow everyone to share the burden. Kishan is sitting on the sidelines and watching us. Quiet and serious. Goma the team. Then he speaks. Kishan refers several times to nod. In Nepal it is a very sweet gesture and sometimes ambiguous. The head draws a sort of eight. Rather than "yes", the gesture means "as you want" ...
Kaiku to leave the carriers and we share their own. The path is collapsed in several places. We ascend and descend on landslides holding on to rocks and branches of some shrub that grows here and there. A large stone bounces very fast to even a meter from my head and disappears in the lower river. Suddenly, panic seizes me. A uncontrollable panic that drives me to run. I run and limped to lose your breath until you reach a wider path through a pine forest. I do not waste time looking around. I feel safe even there. I continue to go up, quickening his pace. The situation I do not like. The path is strewn with debris. And the stones, large and small, continue to roll down the mountain. At intervals, the silence is broken by the sinister sound of stones falling.
I realize, then, that for about an hour we do not meet anyone. Five hundred yards after the trail forks. An arm goes up to the left and disappears behind a rock. Another goes down among the trees. We do not have to do is wait, tell Claudio. We will ask the way to the bearers or the first person to pass. The porter, then, are behind us and should not delay. We sit on a rock to wait for an hour. There is no soul. No one who falls, no rising. Strange as that is the only road linking the villages of the valley. We begin to speculate, but a fog over the whole set to be cut with a knife. An avalanche below prevented the porter to continue? But as you can, then, that no one falls ...? The map I have in the backpack does not help us choose and the only one cabin that can be seen above is empty. We decide to take the nose of the right trail that goes down to a tributary of the Kali Gandaki. The bridge Pending that connects the two banks are unable to see just the beginning. The end of the bridge is lost in the fog. On the other side the trail forks again. Go up or down? We stuck with his back against a rock while on the overhead slide down the rocks.
Half an hour later - half an hour of silence, fog, and anxiety - decide to do what they teach the laws of the mountain. If you get lost, and obviously we're lost, go back.
The outlook is not smiles at me. Go back means to follow the zone of avalanches and dodge the rocks that rain down from above. And on the other hand, does not make sense to go ahead. I have read too many books on the valleys and valleys of the Himalayas. Stick the wrong valley and find yourself in the middle of nowhere. The strange thing is that I'm afraid. An irrational fear fed by the majesty of the landscape that surrounds us. I realize for the first time that everything around me is beyond measure. Are enormous peaks that occasionally can be glimpsed twenty thousand feet above our heads. It is the immense fog that reduces noise. It is a huge river flowing at our feet roaring like a plane about to take off. And the silence is beyond measure, which excludes the roar of the water.
retrace our steps. An hour's descent. The more time passes the more we hurry. And yet no one going up, anyone who goes down. No caravan. Only then did I realize that long-shocked il sentiero non c'è alcuna traccia di cacche di animali.
È quasi l'una quando ritroviamo Kaiku, il villaggio da cui eravamo partiti quattro ore prima. Dei nostri porter nemmeno l'ombra. Ci lanciamo nell'incongruo tentativo di farci spiegare la strada dal proprietario di un bhatti, che si limita ad indicare una vaga direzione con la mano. A stare all'uomo il sentiero che abbiamo preso è quello giusto.Ci fa segno di tornare indietro e nulla più.
Un quarto d'ora dopo passa davanti al bhatti uno sherpa. Va a Lete. Ce lo fa capire pronunciando questa sola parola, Lete, senza fermarsi. A stare alla carta, Lete è sulla nostra strada e quindi arranchiamo dietro di lui. Non è semplice. L'uomo, despite the huge basket full of merchandise that carries on his shoulders, salt lightly cutting the hairpin bends. Every time he disappears behind a bend, I start crying. Then he stops. Without turning, without bothering to look, wait. After half an hour of rising, that's right on the forks. It can be seen from the trail soon. On the right, in the pines, down another path. What we had not seen before, nor the outward or return. It ends up floating bridge that crosses the stream and allows us to trace the other side of the valley.
less than an hour later we finally reach a plateau from which in the distance you can see the first houses of Lethe.
Lete is a large village with a paved road that goes straight across through the houses. Apart from some Bhatti, a school and a water purification station, there is nothing to Lete. A soldier, a young boy in camouflage fatigues with a machine gun in his hand, stops us and asks us to check the trekking permit. To explain the actions that we are headed in the Mustang and that permits them to us Goma, our Sirdar. Has seen a group of porter? The boy shakes his head. Without permission is not passed, we understand. Then he laughs.
A soldier ride is the most common thing you encounter in Nepal. The soldiers in Nepal, laughing shyly, like children. Still smiling, the soldier, it nods to follow in his Garritt. You squint, el 'the uniform is like wearing a very large stock of rest, two more of its bounty. He rummages in a drawer and pulls out a huge log of those that were used by us fifty years ago. It seems to trust, and asks us simply fill in the register. Who we are, where we are, what we are, where we're headed. Peek over my lines and I find that a week did not go on any Western. Summer is the season for trekking. The monsoon and leeches keep walkers away.
greet the soldier and we begin to worry for our carriers. Surely they are ahead of us, but I am convinced themselves that we are ahead of them there is a risk che si continui a salire in una sorta di gioco a rimpiattino. Affrettiamo il passo e chiediamo ad ogni baracca se per caso hanno visto sfilare un gruppo di ragazzi con delle grandi gerle sulle spalle. La gente ci guarda, scuote la testa e ride.
Riprendiamo a salire. Da Lete arriviamo a Kalopani, che in nepalese significa acqua rossa. Ed è infatti di un marrone rossastro l'acqua del Kali Gandaki in questo punto. Stiamo per prendere la scorciatoia che attraversa a guado il torrente, e che ci farebbe evitare una buona mezz'ora di strada, quando, proprio sul ciglio dell'acqua, c'è Kishan.
È seduto su una roccia. Ai suoi piedi, la gerla col mio zaino e una tenda. Ci guarda, ci sorride e scuote la testa. Non dobbiamo attraversare a guado il torrente. L'acqua ci arriverebbe alla vita ed è certamente meglio risalirlo controcorrente, fino ad un ponticello più in alto. Poi, sempre a gesti, ci spiega che i porter ci aspettano a Khobang, a neanche un'ora di strada. Lui ha avuto ordine di aspettarci. Se non ci avesse visto entro un'ora qualcuno sarebbe tornato indietro a cercarci.
Sono contenta di vedere Kishan. Sono contenta che ormai faccia parte del gruppo. Gli sorrido, e gli porgo la racchetta. Lui non se lo fa dire due volte. L'afferra e si incammina assieme a noi.
Poco prima di Khobang, di colpo, la vallata del Kali Gandaki si apre. Ampia. Maestosa. Attorno a noi, a tratti, quando le nuvole lo permettono, you can see the peaks of Dhaulagiri, the Tukuche of the three Nilgiri, the Fang and Annapurna 1. And without any obstacles, very strong, the wind blows down from the north.
is here, and between Larjiung Khobang that begins the path that leads to the serac of Dhaulagiri. Herzog in the 50s, had tried this route to reach the Annapurna, but after a couple of days had left. Too dangerous. On a stone at the entrance of the village of Larjung is engraved the name of Czech climber and the day of his death.
A couple of years ago there. It does not say how or where.
In this valley that was for centuries a major trade route with Tibet, you notice the first signs of Tibetan Buddhism. Stone arches at the entrance of the village square. Faded prayer flags waving from the rooftops. A chorten. They were the salt caravans of merchants to carry it up to here by the great salt lakes of the highlands himalyani. What we are going along in the past was a kind of Silk Road of the high altitudes. Sale against sugar, tea, spices and tobacco. And especially against salt grain. The grain that grows and grows still at low altitudes. The Thakali who inhabit the region have for centuries held the monopoly of this trade. Then, in recent times, the closure of Tibet and the invasion of Indian salt, sea salt, less dear, put an end to this trade almost entirely.
Khobang paved walking on the streets, amid whitewashed brick houses. Narrow streets that are a barrier to the winds that come down from the north glacier. Covered walkways that connect the houses built around courtyards closed. The stocks of well-stacked wood roofs.
the monastery of the village, Madkhi Lhakang, the Buddhist temple to the south across the Kali Gandaki, there remained only a nun. Who agrees to let me in and offers me a cup of tea in his quarters. The monastery is small, not particularly rich, and the woman lived there alone for years.
Come la giovane maestrina, insegnante di inglese alla scuola del paese. Che mi racconta che il marito è partito tre anni fa in Europa. Nel nord, mi dice, ma lei non si ricorda se è la Svezia o la Finlandia o la Norvegia. Al nord, perché le ha detto c'è la neve. I suoi due figli lei li ha lasciati a Kathmandu da una zia. Quella valle è troppo dura per dei ragazzini, mi dice. D'inverno il villaggio è sepolto sotto la neve. Chiacchiero un poco con lei seduta sullo scalino della sua casa, piccola, buia e senza finestre. I ragazzini che passano, la salutano affettuosi. Una signora con un bambino in braccio e un grande anello d'oro al naso mi invita a casa sua e si fa fotografare with the whole family. The women proudly displaying their kids in front of the lens. They perform as trophies. Children in these parts never cry.
Before returning to our lodge, which looks strangely at a Swiss chalet, meet Juliette, a fifty year old Frenchman who rises from the valley alone. Her face and neck eaten by leeches. Many small red scars. She also plans to go to Mustang. Her boyfriend (says his fiancé, boyfriend), a Nepalese mountain guide who is expected to reach the next day at Jomosom with a group of six trekkers. All direct Mustang. The group is in Pokhara and is expected to Take the Gorkha Airlines airplane that provides the link between the top of the valley and the plains. She chose to walk up the valley on foot, alone, without a carrier, to facilitate the acclimatization and avoid altitude sickness. Now, however, is concerned. Told her that some day the airplane does not land because of bad weather. Just very little. A few clouds. A wind slightly more violent. There are planes flying in and view before reaching the plateau Jomosom must fit the narrow valley of the Kali Gandaki. In summer it is rarely able to leave. If the group fails to catch the plane will have to get groped by helicopter to reach Jomosom Khobang and from there on foot. There other means. Permits for the Mustang are clear. If you go behind the border and you lose precious days in any case the release date can not be extended.
We greet the next day knowing that there riincontreremo to Jomosom.
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