out-rused by the masters

[joshua0]

The thing about our guide, Binod, was that he wasn't a bad guy, he was just a little ... inexperienced. He was kind of a young guy, younger than we were, early 20s; he said he'd been around the Manaslu circuit three or four times before, and been on many treks prior to that, but as we found, it was kind of hard to get a straight answer out of him. But being inexperienced is fine, as long as you can find the way eventually, as long as you have three simple words at your disposal: "I don't know". Binod, we found, was not very good at using these words on matters of any import.

* * *

The hike from Prok to Namrung was not all that bad, as I recall, at least compared to the half hour sufferfest of a stairmaster into Prok the previous day. We got ourselves settled into the teahouse, and changed into warmer, drier, clothes; I, into my long base layer, and Kempy also into what she planned to sleep in that evening. We rested for a bit, and then Binod came to check on us to see if we were ready to leave again; we had planned to head up to Namla Gumba (a gumba is a monastery, pronounced like the little brown things you jump on in Mario games), which was said to be a short hike up the hill from the teahouse. We had visited a breathtaking gumba in Prok the previous day, and while we were looking for ideas for side treks, Binod somehow got the idea that we were very interested in gumbas in general, and so we should visit all of them; so, on the schedule that afternoon was Namla.

I layered up with a jacket, assessing the hike to be not terribly serious, since Binod was wearing flip-flops; Kempy stayed warm too. We kept a no-sweat pace as we wandered through the village, and then started to head uphill past the hydro generation station. It was a gentle trail at the start; Binod was cheerful about how the last time he had visited that gumba, the groundskeeper offered him some tea. The gentle trail turned into a fairly steep use trail, and I had to back the pace down a fair bit to keep the heat down; Kempy, below, was not thrilled about being heavily layered, and was sweating pretty good to keep up.

The trail continued to deteriorate, as Kempy and I started asking ourselves what on Earth kind of trail this was, and how much traffic it regularly saw. We spent a little time cursing to ourselves about this steep slog after we had expected an easy walk, sweating into our remaining reasonable-smelling clothes; on the other hand, Binod was still jovial, marching uphill through whatever clearing he could find, right up until the continually deteriorating use trail became all-but-extinct. At this point, his pace suddenly ground to a halt; he looked around, and announced, "I think there is not a way." I pointed my nose uphill of him, and pointed out another clearing, and he tentatively pushed forward, only to decide truly that the trail was no more.

Binod, at this point, was proposing that we go all the way back down -- after spending half an hour pushing upwards in the sweat -- and ask for directions. We went through our respective memories of the trail, looking for places we could have made a wrong turn, but didn't come up with anything obvious, anyway; we, too, were finally becoming convinced to head down, until up came none other than a villager!

A conversation ensued in Nepali. At this point in the trip, I was convinced that all Nepali was spoken in a top-of-your-lungs yell, as an adversarial interrogation between two parties; later, I found that that might have been specific to our dear guide, rather than to the language, but in any event, to the best of my understanding, the conversation went like this:

• "Hey! You!!"
• "Yeah? What? What the fuck are you doing here?"
• "Where is the fucking gumba?"
• "It's not this trail, you fucking idiot!"
• "I fucking know! So how the fuck do I get there?!"
• "Cut through the fucking trees!"
• "Are you fucking kidding me?"

It involved a lot of animated pointing, too.

Binod was not thrilled about this concept. But the tables had clearly turned: with the knowledge that we were bounded on one side by a river, and below by the village, Kempy and I were very excited about the concept of going bushwhacking. All of the sudden, Kempy’s gloom at having sweat through her base layer lifted, with the concept that it was now our turn to perpetrate a ruse. We, of course, didn’t know where the gumba was, either, but we knew that that log over there looked like it led to a clearing. And from that clearing we could easily push through those sticks, and…

The more we pushed through, the more visibly uncomfortable Binod got — and, oddly, the more comfortable we got, knowing that we were, for once, in control here. The machination of alarm was clearly turning in Binod’s head, as he realized that the veil had been penetrated, that we knew that he was winging it — and that he was going to have to answer to someone if the two Americans got themselves in trouble bushwhacking. But now that we knew what we were doing — the aesthetic was very much like a bushwhack through a New England forest — the more logs we hopped over and the more boulders we scrambled past, the happier we got. Our theory was that that little point of experience was what the hike was actually about, and that if we ever made it to the gumba, it would be a nice little bonus.

* * *

We did not find the gumba bushwhacking that direction. Eventually, we gave up, turned around, and to Binod’s relief, found the ‘trail’ that we were previously on. We descended down to the village (where he had another Animated Nepali Conversation) and redirected ack up a beautifully manicured trail with cut stone steps that took us directly to the gumba. The setting of it really was beautiful, and sure enough, the groundskeeper took us into a dimly lit room and made us some truly terrific tea over a fire, and for a moment, all was calm. But in my eyes, the story of the day was, perhaps, an important lesson for everyone involved: the position of ruse master shifts rapidly, and if you’re not careful, before you even notice, it might no longer be you.

This is the first of a handful of stories from Nepal. If you don't have a Dreamwidth account, but you want to get notified so you can read more things like this when I write them, I also have an e-mail list; I promise I'll only send mail for things that I write that go here on this blog.

(both images shot on Ilford HP5 Plus, pushed to ISO 800.)