[More] Snapshots from Nepal

My trip to Nepal remains among my favourite of all time, and sits right at the very top of my want-to-go-back-to list.  Each year that passes makes me itch a little more.  I revisit my photos often as they trigger an array of memories and feelings.  I’ve posted quite a few from Nepal over the months on this site, so here are a few more which take my fancy, and I hope interest you as well.

The image at top is of the unmistakable Macchapuchare, also known as Mt. Fishtail.  Nicknamed the Matterhorn of the Himalayas, it is one of the singly most beautiful mountains on the planet, in this blogger’s humble opinion.  At 6,997m high, it isn’t among the highest peaks of the Annapurna Massif (many of which tower well into the high 7,000s and even top 8,000m), but its prominence is so striking and dramatic that it remains an icon for all those who have visited this region of Nepal.  I couldn’t get enough of it.

Here, early-morning side-lighting shortly after sunrise casts horizontal shadows across a rural landscape.  These little stone cottages made a lovely foreground to add a sense of place to the dramatic sweep of the Annapurna Range at back.  The vista includes (from left to right) Annapurna South, Annapurna I (at 8,091m barely visible behind the peak of Annapurna South), Hiun Chuli, Annapurna III and Gandarbha Chuli (tucked into the saddle between Hiun Chuli and Macchapuchare), Macchapuchare, Annapurna IV, Annapurna II and Lamjung Himal.  Note that the Annapurnas are listed not according to proximity or geographical succession, but altitude, with I being the highest and IV being the lowest (not that at 7,525m we would call Annapurna IV ‘small’).

Here, early morning dawnlight catches on the south face of Annapurna South.  At 7,219m, Annapurna South is one of the smaller peaks in the Annapurna Himal, but its presence is a constant during the 10-day Annapurna Base Camp trek, never absent for more than a few hours at a time while behind an inconvenient shoulder.  Burning like vapourize copper in the angular light of a rising sun, the fierce edges of a mountain scoured by millenia of wind, ice and crustal uplift can be seen in dramatic contrast.  Poking into the jetstream, high-altitude winds whip past the peak tearing off a tail of snow and ice granules which hang like a blowing scarf in the morning air.  Up close, the sound is audible as the roar of powerful engines, but at the distance I took this shot, the calm quiet of a village dawn belied the fierce battle taking place among the jagged heights.

(click to see detail)

This next photo for me captures three things that make my heart ache just a little.  The first is the beautiful north-east face of Annapurna South (and across to Annapurna I at right) as viewed across the dry basin of the Annapurna Sanctuary.  It remains one of the most beautiful, spectacular locations I have ever stood in in my entire (and moderately well-travelled) life.  The second is the marvellous blue sky which accompanied us for most of the trip and made both the trekking and the photography so memorable.  The third are the prayer flags, so symbolic and such a powerful marker in my memory for that place, as well as being a visual feast with their bright colours, and their ethereal spirituality in the face of such intense and tangible physical beauty.

Back in the lowlands, and I snapped this rather undramatic shot of the terraced fields which are the only way in which villagers can farm a living out of the steep-sided valleys.  Among the foothills of the first few days of the trek, before the landscape gave way to rock and glacial moraine, these terraces were the main geographical marker and the symbol of a hardy resilience that the mountain peoples of the Himalayas have had to adopt.  I enjoyed the play of afternoon light across the terraces, and wish I could have done more exploration of them, both on foot and with my camera.

Perched in a village on a rideline overlooking Annapurna South and Hiun Chuli, the name of the teahouse at centre is “Nice View Lodge”.  Talk about understatements…

(click to see detail)

Trekking into the Annapurna Sanctuary, one of the joys was that after five days with the mountains slowly getting larger, but appearing largely unchanged in terms of appearance, suddenly we had come around behind the peaks we had been watching during our uphill slog, and they appeared totally different.  While not the tallest mountain in the Sanctuary, Annapurna South viewed from the north-east was certainly one of the most beautiful of the peaks we saw, with a certain elegance to its primal and inhospitable face.  I loved shooting these mountains in the strong sunlight against a blue sky, as it cast the details of the rock and ice into sharp contrast and allowed for some lovely textured detail.

(click image to see larger)

And back to the prayer flags.  I really can’t get enough of them.  I took a series of shots of Annapurna I viewed through the tangle of prayer flags at the shrine above Annapurna Base Camp South, and the combination of vast mountain (8,091m), blue sky, white ice and coloured flags was spine-chilling in its impact at the time.  I could post these images all day long…

Nepal is a spectacularly beautiful country, with photographic surprises around every corner, and so much to explore.  As you can see from the amount I post & talk about it, it impacted me deeply.  I am still plotting my return…

Prayer Flags beneath Annapurna South

Despite having my camera break half an hour after arriving at Annapurna Base Camp, I still have truckloads of photos from the Annapurna Sanctuary Trek still to upload- and maybe a story or two as well.

A. brought this photo to my attention as one of her favourites a couple of weeks back, and as she explained why she liked it, it grew on me as well.  The prayer-flags among the Himalayan peaks are always a delightful scene- the colour contrast against the stark blue and white of snow and sky is dramatic.  But it also captures a series of elements and dichotomies- between the man-made flags and the natural mountains; spirituality reflected both in the prayers and in the majesty of the high places; the hard rock versus the flowing flags; wind and earth; man’s efforts and God’s creative power; the list goes on.

Really, each photograph is up to the individual to appreciate however, and so I shall leave you to do so.  Or otherwise.

Back from Tassie soon.  See you shortly.

Moments in Space and Time #2: The Shrine at Annapurna

My trek through Nepal was one of repeated moments that hang viscerally in my memory, and there were probably several that could have made this list, so although this is the second I’m mentioning, in a way I’m showing terrible restraint.

Five days on from the photograph taken of Macchapuchare at Dawn, we found oursleves in the Annapurna Sanctuary, at the Annapurna Base Camp, sitting at 4,300m beneath the yawning face of Annapurna I. As places go, the Sanctuary is up there as in the top two or three most spectacular pieces of scenery I’ve visited anywhere. Ringed by peaks six, seven and eight thousand metres in altitude, it is staggering in scale, in drama and in wild, unrelenting beauty.

Atop a cliff carved by the glacier at its feet sits a shrine (actually a chorten). It has been erected a short walk behind and above the base camp proper, on an outcrop of rock overlooking the glacier, Annapurnas I and South, Tent Peak, Macchapuchare, and a host of other peaks less well known but every bit as dramatic.

The shrine honours mountaineers who have fallen on Annapurna I. Some names are engraved on brass plaques on the side of the shrine. Others have their names on rocks placed at its base. Among the more prominent is that of Anatoli Boukreev, controversial hero of the 1996 Mt. Everest disaster, whose actions both saved lives and, argued by Jon Krakauer in his outstanding tale of that tragedy “Into Thin Air” (one of the best mountaineering books ever written in my opinion), placed them at peril.

As one who loves the mountains (though I would never refer to myself as a mountaineer) I found the shrine deeply moving. A more beautiful setting for a memorial could not be imagined.

Sitting there, the quiet was overwhelming. I was alone. I hung my feet over the edge of the cliff. The sun was warm but the November air was bitterly cold. A wind gusted up the valley, and the streaming prayer-flags snapped and rustled. The belief in the flags is that as the wind moves through them, the words written in prayer on the material are carried to heaven. The tips of Annapurna I and some of its companions are so high that they protrude into the jetstream, and to accompany the fine streams of ice-crystals I could see blowing from their summits, I could hear the deep roar of the high-altitude winds like the rumble of a jet’s engines. Beneath the warming gaze of the sun, ice melted and crumbled, and rocks frozen into the jagged surface of the glacier beneath me were released, where they tumbled with sharp clacks that echoed to where I sat. Far in the distance, hidden somewhere on Annapurna’s vast flanks, a giant avalanche released, an unmistakable noise that sounds like a distant train and shakes the air.

It was a magnificent moment, a place that blended the sheer natural beauty of one of the world’s most spectacular landscapes, with the pathos and energy of human endeavour and its cost. It was at once sensual and spiritual, and in some way, greatly hallowed. Places like this I feel I can reach out and touch God with my soul. I don’t cry easily, but sitting for a few minutes in that place, I found tears stinging my eyes.

A quote from the late Boukreev is inscribed on the base of the shrine, and the words ring true for me and, I’m sure, many others who enjoy the mountains. I still find them moving:

“Mountains are not Stadiums where I satisfy my ambition to achieve, they are the cathedrals where I practice my religion… I go to them as humans go to worship. From their lofty summits I view my past, dream of the future and, with an unusual acuity, am allowed to experience the present moment… my vision cleared, my strength renewed. In the mountains I celebrate creation. On each journey I am reborn.”

Moments in Space and Time #4: Macchapuchare Morning

The ascent from Phedi to Dhampus is a two-hour slog up stone staircases winding their way through the lush overgrown forest of the Himalayan foothills. Upon attaining the ridgeline along which the village’s little stone cottages are spread, a magnificent panorama opens up in the fading afternoon sunlight. The entire Annapurna Massif is laid out, from left to right some of the most magnificent peaks in the world. From Annapurna South and Annapurna I in the west, crowned by the dramatic Macchapuchare in the centre, and around to the enourmous Annapurnas II and IV in the east, the view is simply staggering.

Pemba, our Sherpa, booked us in at a sweet little guesthouse atop the ridge, where the views remained staggering. This was only our first evening on the Annapurna Sanctuary Trek, and it was already delivering the goods in spectacular fashion. The accomodation was rustic- wooden beds and thin mats in what felt like a converted stone barn, accessible by a ricketty wooden ladder slippery with years of tred and woodsmoke.

I got up early the next morning with Lydz and Laura to watch the sunrise. Our vantage looked over the east-facing flanks of the mountains, so as the sun slowly slipped above the distant horizon, they were washed in fresh sunlight, the low angles emphasising the details in the relief. We were standing four and five thousand metres lower than the peaks at which we stared, and the sunlight kissed their tips while our stretch of hillside was still very much swathed in shadow. The air was very still, and hanging with the smoke from early morning fires.

Macchapuchare, or Fishtail Mountain, is known as the Matterhorn of the Himalayas for its distinctive shape and prominence. It is an awe-inspiring peak, and as the sun rose, the light seemed to finger every little crevice and feature on its jagged face. After a little while, the light reached us as well, and a bush exploding with pink flowers in front of me was suddenly bathed in soft light. I balanced a shot with the flowers framing the mountain peak in the background- the sun-splashed petals, the shining peak and the blue sky contrasting with that deep shadows of the valley. The memory of that morning holds a place as one of the most beautiful sunrises I’ve ever witnessed, in one of the world’s most moving settings. The itself photo sits for me as one of the top two or three I’ve ever taken, and I hope you enjoy it as well.

Prayer Flags in the Annapurnas

I loved Nepal.  I loved the Annapurna Base Camp Trek.  And I loved Annapurna I.  The colourful prayer-flags that adorn sacred sites in Nepal are an unforgettable feature of that country.  Photographically, they are such a gorgeous contrast with the white and blue theme of the peaks themselves that few travellers with an eye for images will forget this feature of the country in a hurry.  It is one of the most vivid and colourful memories, and a cliche for photographers such as myself.  Cliche, maybe, but one that works so well.

I took this shot of Annapurna through the flags hanging from the shrine to fallen mountaineers above Annapurna Base Camp.  The framing just worked, and I liked the contrast of scales.  Annapurna I is gargantuan- 8,091m and the 10th highest peak in the world (albeit the first 8,000m peak to be climbed, by Maurice Herzog in 1951).  The location is breaktaking, and with the strong fall sunlight, the colours just shone.  I want to go back here.  To take more photos.  And to stand in this beautiful location and enjoy the magnificence of creation once again.

The Dance of the Cosmos

Chomrong sits at what could be described as the crux of the Annapurna Sanctuary trek.  It’s a small hillside town, much like many others in the Conservation Area, and is characteristically spread over a vertical kilometre of mountain, connected by a broad, steep and uneven staircase that has broken the heart of many a would-be trekker over the years I don’t doubt.  It’s a crux (quite literally) in that the road forks here, running back south towards Landruk and Dhampus one way, or west towards Ghorepani and Poon Hill another.  It’s also the last major permanent settlement on the route to the Annapurna Base Camp.  During the trekking season there are half a dozen more tea-house settlements along the trail, but come the snows, these will almost all empty save for one or two hardy little hamlets that manage to cling to life through the winter here.

We arrived at the hilltop overlooking Chomrong in the late afternoon, and it was clouding over.  It was one of the only afternoons it did this during the two weeks we were out in Nepal, and it was certainly disappointing as the view looked as though it had the potential to be spectacular.  As it was, Annapurna South, Huin Chuli and Macchapuchare were all swallowed by the cold, damp grey.  We explored the town, then tramped our way back up the hill to our guesthouse and settled into the little restaurant to enjoy some warmth, dhal bhat and gurung bread with honey.

Darn I miss those tea-houses.

I awoke at 4am.  I don’t remember whether I set my alarm or whether my body got me up.  I was sleeping in a funky little panorama room by myself, an unconvincing structure tagged onto the outside of our guesthouse which seemed to overhang the hillside.  But from it I could roll back the curtains and peer out into the night from deep within the confines of my sleeping bag.

The Milky Way glared back at me.

I arose.  I dressed quickly but thoroughly.  November in mountainous Nepal is a tad chilly.  Fleece pants, outer leggings, polyprop base-layer, fleece and Gore-Tex shell, boots, gloves, hat, and sleeping-bag to boot.  An iPod.  And my Canon EOS 350D, complete with 17-85mm lens, polarizing and ND400 filters, remote shutter release, and a tripod.  Good to go.

I ventured out onto the patio.

Pemba, our Sherpa, had done us proud.  He knew from day one that I was keen about my photography so he always booked us into guest-houses with a view, and for that I’ll always be grateful to him.  This one was a real winner.  Not ten paces from my room, the vista opened up before me.  Annapurna South, Annapurna I, Huin Chuli, Macchapuchare, all laid out in the still, breathless night.  And above them all the stars burned like tiny pinpricks poked into a sable canvas.

Stars are one of the great beauties of mountain nights, and few places as wonderful as the Himalaya.  Up at 2,000m (6,000 ft) and higher, the atmosphere is largely free of dust and smoke, and out here, many miles from heavy population centres, the light-pollution is minimal.  The cold air keeps the water-vapour at a minimum, and with the afternoon clouds having slunk away for the night and the moon bedded down for another cycle, I had what was undoubtedly one of the more beautiful nights I have ever seen.  And as someone who would much rather be sleeping at 4am, it has to be a pretty special night to get me excited about it.

(Incidentally, the moon, optically speaking, acts as a giant mirror to the light of the sun, so that when you’re shooting long-exposure night-shoots with a moon present, you are effectively catching reflected sunlight and therefore so long as you leave the shutter open long enough, you’ll end up with a shot that looks like it was taken in the daylight.  When the moon- among other light sources- is absent, however, you end up with a dark foreground no matter how long you leave the shutter open for).

There are two main approaches to starlight photography (at least in my lexicon).  One is to increase the sensitivity of the sensor to allow as much light as possible to get it in as short a time-period as possible, while the other is to leave the shutter open for as long as possible.  The two shots above demonstrate the two options (while the third shot, at the end of this post, shows a view of Annapurna I from exactly the same viewpoint the next morning when the sun had come up).

Stars move.  Well, relative to our position on earth, that is.  We know this if we stop and think about it.  And of course if we’re into stargazing at all, it’s always fun to watch Ursa Major, the mighty hunter Orion, or the Southern Cross, shift positions during the course of an evening.  What I never really realized until I started taking long-exposure night-shots, however, is just how much they move.  In fact, if you leave the shutter on the camera open for a minute or so, you’ll already start to see the stars blurring with their own motion.

The motion of the stars (as viewed by us on a nightly basis) is relative not so much to us, but to the rotation of earth, and therefore relative specifically to the axial poles of rotation (i.e. the North Pole and the South Pole).  In other words, the stars appear to turn about the poles, as you’d expect if you imagine the earth turning on its axis in the middle of space.  So when we take long exposure shots of stars at night, we see two phenomenon.  First, the stars appear to be moving (in the sky) around a fixed point notionaly above the pole (in the northern hemisphere marked by Polaris, the North Star).  Second, the stars nearest that pole appear to move slowest (shorter distance while the shutter is open) while those further away seem to be moving faster.  It’s all just an illusion created by our own movement through space, but it makes for dramatic spinning lines in the sky.

In this case, in the top shot I stacked my ND400 neutral density filter with my polarizer (in a procedure I’ve described elsewhere), closed my aperture right up tight, and basically let in as little light as possible.  Like this I could pretty much leave the shutter open for as long as I wanted to.  In this instance I left it open for about forty-five minutes- all the while bedded down in my sleeping bag on the stones of the cold patio in an effort not to freeze.  As luck would have it, relative to my position the North Star hovered directly above Annapurna I (the main focus of my shot), placing the focal point of the rotation right in the sweet-spot of the shot.  This was nothing shy of dumb luck, as I composed for the mountains, not the notional rotation of the stars (though next time I’ll be sure to factor this into my composition).

I was quite chuffed with the result.

The second shot (which was actually taken first) was simply taken at high sensitivity.  Maximum ISO, wide-open aperture and no filters meant as much light was coming in as quickly as possible, and I was able to expose for the stars in about 45 seconds or so.  If you look closely you’ll see there’s already a little bit of motion-blur going on, but there’s not a lot I can do about that.  That said, I may have to take out my 16-35mm lens with my EOS 5D and see what a lens the size of a baseball coupled with ISO 6400 can pull off…

Both shots (obviously) are vastly different but produce very pleasing results (in my humble opinion).  The first one in particular tends to get people saying “wow- how did you do that?” (followed by their eyes glazing over as I start to explain).  But at the end of the day, neither shot comes anywhere close to capturing just how wonderful it was to be out beneath that icy, star-studded sky, surrounded by the majestic peaks of the Annapurna Himal that night.

Travelogue: Kathmandu

Note: Courtesy of my Blog Guru Jan, I have now worked out how to re-include links to the bigger-sized photos, so if you click the images you’ll be able to see ‘em all in much more detail, if that’s your thang.  Though please don’t download them for commercial use without talking to me first (not that they’re in top quality JPEG).

I think I’ve mentioned in a previous post recently that I’m not much of a city person.  I still think that stands.  I’m happiest when I’m in the great outdoors (and the outdoors doesn’t get a whole lot greater than in Nepal).  That said, a bunch of cities do make it onto my list of places I don’t mind spending time, and for all its faults (and not getting a mention in my previous post) Kathmandu is one of them.

On the surface, Kathmandu doesn’t have a lot going for it.  It’s a congested, sprawling city with no discernable pattern to its road networks, and far too many people on motorbikes and in decrepit little cars to make the streets a fun place to spend time.  On top of that, it’s a chronically poor place.  Nepal is one of the poorest countries in Asia (usually competing for bottom place with Bangladesh), and at last tally stood at 145th out of 179 countries worldwide on the Human Development Index.  That puts it slightly better off than countries like Sudan (146) and Haiti (148), but below nations such as Mauritania (140) and Burma (135).  It’s dirty, and the air-pollution that gets trapped by cool air in the valley bottom gives rise both to chronic chest infections and eye- and sinus- irritation, as well as frequently obscuring any view of the mountains that ring the city.

But I lucked out.  The flight landed mid-afternoon on a clear blue-sky day in mid-November.  The sun was strong but the air was mild- mid-twenties perhaps- and before people were even off the rolling stairways and onto the apron, they were blocking the Airbus’ exits snapping lame [sorry, but it's true] shots of white-capped Himalayan peaks, partially obscured by the air-traffic control tower [...].

There’s no way around the traffic, of course.  Kathmandu was virtually carless as late as the early fifties (for a fascinating insight into what was a deeply isolated kingdom, read Maurice Herzog’s fabulous account of the 1950 ascent of Annapurna, unsurprisingly entitled “Annapurna“), and so the sprawl and the old-town has a distinct higgledy-piggledy feel, with steep narrow streets navigating gullies and valleys, and ramshackle brick apartment-blocks leaning unconvincingly into oddly-angled and gridlocked intersections.  Headed to the hotel, and the driver navigated shaded back-alleys where monkeys scattered from the garbage they were scavenging.  We slowed at a complicated confluence of roads and watched in sickly slow-motion as a taxi glided serenely into an unsuspecting motorcyclist who was sent sprawling across the asphalt.  Unhurt (and uncharacteristically wearing a helmet), the rider picked himself up, walked up to the cab window, and firmly and deliberately punched the cab-driver in the jaw before retrieving his mount and driving back into the flow.

For me the most interesting portion of the city (and I admit I didn’t venture too far afield) was the bustling hub of Thamel- the old town.  Connaisseurs of Kathmandu, and those who had the opportunity to visit the country in the seventies or eighties (when, tragically, I was otherwise indisposed) will probably scoff at this comment, and for a good reason.  Once a historic district surrounding centuries-old temples and oozing with character, Thamel is now the Vegas of South Asia, a network of narrow winding streets overhung with top-heavy buildings looking for an excuse to crumble, and hung with as much neon and tourist sign-boarding as their architecture can support.  The narrow strip of sky between the congested three- and four-storey shop-house blocks is a tangled web of wires and cables.  There are restaurants and cafes and backpacker hostels and hotels and shops selling pashmina textiles and outdoors gear and backpacks and souvenirs and paintings and handicrafts…  pretty much every square inch of available real-estate revolves around the backpacker industry.  And it really is horrendous.

Perhaps this is what makes it interesting.  It’s a tremendous clash of civilisations.  On the one hand the clutter and artchitectural chaos of what was once a bustling Hindu city in the foothills of the world’s highest mountain range, full of charm and character.  On the other, capitalism in all its merry mirth, run amok among the rambling side-streets and gaping shamelessly from every darkened stoop and entranceway.  Down the muddy footpaths, rickshaw runners and tiger-balm touts mingle with gore-tex clad Europeans and scraggly western travellers on some gap-year kick (often looking far less washed than the impoverished children in grubby clothes sitting on their concrete doorsteps where they empty onto the street).

I enjoy the life and vibrance of the place.  People who talk about ‘genuine’ and ‘culture’ and how Western capitalist intervention has ruined the world are frankly up themselves.  I mean, sure, in many ways it has.  It’d be lovely for us to be able to enjoy the way these people lived traditionally and soak vicariously in their experiences, preserved pristine forever.  Lovely, and a tad patronizing, no?  Cultures change.  Sure, I’d love to be able to brag that I was here before everybody else was.  But I wasn’t.  And Thamel’s fun.  At night-time the streets blaze with neon and hum with music tumbling from a hundred different eateries.  I was told there are quite literally thousands of travel agencies set up in the area.  During the day you can’t go fifty paces without being offered a ride in a rickshaw, a pot of stinging-hot tiger-balm, or a surreptitious baggie of hashish.  Young backpackers wear an expression of studied absence, as if to say “I refuse to see other white people”.  Insence drifts thickly from shrines in shopfronts and mingles with the smell of rotting vegetables from alleyways and sidestreets.  It’s colourful, and life and energy hangs from the place in thick, tangible folds.

A little walk away from the commercial hub- which is really just half a dozen criss-crossing streets over a couple of square kms- and the exploring becomes fun.  Once you get away from the touts, the Nepalis are graciously accomodating, and strangely the white faces start to thin out.  The noise in the narrow architectural canyons becomes a little quieter.  The air is damp and cool.  Life bustles.  People rinse out stainless-steel cookware on front steps and empty grey waste-water straight into ditches at the side of the road.  Motorbikes, horns blaring, carve a path between pedestrians and work their way around handcarts being pulled by young men and often boys.  The odd sacred cow meanders along in search of food-scraps lying in heaps in dim corners, unmolested.  Little temples are dotted about in alcoves, statues draped in yellow marigolds, purple clouds of incense almost overpowering as you walk past, while offerings of what I guess must be paan stain the stonework in visceral blood-like stains.

I wander down an alleyway that turns into a corridor.  It is so dark I can barely see where my feet land, and I have to stoop my head to avoid banging it on the roof.  When I emerge a few seconds later, I am in some courtyard deep within the tangled array of buildings and passageways.  Families are gathered in corners, eating and washing and living their lives.  I smile and wave awkwardly, realising I have blundered into their privacy, and they smile and giggle and wave back in a manner far more gracious than I would have done, had some tourist waltzed into my living room (and as has happened to some of my fellow students while studying at Cambridge University when they failed to lock their doors while stepping out for a short break…).

One of the aspects of the culture I enjoyed most was the respect towards animals, a refreshing change from the often vicious habits of people in Africa, where donkeys and dogs seem to bear the brunt for being the only creatures consistently in a lower station than humans, and are reminded of the fact with vigour.  While I am usually leery of dogs in third world countries (and having had my own fair share of trouble), the dogs throughout Nepal were healthy, friendly and contended things, with furry coats and feathery tails.  They reminded me of my own parents’ dogs, Zac and Zena, who as Tibetan Terriers and therefore Himalayan dogs themselves are no doubt distant cousins.

An enduring image I have while walking the streets of Thamel is of a little girl, a teeny little thing who was still probably as old as four or five, with straight black hair tied in two tails on either side of her head and a grubby brown face.  She emerged from her front door straight onto the street, and there on her doorstep she found herself nose-to-nose with a happy-looking mutt, its tail held high in curiosity.  For a moment they stood their looking at each other in the morning sunlight, and then the dog’s tongue loped out and smeared itself across the girl’s face in a gesture of tail-wagging affection, and the girl chortled happily and wiped the slobber off with the back of her sleeve.  It was a simple image, but one which spoke tomes of the gentle spirit that Nepal tries hard to embody- political turmoil notwithstanding.

The tourist-sites interest me a little less.  I cruised through the historic Durbar Square (the one on the edge of Thamel) in half an hour, enjoying the architecture, but like the cultural heathen that I am, eschewing both guide-books and tour-guides in favour of exploring the nooks and crannies myself.  Likewise Swayanbhunath (the Monkey Temple) is a bit of a grotty place, jammed with tourists, although well worth the visit not so much for the monkies (wretched, diseased and bad-tempered little animals, wherever in the world I go) but for that fantastic staircase (a must-do for trekkers getting themselves ready for a walk in the real mountains) and for the fantastic views of the city on a clear day.  Watching airplanes slip past the crest of the towering foothills, and the angle of the sunbeams gradually flatten until the sun is lost below the distant horizon, is all rather spectacular.

All up, I’ll take Pokhara and the hills any day over Kathmandu, but as cities go, it’s a pretty intriguing one, full of life in all its unfettered and unsanitary glory.  When the air is clear (and I confess we had a string of really beautiful days, so we were lucky) it is quite simply thrilling to look out and see the world’s highest mountain peaks looming just a few dozen miles away, saw-toothed and impending above the charming ramshackle sprawl.  Nepal, as I believe I’ve mentioned elsewhere, was a place I had been trying to get to for more than a decade, and when I finally did, it still exceeded my expectations.

Go before you die.

See my other posts on Nepal here:

In the Foothills

The Faces of Fishtail

Annapurna Base Camp South

An Annapurna Panorama

Macchapuchare Noir

Annapurna Dawnlight

Flags in the Sanctuary

Jinhu Jungle

In the Foothills

Although our trek through the Annapurna Conservation Area was all about the mountains (or at least, for me it was), the foothills had a beauty that was worth the passage in its own right.  We started our journey from the hamlet of Phedi, at the roadside running north away from Pokhara.  Up a staircase for a couple of hours to the little town of Dhampus, where we spent the first night, then on through the Maoist checkpoint and into Annapurna country proper.  The path varies, from winding, uneven staircases that break the heart on the way up and the knees on the way down, to overhung forests of rhododendron and other matted trees, dense and moist and cool out of the strong sunlight.  The path doesn’t stay on one level for more than a few minutes at a time.  No sooner have you crested one ridge than it’s time to plummet down into the next valley, and within a few minutes you’ve undone all the good climbing work you’ve sweated out for the previous three hours.

But this ‘gentle’ hill-country (gentle when compared to the fierce and sweeping heights of the Himalayan peaks that surround) is well worth it for its own sake.  The forests are full of life and sweet, clean air that fills the lungs.  The villages- each with its own tea-houses for weary trekkers- thrive off the back of the tourist trade, but have a benevolent simplicity about them.  Truth be told, despite the physical nature of the journey across these valleys, it’s quite a relaxing experience.  We’d start early in the morning, take a tea-break by ten, a ninety-minute lunch-break by noon, and be off the trail by three and looking for ways to fill our time outside another little guest-house, until the passing of the sun left us too cold to be outdoors again.  These Sherpas will tell you they’re all about the mountain-climbing, but I reckon they’ve gone soft… 

Day two, the afternoon after leaving Dhampus, we come across the panorama above.  Steep terraced hillsides notched into the slope with the contours, green and glowing beneath a clear blue sky.  Above it all, Annapurna South basks in the afternoon sunshine, and between it and its shoulder-peak Hiun Chuli, the crown of the gargantuan Annapurna I, 10th highest mountain on Planet Earth, can be made out just behind and to the right of Annapurna South, slightly masked by wisps of cloud. 

We spent the night just around the spur you see here, in the quaint little village of Landruk.  These lower villages have a certain charm that is lost higher up, in that these are genuine settlements in their own right, and although they take a huge portion of their income from the tourist trade, so too there are shopkeepers and farmers and herders and schoolteachers and children and all the other trappings of rural life.  I assume that living in a place like this, growing up beneath a mountain such as Annapurna, you become a little blasé about it.  I wonder if the villagers stop seeing it after a while?  But then, growing up in Switzerland I never tired of seeing Mt. Blanc towering behind the lake, so maybe they don’t.

From Landruk it’s another day to Chomrong, memorable for the two-thousand-step staircase that is Main Street.  I kid you not- there is over a vertical kilometre between the top of the town and the houses near the river at the bottom.  If you had to commute here you’d keep fit and healthy, no doubt about it.  From Chomrong inwards, virtually all of the settlements are seasonal, existing only to cater to trekkers, and once the winter snows roll in and the passes into the Annapurna Sanctuary close, they empty for the season.  Places like Bamboo, Deurali, and half a dozen other little blue-roofed hamlets spotted along the footpath that skirts the Modi Khola river between Machapuchare and Hiun Chuli.  These places are set in stark landscapes of rock and the dwindling forest as the altitude climbs.  Tall cliffs rise up around them and the scenery is striking.  They’re exciting to be sure.  But they have none of the beautiful simplicity and lush variety that makes the hill-country such a pleasure to trek through.

Photos:

1. Foothills: Terraces and homes as the trail approaches Landruk in the Annapurna Conservation Area.  Annapurna South (L- 7,219m), Annapurna I (C- 8,091m), Hiun Chuli (R-6,441m).

2. Chomrong Marigolds: Flowers frame Annapurna South and Hiun Chuli in early morning sunlight.  Minutes later we were descending 2,000 steps…

3. Annapurna Massif: The eastern arm of the Annapurna Himal is viewed from a ridgeline a little north of Dhampus.  Annapurna IV (7,525m) is the pointy bit at the leftwards edge, and Annapurna II (7,939m) is the giant bare-faced pyramid behind and to the right.  Lamjung Himal (6,931m) is the other prominent peak to the right side of the range.  It should be noted that the four Annapurnas are numbered not in any geographical location to one another (indeed there are a host of named peaks between Annapurna I and Annapurna II) but in descending altitude.

The Faces of Fishtail

I think I was already in love with Machapuchare before I ever visited Nepal.  My parents went to Pokhara in 2002, and at the time I was most put out.  Since I was a teenager I had had a fascination with travelling to the kingdom to see the Himalaya myself (along with an as-yet unfulfilled dream to travel in Alaska, for much the same reason).  I didn’t have much right to be snarky, of course.  My parents had been trying to go to Nepal since the late seventies together, from the days when they ended up working in Bangladesh and Afghanistan instead.  So I can’t really bugrudge them the trip they’d been hanging out for for more than two decades…

The travelled with our family’s first digital camera, an Olympus 2.1 megapixel beast (which is substantially smaller than the underused camera on my new cell phone), which nonetheless brought back some gorgeous pictures of Pokhara and its jaw-dropping surrounds.  These included atmospheric photographs of canoes on Pokhara’s lake in the early morning sun, where beams of light play in low-hanging mist above still black water.  Taking to a canoe myself on that lake on a bright late-autumn morning almost exactly five years to the week later, I was struck by the incredible play of light in the leaves hanging from the island, and craved my own camera which had tragically given up the ghost ten days earlier at Annapurna Base Camp- possibly the most painful episode of my photographic career to date.

Other photos included some spectacular shots of the Annapurna Himal at dawn, most prominent of which being Machapuchare- which is also visible from the rather posh resort my folks stayed at (and at which Laura, Lydz and myself certainly did not stay at) looming its jagged face over the countryside.  It is a striking sight and a feature of almost any photograph of the town, and long before I ever set foot in Nepal I had its name and form memorized from studying the pictures with awe.

My first view of Machapuchare was from the window of our small Yeti Air flight as it cruised into Pokhara’s little airstrip after a thirty-minute flight from Kathmandu on a cloud-free fall afternoon.  It is a devastatingly beautiful sight, rearing up above the green foothills with its needle-sharp point piercing the sky, and it’s easy to see why it’s called the Matterhorn of the Himalaya.  By no means the highest peak in the Annapurna Range- it sits at 6,993m in a massif dominated by mountains more than a vertical kilometre higher- it is known for its prominence- that is, its elevation relative to the surrounding land (or put simply, how much it sticks out from the rest of the range).  In this it is one of the world’s more remarkable mountains to look at.

Machapuchare changes as you travel around it.  It forms one of the anchors of the Annapurna Base Camp trek (together with Annapurna South).  While Annapurnas II and IV swing out of sight after the first couple of days, and Annapurnas I and III really only show up towards the end of the trek, Machapuchare is rarely out of sight for the entire journey, and for my part, my eyes were rarely off it.  From the south (Pokhara), it resembles the classic off-kilter Matterhorn with its steep angled ridges and pyramidal peak, but as you cross below its western face (craning your neck to catch glimpses of it between the rock-towers above Deurali) it shows its true structure, and the twin peaks seperated by a narrow cleft demonstrate how it takes its nickname, “Fish Tail”, resembling the tail of a fish plunging back into a lake.  When you finally reach the Sanctuary and Annapurna Base Camp and view it from the north, it has once more taken on a pyramidal form, not as visibly prominent from its surroundings, but now shown as the massive mountain it truly is and the tremendous range that its axis holds together.

Machapuchare is considered sacred by locals as a place where gods come down and set foot on earth, and it’s not hard to see how the belief came about, as it is a truly special sight.  It has never been climbed, and the only expedition to be granted permission to climb it was obliged to promise that they would not actually set foot on the summit.  They climbed to within 50m of the summit, then turned around and came back down- a feat of impressive mountaineering overshadowed by a far more remarkable feat of self-control for a mountaineer!  It is now declared sacred and off-limits for climbing parties.

I share these few photos to show its different faces and moods, and hope I can inspire you to pay it a visit someday.  Regretably (due to the death of my Canon EOS 350D minutes after the previous photograph shown here was taken) I do not have as many photographs of the mountain as I might have liked, and I missed some truly exceptional light on her face on our evening at Annapurna Base Camp.  Which is all the more reason for me to go back and pay my respects another time, and soon…

Photographs:

1. Magenta Morning: Machapuchare and Bougainvillea in the morning sunlight from the village of Dhampus.

2. Roof of the World: Framed behind the slate roof of a local cottage, Machapuchare and its roots tower far above the foothills north of Pokhara.

3. Fishtail in the Forest: The peak rises above sprays of rhododendron trees in the lush mild jungles on the approach to the Annapurna Sanctuary.

4. The Umbrella: Machapuchare viewed from the lawn of one of the many tea-houses early in the trek.

5. The Trail Climbs: Machapuchare reappears above blossom trees after half a day of absence following the [heartbreaking] descent and then climb from Chomrong.

6. Cairns: Offerings are laid in reverence of the sacred mountain where it is visible framed by towering rock masses above Deurali.

7. Fishtail Face: From the same angle, the twin peaks and the face that divides them show how Machapuchare got its nickname where it hangs 6,993m above the valley below.

8. In the Sanctuary: Machapuchare dominates the entrance to the Annapurna Sanctuary, with Machapuchare Base Camp nestled in the valley below its formidable face.

9. Himalayan Starlight: Machapuchare anchors the Annapurna Himal with Annapurna South, Annapurna I and Hiun Chuli to the left, and Annapurnas II and IV to the right, while startrails swirl overhead on a long-exposure night-shoot from Dhampus.

A Nomad’s Footsteps (3 of 3)

More pictures from different axes of the globe we wander, a sampler of some of my recent travels…

Mauritania (2005)

Sunrise over the city of Nouakchott, the capital of Mauritania.  Half as big again as the US state of Texas (slightly smaller than the Northern Territory, half as big again as the nation of the Ukraine, or roughly the same size as France and Spain combined, depending on the audience and frame of reference…), Mauritania has a population of just 3 million mostly-nomadic people.  In true Sahelian fashion, it straddles the line between civilizations, with a thin southern strip home to a significant population of African ethnic groups, including the Wolof, and the rest drawn from north African groups with roots in the fairer Moorish, Berber and Tuareg peoples.  Sadly, as with many similarly-divided nations, a sense of superiority aligned with the lightness of skin has developed, such that in Mauritania there are ‘white’ moors and ‘dark’ moors, the latter of whom tend to be subservient to and occupy economic positions below the former.  Mauritania has the dubious reputation of being one of the last bastions of societally-condoned slavery in the world.

Mauritania is a fascinating place.  Much of the population is truly nomadic, and while the African agriculturalist groups have settled close to the Senegalese border (about a third of the population), and another million have begrudgingly accepted a sedentary life in the country’s nondescript capital by the sea, this leaves the final million to be finely sprinkled throughout the rest of this vast Saharan nation, with the result that it is, predominately, devoid of anything.  Just vast empty expanses of desert.

We love it.

I took the above photo with my Canon Powershot G6, the little digital point-and-shoot that kept me company during my year in West Africa.  No polarizer, no special lenses, and no post-processing.  The image of the sky you see there is exactly as it came out of the camera, the colours as they appeared, as the sun came up from beyond the desert above the eastern end of the city.  A phenomenal view.  I will talk more about Mauritania some other time, as it’s a country that has captured my imagination and left me thirsty for more…

Nepal (2007)

Another trip I will doubtless spend more time talking about in more detail is my brief stay in Nepal, trekking to the Annapurna Sanctuary.  Three of the best-spent weeks of my life.  The scenery was spectacular, the culture fascinating, the weather perfect, and the company pretty stellar as well.  Many very, very fond memories.  Among which is not the fact that my camera died forty-five minutes after arriving at the crux of the trip.

Fortunately, on this morning my camera was working.  I snapped this of one corner of the enourmous Annapurna Massif, here capturing at least two seven-thousand-metre peaks just as the sun’s first rays lit their crowns.  Howling winds tear across the tops of the peaks, whipping snow and ice crystals into the air and leaving them hanging like a fine veil for the sun to get caught in.  I have always been a fan of the mountains, and Nepal remains one of my favourite destinations on the planet.  Stupefyingly beautiful.

South Africa (2007)

One of the images I carry with me that reflects the grandeur of the African landscape is the awesome skyscape that accompanies it.  No memory of the open drylands of this continent is complete without taking in the drama of the clouds that hang above, lending a sense of scale to the scenery beneath.  I snapped these cumulus towers building in the early afternoon near Pretoria, when a hot and humid January day promised to turn into a thundery downpour, and which it subsequently did, with gusto.  In this image I love the deep blue gradient towards the top of the frame, and the tangible texture of the clouds themselves…

Haiti (2007)

I took this photograph in a small village that was being rebuilt by the NGO I work for after it had been destroyed by a cyclone.  We were on Haiti’s Ile de la Gonave, a small island a short distance off the coast of the nation’s capital Port-au-Prince.  While Port-au-Prince remains one of the world’s more unsavory destinations, replete with riots, kidnappings, political violence and general criminality- not to mention substantial poverty- Gonave couldn’t be more different.  A laid-back Afro-Carribean island with friendly people and gorgeous tropical scenery laid out on coral-white rock and ringed by azure seas, the only thing that reminded me I was actually working while I was here was the fact that we spent eight hours a day rattling around inside a regulation Toyota Land Cruiser, on what I maintain are the very worst roads I have been on.  Anywhere, anytime.  And I decry anybody to find me a worse set.

Great place though.

Canada (2006)

As we’ve already ascertained, I love mountains.  So I’ve actually been pretty restrained in this collection by not just launching a whole ream of mountain photos at you.  Though truth be told, as my photography skills (and equipment…) have improved, the amount of time I’ve had around mountains has sadly dwindled, an error which I plan to remedy as soon as I get the opportunity.

I took a few weeks out from my stint in Niger to join friends in Alberta for some quality mountain time.  This generally meant strapping on two pieces of carbon-fibre onto the undersides of my boots and hurtling down steep slopes.  I find it hard to conceive of a better way of engaging with God and creation.  I snapped this shot of a mountain whose name I’m unsure while we were driving out to Lake Louise (or was it the Bow Hut area…?  My memory fails me).  It’s not a technically remarkable shot.  But the sheer scale of rock, snow and ice is awe-inspiring, and that blue sky behind the white snow gets my heart beating for more.  I am desperate to get back to the Rockies with my new Canon EOS 5D…

Ecuador (2005)

One of the downsides to travelling to lots of exotic places in my job is being there, and having to spend most of the time working.  One of the upsides is those rare days off.  On this day, a colleague drove us up to the jumping-off point for the ascent of Cotopaxi, Ecuador’s second highest mountain, a stratovolcano of 5,897m in altitude, and one of the world’s most threatening volcanoes.  Part of my trip had to do with supporting a project which is working with communities to be ready for a possible eruption, and so I felt it was particularly justifiable that I spend some time on the volcano itself.  A real hardship, given my earlier observations about my love of mountains…

And hardship it was.  Quite aside from the powerful winds, the altitude was an absolute killer.  We foolishly drove up from 2,000m to 4,500m in the space of ninety minutes, ignoring all calls for acclimitization.  Then we hiked up past the hut at 4,800m, eventually tailing off around 5,200m just short of the start of the ice-cap.  By the top, I was taking five paces, then stopping for two minutes to catch my breath.  Then another five paces…  We ended up coming down of the mountain fairly shortly after that, when my colleague began to complain of difficulty breathing.

This woman was one of the villagers with whom the project was working, one of several who wanted to accompany us on our little excursion.  I caught her in this brief moment of reflection at the mountain hut at 4,800m, and her bright clothes against the grey stone just stood out.  I’m really fond of this photo.  It captures something of the mountain spirit of these gentle people.  She seemed right at home up there, on the edge of where people survive.

South Australia (2006)

The Flinders Ranges, in South Australia, capture for me the rugged beauty of the interior of this continent.  Barren, dry, wild and isolated, they grab my imagination and make me want to explore some more.  The five days that my brother and I spent driving around the southern part of the SA outback only whet my appetite.  Such a beautiful country, right on my doorstep, sometimes I wonder why I spend so much time jetting away from it.  But then I think there’s beauty wherever we end up in the world, we just need to learn how to see it.  Certainly for those of us who’ve ended up here in Australia, we have no excuse to complain.  It’s a pretty amazing country, really.

Am I allowed to say that as a wandering Kiwi…?