On Juniper Mountain: A Journey in the Himalayas

2009

Preface

For every journey there has to be a first step. When, in 1992, Angela Locke travelled to Nepal for the first time, she had never been anywhere in the Developing World. This first journey would be a life-changing experience which would culminate in the founding of the charity Juniper Trust, of which I am the Patron, which now works to provide basic facilities for the poorest and most disadvantaged communities accross the world. This is a book about an inner journey, not an adventure in a conventional sense, but a journey of discovery nonetheless. No mountains were summitted, but there is real adventure, told against a background of the sublime beauty of the Himalayas and of the gentle people who inhabit the foothills of Nepal.

Chris Bonington

Cumbria 2009

On a beautiful summer’s evening, Juniper Trust are gathered for a meeting on the terrace of a house overlooking Keswick in Cumbria. There is much laughter and camaraderie. We sit looking out at the magnificent skyline over the Lake District’s Northern Fells – Cat Bells, Grizedale Pike, Causey Pike, Hellvellyn over to the left in the distance, the Jaws of Borrowdale beyond the lake, all lit by the evening sun. A lone hang-glider dangles in the clear sunset sky, floating from somewhere beyond Walla Crag and the craggy outlines of the fells, before disappearing beyond the trees.

We at Juniper Trust are all volunteers and have tiny administrative costs; a model of a small-scale sustainable charity. At this meeting, for example, we agree to support a proposal for solar lights in the Jancopampa and Pamabamba districts of Peru. One hundred and fifty lights at seventy dollars each, which will transform the ability of the village to continue working after dark, whether it is children doing homework or women’s craft projects. It is wonderful to think that Juniper Trust is quietly lighting up little bits of Peru in an eco-friendly way. We are also considering support for two doctors, founders of TibetVision, who are setting up eye camps in remote areas of Tibet, removing cataracts and bringing light back into the lives of nomads whose lives were effectively over through the blindness brought on by the levels of ultra-violet light at high altitude. TibetVision is just the sort of small-scale, sustainable community project we can try to help. Tonight we have also been looking at our support for a hostel for children in Ladakh who live too far from school to make the journey daily or even weekly. There are reports too on Balodaya and Ardesha schools in Nepal, and Chobar School for Helpless Children, near the Monkey Temple in Kathmandu, all built with the help of Juniper Trust. There is the wish list from Chobar School to be considered – carpets for baby day care, a reservoir for clean water, a swing, slide and seesaw, balls and skipping ropes, more school uniforms and books. One of our policies, which we have kept faith with since the beginning, is to sustain our support and help, not to walk away, but to continue with our partnerships as long as they are needed. ABVK, for example, a wonderful centre in Banepa, Nepal, for children and adults with severe handicaps, is a new project to attract support from Juniper Trust, after it was recommended by Aidan and Caroline Warlow. Aidan is the Founder-Principal of Kathmandu University High School, and I travelled to Nepal with him and Ailsa Mackenzie in the early days of the founding of Juniper Trust.

Since the beginning, working in a low-impact way, alongside local communities, really listening to their needs, our help can ‘trickle up’ rather than ‘trickle down’ to enable change in an appropriate way. We have learned so many lessons from our Nepalese friends, for Juniper Trust had its roots in Nepal, founded after my first visit there. From its small beginnings, it has grown into a worldwide charity.

I think back to that day, nearly eighteen years ago, when I walked into the Post Office in Hesket Newmarket and saw a page open in a magazine advertising a Beginners’ Trek to the Himalayas. Did it all begin there or long before? One thing is certain. My life was about to change forever and nothing would ever be the same again…

1

‘You in the Himalayas! You must be joking. You can’t even find your way round the car park.’

Leaving behind my husband and two teenage children, my fellside farmhouse in Cumbria, friends and neighbours, I am going to Nepal. It will be the first time I have been away by myself, and only the second time I have ever flown. I can’t imagine what I was doing when I booked the flight. I am terrified, but I’m stuck with it. Everyone knows, and I have to go, whatever I feel like inside.

Now I am standing at the frozen food counter in Safeways, trying to calculate the number of pizzas my family might get through in my absence. The youngest two are thirteen and fifteen, and at last I feel I can fulfil this ridiculous ambition to go to the Himalayas, crossing my fingers that they can cope. And after all, there is my capable husband to look after things while I am away…

I load up my trolley and trailing rebellious teenagers, who would rather be anywhere but here, I turn to go to the checkout. Standing behind me, in a black tracksuit, is a tall man. Despite the lack of robes, I know I am looking at a Tibetan, though this is Safeways in Penrith, not Dharamsala. I stare at him and he meets my eyes, smiling.

‘Excuse me,’ I ask nervously. ‘Are you a Tibetan?’

I feel a total fool, not helped by the groans of embarrassment from my two teenagers. He looks up and gives me one of those slow peaceful smiles I will come to know so well in my other life; that unimaginable life I am about to embark on.

‘Yes, I am Tibetan. How did you know?’

I find myself pouring out the story of why I am going to the Himalayas, my fascination with Tibetan Buddhism, the books I have read, the book I am writing, my admiration for the Dalai Lama, and this strange, overwhelming compunction I have to see those great mountains. The kids are mad with me.

‘Mum, why do you always have to talk to people when you go in a supermarket? You are so embarrassing!’

Nothing stems this terrible outpouring of feeling. The frozen stuff is defrosting, but the Tibetan is still listening. When I finally pause for breath, he tells me he is a monk, teaching English at Conishead Priory in South Cumbria. He invites me to visit one day. I thank him, feeling exposed and foolish, and move away to complete my shopping.

While we are waiting at the checkout, I feel a gentle tap on my shoulder. My new Tibetan friend is standing beside me in the queue.

‘I need to tell you something,’ he said quietly. ‘You must know that the book is not important.’

‘Of course it is.’ I say to myself silently, rebelliously. ‘Why else would I be going all that way?’

He smiles that wise smile once again.

‘No, you are wrong. The book is not important.’ He pauses. ‘But the journey is important.’

And so it begins.

2

In the soulless, marble-floored airport at dawn, a woman guard in a yashmak transfixes me with a machine gun and leads me away. I am totally alone, in an alien world. There is neither time nor opportunity to protest. Weak and dizzy after a sleepless night, I am taken to a room without furniture, and the door is firmly shut. Somehow, inadvertently, on my way to rejoin the plane, I have set off the alarms as I walked through the security check. No one else in the world knows I am here. The rest of the group are scattered, and no one has seen me being taken away.

The woman begins a body search. I hardly dare to move. What if someone has planted something on me? I have heard about such things: a woman travelling alone, naïve, vulnerable. What are they looking for?

‘I have nothing! I have nothing!’

Overcome by waves of homesickness, I just want to be home, and safe, with the people I love most in the world. I don’t want to be here. It was utterly foolish and foolhardy to come.

She runs her hands over my body. The half of her face that I can see is quite expressionless, the gun inches from my face. I try to stay calm, smile, not to seem afraid.

There are long seconds. At last she points down to my boots.

‘Metal!’ she says abruptly in English. She indicates that I take them off. She opens the door. Somehow I understand that these kinds of boots, the kind with a metal shank in the heel, can set off the alarms.

I am shaking with relief. Am I really free to go?

The plane is still on the tarmac. Out there, somewhere, those shining mountains still wait for me.

***

We are falling slowly down into a wide bowl of hills, green higher up but browner towards the bottom, terraced and ridged like some mathematical diagram. Every so often there are little pinkish houses with thatched roofs clinging to the hills.

We are actually here, at last, after all these months and years of dreaming, but it means nothing to me. Still shaken by my experience at the airport, I can only feel that it is utterly alien. I will never love it.

Below us is a pinkish yellow haze between the mountains, pinkish houses and yellow fields of what looks like rape, and a huge chimney belching pinkish brown smoke with piles of toy bricks beside it; toy houses again in long lines and the silvery snake of a river crawling across the plain. We are coming into the airfield smoothly, the Royal Nepal pilot doing his job well, despite all the jokes before I left about landing on a pocket handkerchief.

There has been cloud most of the way in, and even now we are to be denied a first view of the Himalayas, except for faint shadows of what could have been more cloud. But then, just as we touch down, a window appears in the haze. Quite clearly, one high, white, perfect peak hangs in the sky. I catch my breath with the beginning of something. Then it is gone.

After that, it all goes downhill. I am hot in my tracksuit, weighed down with cameras, hand luggage and a fleece jacket, clumping along in those walking boots which so nearly caused a disaster at the airport.

My handbag keeps slipping off my shoulder, the camera bumping my hip. Anyone catching sight of me will know instantly how much a fish out of water I am. Almost everyone else in the group is a couple, except Adrian, one of our group leaders, whose sticky-out ears and baseball cap are bobbing ahead of me, six inches above everyone else. He lopes along the concrete corridor, a tiny rucksack sitting easily on his back, cool and assured.

Nothing prepares us for the next bit; the melee of the arrival area. My bags, a huge rucksack and big case, both bulging at the seams, are bound to be the last. We all stand here, for what seems like hours in the stifling heat, watching the same three unclaimed bags going round and round. Perhaps they will go round like that forever, until someone takes pity on them.

Then our planeload of stuff begins to appear. Mine isn’t there. Hot and faint, I feel tears of self-pity well in my throat. What am I doing here?

A man turns and smiles.

‘Hi! I’m Glen. Tell me what your bags look like. You just wait here and I’ll fetch them .’

I feel like a little old lady being taken across a zebra crossing.

‘Cheer up,’ he grins at me. ‘This is the beginning of a great adventure.’

My bags arrive at last. I lift them on the trolley Glen has found for me, but it is instantly snatched by one of the ragged porters who prey round us. I am manifestly on my own, despite the moral support. Easy pickings. The porter runs with my trolley to the far end of the hall.

‘OK. OK. I take.’

We have been warned about this, but what can I do? And I can’t tip him. I have no rupees. He dumps my bag in front of a fearsome customs official, while I trundle breathlessly behind. Bored, the official chalks a squiggle on them both and I am through. The porter pushes my trolley out of the door of the airport. Suddenly we are in blazing sun.

‘I get taxi. I help.’

‘No! No! I am with a group. Cannot go! Must wait. No rupees. I have no rupees!’

He drops my bags unceremoniously and, with a philosophical grin, he sprints off to find a better deal. At least I am through the doors. The sun clamps down on us. There is an overpowering smell of human bodies, even out here, in the fresh air. A gaggle of children hang about us, filthy faces encrusted with sores, their heads bound with dirty, blood-stained bandages. What can have happened to them? Some awful accident?

‘One rupee! One rupee!’

Five ragged boys come up and try to take my trolley.

‘No! I have no rupees.’

Out of nowhere a man in a tweed jacket appears.

‘Namaste!’ He joins his hands together in a graceful gesture I am too harassed to appreciate. ‘Please, you will come this way!’

Another porter come to steal my baggage? I hesitate. He takes hold of my trolley firmly and steers it off the pavement into the road.

‘Please. No!’

He takes no notice: only smiles.

There is a coach a few yards away. A woman, cool and blonde in a denim skirt, is waiting there. The others begin to trickle up, half-recognised from the airport in England. They all look as shell-shocked as I feel. The sight gives me perverse comfort. The man in the tweed jacket smiles again. (I have yet to learn that a tweed jacket is the ultimate fashion statement in Nepal.)

‘Please!’

It’s OK. We are in the right place, thank God. We stand, mutely grateful, stunned by sun, noise and fumes. The begging children come round again, bringing that suffocating smell.

‘One rupee! One rupee!’

Will we ever become hardened to this? We stand while Annabel, the cool blonde English courier, consults her list. We are wilted by the hot sun and the long flight and the utter alienness of it all, by the noise and the disorder, the faces of the beggars and the filth. How can we bear it?

Ram (the man in the tweed jacket), directs us across the road to the coach. I stagger on board with my hand luggage, banging my head on the coach roof as I get in, tangled in straps and bags. For the second time in half an hour I feel the tears come. A dull pain starts in my head. Where are my other bags? I am suddenly too tired to care.

There is an air of shock and depression on the bus. Most of us, I would guess, have never been into the ‘Third World’. Maybe this is why we chose this safe little group. The coach starts off with a shudder, scattering begging children, bicycles and taxis. It roars around the roundabout. A cow walks in front of it just as we speed away. I shut my eyes. The coach screeches to a halt. I open my eyes. The cow is sauntering unhurriedly in front of us, two feet from the wheels. It makes its way over to the central island. Bicycles, taxis, mini buses, coaches and two odd-looking, three-wheeled vehicles I can’t identify, all come to a respectful stop.

‘Can’t imagine that happening in Trafalgar Square!’ says someone at the back.

3

What is happening to me, in this place? I have a poky room in an indifferent hotel on the outskirts of Kathmandu. There is the incessant noise of horns and a rumble of traffic. The shower head has fallen off and I wrestle with the internal telephone to get it fixed. My lamp flashes on and off at odd intervals. I am irritated and depressed after a day and night without sleep.

Yet something is happening to me. I struggle with the grimy window, the mesh outside, which looks like my mother’s old meat safe and about as clean. Leaning out into the orange-pink dusk, the sounds of traffic are even louder now. Why does everyone here blow their horns all the time? There is a courtyard, an alleyway, and a row of little shops between us and the road. Evening staff are arriving and leaving in a variety of run-down cars or motor scooters, shouting across to one another. Beyond the courtyard to one side is an office block with lights on in some rooms, and a man looking out. Beyond that I glimpse another four or five storey building with Microsoft written on one side, and a giant satellite dish. Next door to that is a temple, gleaming pink-gold in the dying sun. Over the screeching roar of traffic, I can hear the temple bell. Beyond that, and beyond the forest of wires and aerials, is the dim outline of the foothills.

I lean out further, taking in a hesitant breath. The smell of Nepal comes up to me, a totally alien scent. Somewhere in there must be drains, but also aromatic smoke, herbs, some spice. I remember