Walking by my side

The kali Gabdaki-From Baglung To Beni

by WONG SHU YUN

FROM ISSUE # 147 (March 2008) | IN THIS ISSUE
	REFER TO FRIEND		PRINT THIS ARTICLE

How to get there: Take a flight to Pokhara, then hail a vehicle to take you to Baglung, a three-hour ride that can be mildly shaky. Otherwise, a day's bus trip from Kathmandu can also take you to Beni, where you can trek in the opposite direction towards Baglung.

What to take along: Enough water and biscuits for a three-hour car ride plus a three-hour trek. Shops at Baglung Bazar as well as those in Beni can assure you of these.

It's a Friday morning, and a shrouding haze over the Kathmandu airport is not good news at all: flights will be delayed including the mountain planes, which push domestic trips further back on the clock. Meanwhile, mountain-viewing from above that only an airplane ride can offer becomes unfeasible. So while a 60-minute flight to Pokhara does promise spectacular views of the peaks of Ganesh Himal and Himalchuli, nature holds the final say to it, and it wasn't quite on our side this morning. Packing in some patience for this trip would have been useful.

Though our journey by air proved to be dissatisfying, we remained hopeful, having just begun – after all, good things do come to those who wait. A jeep greeted us when we landed at the Pokhara airport, and from there the journey to the town of Baglung is a drive that runs along the Modi Khola river.

The channel pours from one of Nepal's major rivers, the Kali Gandaki, and embeds itself profoundly within cliffs and hills, which, when put together, makes up a charming portrait of deep gorges. Still, the scene merely serves as an entrιe, as how the quaint town of Baglung proves only the beginning of a bigger picture to come.

Baglung and Beni are headquarters belonging to two different districts – namely Baglung itself and Myagdi respectively – but between these two mini urban centres is a short and relaxing three-hour trek, 13km apart. After a quick stay for food and ample rest at Baglung, we got up the next day to start the morning walk to Beni, where we finally joined the hike route that paves closely along the magnificent Kali Gandaki, also known for being a tributary of the holy Ganga in India. 

The sun had just risen, and the hills are peeking from their shadows. Here, a low altitude that barely surpasses 1000m means the ground is vastly brown-washed with moss, and an array of tropical trees sew themselves together to form a thick, green blanket. Altogether, they make up the hills that soar above us, providing good shade from the fast-scorching sun. The expanse of Beni has seen large amounts of denudation and vigorous erosion over time, smothering the region with steep frontal slopes and high peaks at the plateau edge – but even in the wrath of nature, beauty has inevitably unfurled itself out.

Across the verdant plateaus, it is the villages that bring life to the landscape. An epitome of country living, the houses are made from mud or bricks, and chickens, ducks, buffaloes and donkeys are free to wander the earth. If in a fancy mood, the dwellings are painted in a colour of fuchsia pink or sky blue. Some, however, have chosen to remain au naturale, leaving their houses to a humble shade of cement.

A Magar lady sitting outside her abode with relatives perched her head out upon hearing our footsteps. "You look just like one of my neighbour's daughters," she turns and tells me, her smile crackling from a weathered face, drawn up due to years of carrying goods across villages.

By this time, we were crossing bridges to explore the abundant hills that fold against each other, all along brushing beside the Kali Gandaki gorge, the deepest in the world – it leads to above 2200m in altitude as one heads up between the Annapurna and Dhaulaghiri ranges and towards Mustang. As we neared the town of Beni, the waters of the river hasten below us, an amber green of vitality that, along with the wind, bellows out a glorious lullaby of a sleepy giant.  

Democracy Day beckons us as we reach Beni Bazar – it's a public holiday for Nepal. Women drink tea outside their homes while children play cricket and badminton on the streets – the lanes are alive with chatter. As we walk through the bricked buildings jutting out with modern electric signboards of banks and financial cooperatives, hardly any men had been in sight. "Most of the men here have gone abroad to work," says Roshan Rana, a teacher. "So here, there're many banks to offer remittance services for the money they send back from places like Saudi Arabia, Japan, Singapore, Korea or the United States."

Indeed, at the district of Myagdi, where Beni lies as its headquarters, men often aim for and join the British Army. It's the dream of every young male teenager, especially since the army is a symbol of strength and a gateway to a better life. The British Army chooses men from the area because of its diverse topography – from rivers to hills to mountains, there is nothing that the people of Myagdi have not seen and traipsed through. They have been born for the wilderness.

Yet, it's also the varied landscape that makes the voyage so worthy – when walking through the lowest ends of the valleys and trudging up to the highest points of the ground, the legendary Kali Gandaki spans itself out all this while, providing a loyal companionship for us on foot. The magnitude of the river is not just a sight to behold, it is also a lesson that has to be told: the streaming faithfulness of it reminding us that more often than not, it's in the journey rather than the destination.