So close yet so far

A potential trekking hub, Dhading moves out of the shadows

by ROMA ARYAL

FROM ISSUE # 156 (December 2008) | IN THIS ISSUE
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GERHARD J WEBER

Destination: Tipling, Lapa, and Shertung in the Dhading region
How to get there: Take a ride to Parbati Kunda by jeep or bus, start walking.
What to take: Tent, sleeping bag, clothes to dress in layers (the weather fluctuates), a warm jacket and rain gear.

For the past 16 years, stopping only for a few years during the war, Himalayan Health Care (HHC), a non profit organisation, has been leading a trek to the many areas in Dhading to aid its small but ingenious projects. The trek encompasses a medical camp in two villages along the way, Tipling and Lapa. The numbers had increased this year, and the group was teeming with a number of excited volunteer doctors from abroad, a photographer, and a number of translators like my self.

On the map, Dhading stands cheek-to-cheek to Kathmandu, and a mere 17-minute helicopter ride will land you in Tipling but the area is remote–the roads are rigged and winding, and the infrastructure is insufficient–no electricity, no phone, and a minimum amount of government-provided healthcare. Tourism is not as high as it could be because the typical tourist will choose a trek in the Annapurna Conservation Area Project (ACAP) region, or into the Langtang area. Dhading has just recently opened up to tourism and along the way you will see only a few trekkers here and there.

COURTESY: HHC

Our journey started in Kathmandu, from where we took a ride in a Land Rover that had traversed the same route for the past 16 years, since the road opened. The road is tarred until Trishuli Bazar but after that, it's untamed earth, snaking ferociously through the landscape. The driver, who seemed as a old as the hills, his feeble bones cracking with each sharp turn, struggled to keep the steering wheel in balance as we bounced over rocks for a good nine hour journey from early in the morning until the dark, when all we had for light was a dying headlight and a half-moon dangling obliquely over a range of mountains.

When we finally reached Parbati Kunda, we were thankful for the tents that had already been put up by the HHC staff, the warm tea, and dinner. I slept like a log–and when I woke up, I was surprised by where I had arrived, in the midst of endless hills and mountains, our campsite felt like a stage. Only a few houses were sprinkled along the landscape along the track of our first day, most of them cowsheds that the villagers made away from home, where the pastures are greener and the animals can be left to feed. Our first day of hiking was through an uphill path, along forest land with brooks and trees that soar to the sky, their thick trunks covered in green moss.

The skies were a clear deep blue, staying that way for the entire trek. We were one of the luckiest groups in all the 70 times that this trek had been conducted–nature was on our side. We stopped over at a small village of lodges that packs up and moves out during the winter, when the snow gets deep. There was no electricity in the village, but electricity poles lay vandalised throughout the way. It had already been five years since rebels had cut the wires–the village was dark, and the cords had probably been sold in town. The next day, after a similar 6-7 hour trek, we reached a small enclosure in a forest which would be our stop for the night. We left again in the morning, and this time our goal lay nestled on top of a hill in the east, to the village of Tipling. When we finally arrived there, the decorations started at the gates of the village, the locals were elated we were there, and garlanded us amidst a small ceremony which embarrassed and humbled us at the same time.

We stopped at Tipling for the next two days, a frenzy of patients, translators who fumbled from Tamang to Nepali and then from Nepali to English and dedicated doctors trying their best with what they had. There were people whose eyes had been clouded for most of their lives with dense cataracts, those who would need immediate surgery in Kathmandu (which HHC would help them with), and a man who had been injured, in a fall off a cliff a week ago, half his face disfigured. He was lucky to have survived, luckier to have made it all the way. When we were done, all of us were tired but satisfied. Tipling spreads wide, encompassing nine wards and acres of ripe millet fields. In the entire village, there is one government health post, and the only health worker, in November is still away on a Dasain break. HHC has one permanent staff posted in Tipling, and others, including a midwife, who is shared with Lapa and Shertung.

ROMA ARYAL

After the two days were over, it was really difficult to leave. During the days, we'd become closer to the staff HHC's health post, and the village with all its friendly people, had become home. Our farewell was a never-ending dohori, and a finale where we all linked arms and sang Mendomaya, beautiful love, through the night.

On the way out of the village on our way to Borang, we passed through a kami (blacksmith) village on the outskirts of Tipling. Beautiful young faces smeared with a mixture of snot and grime smiled at us with their eyes. We also passed Shertung. Here women, with the help of HHC are doing angora farming and other handicrafts to sustain themselves, and engaging in adult literacy classes. An organisation called Kadoori has helped install small solar powered light bulbs along the way.

Our next stop was Lapa, where our next medical camp would be. The dark classrooms of the school in which we had our clinics, had naked and cold stone walls. Children, women and men almost all shoe-less, lined up against the gentle afternoon sun. We left Lapa in another brigade of mala's and saubhagyas the day after, losing altitude as we dropped to Borang, and then further down. The tracks are not gentle–they go up and down, with little breaks of Nepali flat. HHC employs porters from each stopover, and young men and women, run down the down-hills, surefooted and strong, even with the weight on their backs.

In a few days we had lost so much altitude, from the 9000ft of Marmelung, the forest clearing that approached the balding tree line, to the tropical fields from Borang. After Borang, we trekked further and camped on terraces. The next day we left for home, an adventurous trip across creaky suspension bridges and then a jeep that snaked through impossible turns and narrow roads. After a painful ride through the terrain, we finally reached Dhading Besi, from where Kathmandu is a four-hour ride.