Monsoon Mountains

To Nepalis of the lowlands and midhills: try the high-Himal in mid-summer, rain or shine. Especially rain.

Trekking in the monsoon. For more than a decade the idea has been touted by the odd travel writer looking for something new to say and by trekking agents looking to expand their repertoire of packages. It has not yet caught on, and perhaps it is better that way. For the monsoon is the time that Nepalis might keep for themselves in order to get to know their own highlands. In the soft light of the monsoon, the High Himal conies into its own. The tourists stay away, the Sherpas, the Tamangs or the Bhutias who live along the main trekking trails find time to revert to the slower daily rhythms of the monsoon season.

I always tell my Kathmandu-based friends who are increasingly caught in the frenetic life of the city that monsoon is the time to emerge from their cocoons and understand their country. Not having to compete with the foreign tourist even on the main routes, they have the landscape and the trails to themselves. Monsoon is when the Nepalis who inhabit the high, wet valleys east of Dhaulagiri (east to west: Ramsher, Ghunsa, Walangchung Gola, Kemathang, Mumbuk, Hongu, Khumbu, Rolwaling, Panch Pokhari, Helambu, Langtang, Cheakampar, Larkya, Manang, Kagbeni, Dhorpatan) move up the mountain with their sheep and yaks. This is the time that the above-16,000 feet passes are free of snow, so there is maximum local traffic on the trail: trade, pilgrimages, and visiting families and in-laws.

Wild flowers and mist mark the monsoon in the High Himal, not rain and leeches, as the anti-monsoon propaganda would have it. Rain, you find lower down. Take the trip up from Melamchi Pul through the villages of Helambu, up the Ganja La into the Langtang Valley. I will not deny that it rains hard and the leeches do abound on the lower reaches, through the villages of Sermathang and Tarkeghyang. But as soon as you pass Yangrima Mountain, from 12,000 feet onwards, the rain lets up.

Instead, there is soft mist with tiny droplets that caress your check. None of the torrential downpours of lower down —you are in the High Himal. If you are beneath the clouds, then you can look up (or down) to their myriad shapes, their movements. Sometimes they are thick, dark, gloomy and motionless. At other tunes they are white puff balls against blue mountains. In between them you can see far up and down the valleys, and the air is crystal clear. Then, suddenly, a wind whips up and the clouds get jostled about in the narrow gorges. They go colliding against the crags on the steep flanks of Ganja La.

It is not really cold in the summer even high above the treeline, and normal mountain woolens suffice. None of this in the winter, when above 9,000 feet you would have to start ploughing through snow, sleet and ice. Speaking of mountain-wear, please do not imitate the tourist by packing a poncho. A trusty umbrella is much more appropriate. (The extra-wide umbrellas available in the West are the best.) Nothing is more uncomfortable (except perhaps leech bites that fester) than sweating under a plastic or rubber poncho that sticks to the skin and hinders the stride. An umbrella, on the other hand, keeps a hand busy but otherwise provides complete freedom to inspect the clouds and the flowers. During dry moments, the umbrella can double up as a walking stick. Also bring along a polythene for the backpack.

And the flowers! Between 12,000 and 14,000 feet, Edelweiss rules; not the tiny specimens of the Alps, but hefty Himalayan Edelweiss. But there are also scores of other species, including microscopic bluebells whose symmetry you need a magnifying glass to appreciate. Further up, between 14,000 and 15,000 feet, the traveller comes across huge primordial-looking flowers that grow in screes and amidst boulders along with moss and lichen. I have been too busy trekking these monsoon mountains to look up the name of this unique plant, but present a picture of a specimen for the reader's reference.

The local highlanders across Nepal use the summer months to cross over the high passes to visit neighbouring valleys. The Helambu Sherpas go up to Langtang to bring back baby yaks via the Ganja La. Between Panch Pokhari and Langtang, there is the Tihnan Col which the locals use. The Sherpas also talk of yet another pass through the Jugal Himal chain that links Panch Pokhari with Langtang.

While we are on the trail to Ganja La, let us go over the top. On the other side there is a steep descent until you reach Kyanjin, from where, rather than turning left and going downstream in search of Trisuli Bazaar and civilisation four days down, turn right and continue up the moraine. You mostly will not see it through the clouds, but you are headed for the Lang Sisari massif and its four summits. This peak forms part of the high ridge that comes down from Shisha Pangma in Tibet and connects up with Dorje Lakhpa, which is the prominent twin-peak you can see clearly from Kathmandu Valley. Along the way you pass ample goths of the Sherpa/Tamangs of Langtang Valley. In mid-monsoon, this valley is high, quiet and untrodden. Butter contractors from various gumbas, out collecting a year's supply of fuel for the butter lamps, are the only non-locals on the road.

Monsoon or no monsoon, it is time for mid-hill, city-bred and plains' Nepalis to get to know their highlands. But monsoon really is the time when people and the weather are relaxed and receptive. The rains and leeches are for the lowlanders.

P.S. Ghale is a mountaineer and chronicler of mountain travel.