Nepal Travelog: How I hiked in total darkness across a leech infested hillside in good company

On reaching the Annapurna base camp, I had already spent three weeks trekking in the snow, ice and ethereal light of the Himalayan ranges. As usual, I could have spent that time again, and longer, in my beloved mountains. But I also knew that if I were to be true to my aim of breaking with past habits, I would have to get intimate with a new element. With this in mind, I teamed up with a couple of Indians I had met on the trail and together we descended 3,400 metres down to the lakeside town of Pokhara to join a rafting expedition on the mighty Kali Gandaki river.

The descent itself took place over two days, with the last day stretching out way into the darkness of evening on account of the Indians' fondness for cigarettes, tea and moving very slowly. But what they lacked in fitness and motivation they more than made up for in terms of their intelligence, sense of humour and the obvious love which nearly all Nepalis had for them and their country.

As dusk decended on that final evening, we were walking through thick sub-tropical foliage high above a raging torrent swollen by the melting snows of a few days before, and still we were around two and a half hours from the nearest road. Suddenly we rounded a bend and stumbled across a shack on the hillside where some Nepalis were selling tea, and our progress was halted once again. Now fully resigned to the fact that we were going to have to walk in the dark anyway, I ordered a black masala tea, tried to mimic the Indians relaxed body posture and looked on as they chattered away in Hindi with our Nepali host. Like so many tea sellers, guides or porters that we met on the trail, our proprietor had spent time in India and had nothing but praise for the land and people. Indeed, so enamoured was he with my companions that he went out of his way to describe our onward route and ring ahead for a jeep to be waiting for us at the trail head in order that we might reach the hot showers, laundry facilities and restaurants of Pokhara that night. With many handshakes and showers of thanks and good wishes, we took our leave, switched on our head torches and stepped out into the gloomy and tangled hillside.

Within five minutes, we were unsure if we had taken the right turn. After another ten minutes, we began ascending and the path got incredibly thin and slight, as if walking on animal tracks, though it was hard to tell in the now inky blackness. Down below us we could see and hear locals with torches walking on a lower track.

And then the full moon rose from behind the hills on the other side of the valley, at first a deep golden colour, and all tangled up in the vapour which crowned the ridge. Then as it rose higher, it freed itself and beamed ever more silver, lighting up the onward path just enough to reveal a string of villages up ahead.

Entering these villages in the dead of night, we must have made for an odd sight, but the locals seemed sanguine enough, and greeted us as if we were just another group of dayhikers. On the contrary, it was I who was more fascinated in them. The doors of their shacks were flung open and lit within to reveal their normally private life, a life of evening classrooms and late night card games around a glowing fire.

After an hour or more, we left the villages and descended to a steel suspension bridge across a canyon, whose depth even the full moon could not reach. Here we paused and speculated about how long we had to go. Half an hour? An hour and a half? The villagers estimates had fluctuated wildly. Then through the sound of the rushing river, there came the clanging and creaking sound of footsteps across the bridge, a couple of teenage boys going who knows where on this wild and gloomy hillside.

  'How long till Syauli?', we asked once again. The boys pointed to the lights on the other side of the canyon.
  'Just over there'.

In twenty minutes we were loading our bags into the jeep. And in another hour and a half, we had checked into a hotel in central Pokhara and were rushing to catch a meal at the last place to close in early-to-bed Nepal. And we would have made it too, had I not noticed my left foot bleeding uncontrollably in the shower. It seems that in all the drama of our evening hike, I had somehow picked up a leech which had been steadily feeding on me for God knows how long.