From Himalayan Roads: Chapter Ten - Jagat

Ride the open road from Dumre to Besisahar on a clear February morning and you will be enveloped by all that is beautiful in Nepal. It is an easy road, one that does not cut too many hairpin turns and stays relatively level in this world where steep grades are commonplace. The road meanders wistfully, just enough to keep you entertained. It is relatively free of traffic: an occasional Jeep on its way to Manang; villagers walking along the sides carrying refrigerator-sized bundles of leaves, pine needles, textiles to sell at the market. Mercifully, the road is paved all along this stretch; it is easy to look up and see it bending serpentine, ushering you into the Annapurna range off in the distance. The peaks sit stoic and bear a grandfatherly hospitality. From the vantage point of the Dumre to Besisahar road they are just becoming clear, just materializing out of the atmosphere, becoming real.

The villages that flow by are vibrant and colorful. Most of the traditional houses are gone, but the concrete homes have their novelty, painted in pink and yellow and sea green. Children play outside unattended. Mothers in traditional clothes tend to small spinach gardens, and then gather on the expansive lawns that separate the houses from the road. It appears that there is much to gossip about.

On this road I learned a bit about how one can relax while on a bike, how you can float through these scenes as if replaying a languid dream. The stresses of Kathmandu traffic and the fears that I had carried with me since crossing the Bhutanese Indian border, melted away. Had it not been for the great comfort of momentum, I may have just settled in there, laid down on the lawn sunning myself, and let the chatter of the women hypnotize me to sleep.

But beyond Besisahar I had something else entirely in store. I met up with Pratijung, who I had arranged with to volunteer at his school for a couple of weeks. He told me that I would love the village of Jagat, and that I’d just have to ride a bit longer to get there. Pratijung assumed I was better than I am.

“You can take your bike all the way to Jagat. It is a rough road, but many people do it on bikes,” he said, sitting atop his own souped-up motocross bike. “It’ll be another two or three hours.”

I looked at his high suspension, his knobby, aggressive tires, and the mud caked against the bike. “If it’s a really rough road, I’ll just leave my bike here.”

“Not too rough. I think you can do it.”

The calming reprieve from that initial ride ended as abruptly as the pavement. What followed was hours of the worst road I’ve been on so far. Solivagant jounced and cracked against the dips and huge stones. It ached and cried and I cursed and splayed my feet out to try and keep balance. I tipped the bike twice in deeply rutted and loose dirt. It came down on my leg once and it took all my strength to lift the bike and stand it up again. A family walking by stopped and watched me in shock. At a precipitous slope composed of erratic stones, I capitulated, parked my bike at a guesthouse and used their phone to call Pratijung who had stayed in Besisahar to finish some work.

“This was a bad idea. My bike isn’t meant for these roads.”

“I think you can do it. Many people with bikes like yours do it.”

“I’ve tried to do it. I’ve tipped the bike twice. I should have left it in Besisahar.”

A Jeep came by and I left Solivagant at the guesthouse, promising to retrieve it in a month, after I finished volunteering and walking the Annapurna Circuit. I was livid, believing that I had caused unnecessary damage to the bike. It was easier to leave it and try and forget about what damages I’d have to deal with in the future. I wanted to start fresh in the village and not carry any stress with me when I met the family that I would be living with. I’d deal with the bike and its problems in a month. Now I had a fresh experience ahead of me.

* * *

The school was ragtag and worn down. The smallest students, barely four years old, had streams of mucus constantly coming from their noses; they picked at scabs with surgical attention. The older students, up to fourteen-years old, stood in awkward lines at assembly and intoned the national anthem with a mocking reverence. It was a proper village school, with concrete walls that struggled to stay clean, blackboards dirtied and scarred and with no erasers to be found. The floors were muddy and cracked. There was rebar crossing the windows. The teachers, who found bits of sun to warm themselves in during the cold mornings, had no rush about schedule nor routine.

“Josh, why don’t you go teach class seven.”

“Teach them what?”

“Anything.”

“Is it English period? Do they have a textbook?”

“Sure, sure. But you can teach them anything.”

And there I was again in front of a class of students, about twelve of them. It was comfortable. The boys’ uniforms of collared shirts and slacks were stained with dirt from horseplay. They ran around in ersatz sandals. The girls were tidier, though not bereft of scuffs and stains. The older ones wore ribbons in their braids and giggled in their row. The boys were bolder. They answered questions with a confidence that masked their incorrectness. Within minutes, it seemed that the students were comfortable with me too.

For two weeks I taught half days of mostly English, but there were occasional stints of web design, biology, geology and pleas that I join them for recess. There were also ample opportunities to just sit and wait to be told what to do. The students jumped up in their seats and smiled when I would eventually be directed toward a class and told the same teach-whatever-you-want advice. We’d play speaking games mostly. They were interested in new English vocabulary that they could try out with other tourists that passed through the town.

In the evenings I sat with my host family and drank tea and ate meals. The mother took great care in seeing that I was comfortable. I’d sit with her boys, Ashim and Vipin, and help them with their homework, each vying for attention, showing off the English that they had learned that day. Mr. Surya, another teacher from the school who boarded with the family, would sit by my side and teach me Nepali with an infectious smile. He was a faithful friend and looked over my shoulder as I wrote and applied for teaching jobs and even when I was reading quietly.

“How do you find Nepal?” he would ask.

“It’s very nice. Beautiful country. Very friendly.”

“You stay in Nepal, maybe one year?”

“No. No. Only for a few months.”

Mr. Surya would look saddened by this news. “Ah. But we are good friends.”

“Yes, we are.”

And then he would begin again with the impromptu Nepali lessons.

There was a grandmother who wandered around the house. She had weather-darkened skin engraved with hachures and crevasses. Her teeth were gleaming white and perfectly aligned and her eyes bespoke of a sharp, sagacious mind. She talked to me boldly, without demureness, always in Nepali. She cackled and smiled with those perfect teeth when I couldn’t understand or when I could only reply with a simple, childlike response. She was the kind of grandmother that makes you see that old age is a blessing: you rise into enlightenment and grace; you become the most beautiful form of yourself, like an Aspen in autumn, shining with vibrant color.

When I left Jagat, the students were ready with the katar scarves. They each smeared a small fingerprint of bright red tikka onto my forehead – and the mischievous ones put it on my cheeks – and said thank you. The scarves piled around my neck and my head barely poked out from them. I shook hands with the adults and said my goodbyes and directly from Jagat I was on the Annapurna Circuit trail, where I would spend the next three weeks, wandering the mountains.