Nagarkot

I haven't had a huge amount of time to do touristy stuff in Nepal so last weekend i stole a couple of days to myself to get out of the city and cycle up to a little village called Nagarkot. Nagarkot is famous here as a viewpoint where on a good day you can see the length of the Himalayan peaks. During the monsoon you don't get many good days and so travelling up to a viewpoint villlage was faintly ludicrous but I needed the break.



Kathmandu ends very suddenly, you're urban and then in the space of 100 feet you're rural, bouncing along through impossibly green paddy fields. Ahead of me I could see a wall of cloud and mist coming down to meet me, completely obscuring the ridges of the Kathmandu valley. In the paddy fields women stood up to watch me pass, laughing. These women were big women, fat in most cultures, but stooped in their fields they looked full of latent power, like sumo wrestlers at the off. Their faces worn, with wrinkles you could hide your change in. In the cloud bank and the rain they were all wearing bright coloured tarp anoraks, simple sacks slit open on one side. Kids wearing them looked like they were playing at superheroes in their hooded cloaks, stomping through the stalks.



I started getting those strange looks that I had missed from my time in Kathmandu. The locals watching me struggle up and down their little hills with smiles somewhere between welcome and ridicule.



I left the road and took to the mud track which my very general map told me would take me to the Nagarkot. I alternated between cycling and walking as the going got steeper and track got worse. The cloud cover was complete now, you could see little around you except windows of terraced hillsides and the occasional little village where kids would stare at me and ignore cheery greetings. There's nothing like people blanking a good old cheery greeting to make one feel like a knob. When I finally reached Nagarkot the visibility was even worse. Fittingly my hotel was called the Hotel at the End of the Universe. Exhausted and drownded, i crashed on my bed, me, my bike and my mist-wrapped little cabin, in a silence that made my ears ring.



After a couple of hours doze I felt obliged to go for a stroll, it felt like something People do. Down in the village was a little yellow information booth, visible even in the mist. Inside four lads maintained a fog of their own. I asked about the look-out tower where the view was supposed to be best. 'What view?' they asked, and I left them, their eyes glazed and giggling.



Everywhere in Nepal there are signs of the military. That is another days miserable writing. Here in the misty middle of nowhere it was no different. An army training camp sprawled out along the ridge with the road winding back and forth through the hillocks of assault courses and watch towers. I stopped to take photos of a watchtower silhouetted in the mist and was shouted at by men with guns. I did my cheery greeting routine, looked suitably ignorant and walked away with my camera intact.





I continued along the ridge, tending uphill, towards the look-out tower 4 km away hidden in the thick cloud. Things got eerier as i rose, and I realised it was the sun lighting up the mist. As I cycled the localised cloud lifted and beyond I could see the denser heavier clouds breaking up over the valley. And beyond them still was the sun, setting spectacularly behind its own ridge of cirrus clouds.













Apart from a tantalising glimpse of snow slopes disappearing up into thick cloud bands, I saw nothing of the majesty of the Himalayan peaks. I free wheeled down the ridge, the last sunlight strobing through the coils of razor wire on the roadside, and realised I didn't care. As the man said, I'll be back.