Pokhara: From the Lakes to the Hills

Returning to normal life after Vipassana felt anything but normal. Being a nomadic rubber tramp was hardly a soft landing. Nine months on the road had passed, and I was trying to integrate the lessons of Vipassana — equanimity, impermanence, awareness.

It was a challenge to quit meat and still keep a measure of fitness. Training had always been my form of church and I wasn’t ready to let that go in favor of enlightenment.

I returned to the homestay where Imaan and I had stayed, hosted by Honmat. He was as kind and resourceful as he was generous with his time and affection. Short in stature, brimming with light and positivity. A devout Hindu and a pillar of his small street community. His house perched above the lakeside in Pokhara, a haven of bright pink and yellow flowers whose names I never remembered. He and his wife lived on the bottom floor of their hostel with their little white dog, Sly, a boisterous puppy.

We went for morning walks up the surrounding hills to watch the sun rise and lay gold on the snow-capped Annapurnas.

I had no fixed plan for Nepal. The next big move would be the crossing into Tibet and then through China toward Southeast Asia. It was mid-March. The border wouldn’t open until early April, so I had time to kill.

The next week was spent floundering around Pokhara. I joined a local Muay Thai gym to get my fitness back on track. The contrast between Vipassana and kickboxing was fierce. As I entered the gym, a tall, ghoulish-looking man lurked in the corner. Wiry frame, gaunt eyes, moving like a panther crossed with an iguana. He approached with wild energy. There was something disturbing and intriguing about him. “I’m Roman,” he said in a thick Russian accent. “Do you want to spar? Don’t worry, we go light.”

Class hadn’t even begun. I usually avoided sparring with unknowns; it can spill into a full war, and I only wanted some fitness drills. My ego got the better of me. There was provocation in his tone. I took the bait.

Gloves on, we began our pugilistic dance. He was sharp and agile, jumping in and out of range. I couldn’t touch him at first. I felt slow and mechanical, clunky and low on energy after ten days of beans and soup. I did my best not to let frustration take over. He mistimed a counterpunch and I dropped him with a low kick. It was on. We had entered phase one of spar-wars — how far could we escalate it without someone getting hurt, and could we return to balance without losing face.

Thankfully, as the intensity rose, the coach walked in and interrupted our macabre dance.

After class Roman invited me to dinner. His erratic energy intrigued me. He was the opposite of the monastery’s calm and I enjoyed his mad company. He called himself a Dionysian, a pure hedonist, praising all things free and wild. A Christian in belief, but on a Promethean quest for knowledge like my dear friend Valyntin. Jesus as concentrated love. Buddha as dissolution. He spoke on everything with rage and passion. He drank and ate meat. I quietly watched my impulse to join him and let it pass. He felt like a strange blend of a Tolstoy character and a beatnik road poet from a Kerouac novel.

The discipline needed to stay on the middle path was proving harder than I thought. The lessons that seemed clear a week before were already obscured. Old demons resurfaced. Anxiety and regret kept circling. I reminded myself daily: act morally, sharpen the mind, listen to the body, watch it and let it teach.

I settled into a rhythm in Pokhara, trying to hold some spiritual discipline while wrestling with the mundanities of normal life. Mornings were consecrated to meditation and the gym. Afternoons I spent at the Square Café in Lakeside, a biker hangout owned by my friend Ranjeet and his gang of enduro riders — a mix of ragtag street urchins turned motorcyclists. At the head of the team was Ranjeet, US-educated, business-minded, calm, analytical, kind. There was Sudarsan, the heart of the gang, always smiling, the joker, round-faced and hell-bent on getting me to help him chat up anyone he could find. His good nature was as contagious as his grin. Benny, tall and broad, part Buddha, part Genghis Khan — a Nepalese cockney wide-boy, tattooed, connected to everyone in town, sharp-witted and always watching the street. Then Norin, the garage owner. His brother had been a Gurkha and he knew Parakash Guajan, a Gurkha friend I’d served with in Afghanistan fourteen years earlier. Norin was mischievous and often drunk, and we got on like a house on fire. I spent hours in his shop joking around. He was the archetypal mechanic — short, smiling, face lined with laughter. He ran his little garage with love, the same love he had for motorcycles and the local kids who seemed to live there.

The Square Café was a meeting point for the rare overland travelers passing through Pokhara. One morning I parked Tara outside. A burly, tattooed Westerner sat on the terrace reading a book on Buddhism. Strong jaw, bright, curious eyes. We started talking about motorcycles. Brennan was Canadian, newly arrived from Thailand where he was training in Muay Thai. We bonded over bikes, boxing, and the search for meaning. After our chat he decided he would go back to Canada, buy a bike, and ride to Alaska. I didn’t know we’d meet again months later.

I was joined by my fellow rider Alvaro. Our paths had crossed in Kyrgyzstan a few months earlier. Now in Nepal, we decided to join forces and ride together. Nate was due to make it into the area at some point. Alvaro had ridden from Spain to Nepal on his modified Tenere 700, mostly on dirt. He was tired. The road was wearing him thin. He missed home and his girlfriend, torn between the call to adventure and life waiting for him. I could feel his anxiety building and did my best to listen and steady him. We trained together. Both of us had itchy boots. We needed to move.

The slow, monotone pace of Pokhara began to grate. The place had changed since I’d first been there fourteen years earlier. Chinese and Indian money had poured in to accommodate lazier travelers. Once a hub for trekkers and seekers, it was veering toward a cheap party destination for the emerging Indian middle class. Young revelers stumbled through the nights, to the exasperation of locals. The condescension toward their Nepali neighbors crawled under my skin. It was time to go.

Benny and Sudarsan were keen to take Alvaro and me up to Upper Mustang, high in the Annapurnas along the Chinese border. It followed the Annapurna trek I had once done on foot during R&R after Afghanistan. Single-track hiking routes had been turned into tarmac to push more tourists all the way to Muktinath, the third-highest Hindu temple in the world. Once only accessible by foot, after a demanding week-long trek over a 5,500-meter pass, the temple now sat above an Irish pub dressed as Bob Marley, where thirsty visitors could sip beer and eat yak steak behind wooden panels out of the wind.

We set off from the Square Café, a ragtag bunch: me on my Scrambler, Alvaro on his Tenere, Benny on a two-stroke Honda CRF 250, and Sudarsan on a Honda Cub. We rode straight up the valley toward the hot-spring village of Tatopani. Once a tiny place of no more than ten houses, it had grown into a hotel strip around the springs, the tarmac covering the charming, rocky track I remembered. My spirits sank. Is this what all places would look like in the future. Would there be any remoteness left to discover. Greed and growth seemed to walk hand in hand, scarring everything they touched.

The four of us stuffed ourselves into a shared room and set in for a sleepless night, Benny snoring like a Nepali rhino.

The next day we climbed higher to Kalopani. The whole way was tarmacked. I felt lucky to have known this area before the roads, and sad to see how progress had benefited the few while hollowing out the many. Where travelers once stopped at every village, limited by what their feet could carry, busloads of tourists were now picked up in Pokhara for a day trip to Muktinath, bypassing small communities and gutting the local economy. The valley was dying because of the road.

Muktinath, meanwhile, was flourishing. What had once been inaccessible had become a popular attraction for devout pilgrims who would never have climbed this high under their own steam. The temple steps were lined with beggars posing as saints. Porters haggled with overweight visitors over the price of a round trip up the thousand steps from the car park. I wondered what the founders would have said. Surely the point of a temple at this altitude is to force the pilgrim to learn how to climb the mountain within. Muktinath had become another emblem of fast-food spirituality. All fluff and none of the substance.

We returned to Pokhara the next day by a network of high suspension bridges barely wide enough for a person, let alone a three-hundred-kilo bike. At the entrance of the longest bridge in Asia, feeling like Indiana Jones, I waited as three locals raced off it at full speed, no helmets, cigarettes hanging from their mouths. Nepalese were built different.

Riding to Mustang cemented my next plan. I would ride toward the Everest region, as high as possible, and then trek to Base Camp. Robyn connected me with Sherpa friends in Namche Bazaar. One of them, Nima, owned the highest tattoo parlour in the world and rode enduros when he wasn’t guiding at altitude. I had to meet him. I shared the idea with Alvaro, not expecting interest. He jumped on it. “Vamos tío, this will be the best way to finish my trip.”

I wanted to do it alone. I move faster in the mountains. I craved the solitude and the challenge. Nima sent a tight itinerary: thirteen days up and down from Surke, the last road-accessible village before the trail. It fit my time window. Thirteen days to reach Base Camp and return to Kathmandu, then two days to turn my gear around for China. The timings were strict. I knew my fitness and what altitude would demand. Alvaro had never done mountaineering and, to be blunt, he was in poor shape.

The next day we parted ways with Ranjeet, Robyn, Sudarsan, Norin, and Brennan. Alvaro and I were heading east to Kathmandu to set up a logistics base and strip any unnecessary gear before our high-altitude side quest. I choked up as we left. The kindness and brotherhood Ranjeet’s crew had shown me had become a constant in this journey. Saying goodbye, never knowing if I would see them again, never got easier.

So we turned our bikes east and rode onto the notorious Nepali highways to Kathmandu. Loaded with gear, excitement, and a mix of apprehension and frustration. I was sure of my abilities and seriously doubted Alvaro’s. A note in my diary said it all: “I kind of want him to fuck off. Patience, equanimity, compassion. This will be a lesson.” And what a lesson it was.