Up the Himalayas to Tibetan India

Gulu our driver asked us: I bet you plainsmen can’t see a thing, can you? We couldn’t disagree and his novel and slightly cheeky term of reference to us made me smile . To  plainsmen like us the visibility beyond the windscreen was a couple of metres caused by a thick fog from the  Dirang River, 1,500 metres below. It was as if a cloak of cotton wool had enveloped us. Without foglights we focussed on the windscreen, really hard, like chess players concentrating over a board.

Gulu with big lungs and thick legs was from the shadow of Anapurna and a mountain-man through and through. We took some comfort from the fact that he was for 9 years in all-seasons the driver of the “Night Super”, a minibus which took 20 bone-shaking, spine-compressing, neck-jerking hours to get from Tezpur in Assam to the Himalayan town of Tawang in Arunachal Pradesh.

We tried to discern something, anything, from the cotton wool windscreen, a bit of a grass verge? Was that a catseye? Was that a roadside shack? As soon as they emerged in view, disrobing their cotton wool we had already passed them. Every now and again, memorial stones appeared through the fog, perched on the side of the road, testimony to departed souls, a poignant and reminder of the huge drop to the valley on our right.

Our mountain man Gulu, he of the x-ray vision, stuck his neck out of the window, one hand on the steering wheel, to get a better view. My brother-in-law Amitabh in the front passenger seat looked back at me eyebrows raised. After about half an hour at a slow pace, we passed through the blinding fog, able to see reassuring views once more like someone whose cataracts have just been removed. It was about 3pm. Signs written to help motorists became visible:

Some poet had painted a sign in bright yellow:

IF YOU DRIVE,

WHISKEY IS RISKY.

On another, 

IF YOU ARE MARRIED,

DIVORCE SPEED. 

They ranged from the incongruous,

LEPROSY IS CURABLE,

To the inexplicable,

IF YOU HAVE EDUCATION

YOU DO NOT NEED A STANDING ARMY.

We had just left Bhalukpong about two hours earlier where we stopped briefly at a barrier to show the Arunachal Pradesh Police the Inner Line Permits. After a stop at the Durga Mandir we then ascended 1,500 metres on a winding road  when we hit the patch of fog on our drive to Bombila, the stopover hill-town to our journey to Tawang.

By 6pm we had passed an army barracks at Tenga, the militarisation of the place manifested by jawans , jeeps and transporters.  Soon the sun had set, we were at 2,000 metres altitude, and passed the unmistakable silhouettes of pine trees, and fraying Tibetan prayer flags flapping in the wind. Tibetan stupas stood by as we drove in to Bomdila’s electric lights detractorsof the full moon above in the chilly night sky. 

We stayed the night in Bomdila in a hotel opposite the stadium. The next morning, we left Bomdila at 6am. The sun was up already and we turned the corner to see a wonderful view of pure white peaks. Gulu pointed high up to a patch of white snow, the Sela pass, the second highest pass in the world to which we were headed.

The road up to the Sela pass has been considerably improved and it was wider thanks to a Border Roads Organisation project.  In November 1962  the road was little more than a mule track too narrow for lorries; Indian jawans had to go in jeeps to fight the Chinese invaders from the north.

We breakfasted at a small shack with phulka and aloo bhaji, a quiet humble place with a brown dog and  black and white pig lying outside. Resuming our journey, we meandered upward in a series of hairpin bends and I measured the altitude changes on my watch and compared them to ones I had recorded in previous holidays: 1,600 metres altitude already higher than Denver, the USA’s “Mile High City”; 2,000 metres altitude already higher than  Ben Nevis, Britain’s highest peak; 3,200 metres , higher than the altitude of Cusco a pretty  town in the Peruvian Andes.

At 4,000 metres we reached the Sela Pass, the second highest pass in the world. I had a snow ball fight with my co traveller Amitabh Agarwala who was seeing snow for the first time. It was bright on top with the noon sunlight reflecting sharply off the snow, forcing us to squint. We entered a small wooden shack for tea; inside was the owner, a young, bespectacled Monpa lady, a small girl aged about 7, and a soldier in uniform sitting next to a warm, shiny, bikari, its flue disappearing in to the wooden slats of the ceiling.

The shop was a curiosity in itself. Where else at 4,000 metres altitude could you buy tins of mackerel, noodles, cigarette packets and sweets; the owner had done a sterling job for maintaining this much needed respite from the road. The small girl brought us our lunch of eggs, toast and tea and then they all huddled round me, curious to see my mountaineer’s watch which showed compass bearings, altitude, temperature, barometric pressure. And of course , the time , which was approaching 1pm.

In the afternoon, clouds overran the sky and we set off, a further 4 hours east to Tawang. We passed a lake which in the mornings froze over. The scenery changed fast in to craggy rocks, barren hills. There started to appear yaks grazing, and fast meltwater streams as we descended the snowline.

There were several army buildings, munitions dumps and bunkers and sign that warned:YOU ARE NOW IN THE DANGER ZONE. NO STOPPING. Gulu explained, due to the altitude cars can experience fuel flow problems if they stop their vehicles and temporary stop can end up as a permanent one.

We stopped by at Jaswant Garh , a memorial that is now a shrine to a brave soldier who lost his life in action in the 1962 Chinese Aggression. We looked across the valley and tried to reconstruct in our minds how it must have been like that cold November over 30 years ago:

Hand grenades exploding, spraying fire and tossing up sods of earth. Acrid black plumes of artillery smoke wafting upwards in the direction of dead souls. The juddering of rounds of machine gunfire and the bitter-tangy smell of ignited gunpowder. All around the fluids of war: mud, sweat, blood and tears. Piercing cries in Chinese ordering an advance, yells in Hindi to repel the invader for Bharat Mata. Screams in the language of pain.

Today the area couldn’t be further from the experience of a battle. Today on those slopes where soldiers fell, yaks graze purposefully in a blissful silence. Clouds and fog glide majestically through and consume the memorial which is solemn and  tranquil. The shrine, under a white roof, houses a photo and  the personal belongings of Jaswant Singh, Garhwal Rifles, MahaVir Chakra.  

About two hours from our destination, we could see in a north-westerly direction, Tawang sitting majestically on a distant hillside. The neat gold roofs of the main monastery and adjoining buildings looked like a cluster of dandelions on a far-off meadow, striking by their uniqueness if you notice them, but so far off that you wouldn’t unless they were pointed out.

We passed through Monpa villages in Tawang district where houses were wooden beamed and made of stone with tin roofs. Children with rosy cheeks fattened on yak butter ran to wave at us as we passed. The houses, like the people, are small and have piles of firewood stacked outside. The entire area has telephone and electricity and we stopped by to see a hydroelectric power station, next to a waterfall, a picturesque scene used as a film location in a recent Hindi film Koila.

By 2pm after an 8 hours drive, we arrived in Tawang and settled in to our hotel. The clouds by now had parted and there was a storm and we lit a candle in the powercut and waited in the hotel for a while. By evening we took a stroll down Tawang’s single High Street. Due to the powercut, the shops were lit up in candlelight, giving each shop a homely look, with an illuminated curious face above the wares, watching us walk past.

I spotted now and then a monk in dark red robes would pass. One of them whizzed past on a motorbike. For me he symbolised Tawang: an age old place brought in to the 21^st century. The town where the 6^th Dalai Lama was born, one of the holiest places in Gelukpa Buddhism with ancient monasteries, which served as a refuge for the 14^th and current Dalai Lama against the advancing Chinese army. Today the town has electricity, telephones, a snooker room and is an army base with helicopters. Its markets a whole variety of things I spotted one that was selling a Britney Spears jogging bottom alongside traditional Monpa dress. In the twilight we admired the view of the monastery , close enough now to make out its myriad of buildings and ascended some steps to Tawang’s cybercafe. There I wrote some emails back home to London and drank a coke to the sounds of the Back Street Boys.

In the morning we woke early and drove down the main road of Tawang – some people were out washing their faces and brushing their teeth. After a few minutes we were outside the main monastery. A group of monks were busy reinforcing the road with tar in preparation for the Dalai Lama’s visit in a few weeks time. The courtyard we entered was spectacular with the brilliant white of the gompa, yellow roofs and multi-coloured decorations. The murals have recently been repainted and for object so old and spiritual, the lacked, for me, a certain aged reassurance.It was the same feeling when I viewed Michelangelo’s Sistine Chapel with the older paintwork covered over by newer. Inside the Gompa is 40 foot statue of the Buddha, a monk chanted and lit a butter lamp. Ancient silks adorn the walls to give the place an intensely holy ambience. Outside the main temple, some monks had laid rice grains to soak up the sun , and one monk was perched precariously up a 100 foot flag staff adjusting it. We visited a museum close by where we saw statues some 400 year old, of the previous Boddhisatvas, including a blanket of a disciple of the second Dalai Lama. Close to the front gate there was a water wheel which had prayers inscribed on it; every time the power of the water spun the wheel a prayer was said, imparting holiness to the water. 

We then went to visit an Ani-Gompa, or nunnery close to lunchtime. On arrival we saw several of the nuns were busy heating large tawas of wheat. They still managed to offer us cups of salted yak-butter tea. On the way back from the Ani Gompa we passed a sign that showed the road to Bumla, Lhasa and Peking. The road is strictly out of bounds, and grass covered military bunkers were everywhere. The final Gompa we visited was the one where the 6^th Dalai Lama was born in the 18^th century. It was quiet and homely and had an outdoor staircase that took you up to the main room where a cabinet housed the foot prints of the 6^th Dalai Lama in stone. The lawn outside had bushes with tiny strips of cloth attached to its branches which fluttered in the wind invoking the prayers which were written on them. A huge tree stood grandly by the entrance, said to have been planted by His Holiness Himself centuries ago.

We started the next day started at 5am. The two plainsman, now mentally prepared for the drive, were able to enjoy the winding, beautiful yet still daunting journey home. We breakfasted at a cold Sela pass at 7am, no longer strangers to the bespectacled lady owner and her young assistant. After 11 hours of driving we were back on the plains. The yaks had now changed to cows, the pine trees to banana plants, and the precipitous slopes were now embankments to paddy field. The air was thick and warm again, and a mosquito entered the car.

We were tired but happy. Tawang, with its mystical charm seemed miles away but somehow, strangely , deep within us still.

The Motorbike Taxis of Kigali

A few years I worked in Kigali in Rwanda and my daily commute was on a motorbike taxi. It was the first thrill of the day, the smell of petrol, the buzz of the engine, a post-breakfast adrenalin high, a caffeine-free pick-me-up, a centrifugal, centripetal, air-rushing, death-defying high-octane way to get around.  

Summoning a motorbike taxi (or piki piki as they are called) is relatively simple, they are ubiquitous before 8 pm and it’s best if you find an elderly rider for they are the safest (most riders are young, many are orphans of 1994) . Make sure he has a green helmet and tabbard for his bike will be more powerful, maybe over 250 cc perhaps up to 750 cc. The acceptable way to summon a motor bike taxi is to make a sound which to western sensibilities would appear rude but in Kigali is used to attract attention from anyone from a roadside peanut vendor to a waiter in a fancy restaurant. You just need to make the sound by pushing the tip of your tongue to just behind your front teeth, making an air pocket and pushing air till it compresses behind your front teeth and escapes along the length of the front teeth making a sound similar to a schoolboy’s “psssst” but as the lips are open for the duration it is more like “tsssssst”. The sound travels surprisingly well, sometimes over 50 metres for its frequency is loftier and rides above the deeper frequencies of sounds from rubber tyres beating the road, and engine rumbles. It also takes remarkably less energy than a shout or even raising an arm. 

Once the green helmet motorbike taxi rider stops by, he will see that you are a Mzungu and will be contemplating how much to overcharge you. Firstly establish the language he speaks, most know a few words of English or French. Exchanging a few minor pleasantries like “comment ca va?” or “amakuru?” (how are you?) is customary in Rwandan dialogue. Then you can start the haggling. Get your bid in first; if he shows you a fist, do not be alarmed, he’s not up for a fight, this hand-gesture simply means 500 Rwandan Francs; a ten minute ride from Remera close to the VSO office to centre-ville should cost two fists, so start at about 700 Rwandan Francs; he will say 1,200 Rwandan Francs, so hopefully the final price will settle at around the two fists mark as he comes down and you go up in the negotiating. If he doesn’t come down, don’t worry; this is a buyer’s market and the motorbike taxis of Kigali are plentiful so walk away and he’s more than likely to come back to you with a lower offer. 
Then he will unclasp the passenger helmet kept tied with a piece of elastic between the handle bars. This is when having a head scarf or hankie to cover your hair is advisable for in the cushioned nylon interiors of the helmets, in the dark and dank places where the sun never shines, emanate the heady smells of hair grease and congealed sweat from the multitude of fluids that can only be loosely classified as “head-juice” and find a domicile there. (If you don’t have one, then just don’t think about it.) 

Boarding the bike and sitting on it is a rite of passage that provides a lesson in working in Africa: this is that some things are in your control and some things will be out of your control. Type As or control-freaks may have problems with this. Wisdom comes from realising what events and outcomes sit in which category. Embrace the fact that the entire ride is outside your control, squirming at the speed, shouting at him to go slower, using your will power to control the bike will all be ineffectual but it is best to save your energy. Put simply, your fate is in his gloved hands not yours. Never get to hung up about the scare stories you hear about the motorbike taxis, a ride is much more pleasant without such mental baggage; your chances of surviving the ride are close to 100%. 

Be careful where you place your feet. There is a hot exhaust pipe below the passenger’s right foot and you should place your feet on a small plate just above it. There are many a red scald on shins of Mzungu tourists (who seem to be the only adults to wear shorts in Kigali) to vouch for this. Sam once complained that motorbike taxis “always smell of burning rubber.” Only weeks later when we saw him walking with a limp, did we realise the rubber heel on his right shoe had melted right off. 

As you speed up, you will have to pull the plastic visor of your helmet down, sometimes these are cracked, or worse non-existent in which case you will have to position your head right behind his helmet to get out of the windy slipstream. Just hope he doesn’t sneeze, but even that is preferable to a fly hitting your face at 30mph . 

If he gets fascinated by you and stares back at you (a friend, Louise, was proposed by one in the middle of a journey and suggested a detour to meet the parents) remind him to look at the road in front for Kigali’s road are filled with a litany of hazards, motorbikes racing one another, a car reversing in to a roundabout, buses just pulling out, people jay-walking with chairs, water cans carried on their heads. 

Your ride may suddenly because he has run out of fuel (The fuel in a motorbike taxi is always kept at the empty mark and the emergency amber light is always shining.) At this point the motor bike driver will ask you to get off and stand by the side of the road as he turns the motor bike upside down to get the very last drops of fuel to seep in to the engine. He will hold the handle bars and move the bike up and down left and right, in a sort of fast paced salsa serenade, strictly come dancing but mechanical, on the roadside. When satisfied he will right the bike, push the start pedal and as if by magic, the engine will roar back to life once again. He will go straight to a petrol station and may ask you for a short loan to pay for it, which is deducted from the fare. 

If your rider suddenly starts to talk in Kinyarwanda, he is most likely to talking in to his mobile phone. If you cannot see a mobile phone it is because it is lodged within his helmet right next to his ear and he poked his right finger up into the gap in his helmet to switch it on. It is a feat of some dexterity, high speed multi-tasking considering his other hand at this point is doing all the steering, often clutching a wad of Rwandan franc notes. 

Beware of the motorbike taxis whose riders have blue helmets for their machines are small mopeds of 50cc engine size. All seems well and good on level ground, the problem is when you reach an upward slope which in a hilly city like Kigali is highly likely. Suddenly the ride slows down, the moped engine gains in pitch, it screams in excruciating discomfort. 
This may mean the passenger has to physically urge the bike on by pushing his body weight forward in rhythm. These movements start off with a slow forward rocking motion, at the shoulders, the head and neck nodding forward again and again, egging the moped on in short bursts as the upper body weight pushes forward. It can be likened to the funky chicken dance, but on a bike. It is a fit on wheels. But as that tires and the peak of the slope becomes tantalyzingly closer, the motion acquires a new energetic dynamism; the forward gyrations start to emanate lower down in the body, from the hips, and the whole propelling action becomes distinctly sexual in nature. It becomes a rhythmic pelvic thrust just to gain some extra metres to get him to the peak of the hill. Now roadside onlookers stare with lowered brows: he looks like he is humping a moped. A new meaning to riding a bike. He is in his own little world, his own personal battle with the slope, gravity and a two stroke internal combustion engine. But then the engine screams some more, a howling pitch, the moped slows down and the optimistic passenger may try raising himself off the seat in short bursts, and suddenly no longer is he riding pillion on a moped (or performing unsavoury movements on the plastic seat) but rocking as if he was going through the motions of a jockey on the winning horse on Derby day. Suddenly he is on the home straight at Epsom, and if he had a horse whip he would be using it on the rider, his back, his helmet, the wing mirrors on anything, even on himself in that blinkered obsession to just to get up that slope. Suddenly pelvic thrusts have transformed in to energetic and rhythmic sequence of three moves of sitting, crouching and standing bent, then back to sitting, lifting him in regular bursts completely off the seat. It is horse power. 

People from a passing packed bus are now staring at the spectacle and give the now rising and falling passenger whose thighs have started to ache, a glance that says “oh look an overweight mzungu, poor thing, he thinks he is on a horse.” 

Alas, Isaac Newton’s laws are affirmed. All factors considered, a 50cc engine, a passenger of 75kgs, and a gradient of 60 degrees means that the moped is unable to get to the peak of the hill. Now theoretical physics can prove that an elephant can hang off a cliff with its tail tied to a daisy. But in the hilly reality of getting to work on a Kigali morning, gravity, tiny mopeds and uphill inclines never collaborate in partnership to speed one’s passage. 
And then the moped engine comes close to a slow and agonising death, last moments as the engine splutters and screams, it is in pain, red-lining on the rev counter, the exhaust pipe is belching black fumes and it is starting to overheat. It may combust soon. It needs mechanical CPR. It may soon be an ex-moped and is now moving at walking pace as it slowly canters to a grinding, ear-piercing halt. At this point the right thing to do is to accept the humiliating predicament, concede you are not a jockey, just wallow in defeat, and alight. Just walk alongside the moped and rider till you get to the top of the slope; the engine will roar back to life in a lower, less strained pitch. And the passenger remounts, dignity lost somewhere behind, speed regained ahead as the taxi rider under the tinted visor of the blue helmet, grins a toothy, cheeky grin for he’s seen it all before. 

Like everything in Rwanda, life goes on. The journey continues.

***

The Inca Trail - some tips for the trekker

I'll never forget the Inca Trail. My memories are still rich even though I trekked it 15 years ago. The smell of the damp air in the tent, the musty taste of coca leaves and the incessant rain that fell for every one of the 4 days still stay with me. The final morning waking up bats with our torches and being the first group to enter the misty ruins of Machu Picchu, before the throngs of fresh smelling tourists on the train from Cusco arrived. The feelings of being tired, dirty, elated, joyful at the same time, all mixed in with a wrap of deja vu.  

Five hundred years ago the Inca King in the High Andes was able to breakfast on fresh Pacific fish, brought by his relay runners over 300 miles. The roads were built of cobbled stones and were designed for travel by foot or pack animals as the Incas never invented the wheel. Their roads spanned the 4 corners of their empire, which was larger than Roman empire, from Ecuador down to Argentina and could have circled the earth twice over.  Some of these Inca roads still exist today and the most famous of these is a 45km stretch called the Inca Trail. It takes 4 days and 3 nights and carves its way past ancient ruins, over misty mountain passes just below the snowline, and through cloud forests of waterfalls, wild orchids and humming birds. It ends in the fabled Lost City of the Incas, Machu Picchu. In August 2000 , 4 of my friends and I were fortunate enough to make that journey.

Acclimatisation in Cusco:

After flying in from Lima to Cusco, the old Inca capital lodged in the Andes at 3,300 metres, we made sure that we spent two days just getting acclimatised to the thin air. I found the symptoms to be quite subtle, tightness around the temple area, a runny nose, and a slight headache. Running or walking at a pace will leave you catching your breath for the next half hour. For some people being at altitude can be worse, with a feeling of tightness around the chest and nausea. Drinking tea made from coca leaves said to alleviate the symptons as does refraining from smoking, drinking alcohol, and eating too much. The symptoms last only a few days, after which you barely notice them.

There’s enough to do in Cusco to keep you busy – the magnificent Plaza de Armas is the centre of Cusco , a pretty colonial  town resplendent with Cathedral and Church. When the Spanish arrived they built these on top of the old Inca buildings, although there are traces of Inca Walls and the Inca temple called the Coricancha. There are some lovely hikes to nearby ruins in Sachsayhuaman, Qenko and Puka Pukara which take about a day to do fully and show how sophisticated the Incas were. There are examples of their magnificent stonework engineered to resist earthquakes (some limestome blocks were over 130 tonnes), examples of their tunnels and underwater aqueducts.

Cusco has some excellent restaurants and some serve a local delicacy called cuy, which is Guinea Pig. Be warned though that cuy is served looking pretty much like a guinea pig, belly up, with an expression on its face that speaks volumes about its recent fate. With its limbs stuck in the air it’s a bit fidgety to eat, like a quail, and tastes, as these types of food tend to, like chicken. There’s a whole selection of international restaurants in Cusco and even a British pub (the Cross Keys). The local drink is the excellent Pisco Sour which is made of grapes, lemons and egg white and looks a bit like a glass of shaken Fairy Liquid.


Using a trekking agency – roughing it in comfort

Cusco is the place to organise your trek and there are many hiking agencies who can provide porters, cooks, guides and equipment. We used Big Foot and we met a well-informed guide called Washington and a superb cook called Theophilo. I would recommend doing this all in Cusco as organising it from Europe or the USA can be very expensive. In choosing an agency make sure they are environmentally friendly by taking away their rubbish, not burning wood and not over-burdening the porters. As responsible travellers, all rubbish should be packed away with you, and if you can, pick up any litter you see on the way.

The comfort of using an agency became apparent to me at lunch on the third day of the trail as we sat on chairs around a table adorned with a Peruvian patterned tablecloth. We were sipping tea and had just finished our meal of vegetable soup followed by rice, sweet-potatoes and peppers (the porters ate the same meals as we did). Theophilo had knocked up a culinary masterpiece whilst surrounded by clouds on a 3,600 metres pass called Phuyupatamarka. Getting the agency to organise our meals and sites made the trek relatively comfortable. It was hardly roughing it.

The Porters – the supermen of the Andes

On the first day of our trek we stopped off at Urubamba for Theophilo to pick up 5 porters. A mad scramble ensued, as about 30 men volunteered for our trek. In the dry season the local farmers top up their incomes this way, which is clearly sought after work.  You could choose your porters yourselves, which does have an element of uncertainty, but at least you know that the money goes direct to the local community, instead of an agency who could be just giving a small cut to these hard working men of the mountains.

The porters of the Andes are generally quite small averaging about 5 feet 5 inches but they are incredibly fit and their muscular frames are able to carry huge loads. They don’t wear boots like the hikers, instead they prefer open sandals with which they can race with full load up and down the passes. One porter apparently was seen carrying a VW engine!

At the start of every day’s trek, the porters were the last to leave the camp but within about half an hour they had overtaken us in order to make it to the next camp to claim the best areas for us to pitch our tents. Once a year the porters race the Inca Trail – the record so far is just over 3 hours which shows that these men really are the supermen of the Andes. As I  can’t speak either Quechua or Spanish as they passed I  would just offer them coca leaves. They take about ten leaves and roll them in to a ball which they place like chewing tobacco under the bottom lip; the juices of the coca leaf are said to impart extra energy at altitude, although I think it just made my tongue and lips green.  The Incas made cocaine from the coca leaves but its use was regulated to Royal Messengers, the Chasquis.

The porters, like most Peruvians, are Catholics but they also have their own religion of the mountains and they believe in spirits and haunted areas they would be too scared to go to.

Fitness: The Inca Trail or Inca Trial?

You don’t have to be super fit to do the Inca Trail, but a general level of fitness will mean that you enjoy it a lot more. You are in inspired settings that lift the soul, so you feel more energised. The equatorial sun at altitude can be deceptively strong so it is important to wear sun-block and a hat and to keep drinking water.  At nights the temperature plummets to freezing point so you must take warm clothes with you too. The hardest part of the trail is climbing the Dead Woman’s Pass which is a series of unending steps , with a teasing false summit, peaking at the snowline at 4,200 metres. You’ll feel your heart beat race in the rarified air and  a great sense of achievement once you’ve done it that transcends the aches you’ll feel in your knees by the end of the day.

On arriving in Peru your two health priorities are firstly getting used to the altitude and having a robust tummy. All over the world, having an upset stomach has a local name such as Delhi Belly (India), Montezuma’s Revenge (Mexico),Mummy's tummy (Egypt), Bali Belly (Bali). In Peru this is termed the Inca Two Step. The rule is if you can’t cook it, peel it or wash it (in bottled water) then forget it. Do try cerviche (raw fish with lemon juice) but only after the trail. getting ill on the trail is not pleasant and because helicopters only go up to a certain altitude, you may end up being carried by a porter some of the way. After day two of the Trail when bottled water runs out, you have to drink water from streams purified with iodine tablets.

On the trail at Pacamayo campsite, we met a hiker from America who was weak and bed-ridden with a stomach disorder. It was a two day hike to any medical help and radioing a helicopter would have cost $3,000  (that night the helicopter wouldn’t risk a landing due to the mist). The Inca Trail is a terrible place to fall ill and it is worth taking all precautions against that eventuality.

Wearing the correct footwear is absolutely essential as the paving stones of the Inca Trail are not uniform and angled so could easily cause you to slip. My Hawkshead Lomers were comfortable, caused no blisters and were totally waterproof even after I had stepped through streams and puddles. In the wet, the soles grip well. Ankle support is vital for me as two years ago I broke my ankle and had seven screws put in to the bones – my Lomers provided me with excellent ankle support and they were the most precious piece of equipment I took on the Trail.


Raiders of the Lost Ark, or a Back Packers convention

In those days, any amount of trekkers could hike the route and it felt really crowded (especially so during trekking season which is April to October). Up to 400 people could have been doing the the Trail, but nowadays the government has made it compulsory to have a permit and numbers are now restricted. It’s so exceptionally beautiful, it’s inevitable that people from all across the world will congregate.There are several campsites and these can appear to have a crowded feeling. The campsites are adequate, some have running water, but the toilets are best politely  described as Spartan. Be careful of the campsite at Huayllabamba on the first night of the trail– there are thieves in the area, and I heard a story of some Dutch trekkers who woke to find their tents slit, rucksacks and boots missing. All they had left were their sleeping bags and pyjamas. At Huayllabamba, I made sure I slept on my boots and kept my money and passport under the insoles!  

Certain parts of the trail have a great feeling of solitude and oneness with nature and history. You can easlily find your group alone in a bamboo grove, with a cascading waterfall and humming birds. On the other hand, certain parts of the trail have crowds on them, such as the highest pass, where it can feel like a convention of the world’s backpackers, fashioned in goatie beards and dripping in cameras.

On entering Machu Picchu at the end of the Trail you arrive there after a walk in the dark with torches at 7 am and for a while you have thwarted the tourist trap. But as the buses arrive, there is a confluence of day-trippers and  Inca Trail hikers, the washed meeting the unwashed. There is hotel there with a restaurant that serves full breakfasts and plays supermarket music. Its inevitable that such wonder as Machu Picchu is so touristy but it is  so breath-taking, you won’t notice this.
  
If you are expecting the trail to be like the first scene in the Raiders of the Lost Ark, then the Inca Trail won’t be what you are looking for- there are other trails, less well known such as Vilcabamba, Mollepata and the Chilca circuit which would be the roads less travelled by. Further excacavations in the area still go on and there are still legends of lost cities made of gold which lie at the end of trails overgrown by the Amazon jungle, which the Spanish never conquered.

The ruins

The trail winds its course around many ruins and it is useful to have a guide for this purpose. Each ruin had a specific purpose but as the Incas had no writing , much of this is still open to historical conjecture.

On the final day of the trail, we left camp at Huinay Huana at 4.30am and walked one and a half hours up the steps to the Sun Gate, our torch lights rudely waking the bats. From there you can get a view of Macchu Picchu which was surrounded in mist and for me added to its mystery.

From there we descended to Machu Picchu to arrive at 7 am. It takes about half a day to explore the city of Machu Picchu and a guide will be able to recount the various stories and explanations of each sector of the city. Some say Machu Picchu was the Inca King Pachacutec’s hill top city, the watchtower of a frontier province. Others maintain it to be an agricultural outpost or an observatory as parts of the ruins align with the moon, sun and certain star constellations. As you walk the ruins there is something mysterious about them, as if there’s an untold story, as if the rocks hold a secret that they want to but are unable to yield. Every year, Shamans arrive in the world heritage site, to perform rituals for the spirits of the mountains that cradle Machu Picchu. Who were the people who made it and how could they moved the rocks? What was its purpose? . Why was it deserted so suddenly and how did the Spanish miss this place? When Hiram Bingham discovered it in 1911 it was overgrown by jungle and must have looked very dissimilar to its well pruned appearance today.

The ruins are breathtaking  and awesome – its not just the sheer physical geography of a city perched next to sheer precipitous slopes, engulfed on all sides by mountains and mists, but the buildings too are beautifully built,  with  terracing for agriculture, temples and fine stonework. They evoked the richness of a once great race but they also brought to me a sense of sadness as they  were made by a people which was cruelly and treacherously put down, their beliefs and traditions airbrushed away.

Hiking the Inca Trail was unlike anything I had ever done before, or am likely to do again. Whether the Trail is to find nature, history, a physical challenge or a pilgrimage there are things around every corner that just left you breathless. Would I recommend the Inca Trail as a holiday? The answer would be to whom? The weather can change and if you are not fit it could be arduous. For those who choose to do it, the Inca Trail will leave them feeling physically tired, mentally enriched and even spiritually lifted. The experiences of those 4 days will always be with them.

Bar-hopping Rwanda Style

Some years ago I lived in Kigali in Rwanda in a small bungalow, with a guy called Peter, my Rwandan housemate who was a man of many talents; he was my gym training buddy, my security guard, a law student and a boxing champion for the Kigali Police First Team. One morning at breakfast on the veranda he demonstrated one further remarkable talent: an uncanny ability to tell the time by just seeing the position of the sun in the sky. 

Telling the time by the sun

At the equator at noon, he explained, the sun is always directly overhead. So you just have imagine 12 notches representing the 12 hours of daylight at the equator, in a semi-circle from the points of sunrise to sunset. One needs to allow for the fact that the shape of the sun’s movement in the day is a semi-oval, as opposed to a semi-circle, as the sun gains and loses rapid height just after dawn and just before dusk; at noon, its zenith, its path is flatter. We stood in the yard at breakfast holding mugs of tea squinting at the sky like a couple of morons, to test his ability. Peter, who had never owned a watch in his life, looked up at the sun, not directly at it but at its position in the sky, triangulating it with a leaf of a banana tree and the pole for the clothesline. He swayed his chin left and right deep in thought and then proclaimed: “7.15”. He was 2 minutes out, a remarkable feat nevertheless. 

Bar-hopping in Kigali

Peter was keen to prove that in Africa everything is shared and being aware of the incessant begging I was encountering daily on the streets as a foreigner, he wanted to show me that some things in life could be done for free without any hope of a payback; to demonstrate such benevolence he requested to wash and iron my clothes once a week. It was a thoughtful and magnanimous gesture so I brought him a pile of office shirts to wash. As he would not accept payment we agreed that every Tuesday he should let me take him out on a “beers and brochettes” evening at a nearby bar called Chez Lando in Remera. With its pool table and televised football, Chez Lando was little different to any bar in any city in any corner of the world, so he suggested we go somewhere more authentic close by down some dark back-alleys till we came to a house with an open door at the top of two stone steps. Some patrons were sitting on plastic chairs supping their bottles of beer in a silent semi-comatose stupor under a single light-bulb that made the shadows of their faces ghoulish on the back wall. The bar had no counter, was devoid of draught taps, there was no fridge, no beer posters. In fact there was no evidence that it was actually a bar. It could have been someone’s front room; infact it probably was. This homely bar had the slowest service south of the Sahara and after an hour our well-grilled brochettes and a fiery piri piri sauce arrived; on the drinks menu was Mutzig, the most popular beer of Rwanda touted on billboards as the “taste of success”; it is always best to pronounce Mutzig as Miitzing as the umlaut over the “u” makes it look like a double “i”. It is sold in 33cl and 65cl bottles with an alcohol content of 5.5% . Billed as a medium beer, it has a bright red and gold label with a jousting knight on a stallion and castle and lists hops, malt, water and CO2 in its ingredients. 

Bar etiquette

There are certain etiquettes to follow in a Rwandan bar. When ordering a beer one needs to specify that it should be a cold beer for many Rwandans prefer their beer at served at room temperature. If when you tell the barman your order, he raises his eyebrows, it means “yes, that’s fine I will get you your order”. It is a minimal gesture of affirmation, subtler than a nod. The first time I saw the raised eyebrows affirmation, I interpreted it to be a look of surprise, or not understanding, so I repeated the order several times; he raised his eyebrows several times; I ended up with several drinks. When asking where the bathroom is, instead of pointing with his finger the bar man may point with his chin. It is a slight and curious gesture, making it like he has a tick or a tinge of discomfort in a tight collar and it requires a certain intense observation to make out. In the homely bar, imported drinks are expensive, a glass of wine is over £2 a glass for Rwanda has no vineyards and wines are freighted overland from South Africa. Local drinks are urwagwa (a type of banana wine) and waraji a clear liqueur made from distilled maize or even mango or pineapple, which is sold in innocent-looking clear plastic packets which state in bright red capitals: “NO HANGOVERS, CHILLING, ORGANIC, AND GOOD FOR YOU.” And as an after-thought: “45%”. The clear liquid in a transparent packet looks remarkably similar to a saline drip and the clear wording serves to aid medical personnel in avoiding a catastrophe of either drinking saline or administering an alcoholic beverage intravenously to a patient. I don’t know what is worse. Rwandan beers are typically stronger than their European and American counterparts; an afterwork beer tastes more refreshing, more tingly on the tongue for in Rwanda one tends to be in a continual state of sub-hydration for Kigali is at altitude. 

A soup disaster

One morning in the yard I handed Peter a couple of packets of soup. I had brought 20 boxes of soup with me from London because at the last minute I realised that I was allowed double a normal baggage allowance as a VSO volunteer and soup seemed as good as anything to take. With each box containing 6 packets, I had 120 packets in all - a tad excessive I admit. Peter looked at the packets of soup inquisitively and I explained as I rushed out locking the front door that all he had to do was add hot water and stir. 

When I came home from work Peter knocked on the door. He had a perplexed look on his face. “The soap you gave me doesn’t work,” he said. 
“I never gave you any soap,” I replied. 
“You did. This morning. The two packets. Remember?” he said in his usual monotone. 
“That was soup!” 
“Soup? Qu’est-ce que c’est soup? 
“Potage.” 
“Oh merde.” 

Thinking I had given him soap, Peter had poured two packets of soup in to a bucket of hot water and stirred it just like I had instructed. When he found no soapy foam, he added some more and when that didn’t foam he just assumed that British soap was so good that it didn’t need to froth. Then he added my shirts to the mix and left them there to soak for the whole day. In the evening we both stared down at the bucket. It was a sorrowful sight: my shirts had achieved a tie-die marble-effect swilling about in a diluted soup of mushrooms, tomatoes, minestrone, peas which were by then juicily hydrated and floating croutons. “Oh merde,” Peter kept repeating but I accepted partial blame for the mix up, or rather the mix; soup said quickly enough can sound like soap and with our barter arrangement of food for washing, the deduction seemed logical. It took at least three more washes to get the shirts close to their normal colour and for weeks afterwards, at lunchtime, the warmest part of the day, an embarrassing soupy whiff would drift off me. 

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