Dawn flight, Pokhara to Jomosom

It was still dark when we left the hotel, the air filled with a tropical bedlam of pre dawn bird calls. I’m not what you’d call a good flyer; when I flew for the first time (at the grand old age of thirty!) I felt as excited and awestruck as if I was being shot into the moon. That was then – now, I feel as if the odds against survival are just getting shorter every time and the thrill is tempered with dread. So walking out onto the runway to board our tiny twin propeller aircraft I was doing pretty well at staying calm. This route is cancelled at the slightest hint of bad weather, because if  bad weather hits during the flight the pilot will have to coax the plane over some of the highest mountains in the world in some of the worst conditions imaginable – there is no margin for error. Flights in or out of Jomosom have to be completed by 11.00 -11.30 am, because after that the weather changes for the worst and the fearsome gales that spring up between the peaks would dash a plane to smithereens. If a flight is cancelled, you KNOW you wouldn’t have wanted to be on it.

We were the last to board, with me in a seat near the tail and R sitting by the door. Look at the picture at the top of this post. That’s my view of sunrise through the open door as the plane stood on the runway. See that rope going diagonally, bottom left to top right?  That’s the rope they use to open and close the door. No, really. The stewardess whose seat was in front of mine gave me a reassuring smile, passed a tray of bonbons around the cabin (which I in my nervousness tipped up all over the place) ensured we were all strapped in, and yanked the door shut seconds before the tiny plane roared up the runway.

The plane banked and set it’s course over forested foothills studded by tiny villages and steep terraced croplands. Some villages had visible switchback roads leading to them, but the further in you got the thicker the forests became, and you began to see less and less dwellings in more remote and unlikely places, without even a trail for access. The plane seemed to almost graze the tops of the trees and then it felt as if I could, if my window were unglazed, reach out and brush my fingers through their leaves as the hills became mountains, their sides growing up around us.

And then suddenly, no more lush forests, no more tiny villages. The plane was climbing steadily, but if I looked out of the window I could no longer see the foot of the mountains… and their peaks were so high that I could barely see the tops. At last the plane climbed free, and this is what we saw.

I think I may have been making whimpering noises; I’m not sure, but the stewardess gave me a big reassuring grin and pointed out the astonishing peak pictured below – Machapuchare, or the Fishtail. Sacred, unclimbed and brilliant white it is a mountain as a child would draw it, it’s graceful twin summit hidden by a tiny cap cloud. I despair of the photo – it gives no sense of grandeur or scale. It’s a snapshot taken by an over excited woman through a grubby aircraft window, there’s barely any relation between it and what I actually saw.

Once past the highest peaks we began to descend immediately, following the Kali Gandaki river valley and through the deepest gorge on earth.

The river valley is subject to screaming gales which spring up from eleven am and continue all day – so all flights in and out have to be completed before this astonishingly dramatic change. That’s on a good day – inclement weather means no flights at all. A good thing too. If something goes wrong during the flight there’s no-where to go but into the river or the side of a mountain.

One of the most spectacular twenty five minutes I’ve ever experienced finished with our zippy little plane touching down on the short Jomosom airstrip while the other plane which works the route loaded up with passengers. These planes have an incredibly fast turnaround due to having to be safe back on the apron at Pokhora airport before the weather closes in for the day. As the plane taxied, I was able to see that the sky was pretty much taken up by mountains on all sides and that the landing strip was only a few hundred yards long.

Our plane taxied right up to the airport door and I marvelled that not many departures and arrivals can boast this kind of view. The mountain is called Nilgiri, and dominates the Jomosom skyline. Notice the other plane’s propellers? We’ve only just taxied off the airstrip and it’s already getting ready to go. No time to waste in these conditions!

So here I am, in the middle of Himalayas. You can barely see the sky for mountains.

If you want to read more about this journey click on Nepali Adventure to see all the posts!

 

For more beautiful and fascinating images of the sky around the world, visit Skywatch Friday!

Related posts:

Meanwhile, in the UK… orchids!

Deep in woods loud with birdsong an elegant spike of white flowers glows, a tiny constellation. This is platanthera chlorantha, the Greater Butterfly Orchid. Night scented (it smells of vanilla) I wonder if its brightness also acts to help lure the moths that pollinate it.

Most orchids I’ve seen in the UK have been relatively small and often rather inconspicuous, but this stately plant was nearly a foot tall and vivid against the woodland gloom. We only saw two of these unearthly beauties on our walk, which made them seem very special.

And although there were almost certainly more of these orchis mascular or Early Purple orchids, we found just one bedraggled flower spike pushing up gamely through the ivy and leaf litter.

I was lucky enough to attend a conference in the Wye valley this weekend, which meant a chance to walk in the woods beside Offas Dyke for an hour or two. I found these lovely plants during that short walk. It’s only right for this blog to celebrate what we have here in the UK right now alongside my Nepali show and tell.

Related posts:

Sunset over Phewa lake, Pokhara

We weren’t in Godavary for long. Just a day to change some money, purchase tickets and travel permits and then we were on our way to Pokhara. We would only be staying one night on the banks of Phewa lake – and we had a dawn start to look forward to.

So this was our brief glimpse of Pokhara, a seductively tranquil lakeside resort beloved of lotus eating hippy travellers since the sixties. Many years ago an old friend of mine who travelled to Nepal, full of ideas of what she would do and see there, visited Pokhara in her first week and never left for over a month. “How could I”? she said, “everything I needed was there – sunshine, a backgammon board, a glass of cold beer and the mountains reflected in the lake – there could be no better place “. I can see how easily you could think that. But we already had our flight booked to Jomosom, and so the lake for us was just a fleeting pleasure. A good thing – we might have been there still…

For more beautiful and fascinating images of the sky around the world, visit Skywatch Friday!

Related posts:

The Cast

Before I go any further I think I need to introduce you to the major characters on our Nepali adventure. Here in no particular order are the cast… they are not the only people we spent time or travelled with, but they feature prominently in the story.

This is Richard, or R for short, my best mate and love of my life.  Ok, enough of the soppy stuff.

This is Naomi, or Na for short, a sweet of voice, multi instrumentalist bee expert and adventurer extraordinaire – and the major reason we got to go to Nepal.

And this is Narayan. How to describe Narayan? He is THE man, a multi tasking organising whirlwind who knows everybody, can get anything (at less than half price) and runs marathons in his spare time. And when I say he runs marathons, he runs them casually, for fun, and at very high altitudes.

Na and Narayan’s oldest kid Erica, a girl of extraordinary imagination and story telling prowess.  She’s trekked in the high Himalayas and isn’t yet seven years old.

Here’s Emily, a cheerful funny girl with a foghorn voice and searchlight eyes who will charm – or talk you into – complete surrender.

And here’s Tanuska, the baby of the family. She might be small but don’t be fooled – she has the strongest will and a fiery temper, a big personality in a little body.

This is Na’s mum Di, otherwise known to all as granny. Kind, warm, wise and intrepid, she’s a real globetrotter.

Na is one of Richards oldest and best friends, and we’d been wanting to visit her and her family in Nepal for years. We spent a jetlagged day or two in Na and Narayan’s house in Godavary (a suburb of Kathmandu) but it wasn’t long before we started out on the first part of our journey – to Pokhara, and from there, Jomosom.

Related posts:

End of the rainbow, end of the road

About a fortnight ago my best beloved and I went to Whitby, where we camped on a rise above the town with our lovely friend A. It was a wonderful few days, and the changeable weather ensured spectacular skies – I have so many sky images from our visit that they will keep me in Skywatch Friday posts for months to come.  Here, we had been walking from Robin Hood’s Bay to Whitby along the Cleveland Way National Trail, when the sky blackened. A rainbow glimmered faintly among the clouds as rain began to spit, while the sun shone on the crops that line the final mile or so into town. I’ll be posting more about this walk hopefully, there’s a lot more I’d love to show you.

I’ve had a lot of adventures this summer – many have not made it into this blog because they kept me a little too busy, but also, I’ve been deliberately keeping my time online to a minimum.  Now, with autumn just around the corner I need to hunker down and concentrate on making new stock, and while that means spending a lot more time indoors near the computer, I’m just not sure that once autumn starts I’ll have the time to blog consistently.  I’m not going to give up this blog, ominous though the title of the current post must seem (I chose it just because it fitted the picture, I didn’t intend the melancholy vibe I now see it lends).  But perhaps the form will change, less writing and more images, or maybe  just a monthly bulletin. I’ll always try to keep up with the wonderful bloggers I’ve met along the way, but please forgive me if my visits to your blogs are fewer.

For more beautiful and fascinating images of the sky around the world, visit Skywatch Friday!

Related posts:

Next Page »