SHERMATANG TO CHHIME

SHERMATANG TO CHHIME

LEAVING CHHIMI WITH FULMAYA AND MAYA

As we leave Shermatang, Yongjen puts a kada around our necks and wishes us all the best for the journey.  Both she and her husband are extremely outgoing people and have a habit of shouting at each other from early morning, not in anger but as a way of having a conversation. I’ve never heard anyone talk so loudly on the phone.  She reminds me of my mother who, when phoning abroad, would shout into the phone as if the distance weakens the signal.

The journey begins with huffing and puffing up a steep slope to the main path which leads on to the track to Chhime.  So on we head off under a burning sun with the sound of the cicadas in the trees loudly celebrating the new morning.

We walk past the Mountain View Lodge, twenty-four hour hot water, and the Himalayan Lodge with its camping place.  Most of the terraces are planted with wheat which has a beautiful golden hue in the sunrise.  Bright yellow flowers  are dotting the terraces above the path.

We had taken three boys to help us with our bags and they have run ahead of us struggling up the path, even although we’re travelling light, past a dense cane forest and terraces that are overgrown with grass and weeds as if they have been lying fallow for a long time. We are walking from Shermatang at over 9,000 feet to Chhime at just under 9,000 feet.

There is a thin mist hanging over the valleys and there is a sense of the vastness of the land as if the cover of land had been stretched wrenching the hills apart.  I say hills, but these are not even the foothills which begin to the north at above 15,000 feet.  This is so much different from the dark, narrow, Scottish valleys I’m used to. Patches of thick, green, jungle forests rise steeply to my right.  Lines of white, prayer flags decorate the trees further up.

Today the mountains are obscured by clouds and the paths are dusty and dry with a very fine, light brown, sandy soil that rises in puffs as we walk and cover the bottoms of our trousers.  We pass the occasional land slip caused by the monsoon rains, or was it an earthquake that caused the land to flow into the valley?  Looking at the dense forest I can see that there will be black bears in there.  A while ago a man was attacked by one and had to have his stomach stitched by the locals before being flown by helicopter to a hospital in Kathmandu.

In the valley below there is the muffled sound of a drum and the blowing of Tibetan horns.

PRAYER FLAGS AT SUNSET

Dropping by 500 feet makes a difference as the breathing has become a lot easier now

A large gomba is being built and rises to 3-stories.  I wonder why so much money is being spent on these temples when there are surely much more necessary developments on which to concentrate – like education which is very important for the children of which there are many.

We come to a sign with Tibetan script at the top and a transcription in English below:  CHHIMI HEIGHT 8,202 FEET PROMOTED BY NORBULING RURAL DEVELOPMENT SOCIETY.