Category Archives: Dad

A Sudden Change of Circumstances

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As you may have guessed from my previous post, we’ve had to cut our trek in the Annapurna Region short. Scarlett had a nasty fall. She’s OK but it turns out that she has fractured her lower right leg in two places. One small, one larger.

We were four days into our trip and at least 5-6 hours hard walk from the nearest dirt road (probably a lot more carrying Scarlett). From there, if we could find a 4×4, it would be another half days drive to Pokhara. And to complicate matters, there was a general strike on so no public transport or taxis were running.

It was already getting on in the day when she had her accident so would have taken two days at least to get to hospital so our insurance arranged for a helicopter evacuation. They’re also paying for a private hospital room that’s big enough for all 5 of us to sleep in. I guess all that tedious insurance shopping was worth it.

It was all very chaotic what with looking after a very pained and frightened Tettie, a tearful Janet and two alternately bored and worried sisters, carrying Tettie up to a local lodge and then the helicopter landing field, finding someone with a phone that could make international calls, ringing the insurance company, waiting for them to authorise a helicopter and organise one to be dispatched, paying off our porter, repacking all our clothes and gear for our separate return journeys.

We had to repack because Initially the insurance company said only one adult and Tettie could be airlifted out. Scarlet wanted her mummy with her so I was going to walk back with Evie and Jem and our porter. Not ideal but I was just glad Scarlett would get treatment quickly, and we’d soon be reunited in Pokhara. But when the helicopter arrived, the pilot asked how many we were. I held up five fingers and he motioned for us all to pile in. Who was I to question him?

As it turns out, it was very lucky that we stayed together.

The flight was very exiting, high above the Himalayas in a tiny chopper, buffeted by side winds, terraced hillsides below us. Which is why, I think, we didn’t realise until we were over the city that we hadn’t been evacuated to Pokhara at all… but to Kathmandu!

Good for hospital care. Slightly awkward in that all out non-trekking gear was in left luggage at our Pokhara hotel.

Anyway, Tettie is getting great treatment here. She was rushed straight from the helipad to the emergency room and then onto x-ray. Initially she was in quite a lot of pain but it is lessening daily. They put a half cast on when she arrived because her leg was still swollen. But when the swelling goes down, hopefully tomorrow or the day after, they’ll put a cast on her whole leg right up to the hip and give her crutches. She’ll have to keep that on for 6 weeks, then have it replaced with a cast below the knee for a further 6 weeks. Three months of being in plaster!

Despite that, we are hoping to keep travelling around Asia, although there is some question as to whether the insurance company will keep insuring Tettie if she’s in plaster and what follow-up treatment she’ll be entitled to. We have flights to Sri Lanka booked for December 7th so that gives us enough time for the 3 weeks of initial rest the surgeons are prescribing if we do carry on. Then back on the road.

As soon as she’s discharged, we’re planning to get out of Kathmandu. It’s no place for kids at the best of times but with one child immobile and two others bouncing around it would be impossible. There’s nowhere to play, the traffic is terrifying, there’s often no pavements (and those three are are littered with rubble, rubbish and mangy stray dogs), and everything here costs money. Instead, we want to go back to the guesthouse near Chitwan National Park where we stayed for nearly three weeks. It’s all flat, there’s no real traffic except elephants and there lots of space. Sure, there’s also only one restaurant and nothing much to do but we did love it there. Of course Scarlett won’t be able to join in with elephant bath time this time but she says she’s ok with that.

And we have to somehow get our luggage from Pokhara (a 7-8 hours bumpy bus journey away!) as we only have warm trekking clothes and boots with us and it’s sweltering here in Kathmandu.

Anyway, wherever we end up, I’ve promised we’ll read Tettie stories, do drawing and maths, play chess and maybe buy a ukulele to learn chords on. She’s also very excited about learning to use crutches. I think she’s taking it better than I am. Both Janet and I feel terribly guilty.

As for what we’ll do in Sri Lanka, I have no idea. The next leg of our trip was supposed to be all about swimming and playing on beaches. Not something you can do in a pot. I guess one of us will sit with Tettie while the other plays with the other two. And we can still go whale and dolphin watching.

But that’s too far in the future to think about right now. At the moment, we’re just trying to get Scarlett better and deal with the shock of our sudden change of circumstances.

Stair Trekking

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So here we are, three days into the Annapurna Base Camp trek, sitting in a crowded trekking lodge, and still in Nepal. Seeing as we were going to stay here longer after deciding to take in India, we’ve just set off an another big trek. First we’re doing Annapurna Base Camp then extending it with a side trip along the end of the Annapurna Circuit and Poon Hill.

It’s been pretty tough so far. Every day has consisted of climbing seemingly endless stone steps, punctuated only by descending stone steps to cross a suspension bridge. Followed, of course, by another massive by ascent. Who needs a Stairmaster?

It’s been made tougher by the fact that not only do we only have one porter this time but Scarlett has hurt her shoulder* and can’t bear to carry a rucksack, so me and Janet are lugging a lot more weight up all these hills.

But, injuries aside, all three of my girls are handling the hard uphills really well. We’re walking further each day than last time as we are lower down so don’t have to worry about altitude sickness but there’s still been little complaining. Jemima and Evie have even accepted, after a little persuading, that it’s OK for Scarlett not to be carrying a bag. Of course the fact that we got a taxi to a supermarket and spent over $70 on treats and snacks helps with the motivations.

Still, despite the sweatiness and shaky legs, it’s beautiful here and I’m loving being out of the city. Pokhara, where we spent the last week, is a lot more chilled out than Kathmandu but it’s still a tourist trap and, with its fake trekking gear shops, Tibetan nicknack stalls and expensive Western-food restaurants, hardly provides the kind of authentic experience we hoped to get from travelling.

The scenery here isn’t yet as impressive as the Everest Region but the drama is building. Fishtail Mountain grows larger each day and has started to reveal how it got its name, it’s twin summits jutting dominating the skyline. And the Lonely Planet promises it only gets better. By the end of this leg of the trek, we should be in a vast amphitheatre, surrounded on all sides by the Annapurna massif.

And after today, there are no communications at all. No phone, no internet. Just us, Krishna (our guide not the Hindu god) and the mountains. And all the other Trekkers, of course, all after their own authentic experiences.

Janet says I must add that it’s not serious, Nana. Don’t worry.

Epic Haircut

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I have just returned from what I can only describe as an Epic Haircut.

Short version: the whole thing took an hour even though the haircut only took ten minutes. This barber was thorough.

Long version: as best I can remember it, the Epic Haircut Experience went something like this…

  • Arrive at barbers looking like recent divorcee, heavily bestubbled with a mop-head of greying hair.
  • Haircut. So far so good. Resemblance to divorcee receding.
  • Barber’s attempts at internationally-agreed hairdresser conversation number three somewhat stymied by language barriers (“Days many you holiday Pokhara?”).
  • Barber applies Shaving foam the thickness of a rhino hide. Amusement at new resemblance to Father Christmas.
  • Shave with cut throat razor. Amusement replaced with raw fear. Try not to think about Sweeney Todd.
  • Notice barber is flying low. Try not to smirk while he has my life in his hands.
  • Face sprayed with plant mister. Surprise.
  • Second application of shaving foam. If anything even thicker. Santa has really let himself go.
  • Second shave. Skin now feels impressively smooth. I prepare to leave but no.
  • Head massage begins, accompanied by theatrical knuckle cracking. Massage only in the loosest sense. More of a head battering.
  • Surely it’s over now? No. Now begins the face massage.
  • First white cream is slopped vigorously into my face. Not onto, into. Is it moisturiser? Particular attention is applied to my nose. Is my nose lacking moisture?
  • Cream then scraped into piles with a length of cotton thread, and removed with a razor blade.
  • Now orange cream is applied, and removed as before with strange cotton thread technique. Nose still receiving particular attention.
  • Finally amber cream is rubbed in. Not removed this time. Face now feels like it is made of rubber. Surely it’s time to pay now?
  • No.
  • Another head massage. Possibly now qualifying as GBH not just ABH. Am I actually being mugged?
  • Razor blade used to shave neck and hairline. Ah, finished at last.
  • Nope.
  • Shoulder massage begins. Feels pleasant. At first.
  • Barber now moves onto arm massage. Each finger is pulled until it cracks. Then the whole arm. Am worried I may now resemble an orangutang.
  • And to top it all off, a third and final head beating. Is he hoping concussion will prevent me from questioning the price? If so, he’s right. For some reason I tip him an extra 100 rupees as I stagger, shorn, shaven, rubber-faced and battered onto the street.

As I said, Epic Haircut.

A Worrying Development

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Something worrying seems to be happening to me. Sure, it all started with the best of intentions but so many things do, don’t they? And now I’m worried it’s too late to stop, that I’ve passed the point of no return. That the old me is gone.

You see, when we first arrived in Nepal we avoided eating meat because we were about to trek out into the wild where a tummy bug would be a lot more serious than a trip to the nearest doctor. And while trekking we carried on not eating it because there was no refrigeration in most of the places we went to.

That’s right, I think I’m turning vegetarian.

See, after the mountains it became something of a habit. Vegetarian food here is cheaper and often much tastier than food with meat in. And having passed a few butchers, with their half-carved carcasses hanging in the open air, spotted with flies, being splashed with rainwater and fingered by passersby, the thought of meat has become distinctly less appealing. And those are the higher-end places. Several times I’ve passed men skinning animal heads on a tarpaulin by a roadside.

Plus there is rarely beef anywhere. Hindus won’t eat it because it’s sacred. So it’s generally substituted with buffalo (or buff as menus call it – not that making it sound like beef is fooling anyone). You know how a buffalo looks like a bonier, surlier cow… well, that’s all the clue you need to understand its jaw-exhausting texture.

And the only other real choice is chicken, which of all the meats is the one it’s probably best not leave by a roadside in the heat for a few days before consumption.

So it’s been tasty daals and curries, pakauras and sandhekos, naans and rotis… and rarely a piece of meat at all. And it’s been fine… until I realized I might be in danger of turning to the dark side*.

So tonight we go to a post-trek institution: the famous New Everest Steak House, with beef flown in from West Bengal. Hopefully they’ll get me back on the right track.

* Green side?

Moving On

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In the Garden at Traveller's Jungle Camp

We’ve finally decided to uproot ourselves from our lovely guesthouse here in Sauraha – the Travellers’ Jungle Camp. By the time we leave on Saturday, we will have been here two and a half weeks. Not long in the grand scheme of things, perhaps, but compared to trekking it seems an age.

Up in the mountains, we moved on every day. Having to repack all our stuff ready for a 6 or 7am start each morning meant we rarely unpacked much in the evenings which, in turn, meant none of our rooms ever felt much like home. Even in Gokyo we only stayed a few nights before our itchy feet drove us on.

When we got back to Kathmandu we stayed nearly a week but our time there was enforced rather than voluntary. We had to arrange Indian visas, the weather was torrential, and the festival of Desain (kind of like a Nepalese Christmas but with more animal sacrifice) had just begun when we arrived back, meaning everything official was closed and many non-official things like shops and cafés, too, as people went back to their villages to celebrate.

And even with the streets quieter than normal, Kathmandu traffic is still terrifying when you’re shepherding kids around. In fact, there really isn’t much open space in Kathmandu at the best of times, meaning the kids spent much of the time bouncing off the walls of our hotel room or cafés.

All of which added up to Kathmandu falling very firmly into the category of “not much fun”.

So when we arrived in Sauraha it was a double relief. We got to stay still and relax, but we also had space. In fact, we chose a guesthouse based solely their having a resident elephant which was, of course, awesome. But it turned out to be better in even more ways.  The gardens here are long and grassy, and divided up into enough parts that the girls can move around, exploring for ages. The food’s cheap and tasty and we can eat on our veranda rather than the restaurant, which means the girls don’t have to be on their best behaviour.

It wasn’t long before a routine began to establish itself. I generally wake up early so I’d chill out reading until one or two of the girls woke up, then we’d snuggle in a single bed and play Small World on the iPad until Janet or the third girl woke up, too. Then we’d all do sun salutes (Janet’s been teaching us all yoga to make us all into proper hippy travellers) and wander out to the veranda where we’d order a big pot of tea and some breakfast.

After breakfast, the girls would go and take the elephant some bananas then we’d do “jungle school” (mostly Janet teaching maths while I helped the girls hand-code website projects one at a time).

Around eleven, we’d all roll down to elephant bath time for some elephant washing, rising and splashing about in he river, staying there until the last elephant left at which point we’d have to evacuate in case the crocodiles came back.

Then more  “jungle school” until early afternoon before wandering up either the village’s one street or along the river and ending up at the only proper restaurant in town, KC’s, where the girls would play in the long garden while Janet and I chilled out over a beer until tea time.

Later we’d stroll back for story time and bed, ready for it to all start again.

And so day after day passed. It felt like we were in slow-mo sometimes, as almost everybody else in our guesthouse would stay for two or maybe three days. They’d arrive from the mountains by bus, do an elephant safari, elephant bath, jeep safari, watch a Tharu stick dance and take a canoe trip down the river, then shoot off again having done every activity on offer in a matter of days when we only just managed to squeeze them all into over two weeks. And we never did get round to the canoe trip. Nor the stick dance. Although having see Stomp on the Royal Variety Show a few times and heard the stick dance going on from across town, I don’t think we missed much.

If I’m honest, I’m not entirely sure why we are leaving. Sure, we’ve done everything there is to do here (canoeing and stick dance excluded) several times over but we’re very happy. And having decided not to do India any more, we have ton of time left here in Nepal.

Is it because we’re still near the start of our trip and I want travelling to include, well, more travel? Is it momentum left over from trekking? Am I subliminally trying to avoid having to sit on an elephant and be squirted with high-velocity river water again (which was fun the first few times…)?

Whatever the case, we’ll soon be back on the road, heading up into the mountains for another trek; perhaps even the huge Annapurna Circuit.

But even with the soothing routine and constant new horizons of trekking, I think we’ll miss it here. It’s felt like home.

Top of the World

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Just a quick entry today as we’re paying by the minute in a cybercafe but this morning we saw Mount Everest!

We arrived in Namche Bazaar yesterday afternoon after a scary twin-prop flight into Lukla and four days of walking only to meet some young brits who had done the same journey in one day. Still, they hadn’t had to shepherd three children who were passing a tummy bug between them. And taking it slowly has been fun. We’ve stopped in some quieter villages and had the afternoon to explore most days.

And our guide taking us to his home was fascinating. The girls could hardly believe that their whole family live in one room but I think it brought it home to them how different life here is. That and the constant diet of dahl baat.

And even taken slowly, the trek was great. At first it was just like a rather exaggerated Lake District (rain included) but by yesterday I felt like I was walking in some kind magical mountain kingdom from Monkey. The path hugs the valley all the way here, gradually climbing higher and higher as the peaks grow around you until there’s an enormous drop below and the peaks above strain your neck to look at. And then you get to the suspension bridges. Suffice it to say that Scarlett had a fear of bridges when she arrived here. She doesn’t any more.

And then today… Everest! Sure it was only in the distance but it was still a powerful experience. And definitely worth the trekking, diarrhea and deadly flights to see.

Little Monkeys

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Yesterday we finally got through enough of the necessary recovery sleep and last-minute organisation to do some sightseeing in Kathmandu. The girls were thoroughly fed up with getting their final rabies and Japanese encephilitis inoculations, finding a new, cheaper guest-house, changing money and buying air tickets to Lukla (which took longer than buying our tickets to Nepal!), so we took a taxi up to Swayambhunath, also known as the Monkey Temple.

The temple used to be on an island when all of Kathmandu was underwater but now stands on a hill to the west. It is also home to thousands of (rabies-carrying) rhesus monkeys which locals consider holy to the Hindu god Hanuman. Which is why no-one beats them off with sticks when they steal ice creams and generally bother the pilgrims, tourists and groups of cool, posing Nepalese teenagers.

I’m not sure my three monkeys are holy to Hanuman but no-one seemed to beat them off with sticks either, so I guess they might be. And they certainly had a great time at the temple. They weren’t too bothered about the statuary or carvings I tried to point out but they liked spinning the Tibetan prayer wheels, chasing the pigeons and, of course, the monkeys, but we did have an interesting chat about who the Buddha was, enlightenment and reincarnation (they were particularly outraged at the idea that women who behave well might just be lucky enough to reincarnate as men).

For myself, I found the temple fascinating. It has been in constant use since Europe was in the Dark Ages and, apart from the teenagers, is probably largely unchanged, and is packed with a mixture of Tibetan Buddhist and Hindu iconography. Wherever I looked, there was something I would have loved to examine more closely if I hadn’t also been realising that I could no longer see my children and leaping to my feet in panic.

And a few of us:

At the top of the Greeat Eastern Stairway
Jemima
A monkey
Dad
Ice cream thief
Mum
Stupa
Monkeys watching monkeys
Triplet attention

Keys

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Today we left Leeds – a step that has proved surprisingly difficult.

Surprising, I think, because I have always thought of myself as someone who isn’t too bothered by material possessions. I generally own one pair of shoes which I wear into the ground (literally), I couldn’t care less what car I drive as long as it gets me to work and back, I use the cheapest phone money can buy, and my clothing reflects a natural scruffiness which I long since gave up trying to fight. What matters to me is my family, my wife, experiences. Not things.

Which probably explains my surprise at finding how much stuff I actually have, and how fiddly it has been to disentangle myself from the attachments of everyday life.

On reflection, I suppose it should have been obvious that you cannot reach the age of 39, have a family and a wife and a home and a job and not gain a great number of attachments. A home needs a house, a job needs a car, kids have school (and a pet!), and there’s bills and insurance and mortgages, bank accounts and registrations, lawns and hedges and 10’ trampolines… all of which roll happily along on the assumption that their owners are not going to disappear off around the World for the best part of a year. So the fact that we are disappearing off around the World for the best part of a year has meant disentangling ourselves from all those things.

Over the last month, as we arrange all the necessary letting and selling, storing and donating, dumping and packing, painting and cleaning, and mending, painting and mowing, I have been gauging how successful I have been at disentangling myself from all our material possessions by watching my key ring.

First to go were my 3 work keys, then our house and garage keys, then one of our two car keys. Now all I have remaining is one car key. And after we drive to the airport on Tuesday, my Mum will kindly sell it (the car not the key) and my Lego Gandalf key ring will be all that remains. Then I guess I’ll also have to give that up, too, as there’s not much point to a key ring with no keys.

One of my lasting memories from last time Janet and I went travelling was how liberating it was to have everything I needed in one backpack. In a few minutes, I could be packed up and ready to move on and explore somewhere new, or arrive somewhere and be settled in in no more time than it took to string a hammock. It felt wonderful to prove how much of the stuff I normally surrounded myself with just wasn’t necessary.

Of course, it’s a lot easier to carry everything you need when you’re in a hot country where you can wear sandals every day and never need more than one layer of clothing.

And there’s a certain amount of illusion to the backpacking life. Pure luck and historical inertia gives us the exchange rates that make us relatively rich in other countries, even when just starting out in life. And this money allows us to hire the stuff we need at a moments notice: roofs over our heads, transport, prepared food. It’s just we don’t carry the stuff around.

And I guess youth also helped. Back in the UK, I rented my room in a house, I had no car, I’d just finished university, and, of course, Janet and I only had one rucksack each to carry, not three extra small ones and their attendant children.

So perhaps it’s no surprise after all that it’s proven tricky to get going. But it’s almost done. There’s just that one key left in my pocket (and Gandalf, of course), and in a few days I won’t even have that. It’ll be just us, our rucksacks and the open road (well, Heathrow Terminal One).

Homeless

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So that’s it. We now officially have no house. It’s taken weeks to do it but everything we want to take with us is in rucksacks, everything we want to keep is in storage and a lot of other stuff that was filling up our house has been divided between the bin, the tip and local charity shops.

Janet and I sat in our empty house for the last time this morning, listened to the echoes, marvelled at how clean it was, promised not to let it clog up with junk again, left a welcome note and a bottle of wine for our tenants and walked out of the door.

Now we just have two weeks of spare rooms and hotels then we get on our flight to Kathmandu, and the adventure that we’ve been saving up for since the year 2000 begins.

Moving out has been a lot of work – not just  packing up and throwing out, but decorating and cleaning ready for renting – so it’s not until now that I have really been able to have time to feel properly excited. But now the trip is close and we’ve uprooted out family, I can feel it the elation starting to build. It’s here, rIght before me. Nearly a whole year of no work, being able to spend all day with my family, new places, new experiences, opportunities to grow and be challenged… an adventure. And to do it all with kids, while probably more difficult at times, will also let me see everything afresh, through their eyes.

I can’t wait.

Wet Paint and Packing

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Things I have said (yelled) today:

Stop!

Don’t run! Walk! Slowly! No! Not there!

Now don’t touch the door! Or the door frame! Or the… oh.

Yes, it’s still wet. No, don’t tou… Hm. Right, go and wash your hands. And please don’t touch anything on the way to the… oh.

From which you can probably surmise that we have been painting and decorating.

The upstairs is largely done (only the girls’ room to go). But now we’re working on rooms that our girls need to pass through, and discovering that keeping three 7-year-olds and wet paint apart is a largely futile process.

Still, the dining room is nearly finished and will hopefully continue to look just as amazing as it does currently until we rent our house out.  See, we decided when our girls were young that there was no point trying to keep the walls clean. When you’re outnumbered by toddlers you have to be realistic about these things. So our walls have taken something of a battering over the last five years. Between the thousands of blue-tacked pictures, grubby hand tide marks, impact craters, crayonings no-one would admit to and other sundry abuses our dining room has descended to a state where we’d have trouble letting it out in Third-World warzone let alone a leafy English suburb.

There was nothing for it but to hit the DIY supercentre and start decorating.

Only it turns out that decorating is rather time consuming. And expensive. And tiring. Not to mention dangerous (when paired with wandering children). We started at Christmas and still have tons to do.

Nor is it the only thing we need to before renting our house out. We need to prove we comply with safety standards for gas and electricity, find an estate agent, make the gardens presentable, tackle all those little DIY jobs you learn to live with but renters might not be so laid back about, pack up (or chuck out) years of accumulated stuff, clear out the garage of things we really should have thrown away years ago to make room for the stuff from our house that we really should be throwing away now, and, of course, find tenants.

All of which makes our departure date seem worryingly soon. WIll we manage it all in time? I have to say, when I daydreamed about going travelling, my thoughts never dwelled on all the hard work we’d have to do before we stepped onto the plane. And it seems a shame to be spending so much time thinking about home improvements not our trip of a lifetime.

I guess there’s nothing for it than to just crack on.

I just hope all this hard work means we can find the tenants we need. And that they don’t mind a few finger marks in the paintwork.