pillow in the small hours. But in a way the millions of tiny, red-brown ants are even more troublesome than the rats: they get intoall the food and swarm over one at night in tickling (but not biting) hordes. Initially I tried to pick them out of the rice, dahl, sugar and tinned milk, but I soon gave up – life’s too short – so now I suppose cooked ant is my chief source of protein. All things considered I don’t especially look forward to night-time at the moment. Yet on the whole I’m very happy and one can’t have perfection.
3 JUNE
Today I distinguished myself by getting hopelessly lost for eight hours. Kay had asked me to go up to the Shining Hospital for some medical reports and then to collect an X-ray result from the Indian Military Hospital on the other side of the Seti Gorge; but at the Shining Hospital one of the missionaries very kindly, though rather vaguely, directed me to a short cut and by 2 p.m. I realised that I was probably halfway to India. However, as there has been no opportunity to take a day off since my arrival I decided to make the most of this involuntary expedition, without feeling too conscience-stricken.
On the whole my sense of direction is quite reliable, yet soon it was clear that I was becoming ‘loster and loster’ – and my compass was in my knapsack at Pardi. The sort of reasoning which can usually be applied to such situations seems to count for nothing in Nepal, and I’m seriously tempted to believe that here even the sun flouts the natural laws. One complication is that those low, wooded hills which rise at intervals from the valley floor look identical to the newcomer, so one is wildly misled and lured over the plain for two or three miles in the conviction that Pardi lies just there – only to find oneself on the verge of a magnificent 1,000-foot river-gorge one has never seen before and which is certainly not negotiable; and so it goes on … and on … and on.
Though Pardi and Pokhara have now been put on the tourist map by the airfield one only has to travel a few miles beyond them to reach, within the valley itself, villages so untouched by outside influence that a white woman on a bicycle creates a veritable sensation; and this unblemished picturesqueness has its snags, for whenever I asked for directions the villagers were too astonished, too scared or too amusedeven to attempt any helpful response or gesture. Once a man did point down a track that appeared to be leading direct to the middle of nowhere, and optimistically I followed it to its terminus on the brink of yet another gorge – or perhaps at a different point along the same gorge.
All day the heat had been intense and by 3 p.m. I was feeling quite dehydrated, having covered over forty miles according to Leo’s milometer. Partly for this reason, and partly because I despaired of ever disentangling the inconsequential tracks of the plain, I now attempted to descend to river-level and follow the course of the Seti – an idiotic move which involved Leo and me in a series of gymnastic feats and stamina-tests such as even Roz and I have never had to endure. And Leo is twice the weight of Roz … Eventually I discovered that one could descend to within about one hundred feet of the water, but no further – something which would have been obvious from the start to any moderately intelligent person. So I sat down in the shade of a tree by the cliff-edge to smoke a cigarette while reflecting on the sad fact that soon we would have to ascend somehow to plain-level and resume our war of nerves with those tracks.
However, it was impossible to remain glum for long in such surroundings. Below me the Seti (its name means ‘white’) was a swift, seething torrent, narrow at this season but still violently strong amidst a desert of pale, rounded stones. From the opposite cliff rose smooth-browed , forested hills enclosing the gorge in a wide, gentle curve, while behind, rising in layers to the plain, lay the rough,
3 JUNE
Today I distinguished myself by getting hopelessly lost for eight hours. Kay had asked me to go up to the Shining Hospital for some medical reports and then to collect an X-ray result from the Indian Military Hospital on the other side of the Seti Gorge; but at the Shining Hospital one of the missionaries very kindly, though rather vaguely, directed me to a short cut and by 2 p.m. I realised that I was probably halfway to India. However, as there has been no opportunity to take a day off since my arrival I decided to make the most of this involuntary expedition, without feeling too conscience-stricken.
On the whole my sense of direction is quite reliable, yet soon it was clear that I was becoming ‘loster and loster’ – and my compass was in my knapsack at Pardi. The sort of reasoning which can usually be applied to such situations seems to count for nothing in Nepal, and I’m seriously tempted to believe that here even the sun flouts the natural laws. One complication is that those low, wooded hills which rise at intervals from the valley floor look identical to the newcomer, so one is wildly misled and lured over the plain for two or three miles in the conviction that Pardi lies just there – only to find oneself on the verge of a magnificent 1,000-foot river-gorge one has never seen before and which is certainly not negotiable; and so it goes on … and on … and on.
Though Pardi and Pokhara have now been put on the tourist map by the airfield one only has to travel a few miles beyond them to reach, within the valley itself, villages so untouched by outside influence that a white woman on a bicycle creates a veritable sensation; and this unblemished picturesqueness has its snags, for whenever I asked for directions the villagers were too astonished, too scared or too amusedeven to attempt any helpful response or gesture. Once a man did point down a track that appeared to be leading direct to the middle of nowhere, and optimistically I followed it to its terminus on the brink of yet another gorge – or perhaps at a different point along the same gorge.
All day the heat had been intense and by 3 p.m. I was feeling quite dehydrated, having covered over forty miles according to Leo’s milometer. Partly for this reason, and partly because I despaired of ever disentangling the inconsequential tracks of the plain, I now attempted to descend to river-level and follow the course of the Seti – an idiotic move which involved Leo and me in a series of gymnastic feats and stamina-tests such as even Roz and I have never had to endure. And Leo is twice the weight of Roz … Eventually I discovered that one could descend to within about one hundred feet of the water, but no further – something which would have been obvious from the start to any moderately intelligent person. So I sat down in the shade of a tree by the cliff-edge to smoke a cigarette while reflecting on the sad fact that soon we would have to ascend somehow to plain-level and resume our war of nerves with those tracks.
However, it was impossible to remain glum for long in such surroundings. Below me the Seti (its name means ‘white’) was a swift, seething torrent, narrow at this season but still violently strong amidst a desert of pale, rounded stones. From the opposite cliff rose smooth-browed , forested hills enclosing the gorge in a wide, gentle curve, while behind, rising in layers to the plain, lay the rough,
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