October 18, 2024, day 2
The next day the appointment with Padàm is at 07:30. He is waiting for me in the off-road vehicle rented for the occasion, complete with driver. He will take us to Syabrubesi. I could have chosen to go with a public bus, I would have saved quite a bit of money but the horrible videos I have been subjected to for six months have had their uses, including showing me what an equally horrible thing public buses are, packed like eggs, rickety, dusty, stinking of fuel and extremely uncomfortable. Outside the urban area, the roads are worse than trenches in Beirut. I have a hundred and forty kilometers and a journey of five, six hours, traffic permitting. With a bus it would have been hell.
The off-road vehicle, a Mahindra Scorpio, made in India, is a large, comfortable vehicle. I sit in the back, the whole seat to myself. Outside the window, the city flows, thousands of cars, motorcycles that dribble between the bumps of dirt, between the abandoned carcasses of old buses, between the remains of recent floods. Beyond the windshield, a thick blanket of dust. There are no sidewalks. Pedestrians wear masks. The outskirts of Kathmandu are not unlike the outskirts of European cities, areas that remind you that the administration is far away and has much more to do.
The off-road vehicle begins to climb the mountains covered by subtropical forest. Hairpin bends every hundred meters. On the hairpin bends, shacks. I use shacks not out of contempt but for the record. Chickens scratching around indifferent to the traffic, the usual dogs dangling around dead tired, and swarms of children playing under the not-so-watchful gaze of adults, kids in school uniforms at the bus stop, men with impossible loads on their shoulders, the only thing they can see are their own feet in the kind of shoes we good Europeans use to go to the beach. The off-road vehicle climbs in altitude, the forest thickens. There are no guardrails. A woman climbs the slope dejectedly, in front of her a child runs happily. Then the woman stops, the child joins her, and they both sit on the edge of the road. Behind them the traffic flows, in front of them, the cliff overlooking the valley of the city. I ask the driver for a technical stop. The driver puts on his indicator and pulls over. In Nepal, they drive on the left. Raise your left turn signal. It's a signal to those behind: the lane is yours, you can pass. I get out of the vehicle. There's a sound, a thin, persistent, low, long and constant sound. There's a high voltage pole.
- It's the sound of electricity, - I say.
- No, - Padàm corrects me - they're crickets. -
We have a coffee. We get back in the car. The off-road vehicle begins to descend towards the bottom of another valley. It is the valley of the Trisuli River. 'Trisul' stands for 'trident', the trident in question is that of Shiva. The scenery changes radically. The asphyxiating compactness of Kathmandu and its suburbs gives way to wide roads, rice fields as far as the eye can see, suspension bridges and the Trisuli riverbed, a few hundred meters between one bank and the other. The valley shines. We go back up. More hairpin bends. More shacks on the side of the road. Thick forest. And no road surface. In its place, trenches. They are the real cause of the slowdowns. The traffic is heavy, millions of people live in the mountain villages, and yet there is a self-discipline that is completely new to me, a European, and an Italian at that, vehicles give each other priority as appropriate, without much chitchat. Beyond the edge of the road, a few centimeters from the tires of my vehicle, the valley reveals itself in all its grandeur and its abysses, the peaks of the Himalayas wink. The path is lined with generous waterfalls, jets of hydropower that pierce the ground and cause landslides. I succumb to the beauty but the beauty hides the danger. The state of the road surface reminds me how appropriate it was to rent an off-road vehicle.
The vehicle proceeds slowly and casually between the abyss and the trenches, but the driver is good. Five hours pass without the slightest weight. In the distance in front of us, far away, some buildings. It is Syabrubesi, lapped by a powerful river. It is the Langtang. My river. The river of my valley. The vehicle begins to descend.