COMING SOON HOUSE ADVERTISING ads_leader
Geo: 27.7029, 85.3182
Travelling they say broadens the mind and I agree when you are in an unknown area, city or village with unfamiliar food/ traditions/ bathing habits etc. you find out things about yourself that may have been to this point buried deep in your psyche. Recently when we were in Mcleod Ganj in India I found such a thing out about myself that I hadn't really been confronted with before in my safe little life and if I was in any doubt about it then the trip to the remote village of Gatlang in Nepal has made me realise that I have a fear. It's an irrational fear as most fears are, not unlike those who are scared of spiders or snakes or mice but unlike those types of fears I'm am unable to frighten them off or get some brave soul to remove for me. My fear is of falling, not tripping over but of falling, like falling off the edge of a cliff or falling of the top of a building or as the cases mentioned above, of falling of a track or a road and plummeting down a sheer drop into the valley below. I'm unable to overcome this fear with rational thought or even with being light hearted about it. As I go higher up a road or trail my fear increases, recently in Mcleod Ganj we set off to do a day trip to a small village that was situated at the top of a mountain. The start of the walk was fine but as the trail we were following began to get narrower and the drop off to one side became higher my ability to cope decreased. I did my best to stick to the side of the trail most of the time even using my hands to hold on to the rock face. This did little to reassure me, I was convinced I was going to slip of the edge. I managed to walk for 2 hours in this state until finally my fear got the better of me and I refused to go any further, at this point we were only an hour's walk from our intended destination, but the view of the track winding its way up the edge of the mountain made me feel decidedly uncomfortable. I squatted down with my back to the rock and refused to move, no amount of coaxing, encouragement of even being challenged could make me change my mind there was only one direction I was going from that point and that was down. Not long after this incident we departed Mcloed Ganj for Delhi and that was our final leg of our India trip, the fortunate and unfortunate part was that we were leaving India for Nepal the home of the highest peak in the world. Not that I had any intention of attempting an assault on Mt Everest but the country is full of high mountains, there was little doubt I was going to encounter some anxious moments. I didn't have to wait long. We had put our hands up to do some volunteer work in a remote village called Gatlang, its only 120 km away from Kathmandu but it takes 10-12 hrs. to drive there due to the conditions of the roads. We set out at around 8.30 am in a good sturdy 4 wheel drive vehicle with a driver who had made this trip several times before so he was familiar with the road. The first half of the journey was fine the road had had some work done on them and even our driver was impressed with the improvements made. After stopping for lunch in a village of reasonable size ( we stopped there due to the traffic jam caused by people waiting to fill up there vehicles with fuel, one driver told me he had been stuck there already for 4 hours). So after a 2 hr. delay we set off again and this time things started to make me nervous. The road hugged the edges of the mountains as the ascended further and further up wards. At times the roads (and I use that word loosely goat track might be a better description) filled with pot holes and large protruding rocks looked barely wide enough for 1 vehicle. The drop off to one side was getting more cliff like by the minute and sometimes we had to pull as close to the edge as possible to allow another vehicle to pass. I couldn't relax, even though I had faith in the driver I wasn't in control and at times I had to do ever thing to stop myself from screaming at him to slow down or move away from the edge. The whole time I was holding on to the handle of the door so tightly that my knuckle where white while my other hand was grabbing hold of the head rest on the back of the seat. I couldn't watch most of the time, I would look at the road ahead, the rock wall, anywhere but down over the edge of the sheer rock face I was convinced we were about to plummet into at any moment. By this stage my uneasiness had become obvious to the driver and the other passengers who couldn't help but find some humour in my discomfort. Things didn't improve the road conditions got gradually worse and the height of the road went gradually up. Add to this that we were getting further and further away from any signs of civilisation my mind just wouldn't stop creating horrific scenarios that involved the vehicle tumbling down into a remote valley. The village we had decided to work in is at an altitude of roughly 2500m above sea level in Australia I'm not sure there are too many mountains that go above this height add to this that I have a Welsh background and I can start to understand perhaps why I have developed this fear. For one thing I don't think I have ever been up any really high mountains before perhaps the highest point I have been to is in the Grampians where you get to walk up the back side of some ancient peeks and eventually come to a cliff edge. Now I must admit that when I have approached those cliff edges in the past it has been on all 4's but I just thought that was natural after all who wants to walk right up to the edge of a cliff, it's a dangerous thing to do. I thought that was quite normal. As for my Welsh heritage, the Welsh are from the valleys now I know this suggests that if there are valleys then they have to be surrounded by mountains and the valleys are, but we are valley dwellers not mountain dwellers, I think the last 400 years of my ancestors living in the valleys has given me an in built attachment to flat low land and an aversion to high exposed ledges.
Now I found myself travelling along a road that convinced me that this would be the last thing that I would do and I was going to die a horrible death by bouncing down a cliff face inside a car so far from anywhere that even if we survived the fall it would be days until anybody could find us or get to us, I was sure we were doomed. Things hadn't been helped by the fact that the day before I had picked up a newspaper in Kathmandu that reported that a bus had gone off the edge of a road killing 18 people, only 2 people survived and on top of that we had past the wreckage of a bus that had obviously suffered the same fate at some stage and the remains of the bus had been left there a stark reminder of the consequences of 1 false move or lapse in concentration could lead to. So for close to 5 hours I couldn't relax I couldn't smile and I couldn't even look around and enjoy the magnificent scenery that surrounded us. We passed through small villages that literally balanced on the edge of the roads, children play right up to the edges of these roads without a care in the world and this just made me more uncomfortable I was sure they were about to fall off also. The final stage of the journey was the worse the road wound steadily upwards and by this stage it had begun to get dark, I nearly asked to be let out so that I could walk the last couple of kilometres I was getting that distressed I tried to tell myself that the darkness would make the rest of the trip easier because I couldn't see the impending danger, it didn't help. So as I hung on for dear life we eventually got sight of the lights from our village. Gradually we started to descend ever so slightly and then came to a complete stop, the nightmare was over, I have never been so petrified for so long in my entire life. I pulled myself out of the car I could hardly open my hands they had been clenched for so long, I could just make out in the darkness the mountain peaks rising above the village and I was thankful that the inhabitants of this village were valley dwellers too.
........................................................................................................................... I would like to add that since writing this blog I have successfully trecked up mountains on narrow paths up to the hieght of 3100m, the thing that enabled me to do this was a stick, yes as long as I have a stick in my hand I feel safe. I cant explain the psycology behind this but who cares as long as it works.
COMING SOON HOUSE ADVERTISING ads_leader_blog_bottom
Tot: 0.139s; Tpl: 0.011s; cc: 6; qc: 45; dbt: 0.0906s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.1mb
enis
non-member comment
Why are recollections of someone else's fear always so funny? Probably because I am sitting here safely in the 'lowlands' of Preston. I don't like the idea of sitting in the passengers seat though. And... If you were hugging the hill on th
e way up, that means.......Um, any way, gotta love that stick :)Ta for the story dude, take care.