Photo album: "From Jomosom to New Dehli"

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The return segment of our trek begins the very day of our arrival to Jomosom, on Sunday May 12th, 1968. Our feet make us still to suffer but our injuries are beginning to heal, even if walking with our thongs in the middle of fields of stones or on long and irregular stairways will create new injuries. The other problem we meet is the rain. It rains every afternoon. We often have to follow a longer path because it has no longer been possible to step on big boulders to cross a stream.. We learn, when we arrive in Pokhara, there are some troubles in France. A few days later, when we are in New Delhi, the situation in France is on the first page of every newspapers, with photos of barricades, of burning cars... They speak of stop of transportation, of shortage of gasoline, of general strike, of confrontation with the police, of injured people, even of dead ones… When we get to the Japan Airlines to confirm our return flight, they tell us no planes are landing in Paris any more and they give us instead, an air ticket to Geneva. Once there, we will have to manage… During the Rome stop we succeed in calling  our families, they hearten us a little. Arrived in Swiss, we learn that a French military aircraft shuttles between Geneva and Brétigny, a military airport close to Paris. Two flights are scheduled for this day but they are already booked up. We register for the next day, but we come all the same in the afternoon to see is a few seats have become available. Fortunately, six people do not present themselves to embark, we can therefore leave on this very day. André's parents come and fetch us Place Balard where a military bus lets us. Later on, a friend of mine with my parents, come to André's home and bring me back home. We are on the evening of May 28th, 1968, a little more than 15 months have passed since my departure from France and, luckily, the return has been easier than we feared… Now, what is going to happen during the days, weeks, months to come? We have no idea yet…

We don't stop in Jomosom. We come back to Tukuche, on the same Sunday May 12th. We arrive in Pokhara, at the end of the trek, on May 19th. We leave to Kathmandu, with a DC3 of the Royal Nepal Airlines, on Thursday May 23rd. We leave Kathmandu the next day, Mai 24th, on a Fokker 27 of the Royal Nepal Airlines and arrive, end of afternoon, in New Delhi, capital of India. We leave New Delhi on Monday 27th, around midnight, aboard a DC8 of the Japan Airlines. We arrive in Rome on Tuesday morning after two stops (Teheran and Cairo). A DC9 of Swiss Air brings us to Geneva (Swiss) where we succeed in boarding a Nord 2501 (Nord Atlas) of the French Air Forces which transports us to Brétigny. A military bus allows us to reach Paris, on Tuesday May 28th end of the afternoon.
On Sunday May 12th, we start back from Jomosom at 14:20, the same day of our arrival, and we find us for the first time under a rain shower. We stop around 16:00, to have a hot tea and to let us dry up, in a village where we come across a Mingma's brother. Our guide decides to stay the night with his brother and lets us proceed alone. We start again around 17:30 and arrive in Tukuche at about 19:00. 
On May 13th, Mingma joins us around 7:0, but we stay, waiting for the arrival of Mingma's brother who is coming back from an expedition with three Americans and a few porters. Since we don't see him arriving, we leave around 12:10. We reach Khoban at about 13:10, as it is beginning to rain. 
On May 14th, the weather is fine in the morning, we start at 6:50 and arrive in Lete around 9:15. It rains again in the afternoon. It will rain thus every afternoons, we will try therefore to walk as much as possible on the morning.
On May 15th, we start at 6:10 and we arrive in Dana around 13:35. 
On May 16th, we leave at 6:05. We stop for a while around 8:40, near hot water springs. People are bathing in natural puddles, in a water that seems to smoke in the cold air. We arrive in Sikha around 14:45. 
On May 17th, we start at 6:40. We reach Ghorapani pass around 8:05. We stop in a village to lunch and we are at the top of the long stairway at about 13:50. It will take us one hour to get down. We arrive in Tirkhedhunga around 14:55. We got the opportunity to speak with Mingma's brother who is following us. He participated in the J. Franco's French expedition to Makalu in 1955 (the first time this 8515-metre summit has been vanquished). 
On May 18th, we start at 6:15. We stop from 14:00 to 16:00 to shelter from the rain and we arrive in Nodhala around 17:10. 
On May 19th, we leave around 6:20 for the last stage of our trek. We arrive, around 13:00 near Pokhara airport where we find a hotel.
A wall with prayer mills on the way out of a village. One should pass on the left side of the wall in order to make the mills rotate with one's right hand. This allows the prayers which are kept inside the mills to ascend toward the gods. We can see, also, a prayer flag, in that case it is the wind that makes the flag move allowing thus to send the prayers that are written on it.
A view of Dhaulagiri (8172 m) free of the clouds, in the morning..
At the altitude of Lete (2379 m), there is a forest of firs. Before arriving in this village, we saw two big monkeys (around one meter long, without the tail). At first, from a distance, we thought they were big dogs. It was Mingma who showed them to us. We will see others of the same kind another day.
Different types of houses, seen during our trek. In this village, they are in stones without facing with a ground floor and sometimes a second floor over it. They all have one common feature: they don't have any chimney and the smoke escapes through the door or the window, if there is one. As a consequence the ceilings are always bright black because of the smoke that deposits on them.
In another village, the houses in stone, without coating, have many floors (up to two over the ground floor). These houses, like the former ones, are covered with thin slabs of stone.
Meals and lodging During the trek, we lodged in the inhabitants' home, in different types of houses. We slept generally on the floor, in our sleeping bags, laying on a matting of straw, or a carpet even, once, on cushions. Mingma negotiated the price for the night and for the dinner. He did it also when we stopped in a village to have breakfast, lunch , a cup of tea or a glass of a fermented beverage he called "beer" and which local name was "tsar". The only time where we slept in a kind of hotel was in Tukuche. The building was square-shaped with an internal courtyard. The rooms were distributed all around that courtyard which was, thus, well protected from the fierce winds that often blow in the upper Kali Gandaki valley. This lodge was certainly built to accommodate the members of the numerous caravans that, once, journeyed this valley carrying Tibetan mined-salt onto Nepal.
Another type of house, small, with only one room without window, the walls are coated and white- or ochre-painted, with a thatched roof. This kind of houses can be found mainly at a lower altitude and outside villages.
The food Food has practically ever been rice with a very spiced sauce containing generally vegetables, sometimes a kind of lentil called "dhal". We rarely ate meat: chicken or small pieces of dried goat. In the mountains, Nepalese people eat with their hand. They take a small ball of rice between three fingers, they dip it into the sauce, then, with the thumb, they push it into their mouth. As for us, we never succeeded in doing it: the rice always fell down onto our knees or onto the floor. Since the only piece of cutlery available was the little spoons for the tea, we had to eat huge plates of rice with a little spoon. It is a way to learn patience! We always told Mingma to ask that the sauce should not be too much spiced. The only time we found us alone, in Tukuche, we weren't able to make ourselves understood and the food was so much spiced that our eyes didn't stop weeping and we could only swallow, with great difficulty, a few mouthfuls of a dinner that brought fire into our mouths..
On this house, we can see how well the wall is built, there is no need of cement to make the stones hold together and there is nearly no empty spaces between them, just a little dried mud was enough to fill them.
A bridge made of wooden boards suspended onto two steel chains. In the middle of the bridge, a prayer flag provides the divine protection.
A village, near the end of the trek, where we stopped to have lunch. The vegetation has changed, we even make out a banana behind the house.
A buffalo takes advantage of the short grass that is newly growing after the last rains.
These other buffalos are happy to see the incoming rain season, because they, more easily, can have a mud bath to free their hides from parasites.
We are now, on Thursday Mai 23rd, 1968, in front of Pokhara airport. It doesn't look much as an airport. The waiting room is under the tree, people are either sitting on the ground or standing, but always with an umbrella to protect them from the sun or from the rain. On the runway, cows and buffalos are grazing. Because of the rains, we are not sure of the time of arrival of the plane, neither if it will come today. Around 15:15 we hear a warning siren, people of varied ages rush at the runway to clear it from the animals. Then we hear the roaring of engines and finally, we can see our DC3 arriving. We can fly back to Kathmandu!
We are now in India, in the old Delhi, in front of the great mosque.
Our journey is driving to an end and André is taking a picture of a sacred cow (all of them are sacred in India) in front of a park, in New Delhi. That's true, these cows have a nobility in the attitude, the western cows don't have. They also have beautiful eyes, we could nearly believe they make their faces up.

 

 

 

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