Aside from the powerful mountains beckoning from outside the plane window, the traveler to Nepal is greeted by green, green grass. Mountains and grass always make for an ideal combination. Growing up in Germany, we lived near the mountains for a while, and I still remember the grass near the Alps, especially after a long and cold winter. This is the scenery you will find on postcards, in books, or in Disney movies. This is the grass for Heidi, Peter, Grandpapa, and their billy goats.
And yet, this post deals with an entirely different kind of grass.
After another mountain run in the country weeks ago, where the Hash House Harriers performed their weekly routines of stumbling and tripping through grass, rock, and rice paddy, we found a dried up creek that we followed straight up a mountain. The hash marks every hundred feet or so confirmed that this was also where the hares, the organizers of the trail, had intended to lead us.
The higher you go in altitude, the fewer inhabitants you will usually find. I have seen that people can manage perfectly well in higher altitudes. I have been to Berber villages in Morocco where people have survived without any serious prospect of electricity or running water, and have done so for millennia. Obviously, people in capitals like La Paz seem to manage quite well in such environments.
Altitude can cut both ways, though. I have still experienced breathing difficulties off and on here, and we are not even a mile up. There is a good reason the human population dwindles with the altitude. And, ask any mountain climber, so do most human activities. I recall the article describing a couple of knuckleheads who had been killed during a ’mountain marathon’ of the Zugspitze, Germany’s highest mountain. I understand that there is a marathon here leading from the Mount Everest base camp, about 5000 meters high.
In Nepal, as in other countries, the possibilities for people living in higher altitudes diminish greatly with each foot. People will make a living from whatever they can scratch out of the earth. Further up the mountain, the hashers discover one extremely valuable crop.
Shrines are erected everywhere, in any environment in Nepal. The small pagodas might jump at you when you least suspect them, which is what happens before one of our check stops. Depending on degree of fatigue, it varies on what we do when we come across them. After a long mountain run (going uphill, no less), we pass this shrine on a path that reveals an unexpectedly stunning garden. The colors of the flowers are crisp, so obviously not wanting for rain. Good, the gardening leaves a little to be desired. Here and there bushes are not chopped or cropped properly by western standards, but there are few vermin and weeds.
A British runner is the first to sight the seven leaf cannabis plants. People reply with a knowing chuckle. This plant is very small, the kind you would recognize from any average head shop selling stoners’ t-shirts. Yet the more we look, the more potent the plants become. Few vermin yes, but I stand corrected on the weed. It is everywhere. The mountain dwellers make no effort whatsoever to hide the stuff. Understandably so. If the police were ever to raid the place, you would have to find some very capable cops to scale the mountain and have enough air left to comb through the property. You would be out of breath by the time you will have read out the warrant.
Some of the plants stand unabashedly next to the shrine, the necks carrying their thick wooly buds facing the gorgeous Kathmandu Valley. It's clear these plants are ready for harvesting. I doubt very much that they were intended to feed the goats in the yard.
A few runners, Nepalis who will smoke this stuff like we drink coffee, duly line up and purchase a few bags from the old farmer, who is grateful for their business. The Hashers. So maybe nomen est omen, after all. The drinkers have become the ‘stoners with a running problem’.
And yet, this post deals with an entirely different kind of grass.
After another mountain run in the country weeks ago, where the Hash House Harriers performed their weekly routines of stumbling and tripping through grass, rock, and rice paddy, we found a dried up creek that we followed straight up a mountain. The hash marks every hundred feet or so confirmed that this was also where the hares, the organizers of the trail, had intended to lead us.
The higher you go in altitude, the fewer inhabitants you will usually find. I have seen that people can manage perfectly well in higher altitudes. I have been to Berber villages in Morocco where people have survived without any serious prospect of electricity or running water, and have done so for millennia. Obviously, people in capitals like La Paz seem to manage quite well in such environments.
Altitude can cut both ways, though. I have still experienced breathing difficulties off and on here, and we are not even a mile up. There is a good reason the human population dwindles with the altitude. And, ask any mountain climber, so do most human activities. I recall the article describing a couple of knuckleheads who had been killed during a ’mountain marathon’ of the Zugspitze, Germany’s highest mountain. I understand that there is a marathon here leading from the Mount Everest base camp, about 5000 meters high.
In Nepal, as in other countries, the possibilities for people living in higher altitudes diminish greatly with each foot. People will make a living from whatever they can scratch out of the earth. Further up the mountain, the hashers discover one extremely valuable crop.
Shrines are erected everywhere, in any environment in Nepal. The small pagodas might jump at you when you least suspect them, which is what happens before one of our check stops. Depending on degree of fatigue, it varies on what we do when we come across them. After a long mountain run (going uphill, no less), we pass this shrine on a path that reveals an unexpectedly stunning garden. The colors of the flowers are crisp, so obviously not wanting for rain. Good, the gardening leaves a little to be desired. Here and there bushes are not chopped or cropped properly by western standards, but there are few vermin and weeds.
A British runner is the first to sight the seven leaf cannabis plants. People reply with a knowing chuckle. This plant is very small, the kind you would recognize from any average head shop selling stoners’ t-shirts. Yet the more we look, the more potent the plants become. Few vermin yes, but I stand corrected on the weed. It is everywhere. The mountain dwellers make no effort whatsoever to hide the stuff. Understandably so. If the police were ever to raid the place, you would have to find some very capable cops to scale the mountain and have enough air left to comb through the property. You would be out of breath by the time you will have read out the warrant.
Some of the plants stand unabashedly next to the shrine, the necks carrying their thick wooly buds facing the gorgeous Kathmandu Valley. It's clear these plants are ready for harvesting. I doubt very much that they were intended to feed the goats in the yard.
A few runners, Nepalis who will smoke this stuff like we drink coffee, duly line up and purchase a few bags from the old farmer, who is grateful for their business. The Hashers. So maybe nomen est omen, after all. The drinkers have become the ‘stoners with a running problem’.
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