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KATHMANDU, JANUARY 31
Mountains are an amazing place to live in, but they have no empathy for our walking difficulty, whether we climb them up or down. Live in a mountainous country like Nepal and ascent, or ukalo, becomes a household word and an everyday activity.
Whether you walk out of your kitchen to collect some coriander from your garden, work in a cardamom farming a few kilometres away, or your tap runs dry because a herd of water buffalos walked across the upper hillside springs and damaged the water conduit, and you need to fix it - walking uphill becomes just inevitable.
Now, the flip side of the mountain saga: live in a mountainous country, and descent, or oralo, is a household word and an everyday activity, too. It goes without saying: if you climb up a mountain, you have to climb it down to get back home.
Late into the night, you may get a call from your affable acquaintance living in a lower valley, feeling a tad under the weather and he would like you to reel off some mantras to chase away his ailment; you may not exactly feel like wishing the situation away: rather, you take up a sleepy downward walk to offer him some solace and climb the trail back home.
Actually, humans are pretty good climbers, if not as agile as other primates like tarsiers, lemurs and monkeys. Still, they can manage to climb a giant sequoia, a giant grass, a rock at Jomsom and even the lofty Himalayas.
Climbing the Eiffel Tower, Swoyambhunath hill or a Shanghai skyscraper is just a cakewalk.
Interestingly, see a modern-day doc at a 20th floor of an eerie-looking modern hospital - because you have a scathing pain around your kneecap - and she will still recommend you to climb the scary staircase all the way up to her clinic - that she opts to take a lift is a different story - so that you can supposedly burn some fat on your pot belly, which, in turn, would exert less pressure on your knees.
Nowadays, walk up to the terrasse of any high-rise in Kathmandu, and a queer thought may cross your mind: even houses seem to be hastily climbing up the green hills around the city. The once emerald valley is transformed into a chaotic jumble of ugly concrete structures. Now, it's not only primates - humans, tarsiers, lemurs and monkeys - but even these 'inanimate' structures seem to be in a rat race: let me reach Phulchowki hilltop or the ridges of Nagarjun hills first!"
Now, a queer prayer may cross your mind: green, beautiful and towering mountains!
Just give a cold shoulder to the gatecrashers!
A version of this article appears in the print on February 1, 2022, of The Himalayan Times.
