Grandma’s gone to Kathmandu

By Olive Surtees

There was political turbulence in Nepal in the spring of 2004; episodic bombings and strikes in Kathmandu and marauding Maoist guerrillas kidnapping in remote Himalayan regions. However, it was reassuring to learn that there was little interest in capturing white-haired old English women. There’s something exhilarating when setting out into unknown territory in your seventies. More so when the journey is tinged with dangerous element, the unexpected and the realisation that this was an experience of a lifetime.

With my two young sixty year old friends and the 100 years of experience between us we set off in an old bus alongside a small team of Nepalese outreach workers heading up into the Kathmandu valley along the rocky road to Tibet. We circumnavigated boulders ruts and craters while gazing in awe at deep ravines (no barriers), cultivated hillsides and lonely dwellings. Fearlessly we climbed higher and higher, our sense of humour forever present but with an occasional rendering of ‘Nearer my God to Thee’, assuring each other that we had made our wills before departure.

We left our truck and covered the final lap on foot. Along the dusty track we passed smiling potato pickers and barefooted children until we reached a colourful community awaiting our arrival. Thin bronzed old women sitting cross-legged in the dust, children with an expectant gaze interspersed with goats and hens. All were awaiting a miracle – but we don’t do miracles – we never have.

We found a hatchet and some bamboo poles, rigged them up between some posts and set a four year old on his way to walking. A young girl sitting with her back to a house wall surrounded by clucking hens, tormented by a younger brother and unable to defend herself couldn’t drink unaided from a cup. We upended and utilised an old waste paper basket until her dad found time to make a wooden box. Two of his mates, looking on, remarked; He’s a marvel that dad. If we’d had one like that we’d have left her on the mountain at birth.” 

We’re off to Lebanon in autumn.