Barfi, and the Grey Lake

Up the Rolwaling to a lake the colour of cement at 4,550 m: three friends, an architect and his dog met on the trail on the first afternoon, and a lodge at Beding kept by a man who has been up Sagarmatha fifteen times.

By Ujjwol Kayastha · October 30 – November 3, 2023 · Dolakha

The Rolwaling only runs one way, east and up, and for two days it does not let you see where it is going. You walk a river in a trench of forest, then above the forest, then past the last village, and the valley keeps its ending to itself until the morning you come over the moraine and there it is: a long sheet of flat grey water at four and a half thousand metres, held in by a bank of loose rock, with a glacier feeding it at the far end. Four of us walked up to it and back. On the first afternoon, above Samdar, we fell in with Nripal dai, an architect going the same way, and with his white dog Barfi, who from that hour on walked with us as though the arrangement had been his idea. Higher up we slept in Beding, in a lodge that belongs to Phurba dai, who has stood on top of Sagarmatha fifteen times.

metres at Dudh Kunda: 4,592
best friends: 3
at the water: 08:17
dog, the whole way: 1

Up the valley, and Barfi falls in (Day 01 · Oct 30)

DONGANG → THEMLUNG → THANGDINGMA → SAMDAR → BEDING

09:56 above Dongang
12:07 Themlung
12:32 the iron bridge
13:10 Thang Dingma
15:16 Samdar
16:19 Barfi
17:29 Beding

The first frame of the whole trip is at 09:56, above Dongang, and it is a river: milky blue, loud, running through a trench of forest with the valley walls going up on both sides further than the photograph can hold. Two thousand seven hundred and eighty metres. Below us, unphotographed, are the stages up from the road: Simigaun at 2,020, Surmuche at 2,480, Kyalje at 2,740. Above us the trail stays on the north bank and climbs all day, not steeply, just constantly, the way a valley climbs when it is going somewhere specific.

A milky blue river running over boulders between steep forested walls — The river, and the only direction there is · 09:56

Walkers on a stone path with a sharp snow peak at the head of the valley — The first white thing · 10:10

In through the trees, one behind the other · 10:20

The Gaurishankar conservation people have put a signboard at every settlement, blue frame, black face, yellow letters, each one carrying an altitude and two distances in kilometres and hours. Themlung, 3,090 metres, at 12:07. The phone says 3,083, which is close enough to be reassuring about both of them. Thang Dingma at ten past one, a stone lodge and a tin roof. Samdar at 15:16: 3,475 metres on the board, Beding 3.22 kilometres away, two hours.

A signboard reading Themlung 3090 m with arrows to Dongang and Thang Dingma — Themlung, 3,090 on the board · 12:07

A signboard reading Samdar alt 3475 m with distances — Samdar, and two hours to go · 15:16

An hour above Samdar, at 3,623 metres, a white dog appears on a wall above the trail. He is nobody's stray: there is a collar, the coat is too good, and he has a person on this trail. That is Nripal dai, an architect walking the same valley the same week, and the dog is Barfi. From that hour the two of them are simply with us, and Barfi in particular behaves as though he has been given the job of holding the line together, trotting between the boots on the flat bits, ahead when the trail is clear and behind when it is interesting.

A white dog with a collar sitting on a rock beside a trail — Barfi, off a wall above the trail · 16:19

In between the boots, keeping pace · 16:00

Barfi has a collar, a name and a person of his own. He spent the rest of the week walking as though he had been put in charge of the rest of us. Above Samdar, 16:19

Beding at half past five, 3,716 metres, and the valley has gone in behind mist, so the village arrives as a yellow sign on a pole, a line of stone walls and a few roofs below the trail. It is cold in the way that the first properly high night always is, which is to say it is cold indoors as well.

A stone house among tall conifers in flat grey light — The cloud, coming up behind · 16:56

A sign reading Welcome to Beding with mist over the village below — Beding, in most of the mist · 17:29

Beding to Na, and the board that says 4.4 km (Day 02 · Oct 31)

BEDING → THE GATE → NA

08:55 out of Beding
10:26 above the trees
11:20 the stone steps
12:03 the gate
12:54 Na
14:52 chairs, sun, nothing

Morning does the thing that makes these valleys worth the walking in: everything the mist took yesterday is handed back at once. A rock and snow peak straight above the village, a sky with nothing in it, the river a pale braid down the middle of the floor and the sun arriving over the ridge an hour later than sunrise, which is normal here and still feels like a delay.

A sharp snow and rock peak under a cloudless sky — What the mist had been hiding · 08:55

Sun rising over a ridge above a braided river — Sun over the gorge, an hour late · 08:59

It is only six kilometres to Na and about four hundred and fifty metres of climb, which sounds like a morning off and is not, because it all happens above 3,700 metres. The trees stop, and then the valley opens the way high valleys do, flat-floored and enormous, the walls stepping back and the peaks coming up over them. Somebody has laid stone steps into the steep bits, by hand, at four thousand metres.

A trekker walking into a broad U-shaped valley — Above the trees the valley opens · 10:26

Rough stone steps climbing a dry hillside — Built by hand, at four thousand metres · 11:20

At 12:03 there is a painted gate standing on its own in the grass with a prayer wheel set into it, no wall on either side, nothing to keep anybody out. You walk through it because walking around it would be strange. Fifty minutes later the track runs in between dry stone walls and there is the sign: Welcome to Na, and behind it the board with the numbers on it. Na, 4,185 metres. Beding six kilometres back. Tsho Rolpa, 4.4 kilometres, two hours.

A painted Buddhist gateway with a prayer wheel beside a trail — A gate with nothing on either side of it · 12:03

A signboard reading Na alt 4185 m with arrows to Beding and Tsho-Rolpa — Tsho Rolpa: 4.4 km, two hours · 12:57

Then the best part of any acclimatisation day, which is that there is nothing to do. Camp chairs out against the red wall of the lodge, boots off, Barfi flat on the ground in the middle of everybody, the sun hard, the air thin and cold in the shade, and four hours to get used to breathing. We walk twenty minutes up behind the village to 4,214 metres because you are supposed to, and then come back and sit down again.

Four trekkers on camp chairs outside a red lodge with a white dog — Chairs, wall, Barfi, afternoon · 14:52

A person sitting on dry grass with a white dog leaning on them — Still with us, a day on · 14:17

Tsho Rolpa, and then Dudh Kunda (Day 03 · Nov 1)

NA → TSHO ROLPA → DUDH KUNDA → NA → BEDING

07:17 4,346 m, still blue
08:17 the water
11:12 Dudh Kunda
13:28 the bridge
16:02 Na again
17:14 Beding

Out of Na in the dark and cold. At 07:17 the phone reads 4,346 metres and the photograph is entirely blue: blue snow, blue rock, one seam of orange on a summit a long way off. Nobody says much on that stretch. It is the hour when the whole thing is either going to work or not.

A cold blue high valley at dawn with snow peaks catching first light — 4,346 m, and the valley still blue · 07:17

It works at 08:17. You come up the last of the moraine expecting more valley and instead the ground stops and there is water, flat and enormous and the colour of wet cement, running away up-valley between black walls with a glacier tipping into the far end of it. Four thousand five hundred and fifty metres. The flag comes out of somebody's pack and goes up on a stick at the edge, and at 08:22 all five of us are on a boulder with it, which is not a subtle photograph and is not trying to be.

A person holding a Nepal flag at the edge of a large grey glacial lake — The flag goes up at the water · 08:17

Five trekkers with a Nepal flag beside a grey lake with a glacier behind — All of us, 4,558 m · 08:22

The ground stops, and there is water where the valley should have been, flat to the end of the sight line. Tsho Rolpa, 08:17

We stay a long time, which is the part I did not expect: we had been walking towards this thing for days and there was no hurry at all to look at it and leave. Then north and up again, because there is a second lake above the first one. Dudh Kunda, 4,592 metres on the itinerary and 4,707 on a phone that has been rounding up all week, and it is nothing like the big one: small, pale green, shallow enough to read the stones through it, with prayer flags strung over the water and a tarp shelter on the bank. The weather arrives while we are up there, flat and grey, and takes the sky away. The flag comes out again anyway.

A person with a Nepal flag beside a small pale green lake with prayer flags above it — Dudh Kunda, and the flag out again · 11:17

A trekker in a hooded down jacket with prayer flags and a small pale lake behind — The weather, arriving with us · 11:12

Then the whole day backwards, which nobody photographs properly and everybody remembers: down off the moraine, over the new steel bridge in the boulder field, past Na at four in the afternoon, and into Beding at quarter past five with the last ten minutes of sun sitting on the tops and nothing on the valley floor at all. Ten hours between the first photograph and the last. Barfi did all of it too, and spent most of it in front.

A person on a galvanised steel footbridge over a boulder field — The new bridge, the old boulders · 13:28

A white dog sitting on a rocky trail waiting — Barfi, ahead again · 16:02

The last of the light, going up and off · 17:17

All the way down to the trees (Day 04 · Nov 2)

BEDING → DONGANG → SURMUCHE

07:19 moon over Beding
08:48 the group photograph
11:25 the bridge, in sun
12:40 Dongang
15:13 green again
17:50 ludo

Beding at 07:19 with a half moon still up over the carved window frames, and the cold of a village that will not get sun for another two hours. At 08:48 everybody lines up outside the lodge for the photograph, Phurba dai included, whose lodge it is and who has been to the top of Sagarmatha fifteen times: six of us, packs on, poles out, and Barfi sitting in front of the whole group like he had been on the permit.

A stone lodge with carved windows and a half moon above — Beding, 07:19, moon still up · 07:19

A group of six posed outside a lodge with a white dog in front — Everybody, and Barfi · 08:48

Then twelve hundred metres of down in a day, which is its own kind of work. The bridge we crossed in the shade on the way up is in full sun going back. The forest starts again somewhere around three thousand and it is a physical relief, like a window being opened: smells, birds, warm air, colour. Dongang at 12:40, 2,793 metres, washing hung out along the lodge railing for the one hour the sun reaches the valley floor.

A steel footbridge over a river in a wooded gorge in full sun — The same bridge, going the other way · 11:25

Laundry hung along a lodge railing with prayer flags and forest — One hour of sun, used properly · 12:49

A white dog walking ahead down a stone trail through autumn trees — In front all day, and never checking · 14:40

We stop for the night at Surmuche, 2,480 metres on the itinerary and 2,498 on the phone, a village of wooden houses and terraces above the river, and the lodge has a ludo board on the dining table and a child of about four in a red fleece who owns it. She leans across the board on her elbows, moves a counter with one finger, and looks up to check that the room has understood what has happened. A man sits down opposite and plays a few turns with a completely straight face. She is delighted with herself, and the whole dining room is in on it.

A small child in a red fleece pressing a counter on a ludo board — The champion, mid-move · 17:50

A small child in a red fleece smiling over a ludo board — Winning, and wanting you to know · 17:50

The road, and the goodbye (Day 05 · Nov 3)

SURMUCHE → THE BRIDGE → THE ROAD → DOLAKHA → THE RIVER

08:39 the bridge, 1,990 m
13:31 the road, 1,279 m
16:28 Dolakha
22:28 the river, 646 m

Last morning on foot, and it is all descent: down through terraces and thinning forest and then the long suspension bridge over the gorge at 1,990 metres, where Barfi is already lying at the entrance waiting for us, because of course he is.

A white dog lying at the entrance to a suspension bridge above a gorge — Waiting at the bridge, of course · 08:39

Stone steps, and blue roofs at the bottom · 11:03

The road is at 1,279 metres and it arrives as noise: jeeps, a shop, motorbikes parked in the dust, people who have not walked anywhere. The last photograph with him in it is taken there at 13:31, everybody squeezed into the frame, Barfi standing in the middle of us looking at something off to the left. Then the goodbyes, to Nripal dai and to his dog, and we get into a vehicle and they do not. Four days of walking with somebody else's dog, and no way to thank a dog that a dog would recognise.

A group selfie at a roadhead with a white dog among the people — The last one with him in it · 13:31

Barfi walked four days with us and then we got into a jeep and he went home with his own person. That is the ending, and it is the one that happened. The road, 13:31

Down the highway in the afternoon, dust and switchbacks, and a stop at Dolakha at half past four to stand at the temple gate with the brass pillar over it and come away holding prasad. By half past ten we are at a riverside place at six hundred and forty-six metres with lights strung along the roof and through the trees, sitting outside in shirtsleeves at an altitude where that is possible, nobody in a hurry to go to bed.

Four travellers at a brick temple gateway with a brass pillar — Dolakha, and prasad in hand · 16:28

A riverside restaurant strung with lights at night with a paved terrace in front — Six hundred and forty-six metres, and lights · 22:28

Two lakes, and the numbers hold up: 2,780 metres on the first morning above Dongang, 4,550 at the water, 4,592 at Dudh Kunda above it, 1,279 at the road. What I actually think about is none of those. It is three friends, a dining room at Beding belonging to a man who has been to the top of Sagarmatha fifteen times, an architect met at four in the afternoon on a hillside, and his dog Barfi on a wall above Samdar at 16:19, deciding we would do.

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