Towards Mera Peak: Kathmandu to Kharikhola
Kathmandu greets each hour like a host welcoming guests. The city’s moods are woven from incense smoke that curls between temple stones and fine dust that settles on everything like old blessings. Motorbikes roar past whilst prayer wheels turn with whispered prayers from centuries past, their brass surfaces catching pieces of morning light. This is a city full of contrasts, decorated with stupas that have survived monsoons and empires, their white domes rising above narrow streets where steaming dumplings (momos) escape from kitchen windows in aromatic clouds.
Hindu and Buddhist gods share the same weathered walls here, their painted eyes watching over festivals that blur the lines between different faiths. From the red-tiled rooftops of Patan, where craftsmen still hammer copper as their grandfathers did, to the magnificent chaos of local markets where voices bargain in many languages whilst marigold garlands hang like golden prayers, Kathmandu whispers its secrets in colours that have no English names.
But hidden in Thamel’s quieter corners, beyond the bright neon lights of bars and the cheerful chaos of backpacker hostels, I had found something precious: a pocket of peace in the storm.
On 1st March 2025, I found myself once again at the Agantuk Hotel, tucked into Thamel’s northeastern corner like a favourite hiding place in a busy neighbourhood. The Agantuk had become my sanctuary in Kathmandu, a place you return to not for something new, but for the comfort of the familiar. It had that rarest of Thamel treasures: real quiet. Not the dead silence of empty places, but the living hush of a place that understood the value of peace.
Here, the noise of bars and late-night parties from central Thamel faded to a distant murmur, softened by brick walls and the gentle rustling of trees that had somehow survived the city’s growth.
The hotel had that special quality of quiet excellence. The rooms were clean without being cold, comfortable without showing off, each showing signs of real care rather than just efficiency. What made the Agantuk special was its location: just a short walk from the essential shops that every serious traveller needs. The outdoor gear shops lined the nearby streets like treasure caves for mountaineers, their windows displaying ice axes and down jackets with the respect that master craftsmen show their finest work.
But it was the service that transformed a good hotel into a beloved refuge. The young Nepali staff moved through their work with a grace that would impress even the most demanding traveller. Kapil, in particular, stood out for his exceptional customer service. They had that rare combination of professionalism and genuine warmth, taking care of your needs without fuss, answering questions with the patient courtesy of teachers, and somehow managing to know what you needed before you asked. Their politeness wasn’t the manufactured kind of big hotel chains, but something rooted in the Himalayan tradition of treating guests as blessings rather than burdens.
In this corner of Thamel, you could hear the spaces between sounds: the pause between footsteps on cobblestones, the breath between temple bells, the brief silence when even the city’s endless conversation with itself fell still. It was here, in this unlikely sanctuary, that I prepared myself for the road that called northward, toward peaks that had no patience for the unprepared, and valleys where silence held a different meaning altogether.
Pema Dai and I arranged to meet at half past three in the morning. I lay in my narrow bed, listening to the pre-dawn rain’s gentle tapping against the windows, that soft drumming which sounded like fingers tapping secrets against glass. My mind went over the days ahead, turning over routes and possibilities like worry beads through anxious fingers. The previous evening, around half past two, Kathmandu had shaken with a mild earthquake measuring 5.5 on the Richter scale, a tremor that pulled me from sleep with the uncomfortable reminder of how fragile our solid ground really is.
This was my second encounter with the earth’s restlessness, and though the earthquake passed as quickly as a held breath, it left behind something more disturbing than its brief violence: a strange stillness that seemed to settle into the very walls, a quiet that lingered long after the last vibration had died away. It served as a gentle but serious reminder about the illusion of solid ground beneath our feet.
The young man working the night desk called my room with polite care, telling me that my guide had arrived right on time at three o’clock. I was ready, my rucksack packed with the careful attention of someone who has learnt that forgotten essentials become mountain-sized regrets, my boots standing guard by the door. Yet I found myself lingering over my coffee, letting its warmth settle into my bones like liquid courage before the long journey ahead.
A soft knock interrupted my thoughts, and I opened the door to find Pema Dai standing in the hallway, calm and unhurried despite the early hour. Rain droplets clung to his weathered jacket like tiny crystal medals, and his familiar smile carried that particular peace that belongs to those who have made friends with high places and thin air.
We loaded my gear into the waiting jeep and settled in for what we thought would be an immediate departure. But Kathmandu, that grand director of delays and unexpected turns, had planned a different morning entirely. Our driver, a methodical man still working through his dawn schedule, began a three-hour journey through the city’s sleeping neighbourhoods, turning our vehicle into a collection point for people bound for distant mountain villages: Phaplu, Salleri, and the scattered settlements that dot the Solukhumbu region like prayer flags against the sky.
I found myself in the front seat, a position of modest honour that Pema Dai had thoughtfully secured for me. As we threaded through Kathmandu’s drowsy streets, fellow travellers joined our quiet procession: weathered men wrapped in hand-knitted jackets, women wrapped in woollen shawls, their eyes still heavy with interrupted sleep. There was something ceremonial in how they carried themselves, these companions who might well be Tibetan Nepalis making their way home after Losar, the Tibetan New Year having blessed the previous day with its ancient ceremonies.
Many held pristine white khadas (ceremonial scarves) against their chests like folded prayers, alongside humble cloth bags heavy with oranges and apples, modest offerings for family shrines and ancestral altars. We didn’t disturb the morning’s sacredness with idle talk but instead honoured a respectful hush that turned our jeep into something like a moving chapel. Each passenger seemed to carry something infinitely precious and unspoken, as though we had all become guardians of individual prayers wrapped in the silk of silence.
Then, as if summoned by some mischievous mountain spirit, the stereo burst into life with the most gloriously shameless enthusiasm. The volume was nothing short of heroic, a sound assault that would make opera singers weep with envy. Ancient Nepali melodies and folk songs poured from the speakers with such joy that the jeep itself seemed to have found its voice and decided to serenade the sleeping city. It was four o’clock in the morning, darkness still ruling the streets, yet the rhythmic heartbeat of a madal drum turned our slow procession through Kathmandu’s awakening arteries into something like a musical parade, though one conducted entirely within our metal carriage.
At six in the morning, we finally began to leave the city. The sky remained low and grey, the rain now soft but steady, beading against the windows as we pulled away from the concrete sprawl. The streets were slick and nearly empty. Dogs huddled under awnings, their coats darkened and matted. Shop shutters remained closed, their bright signs dulled by the weather’s veil. It felt as though Kathmandu had paused for breath, perhaps mildly offended that we were leaving before it could put on its morning face.
There is an old Nepali word, ‘aalingana’, meaning both embrace and farewell, the moment when holding close becomes letting go. I thought of this as the city’s edges began their slow retreat, each familiar corner becoming memory even as it slipped past the rain-streaked glass. How strange that departure should feel so much like drowning in reverse, the known world pulling away rather than closing over one’s head.
The driver’s hands, I noticed, showed the geography of a life spent navigating these streets: calluses mapped like contour lines across his palms, each ridge a testament to ten thousand mornings just like this one. He hummed a tune that seemed to come from the very bones of the valley, something his grandfather might have hummed, or his grandfather’s grandfather, a melody that had learnt to bend with the curves of these same roads when they were merely tracks worn by traders and pilgrims.
We passed through what the old maps called Pashupati’s Gate (though no gate stands there now, only a roundabout where plastic bags spiral upward in the air currents like prayers made visible). The name fascinates me: pashu meaning creature, pati meaning lord, the lord of all creatures watching over this threshold between the sacred city and the world beyond. Even in our steel vehicle, trailing exhaust rather than incense, we were participating in a ritual as old as the first human who looked back over their shoulder at what they were leaving behind.
As we climbed towards the rim of the basin, I found myself thinking about how this valley held the accumulated dreams of centuries: the merchant who first glimpsed these peaks from the Indian plains, the craftsman who carved devotion into temple stones, the child who learnt to walk on these same uneven pavements. Each departure added another layer to the sediment of memory that gives a place its weight in the world.
The mountains remained invisible, but their presence was absolute: a gravitational pull felt in the inner ear, in the way conversations seemed to echo back from some vast, unseen amphitheatre. I understood, suddenly, why the Sherpa speak of mountains as yul-lha (country gods), beings with intention and memory. To live in their shadow is to accept that your own story is merely a single page in a much larger book.
The road curved and climbed, and with each turn, the city reformed itself into new configurations of meaning. I realised that distance is not only about how far you travel but also about how it changes the way you feel about a place. The farther I went the more my familiar world began to feel strange as though I was looking at it through the wrong end of a telescope still there but smaller and less immediate.
Perhaps this is what real journeys do. They teach us to look at ourselves and our homes as if we were strangers to see that even the places we hold closest are really just temporary collections of stones, memories, and stories.
We reached Bakunde Besi just as the sun was rising behind a curtain of mist. There, in a small roadside café, we stopped for breakfast. I had two puris, two boiled eggs, a generous serving of chickpeas, and some sweet tea that warmed my hands and chest alike. The café was humble: a few benches, a fire smoking gently in the back, and a radio murmuring somewhere inside. Outside, the road was blocked by a landslide, and traffic had begun to pile up. Drivers stepped out, lighting cigarettes and folding their arms, waiting with a kind of mountain patience that city dwellers would mistake for indifference. For us, it was the perfect excuse to stretch our legs and linger with our food, unhurried by the usual ticking clock.
Bakunde Besi: the name itself carries the sound of water over stones, of something essential being worn smooth by time. In the old trading language, bakunde meant “bent place,” where the valley curves and the river changes its mind. Besi, of course, is simply “place,” but in the way that all truly important places are simply places until they become repositories of a thousand small human moments.
The landslide had torn a fresh scar across the hillside, exposing the mountain’s red earth like a wound that hadn’t yet learnt to be ashamed of itself. But already, I could see green shoots emerging from the disturbed soil, life reasserting itself with the quiet determination that characterises all things that have learnt to survive in vertical places. The drivers’ acceptance of this interruption spoke of a deeper understanding: mountains give and take according to their own calendar, and human impatience is just another form of weather that eventually passes.
There was something deeply civilising about sharing breakfast with strangers united by nothing more than a common obstacle. The café owner, a woman whose face held the serenity of those who have learnt to read the moods of stone and sky, moved between her guests with the unhurried grace of someone who understood that hospitality is not a service but a form of prayer.
Once the road cleared, we pressed on. As we drove further towards Manthali, the destruction of the roads became starkly clear. In October, the region had suffered from severe flooding. The force of water had twisted entire hillsides, torn away bridges, and shattered sections of the highway as if they were brittle clay. Whole stretches of road were missing, replaced by muddy detours carved hastily through farmland and forest. We passed lorries balanced uneasily on narrow ridges of gravel, tyres half-sunken in mud. Occasionally, we crept over makeshift crossings of wood and stone, where the original road had simply vanished into the river below.
The drive became a slow negotiation with chaos: one moment bouncing over boulders, the next hugging a cliffside with no railing, the valley yawning below like a mouth waiting to swallow the reckless. Still, our driver pressed on, unflinching, as though he and the road shared a private understanding of survival.
Here was infrastructure revealed for what it truly is: not permanent conquest of landscape but temporary negotiation with forces far larger than human ambition. The October floods had been what meteorologists called a “thousand-year event,” though such events seemed to be arriving more frequently, as if the planet itself were speeding towards some appointment we couldn’t yet understand.
What struck me most was not the destruction itself but the speed with which life had adapted to it. Already, new footpaths were emerging along the edges of the damage, worn smooth by the feet of those who understood that roads are only one way of getting from here to there.
Nevertheless, I was amazed by the beauty and serenity of the region. The hills rolled endlessly into the horizon, draped in soft mist and framed by occasional terraces of mustard blooms and barley. I stared outside, wide-eyed like a pilgrim on his first journey, trying to soak in every turn and every view. My GoPro stayed busy, humming along with the music as I captured the shifting landscapes, determined to preserve the poetry of that day for the quiet evenings that would follow.
There is something strange about beauty emerging most vividly in the aftermath of destruction. Perhaps it requires the shock of seeing how quickly the solid world can become liquid for us to truly notice what remains: the way morning light catches in the mist between hills, the geometric precision of terraces that have survived a hundred floods, the defiant yellow of mustard flowers blooming in fields that were, just months ago, buried beneath torrents of mud and stone.
The mustard fields had a particular kind of courage, I thought, blooming with such abandon despite knowing their stay was temporary. These golden carpets spread across the hillsides represented landscape as an act of faith, agriculture as prayer made visible, each bloom a small declaration that life would continue regardless of what next October might bring.
At Khurkot, we stopped for lunch, this time at Fikkel Hotel, a modest, unpretentious spot that served piping hot dal bhat with a side of quiet. The rice was soft, the lentils rich, and the vegetables just enough to fill the belly without weighing it down. Outside, the sky had fully opened. The sun shone over fields and roofs, glinting off wet stone and metal, transforming the road into a path of gold and amber.
There is something deeply satisfying about eating well in a place that makes no claims to grandeur. The dal bhat arrived without ceremony: rice like small pearls of contentment, lentils that had absorbed not just spices but the patient attention of someone who understood that feeding strangers is a form of sacred work.
The road after Khurkot began to climb with more purpose, winding through a series of switchbacks that tilted and turned like a mountain serpent. Though the road was intact and manageable, its twists and turns revealed new elevation with every bend. There was no rain now, only blue skies broken occasionally by patches of grey. The sun danced through the clouds, casting moving shadows over the hills. As we gained height, the views widened. The green folds of the foothills gave way to distant glimpses of snow-capped giants: the Himalayas standing sentinel, far beyond but drawing closer with every bend.
It reminded me of my childhood in the Kumaon region of Uttar Pradesh, where I had studied at St Joseph’s College in Nainital. The curves of the road, the scent of pine and earth, even the way the light shifted across the valley: all of it stirred something long dormant. A quiet joy rose in me, as though memory and landscape had finally met again.
There is a particular quality to recognition that goes beyond simple remembering. The Kumaon hills had planted seeds of mountain knowledge in me decades ago, seeds that had lain dormant through years of city living, waiting for just such a moment to bloom into understanding. The scent of pine needles warming in afternoon sun, the way distant peaks seemed to float rather than stand, the particular blue of high-altitude sky: these were elements of a language I had learnt young and never quite forgotten.
We had been on the road for nine hours. My stomach was still full from the dal bhat at Khurkot and, despite the rhythmic motion of the jeep, I couldn’t quite fall asleep. I was sleepy, yes, but the rather loud Nepali music, none of which I could understand, kept me wide-eyed. Nepali folk music has a flavour all its own: earthy, high-pitched, often accompanied by traditional instruments. It takes time to grow accustomed to it, especially for those unfamiliar with its rhythms and tonal scales. At first, the melodies can seem insistent and repetitive, but over time, they begin to feel like part of the road itself, as if the hills are humming along.
As we climbed higher and higher, the outlines of the Himalayas began to emerge, majestic and distant, rising above the green folds of the hills. My heart rejoiced within me. There was a childlike joy in my chest, a happiness that needed no explanation. I stared at the peaks, mesmerised, the camera in my hands forgotten. This was why I had come. This was where my spirit remembered how to lift its head and smile.
By late afternoon, we reached Salleri. We had been on the road for eleven hours, though I had been seated in the jeep since half past three in the morning: nearly fourteen hours in total. As we pulled into the village, a new kind of cold greeted us: not the damp, heavy chill of the lowlands, but a crisp, alpine sharpness that bit at the cheeks and nose. The sun hung low in the sky, casting long shadows across the stone-paved streets, and the air was filled with the scent of pine needles, woodsmoke, and freshly turned earth.
This was altitude made real: not just thin air but a different quality of presence altogether. Cold at this elevation carries information, speaking of snow on distant peaks, of nights when breath becomes visible, of the closeness to places where human life exists only as temporary visitor rather than permanent resident.
This village has long been an important stop for travellers heading north toward Everest and Mera, and for the Sherpa and Rai people who live here, it is a place of both tradition and daily life. As we drove through, I saw women in wool shawls selling vegetables by the roadside, children laughing and running along stone walls, and old men drinking tea under roof edges, their faces marked with the lines of many stories. Smoke rose from chimneys, prayer flags moved in the evening breeze, and the gentle sounds of life echoed between the houses. Everything felt slower, more settled, as though the village itself moved to the rhythm of mountain time. It was both a place to pass through and a place to rest, a reminder that even when traveling, you can arrive somewhere that matters.
The village appeared from the mist with a quiet welcome. Its stone paths were wet with rain. The air smelled of pine and wood smoke. Prayer flags flapped gently across rooftops, their colors faded but still bright, like hope that refuses to disappear. Somewhere above us, a monastery bell rang.
It was here that everyone got off the jeep. A couple that had traveled with me from Kathmandu were going home to Phaplu, a small village about seven kilometers further uphill from Salleri. The road between the two is not paved but made of gravel, narrow and winding, often impossible to drive after sunset. With no jeeps available at this late hour, they would have to spend the night in Salleri.
I met another woman in the jeep who was traveling to Thame, the birthplace of Tenzing Norgay. Her face showed both determination and tiredness. She told me how just months earlier, Thame had suffered a disaster: a mountain lake had burst, washing away homes and changing the shape of the valley. The names of these villages, known to me only through books and history, had now become real people, faces, voices sharing a ride through the mountains.
Somewhere above us, a monastery bell rang. We had arrived.
The seventeen kilometres to Kharikhola stretched before us like a lesson in how distance works differently in mountains. Here, in this vertical world, space transforms into time, geography into endurance. The mountains have their own way of measuring, written not in the clean numbers of the odometer but in the more honest language of grinding gears and aching spines, in the patient accumulation of switchbacks that climb and descend with the irregular heartbeat of terrain that refuses to be tamed.
This time there would be no music to ease the journey between human comfort and geological indifference. Instead, Pema Dai and his companion settled into conversation in what I took to be Sherpa or Tibetan, languages whose rises and falls seemed to echo the very contours we were crossing. I understood nothing of their words, yet their rhythms worked on me like a half-remembered lullaby, the kind that mothers might sing to children travelling through uncertain territories.
We moved at fifteen kilometres per hour, a speed that in the flatlands would suggest mechanical failure but here represented a kind of automotive wisdom, the speed at which you converse with cliffs rather than challenging them. Within thirty minutes, night had claimed the landscape entirely, transforming our journey into something more like deep-sea exploration than land travel.
At nine o’clock, when the night had reached that depth where time seems to pool rather than flow, we arrived at Kharikhola. The village announced itself not through any fanfare but through the simple stopping of motion, the sudden stillness that follows mechanical prayer answered.
Pema Dai led me through the darkness towards his home, a modest structure that seemed to have grown from the hillside itself, part geology, part architecture, wholly appropriate to its steep context. This would be my first night within a Sherpa household, and as we approached through the mountain air thick with pine resin and wood smoke, I felt the particular anticipation that comes with crossing thresholds between worlds.
But as Pema Dai guided me towards my room, he shared something that transformed the evening’s simple arrival into something more complex and profound. This house, he told me, had been destroyed in the earthquake of 2015, that geological punctuation mark that had rewritten so many Nepali stories in minutes. What surrounded us now represented not just shelter but an act of resurrection, each timber and stone chosen not just for structural strength but as declarations of human persistence against planetary indifference.
The house had what I can only call an unfinished grace, walls that still showed the grain of recently cut timber, corners where shadows pooled in spaces between intention and completion. Yet it stood with absolute solidity, rooted in bedrock and resolve equally. There was something deeply moving about its incomplete perfection, the way it showed that sanctuary need not be finished to be real, that home exists as much in the act of creating as in the achievement of completion.
As I settled onto the floor of my small room, the wooden boards beneath me felt like a quiet promise: you have arrived, rest now. Bone-weary from the day’s negotiations with distance and terrain, I pulled quilts heavy with mountain air over my shoulders and let exhaustion claim its due. Somewhere in the darkness beyond these sheltering walls, the peaks that would define tomorrow’s efforts rose invisible but present, patient guardians of a vertical world that demanded everything and promised, in return, transformation measured not in comfort but in the strange mathematics of ascent.
Tomorrow, the grammar of climbing would begin in earnest. But tonight, wrapped in the hospitality of rebuilt walls and the profound silence that only mountains know how to keep, I slept the sleep of arrival: deep, dreamless, and complete.
Copyright © Tales from the Horizon, 2025
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