Levison Wood - Walking the Himalayas

Without warning, a man burst into the internet caf, pulling down the shutters behind him and plunging us into near darkness. He was desperately out of breath and shouting something in Nepali.

As my eyes became accustomed to the dingy light, I made out the anxious face of the skinny white teenager whod been sitting next to me. Clearly just out of school and on his first solo trip abroad, his loneliness all too apparent, he was now trembling. The screens of the twelve ancient computers, the only gateway to the outside world, flashed and the roar of computer fans filled the room. Dust sparkled in the sliver of light that crept in through a high window. Outside it was eerily quiet.

The man forced a smile and walked a little closer to the weather-worn woman who ran the caf. She and her baby were both shrouded in the faded, thinning silk of her sari. All eyes were on him, as he stood there sweating in his white string vest and an old pair of grey suit trousers.

Army, police, they coming now. Shooting, killing. You need to leave, now, go.

I looked across at the boy next to me. He hesitated nervously, wanting to move but paralysed by fear. I got up, but the man gestured in the direction of the door.

Wait. Stop, too late. Not now.

As he spoke, there was the unmistakable rattle of gunfire somewhere in the street outside. It sounded close, but it was impossible to tell, as the din of a hundred shouts grew nearer. I had no idea if it was the police or the army, or just another angry mob.

Riots, whispered the man. Stay here for now, too dangerous outside.

I tiptoed towards the front window and peered through a crack in the shutter. The noise outside was deafening. I couldnt see much in the blinding sunlight, except people shuffling past. Some were running and some waving big red flags.

Who are they? I asked the man, who was busy attempting to reassure the nervous mother. The child remained fast asleep.

Protestors. They no like government. Maoists.

Id heard about the Maoists when I arrived in Nepal just a week earlier. There was already a curfew in the streets after nine oclock in the evening, but most people in Kathmandu seemed to pay lip service to it, particularly in the backpacker enclave of Thamel. I certainly had, walking alone through labyrinthine alleyways back from a boozy tavern in all my teenage irresponsibility. The newspapers were full of warnings about these communist insurgents, but until now theyd been confined to the countryside and mountains. In more recent months, the Maoists had spread to the towns and cities, causing mayhem. The government had cracked down and violence was on the rise, but I was not prepared for thisa full-blown riot outside my shabby hotel. This was turning out to be a rather unusual gap year.

A civil war had been raging in the hills of Nepal for six long years and hundreds of people had been killed. In the months before my visit, dozens of policemen, soldiers and government officials had been hacked to death by angry mobs and many more had been victims of improvised bombs hidden in cars and haybales. Over three hundred Maoist insurgents had also been gunned down. Some had been executed without trial by the security forces in revenge for the chaos. Since 1996, the Maoists, or members of the United Peoples Front of Nepal, had taken up arms in protest at having been excluded from the political process. They launched a peoples war, fighting against the government and monarchy, employing communist guerrilla tactics of torture, assassination, bombing and extortion in an attempt to gain power. By 2001, the insurgents numbered in their thousands and were active in fifty of the seventy-five states of Nepal. At the time though, I was blissfully unaware of the political situation; I was just there to enjoy the Himalayas.

After half an hour, the noise outside died down and the whirring of the fan became apparent again. The man in the string vest ventured to the door and pulled up the shutter, revealing the blinding rays of the midday sun, which poured into the filthy room. With my eyes adjusting, I peered around the door to see the street virtually empty. Across the road, a water buffalo munched away at a soggy cardboard box. All that remained of the riot were a few broken bottles and the tatty remnants of a red banner.

A motorbike spluttered past; the rider cannot have been older than twelve. An even younger boy clung haphazardly to his brothers back and I watched as the pair darted in between the parked cars, swerved around the occasional cyclist and narrowly avoided a bullock cart. Overhead, the wonky electricity poles threatened to crash down at any second, and the spidery tangle of wires dangled menacingly above the heads of passing pedestrians. On the other side of the road, a shopkeeper pulled up his shutters, let loose an enormous throatful of phlegm into the street and dragged a trestle table covered with fruit back onto the pavement, patting it delicately with a feather duster. Pineapples, oranges, mangoes and a giant Indian jackfruit wobbled precariously as he replaced his sign offering fruity lassi, the yoghurt drink found across the subcontinent and favoured by backpackers and hippies on the trail. It reminded me I hadnt eaten anything yet and I was hungry.