A frightening encounter in Nepal

 I was hiking alone. Two men were following me. I came to a clearing and stopped. Both of them pulled out knives. I was climbing the trail to Sarangkot in Nepal to get an unblemished view of the Himalayas.

I was in a semi open-air lakeside bar in Pokhara talking to two American women. The two women were travelling independently. All three of us had met in the bar. One woman was a younger woman from Denver and the other woman was an older woman from Seattle. The younger woman and I were drinking a local beer, Gorkha Beer. The older woman was having an imported Heineken. "I don't trust local beers", she said. We were talking about Nepal. "I hate Nepal", the older woman said. "The roads are uneven. I get a backache travelling anywhere. The electricity keeps failing", she said. "I don't trust the water supply. I am too scared to have a shower. I brush my teeth with bottled water", she continued. She was staying in a luxury hotel. "That ought to be comfortable", I said. She said, "I couldn't sleep last night. The pillows are too soft".

She asked the younger woman, "What have you been up to in Nepal?". "I have been hiking the villages at the base of Mt. Annapurna for the last two months", she answered. "Where do you sleep?", the older woman asked. "I sleep in the villages in a hut. I used to sleep on the mud floor", she said. "What do you do for water?", the older woman asked. "In every village there is a well. You pull up water from the well", she said. "For drinking?", enquired the older woman. "You drink the same water", she said. "Do phones work?", asked the older woman. "I don't know. There is no electricity in the villages. You can't charge your phones", she replied.

The younger woman said, "You both should climb up Sarangkot". Was she trying to pair us up? "You get a wonderful view of the Himalayas from the top. It is a two-hour hike from the trailhead", she said. I asked the other woman, "Shall we climb up tomorrow morning?". "How will we reach the trailhead?", she asked. I said, "There ought to be a bus from Pokhara. We can ask the driver to drop us off at the trailhead". She said, "No way. I am not going in a local bus". I said, "We can take a taxi and share the cost". She said, "I don't want to climb. I am planning to take a taxi to the Peace Pagoda tomorrow morning". So, I decided to climb Sarangkot alone the next day. 

The next morning, I got a bus from the bus station in Pokhara. The driver understood Hindi, so it was easy to communicate. He said that he will stop the bus at the trailhead for Sarangkot. At the trailhead there was a small village. There were a few houses, a Hindu temple and a small shack selling tea and snacks. I walked into the shack to have tea. There were two men in the shack smoking beedis (unprocessed tobacco wrapped in leaves). They asked me in Hindi, "Are you from India?". I said, "Yes". "Do you want a guide?", they asked. I said, "No. I don't". "Very low price, Babuji (a double honorific term of respect in Hindi)", they said. I declined and said, "No thanks". 

I started my hike up the trail. It was not too steep. The houses soon thinned out and there was nothing but the forest on both sides of the trail. After about 15 minutes, I stopped to take a break. When I looked back, the two men at the shack were behind me. They were about 100 paces behind. I waited. They reached me and said, "It's still a long way to the top". I said, "Okay". "Do you have a cigarette? An Indian cigarette?", they asked. I said, "No. I don't have a cigarette". "Do you want to change some money?", they asked. I said, "No". I resumed climbing. They were now just two paces behind me. After about 30 minutes, I came to a clearing. I stopped and turned around. Both of them pulled out knives. 

My mother had told me of an event that had occurred in her life in the 1950's. She had just then gotten married to my father and was living in an apartment in Bombay (now Mumbai). My mother was alone in the apartment and the doorbell rang. She opened the door. A man pushed open the door and ran into the apartment. My mother ran out of the apartment and closed the door. She bolted the door from outside. She called the police from the neighbour's house. The police reached after some time and caught the man. My mother had told this story to me several times and said that, "In times of danger, what you need is quick thinking". 

Both of them pulled out knives. I kicked mud into their faces with my shoes and started running down the trail. I ran downhill as fast as I could. I ran until I saw a hut on my right. I ran straight into the hut. There was a very old woman inside the hut. She immediately realised what was happening. She grabbed a stick and went out. The two men had followed me downhill. She screamed at them in Nepali. The two men disappeared. The lady who was perhaps in her late 80's or 90's, then told me in Hindi, "I will walk you to the village downhill". She then walked me all the way downhill to the beginning of the trailhead. She had to climb up back to her hut. I said, "Thanks". But how do you really thank such a person? I didn't know. 

The two men had applied tikkas (Hindu practice of applying vermillion paste) on their foreheads. They had prayed in the village temple for success in the mugging, before setting off to follow me. My water bottle had fallen off during my run downhill. I walked into that shack in the village to buy a bottle of water. There was shock in the shack owner's eyes when she saw me. She had known that I would get mugged by those two men. She was shocked that I was still fit and fine. Suddenly the expression in her eyes changed from shock to worry. She was worried about the welfare of the two muggers. I decided to get out of the shack and the village. I knew that the two men would come back. I decided not to wait for the bus. I started walking towards Pokhara. I then flagged down a passing taxi and reached my hotel. 

That evening I was again in a bar by the lakeside. The talk in the bar was of a mugging on the Sarangkot trail. Two Korean women had been mugged on that trail, a few hours ago. There were both in a serious condition in a hospital with concussion. They had been hit on the head with a stone. Paul Theroux has been travelling and writing for the last 60 years. He says that he has had a gun pointed at him five times in the last six decades. Had I travelled in a group, this incident would probably have never happened. I guess, solo travel gives you the best and the worst of experiences. I used to say that travel is meeting yourself outside of your comfort zone. It had happened to me. 

Have you ever been mugged or almost mugged, while travelling? If so, where?

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