Seymour Totti’s Foreign Policy

Asha has nothing to do with the story, she just looks great

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She was in tears. I don’t like making girls cry but this was beyond my control. “It’s p-p-purple” she wailed. I pointed out that it had been but now it had mostly faded to a yellowy-brown.

Then she begged me to tell her again about the flight of stairs in the Kathmandu hotel where the second from top step had snuck out from beneath me and left me to bounce down the rest. Largely on my right buttock. This was rewarded with another peal of laughter

I decided not to mention the indignity of the following morning when I’d had to squeeze said buttock, rather gingerly, into the confined quarters afforded by a 24-seat Yeti Airlines turboprop for the flight to Pokhara.

I slid down into the bubbles. She slipped in facing me pushing her thighs beneath mine and my legs around her waist lifting my bum a little off the bottom of the tub. “OK?” she asked. OK, I confirmed. She began to soap both of us all over, I closed my eyes.

Pokhara is about 20 minutes flight to the west of Kathmandu. To one side of the town is the Phewa Lake and the World Peace pagoda. To the other is the mighty Annapurna, arguably the most beautiful section of the of the whole Himalayan range.

It is possible to trek around Annapurna, you need to budget three weeks. It can be done quicker, I’m told, but it depends on the stamina of the individuals in your group and the length of time it takes to acclimatise to the altitude. I had nothing like that amount of time. I had only a few days so my plan was to fly into it.

This, of course, required me to cram my dented derrière into and even smaller aircraft. A micro-lite, owned and operated by the Avia Club of Nepal who offer Skytreks of 15, 30 and 60 minutes.

After a journey like that I wasn’t going to settle for anything less than the full monty so the following morning I presented myself at the airport where I was bound and trussed in windproof clothing in preparation for the flight.

Despite the extra padding the runway still felt like it was made of corrugated iron as we barrelled along to take-off. But all pain is forgotten, along with any apprehension about flying in a motorised hang-glider, the moment we lift off.

We bank, fly over the town and follow the Seti gorge toward the mountains. Below there is a patchwork of implausibly remote farms held together by threads of footpaths and small roads.

There is some turbulence as we pass through a thin layer of cloud but emerging through the top the view is so stunning that I almost forget to breathe. The summits of the mountains seem so close and so crystal clear it feels like we could just fly onto them. But at an altitude of about 12,000 feet we are probably not even halfway up.

The pilot cuts the engines and suddenly there is silence. We glide across the roof of the world with only our thoughts and the wind in our ears. It is a special moment indeed. To the west I can just see the summit of Dhaulagiri, where the last alleged evidence of the Yeti had been found. To the east the mountains stretched off as far as the eye could see.

Right in front is the spectacular fluted summit of Machhapuchhre or Fishtail mountain. It commands most of the attention. After what seems like only a few minutes the motor is restarted and we start the journey back flying over Sarangkot and the World Peace pagoda. My sixty minutes was up. I was so enchanted by the experience that I quite forgot to brace my buttocks for the landing.

Ouch! I said. “You OK?” asked my masseuse again. Yep, I said, just have to remember not to put all my weight onto the right side. On the bed she gave me an excellent massage, gently rubbed some tingly stuff into my bum and then took me back into the heavens for another 60 minutes.

See also: Raising the bar in Kathmandu