After the young men are registered and their height measured, they have to perform a series of physical tests. The first are heaves up onto a bar (the British Army requirement is six, the Gurkhas demand 12), after which they have to show that they can expand their chests by two inches. According to Adrian, this is a rule of thumb way of anticipating possible tuberculosis problems later on. The disease is prevalent here.
The boys puff their chests out to bursting point, and those who fail the first time are allowed to take strenuous exercise and try again. One of them completes a frenetic routine of 40 or 50 push-ups before leaping up, panting like a racehorse, and rejoining the queue.
He scrapes through the two-inch test next time, but his chances of being among the final 44 are still slim and, even if he gets through, this is only the first phase of the process. Successful applicants here go for a gruelling Hill Selection later in the year and only the best of those will go through to Central Selection in Pokhara after that. Some five months from now, the 24,000 original applicants will be reduced to a lucky 230, who will then leave Nepal for induction training in Singapore or at Catterick in North Yorkshire.
‘It’s a big culture shock,’ Adrian admits, before adding, a trifle ruefully, ‘But the army’s a culture shock anyway.’
The rewards are substantial. As a serving soldier, the Gurkha gets the same pay as a British soldier, around PS1000 a month. By comparison, a captain in the Royal Nepal Army is paid around PS100 a month. On retirement many Gurkhas come back to Nepal and make a good living in the tourist business, buying hotels and guest-houses.
Adrian brushes off any suggestion that there might be local resentment at having these elite fighters poached by a foreign power. Adding up pensions, welfare schemes, direct expenditure, as well as the return of money earned abroad, he reckons the Gurkhas are worth PS68 million a year to the Nepali economy.
Because the turnout out has been much higher than expected, with 251 applicants registered, they are only halfway through the programme by the end of the day. The galla seems pleased as he brings the results up to date. Twenty-three failed in the heaves, 40 in the sit-ups (in which one boy managed 98 in less than 2 minutes), 13 failed the eye-test and 7 were deemed too short. This leaves 168 still in the running for 44 places.
It’s been a long hot day for everyone, so we discreetly open a bottle of whisky to celebrate with Adrian and the organizers up in our dining tent.
After a while the galla comes in to join us. He looks decidedly uncomfortable and, mopping his brow with a handkerchief, he talks rapidly to the others in Nepali. I can see expressions change.
Adrian translates for us. Some ‘visitors from the forest’ have approached the galla. They now want to talk to the rest of us. He nods, anticipating my question. They’re Maoists.
A delegation, including our director J-P, follows two young men who look like students, one with a colourful embroidered shoulder bag, the other carrying documents of some sort in plastic folders. They look quite harmless, as if they might be on their way to a tutorial, but the submissiveness of everyone concerned suggests they have something more than moral authority.
They lead our people out of earshot, off behind a small temple, beside which a gnarled old bo tree grows. After half an hour they’re back. J-P reports they met with four of them, all young, the same sort of age as the recruits, two of whom were polite and reasonable and two ‘a bit nasty’.
They have asked the galla, Adrian and two other Gurkha officers, to go with them to meet what they call their high command, two hours’ walk away into the forest. While we are taking all this in, three of the Maoists appear at the door of our tent. One, in a white shirt, is short and chunky and wears glasses reminiscent of Piggy in Lord of the Flies. He has a row of pens clipped in his top pocket. Another holds a radio. We mask the whisky bottle as they peer round the tent. Once they’ve gone another boy appears. He wears a baseball cap and speaks to the Sherpa Nawang, expecting him to translate. Nawang’s eyes simply grow wide and he seems transfixed, speechless with anxiety. The boy’s tone seems apologetic. Cradling a silver torch, he puts his hands together in the traditional greeting.
‘Namaste.’
At that moment the stocky accomplice appears once again. He is less charming and, having scrutinized us all one last time, he makes a remark and goes.
Nawang eventually recovers enough to translate.
‘He said he has the tape measure.’
The galla, together with all his records and the tape he used to measure the chests, has gone, along with Adrian and his two fellow officers. Though there appeared to be no physical threat, there seemed no question of their not going, nor of who they were going with. I walk outside. The sun has set and the distant peaks of the Himalaya, a moment ago blood-red and magnificent, are now cold, grey and remote. I find myself scanning the faces of the villagers. Everything seems very different from this morning. Perhaps they all hate us, stirred to anger by the Maoists, who’ve portrayed us as friends of a corrupt and oppressive government?
I realize, rather pathetically, how easily I project my own feelings onto others. If I’m happy, they must be happy. Now I’m suspicious, they must be too. Their expressions give nothing back. They get on with their work and I get on with my insecurities.
To complete a rotten end to the day, our cooks serve us goat in batter with tuna sauce.
Day Forty Eight : Lekhani to Pokhara
Adrian and his companions have not returned. Wongchu, our experienced Sherpa leader, doesn’t want to stay here a moment longer than we have to, and in truth, there’s nothing much we can do.
We wait until nine, then strike camp and head off down to the valley. As we leave the village we pass groups of young men standing around. Faces that were so eager yesterday, are either blank or confused as they wait to be told what they probably know already, that all their efforts were wasted.
I feel we’ve let them down and try to avoid catching their eye.
Soon Lekhani passes out of sight, and we pick our way down steep and precarious clay tracks through tiny settlements where we are the objects of considerable curiosity. The sticky heat of the valley replaces the cool of Lekhani, and I’m pouring sweat by the time we step carefully along the knife-edge rim of a rice paddy and out onto a level but half-finished highway, which in happier circumstances might have prompted mass whistling of the River Kwai march.
The road-head, over two hours’ walk from Lekhani, is at a pretty village called Dopali, surrounded by silent, wooded slopes and a clean, fast-rushing stream. Life seems utterly restful here. An old lady cradles a cat, a family sit on the steps of a beautifully carved timber-frame house whose long doors are folded open to reveal slanting rays of sun spilling onto a cool, clay floor. Dopali is like something in a dream, a vision of delicious drowsiness and lethargy sent to subvert the purposeful and debilitate the dedicated.
We pick up vehicles here and, once away from the villages, J-P calls Adrian’s superiors in Kathmandu to tell them the bad news. Absurdly, whoever he gets through to is not helpful. It’s a Sunday, the commanding officer is having lunch and can’t be disturbed. As J-P won’t disclose details of what’s happened, they seem to presume he hasn’t any, and the harder he tries to convince them, the harder they stonewall.
It is a credit to J-P’s persistence that eventually the word gets through.
By the time we’re back in Pokhara all hell is let loose. At least three separate calls from the British Embassy ask us not to breathe a word of what has happened at Lekhani to anyone. This is the first time the Maoists have abducted a serving British officer, and may mark a significant change in policy. We eat, but, for once, no-one’s terribly hungry.