Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    Only $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    Hidden Tiger Raging Mountain: Over the Hill in Nepal
    Hidden Tiger Raging Mountain: Over the Hill in Nepal
    Hidden Tiger Raging Mountain: Over the Hill in Nepal
    Ebook100 pages1 hour

    Hidden Tiger Raging Mountain: Over the Hill in Nepal

    By Jo Carroll

    ()

    Read preview

    About this ebook

    After all the excitements of her mid-life Gap Year, Jo Carroll couldn't quite reconcile herself to her gentle corner of Wiltshire with her garden and strolls across the Downs.

    It seemed such a good idea to return to Nepal. She knew her way around there now. She was ready for adventures, but surely there'd be no terrors in Kathmandu this time?

    She should, she knows, be careful what she wishes for. She managed to extricate herself from a scam in Pokhara with nothing more than her pride damaged. But no one warned her about cyclones in the mountains. And then there was the tiger ...

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherJo Carroll
    Release dateSep 18, 2012
    ISBN9781301357291
    Hidden Tiger Raging Mountain: Over the Hill in Nepal
    Author

    Jo Carroll

    JO CARROLL decided that thirty years working with traumatised children is long enough. Besides, if she left it much longer she would be too creaky to fulfil her adolescent dream of travelling round the world. So, armed with little more than general ignorance, a diary, and insatiable curiosity, off she went. A grown-up gap year. Except she didn’t always feel like a grown-up.

    Read more from Jo Carroll

    Related to Hidden Tiger Raging Mountain

    Related ebooks

    Travel For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    • Article

      How We Rolled

      May 25, 2019

      How We Rolled
      4 min read

    • Article

      Flour

      Mar 15, 2018

      The driver and I got a late start. I usually decide on these excursions the night before, but it was late in the morning when I informed the friend who was coming to visit me for the weekend that I had to cancel, it was absolutely necessary for me to

      7 min read

    • Article

      Tiny Truths

      Oct 15, 2021

      We hiked the Kittatinny Ridge, clambering over rock. Above us streamed a thousand hawks, called south again. Age has chopped the world into segments by distance, each segment viewable with a different pair of glasses. We sang together in the darkness

      2 min read

    • Article

      Ghost Girl, Banana

      Aug 21, 2023

      By the time I was 25, there were only two things I remembered about Mumma. The first was that she smelled of watermelons, the second was that we were happy. We’d taken our father’s name of course, but a name is only half a story. The other half exist

      6 min read

    • Article

      Five Poems

      Nov 1, 2020

      We went to visit our brother.They had a special, blue roomfor the purpose of waiting.A counselor came over andcalled my sweater “too provocative.”Nora started laughingand then I started laughingand then our brother came outand told us about the squir

      4 min read

    • Article

      The Crossroads Of Paths

      Oct 1, 2021

      IT WAS NOT easy to fall asleep, stuck between the door and the toilet. Soaked to the bone on the cold tile floor, I had hoped for a better place to spend my first night abroad than the public toilets of an Austrian highway. I was lost, not far from I

      3 min read

    • Article

      A Lost Cause

      Dec 6, 2020

      A Lost Cause
      9 min read

    • Article

      A short BREAK

      Apr 16, 2024

      A short BREAK
      5 min read

    • Article

      A short BREAK

      Jun 2, 2021

      A short BREAK
      5 min read

    • Article

      III: Just Go

      Oct 11, 2016

      III: Just Go
      2 min read

    • Article

      To Morocco, And Beyond!

      Mar 25, 2022

      What business does a 60-year-old woman with no experience of overlanding have driving through West Africa, all on her own, in a two-wheel-drive van? My answer? A woman’s place is wherever she wants it to be! I was born in Zimbabwe and moved to South

      11 min read

    • Article

      Seven Poems

      May 1, 2023

      There was a boy even stranger than I waswho’d call me in the eveningto see if I’d come to Scouts. Something in mehesitated. Then one morning during eighth grade English we got hall passesand did it in a stall in the bathroomtaking turns over the john

      3 min read

    • Article

      My Mumbai

      Aug 22, 2023

      My Mumbai
      7 min read

    • Article

      On the Road

      Jan 13, 2020

      On the Road
      2 min read

    • Article

      Two Poems

      Feb 28, 2023

      I want to write a poem about abortion.I’m driving to Rural King to get a key cut.I’m in rural Indiana. Then I’m in rural Michigan.I’m in Michiana. I’m driving to Niles.I pass the neon Pegasus sign outside a gas station,always off. I pass a man panhan

      5 min read

    • Article

      Station to Station

      Dec 3, 2020

      Station to Station
      6 min read

    • Article

      Guiding Presence

      May 18, 2020

      Guiding Presence
      7 min read

    • Article

      Saying Goodbye to Sara

      Nov 10, 2021

      — We never really know when it will be the last time we talk to someone, the last time we see them, the last hug. The time was 2:23pm. Or there about. It’s hard to pinpoint the precise time when you’re in that deep sleep state where time seems not to

      6 min read

    • Article

      Four Poems

      Mar 1, 2024

      I was trying to look a little less like myselfand more like other humans, humans who belonged, so I put on a skort.Purchased in another life, when I had a husband and wrote thank-you notes and held dinner parties,the skort even had its own little poc

      6 min read

    • Article

      Personal Space

      Mar 29, 2020

      Ten years ago, almost to the day, my father died without warning. He was getting off a plane in Sydney. I was 22 and living in the south of Spain at the time, a place where my biggest qualms were whether the orange juice was pre-squeezed, or if my br

      6 min read

    • Article

      OK, Mr. Field Part 2 (Autumn)

      Mar 15, 2018

      OK, Mr. Field Part 2 (Autumn)
      54 min read

    • Article

      Diamonds

      Jun 4, 2018

      Diamonds
      9 min read

    • Article

      The Damascus Journals

      Nov 29, 2017

      It's important that the memory of a place survives the horror that overcomes it. So I find my Syrian voice in the sweet memories of a grand city. The post The Damascus Journals appeared first on The Millions.

      5 min read

    • Article

      It’s Come to This

      Sep 1, 2021

      It’s Come to This
      16 min read

    • Article

      If You Believe

      Jan 2, 2022

      If You Believe
      4 min read

    • Article

      Paltry Gestures

      Jan 5, 2021

      Paltry Gestures
      6 min read

    Related categories

    Reviews for Hidden Tiger Raging Mountain

    0 ratings

    0 ratings0 reviews

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

      Book preview

      Hidden Tiger Raging Mountain - Jo Carroll

      HIDDEN TIGER RAGING MOUNTAIN

      OVER THE HILL IN NEPAL

      By JO CARROLL

      Smashwords edition, copyright 2012, Jo Carroll

      All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form other than that in which it was purchased without the written permission of the author.

      Cover design by Mark Smart

      Join me on my website: http://www.jocarroll.co.uk

      ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

      You will see how many people kept me safe on this journey. I’ve have changed almost all of their names, because it has been impossible to contact them and ask permission to write about them in this way. They know who they really are, and I hope they know how grateful I am to them.

      Without Tika I’m not sure I’d be home safely to tell the tale. Thanks, too, to Shobha, who welcomed me like a sister. One day I hope I can do the same for her.

      Meanwhile, Pauline Lively and Inga-Britta Currie helped to keep the show on the road in Wiltshire, and made sure I had a home to come back to.

      And then there are those who have stood by while I tried to tame my chaotic diaries and reframe them into a coherent narrative. Thanks to Gwen Stuart and Anna Smart for their support and helpful comments as I drafted this, and to Elaine Connolly for her copy edit. Any residual mistakes are mine.

      Thanks to Mark Smart for his original cover.

      Finally, thanks to my patient daughters, who carry on behaving like grown-ups whatever I do. They applaud my leaving and my coming home. My story would be bleak without them.

      CHAPTER ONE

      .

      I’M OFF AGAIN

      1.

      I don’t make a habit of leaving Wiltshire in March. After the gloom of winter longer days tempt me into the garden, into the forest to search for fresh green leaves on the beech trees, across the Downs to laugh at the lambs. And this is a particularly delightful March, the sun high in the sky and warm enough to see winter coats left at home. My magnolia tree is heavy with buds; I shall miss its blossoming.

      I’ve ached to travel all winter, but commitments have kept me at home till now. I have been cooped up long enough. The need to pack my rucksack and be on my way again is overwhelming. I no longer feel a need to justify my wanderlust. It is simply part of me.

      My daughters wave me off. I have promised to travel safely and they almost believe me. I have four grandchildren now – even the tug of infant giggles and games of hide-and-seek are not enough to keep me at home. Though I’ll not be gone for long this time – just one month.

      Kathmandu. The name alone sounds exotic – it ranks with Samarkand, Xi’an, Marrakesh – great trading cities. A focus for the hippy trails of the late 1960s. I’ve no flowers in my hair (to be honest, just streaks of grey these days) but I can still sit on temple steps and pretend to be eighteen.

      This is my third visit to Nepal, so I understand this city’s ways now – quite a contrast to my last arrival, when, after three months in Australia and New Zealand I almost crept back into the airport rather than face the mayhem outside. It was impossible, I thought, for a lone woman to tackle this chaos. But Tika, my guide, rescued me, lured me into the streets, kept me safe while I found my travelling feet. After five weeks together we were friends. Now I know what I’m doing, and do not need him – but he knows I’m coming and has organised a welcome for me.

      This time the International Airport does not alarm me. Its bricks are as red and forbidding as ever. Its air as stale. The smell of weary passengers. I queue to change money. Queue to pay for my visa. Queue to collect my visa. Queue to collect my luggage, politely (I hope) rejecting an offer of help from a small man who reaches for my rucksack as soon as I identify it. I have packed lightly and can lug it myself without going pink and puffing, and I march towards the exit with confidence. I even smirk when I recall the stomach-churning that beset me last time I arrived here.

      I stride through the exit doors and into the muted sunshine of late afternoon. Walls too starkly bright to look at during the middle of the day are washed with early evening orange. Dust hangs in the still air. My stomach flutters with excitement. I’ve a spring in my step. (Well, actually, I haven’t. I can’t spring with a rucksack on my back. But I would if I could.)

      Airport meeting arrangements have changed. On my last visit I emerged into a phalanx of touts each insisting he would take me to the best hotel, in the best taxi. Now they are restrained beyond stern railings. I josh with them as I amble along, before finding the card with my name on it at the end of the line. I am then whisked to a rickety minibus, driven from the sanctuary of the airport car park and into the streets of Kathmandu.

      They have not changed. Markets line the streets: men with heaps of clothes, women selling grapes and oranges. There may be fewer cows; but still the packs of feral dogs. Small boys, with ragged shorts and no shoes, thread through the crowds.

      We weave through armies of motorbikes. Drivers wear helmets now, but passengers (as many as three) need no protective headgear. Women sit sideways, glorious saris flapping by the back wheel. Small children are tucked between their parents. My driver swerves to the right, down a rutted track by the river, which is low and pongy at this time of year.

      ‘A one-way street,’ he explains, and is then unfazed to meet a car coming the other way, pushing us near the edge of the road and perching above the stinking river. This is the route into Thamel: the tourist corner of Kathmandu, with its narrow streets and trinket shops, passageways leading to hotels and the sanctuary of air-conditioned restaurants.

      We swing into the Sacred Valley Hotel, and a sturdy man with close-set eyes comes out to meet me.

      ‘Tika has told us you are coming,’ he says.

      ‘Tika is my friend,’ I reply. ‘We have been travelling together.’

      ‘Tika is my special friend,’ he insists. ‘We were at school together.’ This clearly trumps travelling. ‘He has asked us to give you the best room.’

      He leads me to the family room. I have no idea why I might need four beds and space to play, but I thank him profusely.

      He’s gone. And I sink onto one of the beds. I have been travelling for seventeen hours and suddenly I disconnect. My body feels suspended in time and I need to tell it that it is evening. To take it out, to feed it, give it a beer, and then send it to bed. The effort of getting here has caught up with me.

      2.

      I am, of course, woolly in the morning. Yesterday’s euphoria is forgotten as I sit on the rooftop with my breakfast and try to gather myself for the day. Electricity hisses on the wires. Somewhere a dog barks. The air seems misty, but I expect it coagulates into smog by mid-afternoon. I find refuge in coffee.

      All I have to do today is catch a flight to Pokhara. It is not difficult. Seven men have gathered in reception to say goodbye to me as I leave. I have no idea why they are there, but their good wishes are comforting and I promise to return. Then it’s time to climb back into the minibus and be whisked (this is Saturday, Nepal’s rest day, the streets are quieter) to the Domestic Airport.

      It is a dingy building; the air is tired but fans whirr usefully and I wait in a corner where I get the full blast of cooling wafts. Heavy-shouldered men yawn. Women in scarlet saris slump on benches. A young man in fake leather trousers, winkle-pickers and slicked-back hair carries a baby girl, about four months old, and

      Enjoying the preview?
      Page 1 of 1