Ahead a landslide had taken a big bite out of the mountainside. Bim was heading for it. There was no other way on, not unless we tried scaling crags or almost vertical cliffs. She didn’t hesitate as she reached the tumble of boulders and mess of broken trees and rocks. She just stepped across it all. She made it look easy, jumping from one big suspended boulder to another. I thought of her as a townie but I kept forgetting that she’d done a lot of tough trips to remote parts of the country with her grandfather who was like a walking encyclopaedia of nature. Like many Nepalis we knew, heights didn’t seem to spook her. It would always make me feel ill to see people standing on crumbly road-edges not seeming to care that one little mistake would have them plunging to their deaths. That was what was in my mind as I followed Bim, seriously wondering whether this route was a good idea.
I stepped onto the first boulder that stuck out of the landslide and immediately saw that the way on was like stepping stones, but instead of jumping across a river, I’d be jumping over thin air.
*
‘Ready?’ Bim and James nodded and clung on to the flimsy bamboo basketwork that formed the sides of the tray. I pushed them over the edge. They sped away, rattling down. The little basket went hurtling away with James shrieking like a crazed jackal. They reached the lowest point on the cable and continued a little way up on the other side. The momentum didn’t help them much though. Soon they had stopped and Bim was standing with both her hands on the cable. If you lost balance and grabbed the cable downhill of the wheels, I could picture now how easy it would be for the wheels – pulled down by your body weight – to run over your fingers. Bim was trying to pull them up the other side.
*
‘I can’t see shizzle,’ I said stepping into the first big room. As my eyes slowly grew used to the dark though, I saw that the inside was carved out of solid sandstone. The ceilings were blackened by smoke from candles and fire. I turned to see Kesang’s feet disappearing up a ladder and climbed after her. There was another storey and another big room.
Entering the second floor I could see that people were still using the caves. There were candle stubs and a battered box of matches. There were sacks of things. There were horns and claws and bones. There were some pouches of brown crystals. There were some rolled dried skins. There was a sack of flat leather-coloured objects. James picked some up. ‘What are these? They look like wonky beermats.’
I picked some out too. They were very light. I could see circular patterning and realised these were pangolin scales – lots of them. From loads of animals.
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