The Hotel Magnificent

The Hotel Magnificent

The Hotel Magnificent stands high above a small village on the Annapurna trekking circuit of north-central Nepal, two days walk from the nearest road. It is officially called the Hotel Magnificent View but its board is too short, or perhaps broken. One thing is true, however, the view from the hotel is incredible. Perched – balanced almost – on a shale ledge on the steep slope of the hillside, the windows of the Hotel Magnificent face north-west towards the snow-capped mountains of the High-Himalaya.

The village nestles in the dip of the valley. Dan and I are tired and hungry as we descend the path towards it, thinking of dhal bat, the evening meal and hoping, maybe, for a hot shower. The blue tin roofs, testimony to its prosperity as a trekkers’ stopover, are bright and welcoming, glinting jewels in the afternoon sun. In the streets stalls are set out with displays of embroidered bags, brass bowls, ancient padlocks, fat Buddhas, carved wooden boxes, packs of incense and shawls of coloured wool. After almost two weeks in the mountains the lure of shopping is irresistible. I pause to examine a shawl, peacock blue, feather light and soft as cotton wool. But Dan wants food.

‘Come on,’ he sighs, tugging my sleeve. We follow our endlessly patient guide as he negotiates the rough, stone paving, the heaps of manure from the pack ponies and leads us eventually to a flight of steep steps.

‘I can’t get up there,’ I grumble. ‘I’m too tired.’

He shrugs apologetically.

‘Village very busy. Peak season for trekking. Vacancies only here.’

No option then. We climb, slowly. At the top of the steps I draw a sharp breath. Dan and I have seen many stunning views in the last ten days, but this one is right up there. The village huddles below us, all its defects photo-shopped out by distance, and beyond, against a deep blue sky, rise the peaks of Annapurna South, Himchuli and Machapuchare, some of the highest mountains in the world.

On the terrace of the Hotel Magnificent is a stall identical in every detail to the ones we have passed, except that somehow the shawls here are even more colourful, even more desirable.

‘I give you good price,’ the salesman whispers. His voice is as slick and dark as his hair. His right hand hovers above his jacket pocket as he passes a string of wooden beads through his fingers, each one a prayer. I shake my head and edge away. He smiles, knowingly, as if it is only a matter of time. His shawls are beautiful, woven from yak wool and dyed a rainbow of colours that are as velvety bright as a bird’s wing. They sit in luxurious piles. I covet them.

The view, regrettably, turns out to be the only remarkable thing about the Hotel Magnificent. Thrown up from concrete blocks to serve growing numbers of trekkers, it is an ugly creation, clinging to the mountain like a cyst. The interior is constructed entirely of wafer thin sheets of plywood, fire-ready kindling. Downstairs a large communal room is set out with tables and benches. Above them two solar-powered light bulbs hang from a fragile-looking cable. An oil-drum, which has been reinvented as a wood-burning stove, squats importantly in the centre of the floor.  At the top of the rickety stairs is a cupboard-sized nook containing a bed, a blanket and a small pile of clothes, dhobi-washed and drained of colour or feature. The distance between the bed and a vast plate-glass window is perhaps sixty centimetres but the view it offers over the mountains gives the illusion of infinite space. This room has no door.

‘Who do you think sleeps there?’

Dan shrugs. ‘Don’t know, but we’re next to them.’

Our room is the other side of the flimsy wall. My bed is pushed against it. This unknown person will be closer to me than Dan. I will hear every sound he makes, all through the night.

We dump our bags and stretch a towel across the window to serve as a curtain.

‘I’m going to see if there’s hot water,’ I say. I have hat hair, lank and lifeless. I enquire and a woman, possibly the owner, leads me to a small, stone room containing a dirty toilet and an electric shower. She explains under what precise conditions these might be persuaded to work. I pay 100 Nepali rupees, seventy pence, about the same as a Mars bar.

‘Waste of money,’ I report back.

Later, Dan and I sit on the hotel terrace, an unfenced cliff edge high above the village, enjoying the late afternoon sun. We crane our necks around a washing line adorned with grey underwear and several stained sheets to enjoy the magnificent view. I sip a lassi savouring the sweetness of the curd and sugar mix, and feel the energy creep back into my muscles after the day’s walk. My bones melt a little in the last rays of warmth. I’m contemplating the shawls.

Nearby, a very small child is playing in the dirt. A babysitter, crouches beside her with a mobile phone welded to her palm. Every few seconds she peels back her fingers to check the screen. When the toddler moves, she reaches out listlessly and pulls her back. Sometimes she is too slow and the child dashes to the edge of the terrace where she hovers, crowing with mirth at the sight of the land falling away beneath her and the smallness of the houses below. Then the teenager rises sluggishly, swishes across to the child and turns her back as if she were a clockwork doll. But the child likes the view and the sequence is repeated again and again.

The babysitter checks her phone once more and gives a satisfied nod.

‘Hoi, Yeshi. She waves imperiously at the stall holder and points to the little girl. Yeshi hesitates. He has seen another batch of tourists heading up the hotel steps. He is not young, I realise. His body is bulky and there are threads of grey in his hair. He raises his arm in a gesture of supplication but the teenager has pulled a mirror from a cloth pouch and is examining her eyeliner. The toddler is occupied, swiping a stick at a hen pecking in the dirt. Yeshi watches, his face creased. The babysitter tugs a broken comb through her long, black hair and flounces to the steps, crossing the tourists on her way down.

‘Hoi,’ they call out to Dan and I. ‘That’s some climb.’ I know instantly from their accents that they are Dutch. The women are interested in the stall and pause, fingering the brass padlocks, trying on the beanies, tapping the singing bowls to hear them resonate. Yeshi is trapped with the toddler and the chicken. He looks longingly across.

Good price. I give you good price. I can feel the song chiming in his head. Beside me, Dan is sipping a beer, Everest.

‘A mountain in a bottle,’ he jokes. He has nodded to the Dutch guy, who is standing apart smoking a cigarette. The women have begun sorting through the shawls and Yeshi cannot help himself. He glances down at the child, preoccupied for the moment with her game. He makes his decision and sidles across.

‘I give you good price. Fourteen hundred rupees. Only fourteen hundred Nepali rupees.’

‘That is too much,’ one of the women objects. The standard response. This is the game. Both parties are quickly absorbed. Occasionally Yeshi flicks a glance towards the baby. She has abandoned the chicken and wandered towards the woodpile at the back of the terrace. No real danger there.

She is perhaps twenty months this tiny girl, pretty in her shabbiness, soft trousers washed to a pinky-grey, spiky black hair just visible beneath her woollen hat, miniature down jacket hiding her fragility beneath its bulk. I watch her as she potters.

Yeshi is engrossed in his transaction. The Dutch women are smiling and have taken their purses from their backpacks. Moments pass. A cloud slides across the sun and the terrace chills and darkens. The toddler abandons the woodpile in search of more animated entertainment. Yeshi is rummaging happily in his pouch for change. The baby ambles towards the front of the ledge waving her arms at something she has seen, or imagines she has seen, in the village below.

I stand up as casually as I can and spot the babysitter languidly approaching the steps. The toddler sees her too and picks up speed. She is making a wobbly dash towards the older girl on pattering feet, her arms outstretched in welcome. Yeshi swivels, clocks the danger and his features contort.

I was born for this moment. I take the fastest five strides of my life and seize the child’s hood. Her foot slips on the gravelly edge of the rock but she is feather light. The coat holds her while I scoop her up with my free hand. She yells in fear and protest but I close my eyes and feel the wash of relief as I close my arm round her. The babysitter runs up the last few steps and grabs her from me waving a fist at the stallholder, sending him a staccato burst of invective. He recoils like a beaten dog against the wall of the hotel. His right hand reaches for his wooden beads. She is still haranguing him as she ducks through the door with the weeping child. Dan wraps his arms around me and I bury my head in his shoulder.

Our guide appears.  

‘The man over there,’ I ask, shakily, ‘is he part of the family that owns the hotel?’

 ‘I think just working here in return for bed.’ He pauses. ‘Your dinner is ready.’

We leave the terrace in the last shafts of sunlight and follow him inside. As we pass the stall I stroke the shawls.

‘I give you good price.’ Yeshi fixes me with his gaze.

‘We don’t have space,’ Dan reminds me.

‘They would fold up very small.’

‘Not small enough.’

‘I could wear them.’ I imagine descending the mountain swathed in rainbows of yak wool.

Dan pulls an exasperated face.

We spend the evening crowded around the wood-burner with the other guests, trying to shuffle close enough to feel its warmth, straining to read in the dim light. The babysitter is off duty now. She has a chair near the fire and sits with her legs tucked under her, her hand still wrapped round her phone.  The toddler patters about in pursuit of a dirty cloth ball that the guests take turns to throw. Her mother, probably babysitter’s sister, keeps a watchful eye.

Weary from the fresh air and tired of squinting at scruffy paperbacks, the backpackers peel off in ones and twos and head upstairs to sleep. Dan and I follow. In the room with no door a figure is sitting cross-legged on the bed. Yeshi is murmuring some mantra in the dark as he stares out at the mountains white and luminous as gods in the moonlight. Through his fingers his prayer beads pass.

Overnight, the yearning for a shawl grows inside me, seeping through the flimsy wall. In the morning I stop at the stall once more.

‘I give you good price,’ Yeshi nods, his voice sliding easily over the well-oiled phrase.

‘I suppose we can fit one in,’ Dan sighs.

I choose the purple, rich and royal as a bishop’s gown.

‘Your room has a beautiful view,’ I observe, handing over a stupidly small number of notes.

‘Yes,’ he says, quietly. His smile is incandescent. ‘I am very lucky.’