The Mountain Spy of Nepal

If the guy was trying to fuck with our heads, he was doing a damn fine job at it. We, the three of us, were high in the Himalaya, 19 or 20 days into a month-and-then-some trek around the Annapurna circuit, out beyond the one week boundary, beyond the quick up-in-and-out treks of the time-challenged, beyond the accomodating zone of semiprofessional "guesthouses" run with an entrepreneurial glee by a new merchant class of mountain Nepali, out past even them to the real world of Iron Age- lifestyle mountain farmers who opened a room in their family home to whatever weary Western trekkers wander that far up the mountain. The rooms are advertised on the edge of each small village in the most direct and unmediated fashion available: a gaggle of dusty boys and a few girls, all age 5 to 8, emerge from the town and claim giant white Western palms in their tiny little brown mitts and lead their befuddled prey back to the family roost, all the while repaeating placating mantras of "Hotel! - Sir! - Dinner!" And these kids were appointed accomodation agents on account of their relative mastery of the English language in the village . Some of these kids were quite conversant and would idly translate for curious older family members, and all of them possessed a business savvy.

Anyway, the point is, way up high here in Nepal in the Himalaya between mountain villages there are paths, footpaths: nothing bigger than a mule gets through. And, it is a fair assumption (repeated however silently many darkening evening upon the apparently unending trail) that a village or town lies within one full days walk on each of these trails. These trails are older then anyone remembers, and are noted for the lack of alternative. There is one footpath between every middling little village or cluster of huts, and no other.

So the behavior of the odd, well dressed man we began to spy one afternoon was, while on the surface nothing too outrageous, just enough off-kilter enough to distract anyone. For this man, who we were quick to nickname "Mr Spy" would be found on the outskirts of a town or village, an open beer half drunk before him and its empty mate next to it and his lit cigarette resting in a mountian of smoked butts, his apparently inexhaustible stack of two packs and a slim lighter. He'd look up and smile this Chesire Cat grin as we entered the village as if to say, "Oh, you again," but in a nice way, and after the first two or three encounters in the first two or three towns Mr Spy finally beckoned us over for drinks.

We were, as I say, three: myself, my traveling companion Steve Kronzer (a longhaired punk rocker like myself, but, better, an iveterate and imaginative liar whose outrageous and transparent series of lies nonetheless attracted circles of attention in the distraction-challenged mountains), and a guy we met on the mountain and had befriended in a casual way that is impossible elsewhere, a guy named Amir or somesuch, who was a 20 yr. old Israeli Army veteran who couldn't abide other Israelis.

The mystery was this: there was one road into every town, and one road out, and in each town we departed well in advance of Mr Spy. He would laugh heartily, wish us godspeed, and gesture us merrily on our way with a wave of his bottle. Then, in an increasingly unbelievably growing series of towns we would enter the next village down the road, and there he would be, Mr Spy, at his customary table on the way into town, one beer half gone and the ashtray spilling over. And we never saw him pass us, once, and interviewed a cross section of townspeople to confirm there were no alternate routes between subsequent villages.

Mr Spy laughed at our obvious befuddlement, but we were too proud to ask him how he did it. Instead we'd join him at his tables, shaking our heads laughing and order a beer of our own. He had a fittingly suspicious story to go with his suspicious activity, too.

He was 45, maybe an aged 40, and darkly tanned and lined like someone who worked outdoors, so when he said he worked most of the year on offshore oil rigs in the North Sea we took it at face value. His measured English accent and diction, his perfectly bland and yet perfectly tailored travel clothes, we were sure that had their been any women in our party they would have found him unrefusable. In addition to cigarettes and his swanky lighter he carried only photographic equipment, a bulky backpack of camera bodies and lenses, and though he said he was trailed by a porter with his extra clothes we never saw either the purported porter or The Spy in any other outfit then the one in which we discovered him.

We were on the back side of the chain of mountains, grizzled and experienced and with the tell-tale shaky pupil common to those fresh from the wild heights and were not tolerant of much bullshit. The three of us had established a nice pace and wordless ease, and though we generally trekked alone always stopped at every peak and summit to share a communal chillum of hash and tobacco. We had the high, lifeless pass behind us, and our ears popped as we plummeted down (and up) an unending series of mountains, through hash towns and dirty hot spring towns, each a bit larger and with a few more amenities than the last, and the dilletante weekend trekkers in their hot neon saw our crazy eyes, ropy bodies, and unkempt beards and gave us both grudging respect and a wide berth.

We finally ended the Day of the Spy in some town whose name I have long since lost, but I remember it was the first town where oranges were not only available, but growing in an orchard right out the guesthouse window, glowing in the waning evening light. We invited the spy into our suite of rooms and plied him with hash and Indian whiskey while he set up incredibly long exposures of us lighting, puffing, and exhaling monster chillums. I always thought those were probably pretty good photos. The Spy seemed happy and stoned, fussing over his lenses and tripod, and neither he nor we ever saw fit to mention the mindfuck on the trail.