Peace in the kingdom

It was New Year's when I was in Nepal last November. That is not a typo. It was Newari New Year's, celebrated by the main ethnic group in the Katmandu Valley, and the capital's narrow streets were crowded with motorcycle parades and truckloads of cheering young people. For them, it was the year 1128.

For the rest of the kingdom, it was already 2064. That isn't a typo, either.

Such time-warp quirks are part of what I love about this poor, crowded, stunningly beautiful little country. But there were other, more disturbing quirks this time. I couldn't decide, for example, which was weirder -- the fact that there were Maoist checkpoints on country roads and trekking trails -- or that the Maoists gave receipts.

Lying like a narrow ribbon on the border between India and Tibet, Nepal has more than 26 million people in a territory only two-thirds the size of Minnesota, with even less usable land: The top tier of the country isn't just mountainous -- it's the Himalayas.

The mountains are a key part of what made Nepal a traveler's paradise as early as the 1960s, with great mountain trekking, some of the world's best whitewater for rafting and kayaking, exotic wildlife that includes elephants, tigers and rhinos, and ancient architecture so unique that it's protected by UNESCO.

Technically, Nepal is still the last Hindu kingdom in the Himalayas, but the once-powerful king has been reduced to a figurehead, after a complicated, bloody, decade-long Maoist campaign to reshape the government. An estimated 13,000 Nepalis died in the fighting, before the Maoists laid down their weapons and joined the parliament in 2006.

The Maoists did not target tourists, but as Nepali deaths rose in the countryside, tourism plummeted. Even long-established wilderness-travel companies cut back on trips and laid off staff. Dozens of smaller ones went out of business. And the ordinary people who depend on tourism -- porters on trekking routes, boatmen on the rafting rivers, hotel staff in the cities -- lost their jobs.

The path isn't smooth yet. When I was there last fall, a nationwide election had just been postponed, and India was working to broker a permanent settlement. But the countryside was already so much safer that tourism, even from Americans, was rebounding -- up 30 percent in 2007, according to an Agence France-Presse report. (Now there's hope the rebound will continue: The election took place on April 10, though results will not be known for some time.)

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With friends, I re-explored Katmandu, did a short (and easy) trek in the Annapurna Conservation Area, went whitewater rafting on the Bheri River and rode elephants to look for tigers in Royal Bardia National Park. It was a perfect trip, though I never got used to seeing red Maoist flags in the midst of a village or beside some rushing stream.

In Katmandu, there was more garbage in the streets than normal (the result, we heard, of a dispute between the government and the haulers' union), and more of its lovely red-brick houses had been replaced by cement. But otherwise the capital felt the same, though bigger, as on my last visit, in 2002.

There were still sacred cows, wandering peaceably among the exotic old temples of Durbar Square and stopping traffic along New Road and anywhere else they pleased. People still fed them, petted them and, while I was there, decorated them. In addition to Newari New Year, it was also Tihar - a nationwide festival of lights, when Lakshmi, the Hindu goddess of wealth, is invited into shops and homes, and people honor special creatures. That week, even the street dogs wore marigold necklaces.

Away from the city core, cremations were still going on at the Hindu temples of Pashupatinath, the holiest place in Nepal, as they have been for centuries, and international tourists were still lining the opposite bank of the Bagmati River, trying to get telephoto shots of flames licking at shrouded corpses.

Monkeys were still biting careless tourists at the Buddhist temple of Swayambunath. And pilgrims and tourists alike were still circling Bodnath Stupa, the center of Tibetan culture in Nepal, under the all-seeing eyes of Buddha painted on its spire.

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Despite the occasional red flag, mountain trekking was in full swing, too. At one Maoist checkpoint, I read the sign-in book. Ahead of us on the trail that week were trekkers from Great Britain, Austria, Australia, Korea (three separate groups) and a dozen other countries including the Ukraine and the United States.

"Trail" is a misnomer for popular routes like the one we chose. Local people have used them for centuries, paving them long ago with thick slabs of stone. That made our trek more like climbing stairs than hiking, except these staircases were knee-wreckers that could go steeply up -- or down -- for half a mile or more.

I couldn't stop looking up, though, hoping for a glimpse of the Himalayas through frequent fog and rain. When the sky cleared just enough to reveal the top of Annapurna South one morning, I was shocked by how high I had to look. It gleamed, pure and white, so far above us that it belonged to a separate world.

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After the busy trails, the Bheri River felt peaceful and almost private. There were straw-thatched villages on the banks, but we saw no other rafts.

The Bheri is in the far west, where there was more Maoist activity. Shukra Lama, our chief boatman, told us about an encounter he had had there five years before. A man waving a gun had shouted at him from the riverbank: "I am a Maoist! Give me a raft or I will shoot you!"

Shukra refused, rowed as fast as he could, and the shot never came. But his company, Himalayan River Exploration, canceled all its trips on the Bheri after that. Last fall was its first season back on the river, and ours was only the second raft trip of the year.

That is a vain business at best, since tigers are solitary and range over large territories, and the Maoist years had taken a toll. The Maoists didn't poach tigers themselves, the lodge naturalist said, but they scared away the local police, and that left the park's wild animals unprotected.

We saw rhinos often, including mothers with calves, and once we got unnervingly close to a wild bull elephant, but there was no sign of tigers. I was certain they had all been killed.

Then, on the last afternoon, we crossed a shallow stream and saw -- clear and fresh and big as salad plates -- the unmistakable prints of giant cat paws in the mud.

"She tiger," our elephant's driver said softly. We never got close enough to see her, but I rejoiced all the same.

My flight home left Katmandu's international airport at dusk the next day. In the inevitable shoving match at the entrance, I glanced above the heads of the crowd for a moment and caught my breath: Through the haze of the city's polluted air, I could see snowpeaks glowing in the distance -- a jagged white ridge turned magenta and pastel-pink by the setting sun.

Former Star Tribune travel editor Catherine Watson is the author of two books of travel essays, "Roads Less Traveled" and "Home on the Road." Her website is www.catherinewatsontravel.com.