Golf Near the Roof of the World
There are plenty of countries where you'd never consider playing golf—let alone visit them at all. North Korea, Iran and Iraq would probably be involved in a three-way playoff for No.1 on your list, while Mongolia and Turkmenistan might be right up there.
How about Nepal?
Until 1999, the former monarchy with the weird twin-triangular flag had a half-dozen courses. Most were private nine-holers that only a reverse-green fee might induce you to play, although there was one course—Himalayan Golf Course—a scruffy but fascinating layout built in 1994 outside Pokhara with surroundings so impossibly magnificent a game there was definitely worth scheduling.
In 1996 though, the strangest thing happened. Suman Sachdev, a successful international businessman with interests in Nepal, India, Thailand and Dubai, contacted Gleneagles Golf Developments (GGD) with a view to adding a proper golf course—not just another unremarkable nine-holer but something that might attract golfers from all of Asia—to the hotel/resort complex he owned in the Gokarna Forest Reserve on the banks of the holy Bagmati River, about half an hour northeast of Kathmandu.
GGD, led by the famous Scottish resort’s development manager, Ian Ferrier, and the Director of Agronomy, Jimmy Kidd, had aimed to create ten or so Gleneagles-type resorts around the world. The recession of the early 1990s made such a vision unrealistic, however. So instead of building grand, 232-room hotels with multiple golf courses, equestrian centers, spas, tennis facilities, clay-pigeon shooting schools, falconry schools, etc, it ended up offering only its golf course design and construction services.
The company’s first job in the US became rather well known. You may have heard of it – Bandon Dunes in Oregon which Jimmy’s son David designed. That project had started in 1994 when the Kidds began hacking their way through 250 acres of gorse to reveal what eventually became the wonderful first course at the Bandon Dunes Golf Resort. Somewhere in the middle of all that though, GGD got the call from Nepal.
“My first thought was ‘Where exactly is Nepal?’” David Kidd remembers. “Is it safe? Are there dangerous animals and insects? Will I like the food; do they eat Indian Food? Will the King of Siam be there with Julie Andrews?’”
Kidd made about a dozen visits over the course of the next three years. “I’d fly from London to Frankfurt to Dubai to Karachi to Kathmandu,” he says. “It was a long trip. I once asked the relief pilot on the way in why we were holding at 30,000 ft, no lower. He explained that in this part of the world the clouds have rocks in them.”
Kidd was relieved to learn the tigers that roamed what had once been the King’s old hunting grounds were now gone, and he was very pleasantly surprised by the efficiency of the contractor, a former Indian amateur champion and Indian Golf Hall of Fame member named Ranjit Nanda. “Ranjit and his staff were exceptional,” says Kidd. “They did a fantastic job and, to be honest, I loved the whole experience of working with them in Nepal. I would do it again….maybe!”
Two years after the course opened, political unrest in Nepal and his growing workload prevented Kidd from ever returning to Gokarna to see the course he designed.
I was fortunate to play it in 2008, around about the time Nepalese citizens were choosing Ram Baran Yadav to be their first President, and can assure Kidd the course turned out very well. If you said you could recognize the Scotsman’s hand in its design you’d be lying, but there are fun, quirky, exciting holes here that he and only a handful of other architects would have had the vision and courage to build.
Suman Sachdev assures me the country is peaceful now, and though you might not buy a ticket from Denver to Kathmandu purely for the purpose of playing Gokarna Forest, I would certainly recommend you take your sticks if you happen to be heading that way. The course is great fun, and even Coloradans who know a thing or two about mountain views, will walk it in awed silence.
And while you’re in Kathmandu, don’t forget to book a seat on a Buddha Air or Yeti Air flight that will take you from Tribhuvan International airport over the Himalayas and past Everest (or, as the locals call it, Sagarmatha; Tibetans–the mountain borders Nepal and Tibet – call it Chomolungma) for perhaps the greatest mountain view of all.
Colorado AvidGolfer is the state’s leading resource for golf and the lifestyle that surrounds it. It publishes eight issues annually and proudly delivers daily content via www.coloradoavidgolfer.com.
