 A stock shot of Mt. Everest |
10/7/06
The culmination of 5 months of planning is this--6 hours into a 16-hour flight to Bangkok, en route to Kathmandu. To hiking on steroids--there's a reason they call it "trekking"--and hopefully reaching Everest base camp. I have always wanted to see that dark molar with my own eyes. Krakauer's book put the fire in me to read everything I could of the mountain and the odd people who have felt the will to claim it. I don't have the urge they have; matter of fact, I think it is wrong to climb, best, and own a presence of nature that storied and big. But it's held a pull for me, quietly, to see it up close, the snowfields thrust nearly 6 miles into the sky and the plume of cloud that Krakauer likens to a jet stream, so hard and fast and high is the severity of that wind.
Over the years, I have filed away the statistics in the part of my brain that said "someday I'll go there." The mountain is 29,028 feet tall. At that altitude, there is 70 percent less oxygen than there is at sea level. Airliners cruise at 30,000 feet; Everest is less than 1 mile below that altitude. Base camp is 17,600 feet, the altitude we hope to reach if it doesn't kick us in the butt. There are plenty of dangers--high-altitude pulmonary edema and high-altitude cerebral edema, both of which can strike at 12,000 feet and higher. The dangers do not dissuade me. Or the distance. Or the cost. I have been joking with my friends that I will never be able to afford to take another vacation again. The outlay is worth it, though. I believe in saving my money not quite until it hurts and then spending it on something I feel passionately about.
More stats: There is 50 percent less oxygen at base camp than there is at sea level. The upper region of the mountain known as the "death zone" is 25,000 feet. Or is it 26,000 feet? Either way, humans are known to ebb more than thrive at that altitude. Staying alive in the death zone truly takes every will in every cell in the body and then some. Breathing is a major effort, eating virtually impossible (high altitude tends to scuttle appetite), and the cold splinters everything exposed to it for more than a few minutes. And then there is the wind--howling, raging, and endless. It is a wonder anyone actually summits--or tries to. The permit to climb Mt. Everest is $70,000 these days. Were it not for the nimble and strong Sherpas, virtually none of the Westerners rich enough to buy a permit would make it to the summit, let alone base camp or the Khumbu icefall.
The icefall is full of house-sized blocks of ice that constantly move--sometimes by only inches, sometimes in crashing avalanches. Climbers cross the icefall step by precarious step on aluminum ladders fixed to the damning ice somehow by the brave Sherpas. The Sherpas constantly go ahead of the climbers and make things safe--or slightly less treacherous.
Now 6 1/2 hours into the flight there is twilight beyond the plane's windows. I wish the Skymap feature on the TV screen ahead of me worked; I would love to know where we are. My guess is somewhere over the Atlantic where that body of water begins to take on a richer, polysyllabic name, judging from the sparse clouds dotting the dark-blue expanse below and the amber lights punctuating all that vast space; those must be buoys, or possibly ships.
I was astounded when I saw the span of the plane's wings; they seem to extend 50 or 60 feet from the body. And the huge, hulking engine hanging below the wing--how does it stay attached and yet consume air so voraciously?
I'm recalling the time I flew to Alaska and sat beside an engineer who worked for Boeing. He'd helped design or had worked on the aircraft we were traveling on and readily explained the wing's hydraulic workings to me. I think he was surprised at my interest. I cannot get enough of the physics that allow such huge man-made beasts to rise into the air and stay there. I know there are coefficients of drag and lift, but those particular statistics I don't know. Take the math out of it, and aeronautics fascinates me. Always has.
10/10/06
Kathmandu is a swirling, somewhat tangled place. The poverty is immediate and abject--that I already knew about--but to see it with my own eyes has been illuminating and humbling.
Yesterday evening my friend James took me to meet Bimala, a beggar girl he has known for 8 years, and her family. They are Indian and came to Nepal from Punjab because there was no way for them to earn a living there.
On the streets of Kathmandu, Bimala rents a baby from an acquaintance and persuades tourists to buy dried milk for the baby from a store. At the end of the day she sells the dried milk back to the store and keeps the cash. She gives a cut to the woman who lets her rent the baby and uses the rest to support her family. There are 12 of them. Bimala is 16.
"She tried school," James told me, "but she didn't like it." He explained that she was molested in school by her teacher as are many young girls who go to public schools in the city.
 My friend James, who lives in Kathmandu |
 Visiting with Bimala in her home |
 Children who live in Bimala's village |
James took me down an alley to meet Bimala's family; when we met her on the street, she had asked us to come by for tea. Before we went to her village, James stopped at a market on the street to get some food for the family. He knows so many people in the city and several children and teenagers greeted him enthusiastically. James introduced me to the young people; he'd told them that he had a friend from America who was arriving. The children were so welcoming and gracious; they took my hand eagerly and seemed glad to meet me. I can't remember the last time I received such a warm welcome in the United States.
Not surprisingly, the children and teens all know and love James. In addition to being gregarious, he is perpetually generous and buys things for their families. "I spent many years [at Paine-Webber] helping rich people," James told me later. "When I came here, I decided to help poor people." And so he sends Bimala's sisters and brother to school, bought the family a TV to replace the one that was stolen from them, and is starting to form a business with Bimala in which he will sell in the United States the hand-sewn blankets that her mother makes.
A young girl led us down an alley toward Bimala's home. The alley gave way to steep, muddy paths that people navigated so easily in twilight. Not as nimble, I walked slowly down the steep pitches so I wouldn't trip, willing my shoes to see better than my eyes did. There was the fecund smell of sewage. "Careful," James said. "Stay to the left of the path because the right-hand side is the toilet."
Along the way we encountered a group of young people pumping water from a piece of iron pipe thrust into the ground. They all knew James well. A little girl of about 3 silently and sweetly took my hand in hers and walked with us for a while. "Who is this lovely?" I asked James. He told me her name and the child beamed. I was continually struck by how happy the residents of the tiny village were to meet someone new and learn my name. It was an honor to meet them, too.
The village was a maze of shacks made of bits of wood threaded here and there with plastic bags, cardboard panels, and rags. Each shack contained several raised platforms where the families slept together. And somehow, despite the dearth of actual structure, each shack had electrical power. As we walked by the shacks, people waved their hands through the wooden slats and greeted James. He introduced me to them and I shook hands with his friends through the open-air walls of their homes.
At Bimala's shack I met her mother, who was pounding grain into flour near a cooking fire, Bimala's youngest sister, a shy brother, her grandfather, who was visiting from India to sell samosa molds on the street, some friends of the family who had stopped by, and a bit later, Bimala's younger sister, beautiful and beaming like the rest of the family, who had been out pumping water for the family.
"Welcome to my home," Bimala said as her mother served us some steaming chai. James had told me it would be the best chai I'd ever tasted and indeed it was. It was a bit precarious to hold the hot tea in a thin metal cup and then bring it slowly to my mouth for each careful sip.
James encouraged Bimala to show me a shrine she had made to Ganesh and the other Hindu gods. Every home in the village had a shrine and Bimala was proud of hers. She held up a picture of Ganesh surrounded by other deities and explained to me who they were. The patriarchal god, who has long hair like a woman, is responsible for the rivers flowing. Ganesh is seen sometimes as a young boy and sometimes as an adult; he is the deity who is part elephant and part human. The shrine contained other pictures in dusty frames and strips of fabric on top.
Like any mother, Bimala's mother kept bringing over plates of food to us. James protested mildly and she smiled at him while offering yet another dish. There was roti, the flat, grilled bread, saag (ground spinach), and some sort of fried snacks. I was touched at the family's generosity, especially given their meager resources. We talked to them through Bimala, who translated. Her English was excellent. James told me she had learned it by working on the streets. She was friendly, knew everyone in town, and did quite well at begging. "She loves her job," James told me.
It was inspiring--no, that's not quite the right word--to meet and talk with people who were exceedingly poor but did not pity themselves or expect any sort of emotional charity. They were barely making do by U.S. standards but they didn't view themselves as victims or as unfortunate and they didn't discuss the difficulty of their lives. Instead, they were quietly proud of what they were able to achieve, of the home they had created among the maze of shacks, and were eager to share anything they could with others--even me, the foreigner they'd just met. Now that's true charity, the actual blood of altruism.
A bit later, we bid the family goodbye to head back to Thamel (pronounced with a silent 'h'). It was good to hug Bimala and her sisters, to shake her mother's hand and thank her for her hospitality, and to shake her father's hand again and clasp it after he'd led us out of the little village.
Out on the street the traffic was as precarious as always, even more so because the streams of assorted vehicles made their way around each other without the benefit of streetlights. In Kathmandu, cars, buses, motorcycles, bicycles, and rickshaws share the street with pedestrians; there are no sidewalks. And "share" is a relative term. Drivers honk their horns constantly, but it is not an angry or frustrated sound that says "get out of my way." It is more of a warning, practically polite in the two quick beeps that say "here I come." Smaller vehicles generally yield to larger ones and cars and motorcycles brake adeptly and often for pedestrians, who sometimes stand to the side of the road to let vehicles pass and sometimes don't. Cars and bikes pass within inches of hips and shoulders. There is no other way. People can't walk in the ditches because the ditches are so steeply pitched.
I tried not to concentrate on the street dogs but I kept seeing them, thin and napping, trotting calmly down the streets, or trying to steer clear of street urchins who unfortunately were frequently cruel to them. "Those are glue sniffers," James said of a ragged bunch of young boys who were about 6 or 7 years old. "They probably came down from the mountains because their parents were killed by the Maoists and now they live on the streets."
He told me the Nepali word for street is "chok," pronounced "choke," and at first I thought it was a reference to the streets' constricted nature. These sinuous pathways are barely 15 feet across, not quite wide enough for two lanes of traffic and throngs of pedestrians, and yet everyone makes do. Vehicles hurtle towards each other, narrowly missing pedestrians, and then quickly pass each other at horrifying intersections bunched like the arms of a squid. There are no traffic lights, no lane markers, and only occasionally a policeman to guide motorists on the scant major roads. Most of the streets are narrow arteries that curve away and then meet each other at random angles. Shops line the streets and beggars and would-be merchants constantly exhort passersby to spend their money.
Above all this, birds swoop among the buildings and caw raucously. Dogs bark and add their voices. Music bursts out here and there from windows and everyone gets along, somehow.
10/11/06
"You need three things to drive in Kathmandu," our tour guide, Kumar, told us this morning. "A good horn, a good brake, and good luck."
We smiled at that and nodded in agreement as our bus backed several feet down a street in order to rev up enough speed to negotiate a hard, practically hairpin left turn up a hill. There was no way to see if any cars were coming toward us and the bus would need both lanes, ill-defined as they were, to make it up the hill. Perhaps the driver simply wished for good luck as our large, shuddering beast swung near a bougainvillea bush and began to climb the hill. I shut my eyes as the bus lurched through the turn.
We were heading to the monkey temple, where I shot more photos of the monkeys and stray dogs than the ancient Buddhist structures with pagoda-style roofs. I got a shot of a mother dog suckling her two young pups.
I bought prayer flags for Jamie and Phil and learned that the flags' five colors stand for Buddhist elements: red is fire, yellow is earth, green is water, blue is sky, and white is wind. "When people put them up or pay a small boy to climb up high and put them up, the person who has the most luck is the one whose flags last the longest," Kumar told us.
En route to and from the monkey temple, I kept noticing slogans painted on the front bumpers of several trucks. "Drive slow, long live," said one. Another said, "help ever, hurt never." If only these sentiments could be applied in D.C. and other U.S. cities where so many drivers are imbued with that aggressive "me first" attitude.
In Kathmandu, there seems to be no such thing. Some trucks even encouraged drivers to honk a warning when passing. "Horn please," was painted on a green truck that drove a few vehicles ahead of us through a traffic jam. The back of another truck carried the simple directive "push horn." I thought that one was quietly hilarious. Vehicles and drivers with a sense of humor? Only here.
10/12/06
It is difficult to adequately picture, in words or on a camera, what the first day of trekking has been like, but I must try to write what I have seen before new sights and experiences on the trail crowd today's images from my mind.
This morning the 10 of us and our head guide, Thupten (pronounced "Toop-tin"), who had spent 16 years in a Buddhist monastery before he began leading tours for REI Adventures, boarded a small prop plane bound for Lukla. The plane was so tiny that we could see into the cockpit. Most of us stared at the controls and watched the pilot and co-pilot maneuver the plane down the runway. Just before the aircraft took off, there was that thrilling hum of revving propellers. I love that sound. Jerry, sitting beside me, explained that the pilot can change the pitch of each propeller to help turn the plane.
Once the plane was aloft and broke out of the clouds, we were glued to the windows. Green pastures gave way to peaks that rose up like teeth and were blanketed with trees. The trees themselves seemed to steam, shrouded as they were in cottony clouds. Here and there I saw rivers threaded through valleys; from that altitude (Jerry estimated about 9,000 feet), it was hard to tell if they were churning with white water made crazy by rapids or if the rising sun was reflecting off the water. We'd left the hotel at 5:00 a.m. and it was barely 6:00 a.m. when we flew over all that lush landscape.
The plane made an extremely smooth landing on the Lukla airstrip, all the more impressive because the pilot had to land on an incline. A bit later, after we'd gotten off the plane and finished getting what we needed from our huge duffels, we watched other flights land and take off. The latter reminded me of cars calmly heading down a driveway. There are no jets that access Lukla. Now I know why all the flights to and from the tiny airstrip have weight limits on baggage.
Sir Edmund Hillary built the Lukla airport to make the Khumbu region more accessible to trekkers. "He is a god to us Sherpas," Mingma had explained to us last night at our briefing session. "Hillary also built schools for Sherpa children and trekker dollars give jobs to so many people."
 The prop plane cockpit |
 From the tiny plane, the hills seemed to be steaming with clouds |
 A jopkyu in Lukla |
As we set out with our packs on the first leg of the trek, I was amazed at all the stalls selling trekking items and all the rustic inns that lined the trail throughout Lukla and into the next village. We continually gasped at the views on either side of us, steep hills knitted here and there with pastures and rice fields. Eventually the commerce petered out a bit as we rose higher and higher on the trail. Now and then we encountered small stupas and engraved stone tablets (or mani stones) set into the sides of small hills. "This is so everyone can have blessings, if they want," Thupten told us. "This is a very big area for Buddhists."
I got my first look at jopkyus (pronounced "zup-kyews"), the cow-yak hybrids that would be carrying our duffel bags. They were cute as hell, with large, gentle eyes, and came in all sorts of colors and patterns. Many were black, some were gray, and now and then I saw a white jopkyu. I was delighted when I saw one patterned like Gomez, my cat. The protocol on the trail is to stand to one side when jopkyus pass so they can get by with their loads. The drivers, generally young Sherpa men, walked alongside or behind their animals and continually whistled to them or urged them on with brief, hearty shouts. "CHWEEEE!" they called to the animals or sometimes "HUHH!" and the jopkyus walked slowly along the outer edge of the trail, bearing duffel bags, bags of rice, folded tables, and just about everything else.
I'd always known that Sherpas were exceptionally strong, but I almost couldn't believe it when I saw them go past at a normal clip, and sometimes a run, carrying bulging baskets of cabbages, duffel bags, stove parts, and other items. One guy even toted a water heater on his back. "I hope that isn't for our group," Mike said to me. He and I were watching people and jopkyus make their way across a swinging bridge suspended over the Dudh ("milk" in the Sherpa language) River.
"I know they don't want pity," I said to Mike, "but I feel badly for the Sherpas that they should have to work so hard for the money they earn."
"I know what you mean," he replied. "In lots of countries this would be considered exploitation, but here it is employment."
We watched as Sherpa after Sherpa stepped off the bridge with enormous loads. Thupten had told us that each had to be able to carry at least 30 kilos (66 pounds) to be hired as a porter. The men, and a few women, were sweating as they passed us, their foreheads beaded with moisture, but none were staggering under their loads.
Mike and I stood near the end of the bridge, trying to get a good angle for photos of the Maoists who were pressuring trekkers to make "donations" to cross the bridge. A red flag emblazoned with the Communist hammer and sickle waved beside the mound of rice bags the Maoists had set up as a toll booth.
"How many you have? One, two, three...." a camouflage-clad man counted as our group went past him. Thupten stopped to talk to the Maoists and set things straight with them. I suspect he didn't have to give them any money to let our group cross the bridge. "It is always better not to argue with Maoists," he told us later. Before we'd set off this morning, Thupten had advised us to tell the Maoists that we would be staying just 10 days in the Khumbu region. "If you stay 14 days or longer, they make you pay," he said.
Sitting here in my tent, a big, comfortable one that can hold two or three people, I'm thinking it will be good to fall asleep to the sound of the Dudh River, which flows near our campsite. Already my head sinks into my hand when I close my eyes to rest them, and earlier, when I was pulling out my sleeping bag and getting my pack ready for tomorrow, I found my hands halting themselves from what they had been doing and I simply stared deeply at the walls of the tent, the bright red duffel, and even my boots in the tent vestibule. I am tired, but peacefully so.
10/13/06
I miss Phak. That's the name Jack gave the golden-brown mongrel we encountered at our campsite yesterday in Phakding. Phak had triangular Lab ears and a sweet, pensive face. Unfortunately, that face bore scars that ran above his right eye to the base of his ear. We hypothesized that perhaps he'd mixed it up with another stray dog. I was glad to see that the Sherpas didn't chase Phak away from our cluster of tents. Now and then he nosed his way into the room where we had dinner. Thupten clucked at him and tried to shoo him from the building. "He doesn't like Nepalis," he said of the dog.
I wanted so badly to give him some food--the poor dog's ribs were showing--but Thupten said not to encourage him to hang around us or even to pet him. "Some dogs, they are not so nice," he said. He told us about a woman on one of his treks whom he'd had to save when she was bitten by a dog. There is no vaccination program for animals in Nepal, so all stray dogs are assumed to be rabies carriers.
After we'd been hiking about an hour this morning, we stopped at one of the many small Sherpa lodges to rest and guzzle some water. I went to use the loo, and when I returned, Mike told me someone was looking for me.
"Who?" I asked.
"Yeah," the others chimed in. "It's that dog who was at our camp last night. He's been following us this morning. It's because of you. He's following you."
I don't think Phak was following me specifically; more likely he was following our group, looking for some food. Perhaps the others had a point, though.
Last night I woke up around midnight and heard some faint growling. I heard it now and then throughout the night whenever I woke up. In the morning, when I zipped open the inner fly of the tent, there was Phak curled up in the vestibule beside my boots. I was so honored that he'd slept there during the night. I petted him gently and he sleepily opened an eye and then closed it. So much for him being potentially dangerous, as Thupten had warned.
A little later, we learned how Phak had earned the scars that knit his face. Our staff urged the six jopkyus who were carrying our gear into a smaller pasture to graze. Phak paced among them and barked. When he neared a large black jopkyu, the beast thrust its horns at him. Perhaps Phak fancies himself a shepherd of some sort.
Today we started to do some real climbing--up and up steep stone steps and hard-packed earth--and crossed several swaying bridges above the churning Dudh River. Phak trotted along with us. When we stopped for lunch, he stopped, too, and curled up under a picnic table. I saved some thick-cut chips from my plate and wrapped them in a napkin. I slipped them to Phak once we were on the trail again, looking right and then left to make sure that Thupten didn't see me. Phak took the chips hungrily from my fingers, his teeth grazing my thumb, and oh how I wished I'd had more for him.
10/14/06
We are at the Everest View Hotel, at 13,000 feet, and all puns aside, I have never been so high. Even before we reached this lodge we had our first look at Everest, which peeked modestly over the edge of several lower peaks, Anadablam to the right, with a bit of a plateau peak, and another peak that I cannot name but is no less majestic. It is thrilling to see Everest with its characteristic jet plume, the ever present stream of high, high wind blowing from its peak. It is said that the wind is so ferocious up there that it howls and rips tents open like entrails. From this view, the jet plume looks like a feather thrust gently in a woman's hat.
The view on our acclimatization hike this morning defied description, as always. Namche Bazaar shrunk below us into a tiny, tiny village and then a series of colored dots (the many multicolored, standing-seam metal roofs) as we pushed higher and higher up the trail. It was a bit difficult to navigate the small, sliding rocks at times, so steep was the incline, but my feet liked it. I found that they didn't like going downhill and sensed the beginnings of a blister growing on each heel.
I like Bodri's term best for trying to capture the views up here. It is not possible to take photos continually while walking, although the eyes crave them and want to remember the brown valleys that front the sharp-edged snowy peaks rising so starkly against the sky. "You take photos in your heart instead," Bodri said. He is one of my favorites of the assistant guides, a young man with a perpetual smile.
10/15/06
On this, our fourth day of trekking, we have the best campsite of all--beside a hungry, churning river.
I always feel so loosened and free beside water, especially when there is so much of it and it is as busy as this river, which chugs past the rocks in rapids and turns aqua-gray from the effort.
Tomorrow I hear that's going to be us--up, up, up on that tan thread of a trail sewn into these tall hills. The hills are so high that the clouds roll in quickly and engulf their heads, then their midsections. We are camping somewhere around 11,000 feet and the hills are so much taller than our campsite.
After tea, I make my way to the edge of the river. It is the Dudh, the same one we followed (or that followed us) from Lukla. Yes, water is water and rivers are rivers wherever you go, but this one is so much more interesting than the Potomac is, partly because it is in Nepal. The Dudh is far narrower than the Potomac, and it is such a rushing, thrilling contrast to the hills and lower mountain peaks that flank it.
Today we saw regular glimpses of Anadablam's nose-shaped peak and I find myself still looking for it in this river-hewn valley. We did a bit of climbing today and I was ever glad for the hiking poles I'd brought. Had I not bought them, I'm not sure I would have made it up many of the steeply pitched inclines we inched up. No one walked quickly, not even the sure-footed Sherpas who never need hiking poles to make it up and down these hills. They are strong, beautiful, and peaceful people.
Last night Nima, whose village we are camping near tonight, patiently taught me some words in the Sherpa language as we sat on a stone wall and watched low clouds sweep into Namche Bazaar. "Moopwah" is cloud. "Zuptu" is boot. "Gee," pronounced with a hard consonant, is dog. I already forgot the word for cat, but it has three syllables and begins with a 'b.' The Sherpas say "kongbah" for house, "meek" for eye, and "mishel" for glasses. "Gno" is nose. "Gor" is jacket. "Limino" is nice. "Chu" is water. "Tendeno" is hot. When you want hot water, you ask for "chu tendeno."
Funny--I was quite agile today with my hiking poles, but climbing without them on these smooth, white rocks makes me feel a bit clumsy and off balance. So far, I have had no problems with the altitude. No dizziness or sleeplessness, and certainly no lack of appetite; matter of fact, I've been eating like a horse ever since I stepped on the Thai Airways plane in JFK and am always hungry for every meal they serve us on this trek.
It is meditative to sit beside this river. I've been thinking, as I stare at its white rapids, what would I give up? Maybe the presence of so many Buddhists and their spirit in this region is making me reflect spiritually on the water and this whole trip in general. What would I give up? I don't even want to clarify that question with the how or the why of some sort of sacrifice; for now, I am content to have the thought wash over me as twilight ever so slowly darkens the rocks.
10/17/06
Everest is hiding today; Thupten tells us we won't see the mountain for the next 3 days. It doesn't matter, though; the view en route to Dingboche, our campsite on the sixth day of the trek, was just as stunning as if we'd had the big behemoth in sight all along.
We passed yak farms on the right, terraced plots of land that each held several of the grazing animals. Below them, the Imsekhola River sent up a distant roar as it tumbled over rocks. Perhaps it is the Imsekhola that is responsible for carving the great slides of glacial moraine we saw on the hillsides. Mike told me he once had to cross similar moraine undercut with some moving water and it made for some precarious footing.
Up ahead, Mt. Pumori's snow-covered crown peeked at us from between brown hills. Like all of the minor peaks around here, it has a profile that is much more striking than Everest's. The famed peak is rather shaggy in profile, sometimes quite unassuming when framed by lesser peaks.
We saw another side of Anadablam today and I noticed that the bulge below its nose-shaped peak is indeed wide enough to camp on, although that would make for some mighty chilly and slippery camping. The guys tell me that folks camp in bivvy sacks on the bulge before summiting Anadablam.
Here at our campsite it feels good to laze inside the tent. In the pasture below I hear the grunting of what sounds like a big yak. I crawl out of the tent, peep over a stone wall, and am surprised to see a small calf of some sort--hard to tell if it is a yak or a cow. The little fellow is fuzzy and brown and has tiny horns. Who knew such a young animal could sound so large?
10/18/06
15,030 feet--I really felt that. We reached that altitude today on another acclimatization hike and I was huffing and puffing through most of it. At one point--about a 20-minute segment--it actually hurt. My chest tightened and it felt like a hand was clutching my windpipe. I was making so much noise with my belabored breathing that Jim looked back and smiled at me.
"Jeez, I make a lot of noise," I wheezed.
"You're supposed to," Jim replied. "There's a lot less oxygen up here."
Back down at our campsite, the view is spectacular, as always. Yaks make their way up the hills and become tiny, moving dots as they near the rocks cresting these foothills. The bells strung around their necks ring a little more quietly as they trudge uphill--the Doppler effect, as Dad would say. I wonder what he would think of this place, this country.
10/20/06
I mean no disrespect, but what the hell would possess people to want to climb all the way up Mt. Everest? Just beating it up to Kala Patar, at 18,180 feet, was difficult enough. To have the gumption to trudge--no, haul--another 11,000 feet, even with oxygen, I cannot imagine.
Our trek to Kala Patar started out with the usual sandy, steep switchbacks, which gave way to even steeper mudflats, more and more wind, and then positively scary huge black boulders. There was no trail at that point; you just made your way up the boulders as best you could. Well before the black rock I was breathing heavily and pushing down the occasional wave of nausea. Because I've been so lucky with the altitude sickness, I wasn't surprised that at least one symptom would sneak up and tap me on the shoulder. That, and the headache. I've been popping ibuprofen as often as I've been taking the diamox, and the past several days I've been popping more of the little red tablets with morning or afternoon water breaks. I am so glad that I brought a big bottle of 50 tablets to continually replenish the supply in the little metal Anacin case I carry with me at all times.
When we got as far up on Kala Patar's black rocks as we could (Thupten, bless his heart, literally gave me a hand up), Thupten unfolded a sign emblazoned with the words "REI Adventures--20 Years" and our group held it up as a very patient trekker from another group took our picture with one camera and then another and another.
 The view while hiking up Kala Patar. It was steep all right! |
 Our tour group on Kala Patar, elevation 18,180 feet |
 One of our guides, Rinzi, with Everest base camp way in the distance |
I took some shots of Rinzi, our guide for the day, in front of the infamous Khumbu icefall and then took some shots of just the icefall itself. The clouds were not cooperating and blocked our view of Everest, but none of us cared. We grinned, cheered, and high-fived each other for having made it up to 18,180 feet in the snapping, scouring wind. My fingers felt frozen numb, but I was happy to rest and get my breath back and celebrate with our group. I knew that on the way back down my heart would not be sounding "Voom! Voom!" in my ears as it had on the way up.
10/22/06
Thupten, Jerry, Michael, John, and I hiked to Everest base camp yesterday and afterwards I was too exhausted to write about it. The hike was indeed difficult, as Thupten had warned us it would be, and long. An 8-hour trip from Gorak Shep to base camp, and then down to Lobuche. Lots of up and down (or "Sherpa flats," as our guides put it), and lots of rocks and boulders to contend with.
About a half hour out of Gorak Shep my hands were numb and wouldn't warm up, so Thupten unzipped his jacket and insisted that I put my hands against his chest while he rubbed them. I was so touched and thankful that I almost wept right then and there on the top of a huge boulder deposited so many lifetimes ago by the glacier we were standing on. But that act of kindness, just one of many Thupten showed us continually throughout the trek, was all in a day's work for him.
"You are a good man," I told Thupten. "You are a prince as well as a monk."
"I am proud," he replied with his characteristic grin.
Base camp, for all its notoriety and fame, was quite unassuming. A collection of colorful tents clustered at the bottom of a huge deposit of glacial moraine. We stopped perhaps 200 or 300 feet from the tents; Thupten told us that the folks climbing the mountain don't want visitors to come any closer. He spotted climbers coming down through the icefall and told us that all five members of a Canadian expedition had summitted the day before.
 Everest base camp, elevation 17,600 feet |
 The wreckage of a crashed helicopter near Everest base camp |
Sadly, what was more striking than base camp were the remains of a helicopter that had crashed just a few hundred yards away while attempting a rescue. The body of the aircraft lay upside down and bits of engine and gears were strewn here and there among moraine till. The severed tail rotor looked like a cicada lying on its side.
Despite the implied violence and carnage of the wreckage, no one had died during the aborted rescue attempt. The helicopter had crashed 2 years ago, Thupten told us, and probably would lie there forever. In the stark Himalayas, there are no funerals for spent machinery, much less removal.
10/25/06
We are back at Lukla after traversing about 70 kilometers on foot in 2 weeks, according to Ian and a book of Himalayan facts and figures he scored.
Just now in the shower I shivered so hard that my ribs still hurt, but I didn't care. I am outside, wet hair plastered to my jacket like seaweed, and although the air carries a slight breeze, the sun is warm, so much so that it feels like a blessing. The two nights we spent camping in Lobuche, a blend of Solzhenitsyn imagery and the ninth circle of frozen hell with its snow-choked heave frost and rocks, seem like a very distant memory.
I will miss these mountains and hills and, most strongly, the Sherpas. Meeting them was one of the things I had most looked forward to on this trip, and I have not been disappointed. I think of the Sherpas' bare hands on the teapots as they bring us tea in the mornings, and those good-natured men are always smiling. The heat that radiates from them is very apparent and real. They always seem eager to see us, to greet us, to serve us meals, and simply to be with us, the crazy, pampered Americans, whether they are packing up the tents on a frosty morning, helping us ease our fat duffel bags into the red-and-blue canvas outer bags, or leading us on the myriad trails through the Himalayas.
I can't decide which member of the staff I am most fond of--sweet-natured Bodri, with his ear-to-ear smile; quiet, calm Nima, who patiently sat with me and taught me words in the Sherpa language; young Rinzi, one of the assistant guides, who sometimes wore a leather jacket when navigating steep, winding slopes and, like the others, always smiled; the other Rinzi on the staff, a slim fellow who frequently served us meals; the beautiful kitchen boy with the high cheekbones, whom I'd kidded the guys on the trek I was going to take back home with me; and all the other staff members whose company we were lucky and blessed to have.
I liked the fact that the Sherpas often set up my tent right next to theirs (I felt protected) and that they called me "didi," which is Sherpa for "sister." After I asked Nima to teach me the Sherpa word for brother, I called them "achoo" and they smiled all the more broadly.
What I love so much about the staff who accompanied us is that their happiness and cheerfulness is genuine. They never dropped their warm demeanor when they were exhausted or cold. They were with us through everything--the lung-tearing challenge of climbing Kala Patar and hiking to Everest base camp, the gorgeous sunrises that gilded the tall peaks around us, the many rich, warm meals they served (and then hovered around us like attentive mothers, offering us more of everything), and the facility with which we got used to handling Nepalese rupees until the cloth of the tattered bills warmed our hands, too. It is the Sherpas that I will miss most of all.
10/26/06
This morning's flight back to Kathmandu was a hoot at a half. At the tiny Lukla airstrip we boarded a stubby army plane through the aircraft's ass. Bags of rice were heaved into the cargo space, several pieces of luggage were tossed in, and then we made our way up a steep stepladder into the bowels of the dark-green beast.
"Makes sense," Jerry had said to me earlier as we'd watched the airport staff offload and send each plane out again in 5 minutes flat. "Unload military personnel and send the plane back packed with tourists. Good economics."
I am still amazed that they managed to squeeze 16 of us onto the flight, but squeeze they did. We packed in along narrow benches lining the plane's gullet, our feet on the cargo and our knees up to our ears. It was a far cry from the flight we arrived on, a Yeti Airlines plane that featured fold-down canvas seats three across and a smiling flight attendant who dispensed a tray of candy and cotton to dispel the noise of the propellers. We didn't care, though; we were all delighted to be heading back to gritty Kathmandu and warm (or at least warmer) temperatures. The pilot revved the props while we boarded and the resulting gust was so strong I staggered a bit with my daypack and had to hold my glasses onto my face.
After we'd mashed onto the plane, we reached up to clutch bars bolted here and there near the ceiling and felt the aircraft making the graceful yet amazing hairpin turn to head down the steep runway. We cheered and hollered like a bunch of kids as the plane picked up speed and then suddenly we were airborne in just a few minutes. It felt like a roller coaster ride, like being at the peak of some crazy hill (we'd done a lot of that in the past 2 weeks) before you freefall down the other side.
As always, the pilot landed the tiny prop plane much more smoothly than a large commercial jet lands. Turned out our luggage wasn't on our flight (it arrived three flights later), but, as with everything else that morning, we didn't care. We were that much closer to heading home.
11/4/06
Six days back in the United States and waking comes easily. Sleep, however, stays away as if it's buttered.
During the day, there have been fewer and fewer nod-off naps when my head lands almost imperceptibly on my arm while I'm reading, watching TV, or just thinking. Not that the jetlag has turned me into a narcoleptic, but I sometimes find myself almost shaking awake when I didn't realize I had been drowsy.
At night, though, my body stays obstinately rooted in Nepali or Thai time, 13 or 12 hours ahead. I stay up as late as I can, until 11:00 p.m. or 12:00 a.m., and then nothing. Warmly swathed in blankets, the cats sleeping like two meatloaves at the end of the bed, and nothing. 1:00 a.m., 2:00 a.m., and I am still awake. I've tried sleeping pills and the whanging codeine cough syrup my doctor prescribed for the persistent cough I brought back that turned into copious respiratory crud. Still nothing. My legs are coated with soreness because I went running with the Reston Runners for the first time in a month, and still nothing at night. Pitching and turning. Gotta admit I'm surprised that my legs would seize up like that after just 5 miles of running since they barely complained at all about traipsing 70 kilometers through the mountains, but oh well.
My body has changed a bit. I came back from Nepal several pounds heavier. I'd suspected I might put on weight because the food was so generous and starchy, and these days my metabolism continues to be revved up and my appetite somewhat insatiable. The outer edges of my two big toes are numb and rather plastic-feeling. First noticed it the day I flew from Bangkok to New York and attributed it to circulation issues from being screwed into a plane seat for so long, so I was extra careful to do leg exercises and to massage my calves often during the flight. A week and a half later, the outer edges of the big toes are still not my own. Now I suspect it might be the latent effect of mild frostbite that came and sat on my feet the day we set out for Everest base camp. The numbness is a weird souvenir of the trek that I somehow don't mind having.
