Sunday, December 19, 2010
Use your Imagination
So the computer that I brought along with me has decided to crap out on the photo front, it simply can't read photos off of the SD card anymore and it looks like the problem has also corrupted my USB sticks. Fortunately it doesn't look like I've lost any of the pictures... yet. I hope you enjoy. I'll do my best to keep writing and posting so you all have something to chew on.
Oh Goa
Most people reading this are in New England. Its December 18th, and aside from a three day jaunt to Hampi (an umpteen hour bus ride in from the coast) I have spent about two weeks on the coast. I read that a snow storm threatened and grazed some parts of New England and my Floridian grown body surely has a piercing memory of the kind of cold that is descending upon what I call ‘home’ with a grudging love. For all my loved ones reading this, I’m so sorry, but right now I’m outside. I’m sitting in shorts and a tee-shirt, the sun set long ago and before me is a fine white sand extending off into the dark where a beautifully rhythmic surge of tumbling water sounds and rolls towards me.
This morning I was up early, before the girls and I was on the beach for a morning walk before the sun had risen high enough over the land to hit the water.
Please remember that I love all of you, and don’t hate me… too much.
The food is spectacular here on the coast. My favorite being a locally caught kingfish that I picked from an array brought before our table. Consistency is fairly absent when it comes to anything on the menu that is not strictly Indian, but this has led to some tasty and pleasantly surprising discoveries. Though, if anything food related is to be said about India, surely anyone in my position would say it must be the juice.
No one does juice like the Indians do. When the three of us had found Goa’s northern most beach and ordered some pineapple juice, we watched as the man who took our order walked back towards the kitchen and grabbed a couple of pineapples on his way. All juice is juiced fresh, on the spot and orange juice is made from mandarin oranges, nothing like home, but perhaps far better.
We decided to hunt down the quieter, more out of the way beaches of Goa as opposed to the drunken party beaches that are more characteristic of its core. The time has been spent well, if simply, and everything that I dreamed of while starving, sick, exhausted and cold in the Himalaya has come true. The heat of the sun and the roll and sway of the ocean is a comfort that is only paralleled by the comforts of home after having been long deprived. My sense of reality has done a gleeful 180. In the Himalaya, I was so thankful to go to sleep, not just from exhaustion but because of what I knew I would dream. Here, I awake from dreams to find that actually, I’m somewhere better.
From the Rajasthan desert through the smog, slum, and glitz of Mumbai to the powdered sand of Goa’s palmed coast, India is quickly living up to its reputation of truly having everything.
This morning I was up early, before the girls and I was on the beach for a morning walk before the sun had risen high enough over the land to hit the water.
Please remember that I love all of you, and don’t hate me… too much.
The food is spectacular here on the coast. My favorite being a locally caught kingfish that I picked from an array brought before our table. Consistency is fairly absent when it comes to anything on the menu that is not strictly Indian, but this has led to some tasty and pleasantly surprising discoveries. Though, if anything food related is to be said about India, surely anyone in my position would say it must be the juice.
No one does juice like the Indians do. When the three of us had found Goa’s northern most beach and ordered some pineapple juice, we watched as the man who took our order walked back towards the kitchen and grabbed a couple of pineapples on his way. All juice is juiced fresh, on the spot and orange juice is made from mandarin oranges, nothing like home, but perhaps far better.
We decided to hunt down the quieter, more out of the way beaches of Goa as opposed to the drunken party beaches that are more characteristic of its core. The time has been spent well, if simply, and everything that I dreamed of while starving, sick, exhausted and cold in the Himalaya has come true. The heat of the sun and the roll and sway of the ocean is a comfort that is only paralleled by the comforts of home after having been long deprived. My sense of reality has done a gleeful 180. In the Himalaya, I was so thankful to go to sleep, not just from exhaustion but because of what I knew I would dream. Here, I awake from dreams to find that actually, I’m somewhere better.
From the Rajasthan desert through the smog, slum, and glitz of Mumbai to the powdered sand of Goa’s palmed coast, India is quickly living up to its reputation of truly having everything.
Curry, Children and the Slums
Sophie and I quickly made our way to Jaipur in the northern region of India called Rajasthan. This was after going to three different train stations in Delhi, looking for our train.
A kid named Isral picked us up from the train station to take us to our hotel. He made us laugh even though we were exhausted and we agreed to meet him the next morning so that he could take us on a tour of Jaipur.
I was still repudiating from being sick in Lukla, but unfortunately this would not last for long. A few days later when Sophie and I were in Udaipur, she got food poisoning and I definitely felt a bit of the same bug, though my body seemed far more experienced to meet the challenge. All I’ll say of this is that traveling to foreign countries where the likelihood of getting sick is high is bound to make friends get to know each other very well - in perhaps… unexpected ways.
Food became increasingly difficult after Udaipur, though when we tracked down a hotel that had a free showing of Octopussy (James Bond movie that was filmed in Udaipur - remember the floating palaces?) we were far from disappointed from the chocolate milkshakes and the ‘Hello to the Queen’. Sophie and I had, also, never heard of this desert. Picture quartered banana with crushed graham cracker, a few scoops of vanilla ice cream and chocolate sauce everywhere.
The German bakery we found also suffered from our onslaught when we stumbled across it. (Side note: When I was way up in Dingboche, Nepal, a few days before my epic babysitting climb with ‘N’ and essentially the starting point to go to that pass, I came across a French bakery that boasted a ‘Snickers Danish’ -- Yes. That’s right, its exactly what you think it is: a Snickers bar baked into a Danish. I’m sure this is the result of an unknown genius somewhere in Nepal who ran out of regular chocolate and noticed they still had a few Snickers bars left for sale. Yes, I got one, its slightly better than you’d think it would be, but only if you have high expectations, in another word, spectacular)
I was a little disappointed that the only way to actually gain admission to the floating palaces of Udaipur is if you plan to spend an exorbitant amount of money on a drink (something I thought was pretty strange since alcohol is a bit taboo in this part of India).
By the time we got on our umpteen hour bus ride to Mumbai, I believe I’d consumed about 30 or 40 pounds of Imodium. Well, perhaps not… but I’ve certainly taken enough for it to be ineffective now.
A rickshaw took us from the hole-in-the-wall ‘bus station’ to the actual bus which was around the block and down the street pulled over on the side of the road across the street from some of the Udaipur slums. As I took off my shoes and got comfortable in the plush sleeper cabin, arranging luggage in the most advantageous conglomeration for comfort, I took out my book to read and stopped to look out the window. The slums seems to be constructed of dark colors rather than actual substance. Rotting food and garbage is strewn about - its end marking the beginning of the road, and everything is slathered in the color of the filth. Corrugated tin roofs are held down by rocks and boulders, doorways are black holes, perhaps with a tiny steady flame suffocating in a corner, but always in the darkness of those dwellings - the wandering glint of eyes. The children, always the most telling examples of a place, are walking histories of their slums. Clothed like their houses, with dirt, garbage, shit and rags, they wander and beg, all with the universal gesture of an outstretched hand moving to the mouth for a moment to indicate food before returning before you for anything you might proffer. I have gone back and forth, unsure as how to regard them. Most westerners, I have noticed simply ignore them. I can’t help but look at them, head to toe, and try to guess what is going through their head. I’ve noticed that there is a substantial complacency that lurks behind a practiced pity look. These children are starving and poor beyond an empty pocket, but there appears to be a boredom in them, and their hunger craves not just in the literal sense, but also for something more, some path to follow, some game to learn, some example to follow. In the month since I have arrived in India, I have paled in these moments, not for the sole reason of their abject poverty but because of this already ingrained habit of the begging ritual. Each and every time I have hoped for some reason to give money. Of course its impractical and unwise to give to children who beg, for it further ingrains that this kind of behavior will reward, as numerous signs in India have warned. What I have hoped for is some kind of ingenuity, some neat trick, a song, a dance, something to respect. I would not be rewarded in my search until I was sitting on Palelom beach in southern Goa. I watched as a mother and her two children sit up two tripods made from long bamboo. Between these tripods extended a rope which was pulled tight between the stands approximately eight or nine feet above the ground. Puzzled I watched while sipping my Danish beer. Of the two children, the younger little girl proceeded to climb up one of the stands and sit perched down on her haunches as her mother handed her another long bamboo pole. She took it, balanced it and then stood up on the rope and proceeded to walk the tight rope. I was delighted to see a break in the pattern as it was still obvious that this trio was in a very low bracket of society. When she successfully got to the other side, her bother gave her a stack of bowls which the little girl took, balanced on her head and then started out again across the rope. On the next run, her mother handed her the inside rim of a bicycle wheel (sans spokes, of course, and tire and tube). The little girl walked the rope with her feet inside the wheel rim, each foot climbing the curve and pushing it down into the rope and of course, the pottery was still balanced on her head. On the next round the wheel rim was replaced by a tin plate which the girl placed under one of her feet and once again she walked across the rope, sliding the plate against her other foot and then stepping on it… on the rope. It was a circus act, but nonetheless, I was enthralled. When the little girl clamored down the bamboo pole, I had already walked up to the trio and was waiting to meet the star. She met me with a gorgeous smile and big bright eyes. Her skin was slick with sweat from the heat and the effort but it was obvious that she was happy, proud and exhilarated. She told me her name was ‘Muscan’. I told her that she was absolutely fantastic and handed her some money. It may not be the most innovative thing imaginable, but I couldn’t help my happiness with the mother’s ingenuity. Surely she had coerced her kids into performing the spectacle, but she was also showing them that begging isn’t they way to go about it, and that if you learn something, work hard at it, and practice, it can reap benefits. What better lesson for someone who is starting off with nothing? The other, countless children, who have come up to me begging for money have the counter-intuitive idea that things will be given to them - an absurd idea that is (ironically) usually a characteristic of someone born into exorbitant wealth.
Upon reviewing this last length of words, Sophie makes an interesting point regarding the boredom and complacency I have mentioned. Begging is a behavior that is taught, primarily, we assume, by parents who tell their children that foreigners have lots of money (which is proportionally too true). Children in turn go about it like they would anything else, like a game. Westerners are just a matter of time. It is in the moments when the game grows boring, and the reality is that a child is just standing in front of someone who is pretending to ignore them, that their utter complacency is revealed. Their practiced look of pity fades and they look off hungry for some kind of stimulation. Sophie went on to say that while I slept on the train out of Delhi she watched the slums roll slowly by, seeing the children play, the men sitting with one another talking and the women smiling, bouncing children on their knees. Sophie’s reassuring observation about people is true: we have each other and joy creeps into our lives through the smiles of those we love, and the joy of family can sprout, even in the worst of places.
I can’t help but think that this reassuring observation is also double edged. Is it a pitfall of joy and love to be… ok with one’s situation? As terrible as it sounds, do the trappings of love, the positive and the negatives, to some extent perpetuate bad situations? Surely its fair to say that no one likes life in a slum but its also likely to say that they DO like and love their family. How much more probable would it be for someone to better their situation if they could sever ties to family and friends who are all woven so intricately into the situation of a slum? And does the observation of happiness in such an awful place in anyway placate an ‘other’s’ sense of generosity and responsibility?
This sign of joy also reminds me that these people have the same capacity for feeling, and that they are not some other kind of creature, or some other kind of ‘safe’ categorization that the mind takes emotional relief in… whether we are aware of it or not. I can’t help but think this is the kind of mechanism at work when I see westerners ignoring children who are standing right in front of them. How can we conceptualize of something we don’t want to recognize? Doesn’t this make a child into something less than a ghost? And isn’t this act of non-recognition the greatest expression of the disparity between my observed westerner and the child before them? I have, of course, ignored some of these children, but all I can think about is the child. I have tried to interact with them, feeling desperate for some brilliant game to introduce, but I have ended up usually embarrassing myself and feeling not a little ashamed.
Infrastructure, I truly think, is the biggest culprit of people’s situations. Having lived in Denmark, (a country where the social services are so good and pervasive it seems that being homeless borders on being a choice) and comparing its infrastructure with the less taut U.S. and Canada, a country’s infrastructure, both political and economic determine how well the poorest will live.
India’s infrastructure isn’t just written on its people but is evident on a constant basis. The entire country, it seems is either in an accelerated rate of decay or growth. Abandoned concrete buildings can be found next to modern structures still incubating in the stages of construction. Dirt roads slam into beautiful highways, and elsewhere the potholes would wake up a comatose patient had they the pleasure to be in the busses we’ve had the pleasure of riding. I could feel that infrastructure, as I sat comfortably in the decked out Volvo sleeper bus. Across the street I watched a child and came to another conclusion. The children, like dogs, find every and anywhere a good place, not just to play but also to defecate. A little boy squatted at random and as he gave something back to the world, he smiled at me.
My aim in this entry is to be thought provoking more than anything else. I’m not sure where I stand on any of this, but the sights I have seen have certainly come with more than just their shapes and colors.
A kid named Isral picked us up from the train station to take us to our hotel. He made us laugh even though we were exhausted and we agreed to meet him the next morning so that he could take us on a tour of Jaipur.
I was still repudiating from being sick in Lukla, but unfortunately this would not last for long. A few days later when Sophie and I were in Udaipur, she got food poisoning and I definitely felt a bit of the same bug, though my body seemed far more experienced to meet the challenge. All I’ll say of this is that traveling to foreign countries where the likelihood of getting sick is high is bound to make friends get to know each other very well - in perhaps… unexpected ways.
Food became increasingly difficult after Udaipur, though when we tracked down a hotel that had a free showing of Octopussy (James Bond movie that was filmed in Udaipur - remember the floating palaces?) we were far from disappointed from the chocolate milkshakes and the ‘Hello to the Queen’. Sophie and I had, also, never heard of this desert. Picture quartered banana with crushed graham cracker, a few scoops of vanilla ice cream and chocolate sauce everywhere.
The German bakery we found also suffered from our onslaught when we stumbled across it. (Side note: When I was way up in Dingboche, Nepal, a few days before my epic babysitting climb with ‘N’ and essentially the starting point to go to that pass, I came across a French bakery that boasted a ‘Snickers Danish’ -- Yes. That’s right, its exactly what you think it is: a Snickers bar baked into a Danish. I’m sure this is the result of an unknown genius somewhere in Nepal who ran out of regular chocolate and noticed they still had a few Snickers bars left for sale. Yes, I got one, its slightly better than you’d think it would be, but only if you have high expectations, in another word, spectacular)
I was a little disappointed that the only way to actually gain admission to the floating palaces of Udaipur is if you plan to spend an exorbitant amount of money on a drink (something I thought was pretty strange since alcohol is a bit taboo in this part of India).
By the time we got on our umpteen hour bus ride to Mumbai, I believe I’d consumed about 30 or 40 pounds of Imodium. Well, perhaps not… but I’ve certainly taken enough for it to be ineffective now.
A rickshaw took us from the hole-in-the-wall ‘bus station’ to the actual bus which was around the block and down the street pulled over on the side of the road across the street from some of the Udaipur slums. As I took off my shoes and got comfortable in the plush sleeper cabin, arranging luggage in the most advantageous conglomeration for comfort, I took out my book to read and stopped to look out the window. The slums seems to be constructed of dark colors rather than actual substance. Rotting food and garbage is strewn about - its end marking the beginning of the road, and everything is slathered in the color of the filth. Corrugated tin roofs are held down by rocks and boulders, doorways are black holes, perhaps with a tiny steady flame suffocating in a corner, but always in the darkness of those dwellings - the wandering glint of eyes. The children, always the most telling examples of a place, are walking histories of their slums. Clothed like their houses, with dirt, garbage, shit and rags, they wander and beg, all with the universal gesture of an outstretched hand moving to the mouth for a moment to indicate food before returning before you for anything you might proffer. I have gone back and forth, unsure as how to regard them. Most westerners, I have noticed simply ignore them. I can’t help but look at them, head to toe, and try to guess what is going through their head. I’ve noticed that there is a substantial complacency that lurks behind a practiced pity look. These children are starving and poor beyond an empty pocket, but there appears to be a boredom in them, and their hunger craves not just in the literal sense, but also for something more, some path to follow, some game to learn, some example to follow. In the month since I have arrived in India, I have paled in these moments, not for the sole reason of their abject poverty but because of this already ingrained habit of the begging ritual. Each and every time I have hoped for some reason to give money. Of course its impractical and unwise to give to children who beg, for it further ingrains that this kind of behavior will reward, as numerous signs in India have warned. What I have hoped for is some kind of ingenuity, some neat trick, a song, a dance, something to respect. I would not be rewarded in my search until I was sitting on Palelom beach in southern Goa. I watched as a mother and her two children sit up two tripods made from long bamboo. Between these tripods extended a rope which was pulled tight between the stands approximately eight or nine feet above the ground. Puzzled I watched while sipping my Danish beer. Of the two children, the younger little girl proceeded to climb up one of the stands and sit perched down on her haunches as her mother handed her another long bamboo pole. She took it, balanced it and then stood up on the rope and proceeded to walk the tight rope. I was delighted to see a break in the pattern as it was still obvious that this trio was in a very low bracket of society. When she successfully got to the other side, her bother gave her a stack of bowls which the little girl took, balanced on her head and then started out again across the rope. On the next run, her mother handed her the inside rim of a bicycle wheel (sans spokes, of course, and tire and tube). The little girl walked the rope with her feet inside the wheel rim, each foot climbing the curve and pushing it down into the rope and of course, the pottery was still balanced on her head. On the next round the wheel rim was replaced by a tin plate which the girl placed under one of her feet and once again she walked across the rope, sliding the plate against her other foot and then stepping on it… on the rope. It was a circus act, but nonetheless, I was enthralled. When the little girl clamored down the bamboo pole, I had already walked up to the trio and was waiting to meet the star. She met me with a gorgeous smile and big bright eyes. Her skin was slick with sweat from the heat and the effort but it was obvious that she was happy, proud and exhilarated. She told me her name was ‘Muscan’. I told her that she was absolutely fantastic and handed her some money. It may not be the most innovative thing imaginable, but I couldn’t help my happiness with the mother’s ingenuity. Surely she had coerced her kids into performing the spectacle, but she was also showing them that begging isn’t they way to go about it, and that if you learn something, work hard at it, and practice, it can reap benefits. What better lesson for someone who is starting off with nothing? The other, countless children, who have come up to me begging for money have the counter-intuitive idea that things will be given to them - an absurd idea that is (ironically) usually a characteristic of someone born into exorbitant wealth.
Upon reviewing this last length of words, Sophie makes an interesting point regarding the boredom and complacency I have mentioned. Begging is a behavior that is taught, primarily, we assume, by parents who tell their children that foreigners have lots of money (which is proportionally too true). Children in turn go about it like they would anything else, like a game. Westerners are just a matter of time. It is in the moments when the game grows boring, and the reality is that a child is just standing in front of someone who is pretending to ignore them, that their utter complacency is revealed. Their practiced look of pity fades and they look off hungry for some kind of stimulation. Sophie went on to say that while I slept on the train out of Delhi she watched the slums roll slowly by, seeing the children play, the men sitting with one another talking and the women smiling, bouncing children on their knees. Sophie’s reassuring observation about people is true: we have each other and joy creeps into our lives through the smiles of those we love, and the joy of family can sprout, even in the worst of places.
I can’t help but think that this reassuring observation is also double edged. Is it a pitfall of joy and love to be… ok with one’s situation? As terrible as it sounds, do the trappings of love, the positive and the negatives, to some extent perpetuate bad situations? Surely its fair to say that no one likes life in a slum but its also likely to say that they DO like and love their family. How much more probable would it be for someone to better their situation if they could sever ties to family and friends who are all woven so intricately into the situation of a slum? And does the observation of happiness in such an awful place in anyway placate an ‘other’s’ sense of generosity and responsibility?
This sign of joy also reminds me that these people have the same capacity for feeling, and that they are not some other kind of creature, or some other kind of ‘safe’ categorization that the mind takes emotional relief in… whether we are aware of it or not. I can’t help but think this is the kind of mechanism at work when I see westerners ignoring children who are standing right in front of them. How can we conceptualize of something we don’t want to recognize? Doesn’t this make a child into something less than a ghost? And isn’t this act of non-recognition the greatest expression of the disparity between my observed westerner and the child before them? I have, of course, ignored some of these children, but all I can think about is the child. I have tried to interact with them, feeling desperate for some brilliant game to introduce, but I have ended up usually embarrassing myself and feeling not a little ashamed.
Infrastructure, I truly think, is the biggest culprit of people’s situations. Having lived in Denmark, (a country where the social services are so good and pervasive it seems that being homeless borders on being a choice) and comparing its infrastructure with the less taut U.S. and Canada, a country’s infrastructure, both political and economic determine how well the poorest will live.
India’s infrastructure isn’t just written on its people but is evident on a constant basis. The entire country, it seems is either in an accelerated rate of decay or growth. Abandoned concrete buildings can be found next to modern structures still incubating in the stages of construction. Dirt roads slam into beautiful highways, and elsewhere the potholes would wake up a comatose patient had they the pleasure to be in the busses we’ve had the pleasure of riding. I could feel that infrastructure, as I sat comfortably in the decked out Volvo sleeper bus. Across the street I watched a child and came to another conclusion. The children, like dogs, find every and anywhere a good place, not just to play but also to defecate. A little boy squatted at random and as he gave something back to the world, he smiled at me.
My aim in this entry is to be thought provoking more than anything else. I’m not sure where I stand on any of this, but the sights I have seen have certainly come with more than just their shapes and colors.
Hello India
Don’t believe what they say. Well, maybe a little bit. The description I had heard over and over of what it is like to get into Delhi couldn’t have been further from my experience. Walking out of the airport and getting to one’s hotel is supposed to be a nightmare of loud, fast paced, mind fumbling disorientation.
Compared to the tiny half-abandoned orange brick building that comprised of Kathmandu’s International Airport, the Airport in Delhi was like disembarking for Heaven. Reminding me very much of Vancouver International airport, I was pleasantly overjoyed to find air conditioning, clean tile floors, huge glass windows of crystal cleanliness, baggage carousels, and not only that, but screens to match flight numbers to carousels! Customs couldn’t have been more customary and when the electronic doors parted and I walked out into the hot Indian air, I dare say it was dead quiet. A hundred taxis were lined up, all silent with only a few drivers lounging around.
I hung my head out the window as the taxi sped towards the city and rejoicing in the heat and the after-glow of business class cocktails. ( because I’d been stuck in Lukla, I’d pushed back my flight to Delhi. The travel agency I had done this through neglected to tell me that this required a change of class also, and when I arrived at the airport, I found out that the only way I could make it to India was to cough up another couple hundred bucks. Sitting in business class with the collision of continents below me, I endeavored to drink back the extra cost of my seat. I lost count, but I’m confident that I succeeded.)
I perked up when I saw a traffic light. I hadn’t seen one since I left the states. (Katmandu uses officers stationed on permanent posts in the middle of intersections as opposed to lights to direct traffic. And they are only present when traffic is the busiest… though every moment after the first morning honk of a car horn feels like rush hour.)
The stereotypical description of Delhi started to emerge, but after the joyously schizophrenic pinball machine that Kathmandu streets had proved itself to be, Delhi was a little tame.
One thing I have noticed about driving in this part of the world is the difference in the use of the horn. In the states, the horn is only really used in two cases: when an accident is about to occur and when someone is just pissed off. The people of these countries have found far more diverse and better uses for the voices of automobiles. Driving, of course, is a visual task, but here in India and also Nepal, people drive using sonar. The horn is in constant use, not because people are agitated or deaf, but really just to say ‘hey, I’m just letting everyone know where I am.’ With every car in your immediate vicinity giving a little honk, you have the invaluable benefit of getting an instantaneous picture of where everyone is without actually looking. Though of course drivers are constantly looking around, the need is not overwhelming to try and compensate for the added chaos that driving in these countries comes with. Sonar seems the best way to describe it.
My god, what a relief it was to sit back with a good friend and a beer and recount the trials of my weeks in the mountains.
Compared to the tiny half-abandoned orange brick building that comprised of Kathmandu’s International Airport, the Airport in Delhi was like disembarking for Heaven. Reminding me very much of Vancouver International airport, I was pleasantly overjoyed to find air conditioning, clean tile floors, huge glass windows of crystal cleanliness, baggage carousels, and not only that, but screens to match flight numbers to carousels! Customs couldn’t have been more customary and when the electronic doors parted and I walked out into the hot Indian air, I dare say it was dead quiet. A hundred taxis were lined up, all silent with only a few drivers lounging around.
I hung my head out the window as the taxi sped towards the city and rejoicing in the heat and the after-glow of business class cocktails. ( because I’d been stuck in Lukla, I’d pushed back my flight to Delhi. The travel agency I had done this through neglected to tell me that this required a change of class also, and when I arrived at the airport, I found out that the only way I could make it to India was to cough up another couple hundred bucks. Sitting in business class with the collision of continents below me, I endeavored to drink back the extra cost of my seat. I lost count, but I’m confident that I succeeded.)
I perked up when I saw a traffic light. I hadn’t seen one since I left the states. (Katmandu uses officers stationed on permanent posts in the middle of intersections as opposed to lights to direct traffic. And they are only present when traffic is the busiest… though every moment after the first morning honk of a car horn feels like rush hour.)
The stereotypical description of Delhi started to emerge, but after the joyously schizophrenic pinball machine that Kathmandu streets had proved itself to be, Delhi was a little tame.
One thing I have noticed about driving in this part of the world is the difference in the use of the horn. In the states, the horn is only really used in two cases: when an accident is about to occur and when someone is just pissed off. The people of these countries have found far more diverse and better uses for the voices of automobiles. Driving, of course, is a visual task, but here in India and also Nepal, people drive using sonar. The horn is in constant use, not because people are agitated or deaf, but really just to say ‘hey, I’m just letting everyone know where I am.’ With every car in your immediate vicinity giving a little honk, you have the invaluable benefit of getting an instantaneous picture of where everyone is without actually looking. Though of course drivers are constantly looking around, the need is not overwhelming to try and compensate for the added chaos that driving in these countries comes with. Sonar seems the best way to describe it.
My god, what a relief it was to sit back with a good friend and a beer and recount the trials of my weeks in the mountains.
Getting Out of Lukla
After three days of trekking down from Gokyo Ri, which had been the last high destination of my trek, I finally crawled back into Lukla having had little food over the last week, spraining an ankle and being generally exhausted and run down. Trudging up the last long misty flight of roughly hewn stone steps to the archway that signaled the threshold to Lukla, I felt as though I was entering a long awaited home away from home. As rewarding and spectacular as my time in the high regions of the Himalaya had been, it had by far taken its toll and I was ready to recuperate. The prospect of making my way down the western coast of India, with Sophie, to the much talked about Goa - a tropical paradise from the sounds of it- was a dream I was holding on to. My tired eyes looked at the cold wet archway of Lukla as if it were signaling some magnificent accomplishment, holding beyond its threshold days of relief.
The weather was very poor that day and the deep green valley that I remembered seeing during my first week in Nepal, almost a month ago, was laid blind by the thick grey and ubiquitous cloud that draped the lower Himalaya. I thought nothing of it and breathlessly made my way to the lodge I had stayed in before. Dropping my bags and sleeping and eating. For the third time in two weeks I got sick, and two days later when my flight out of Lukla was supposed to take off, I stood in the airport all day with the constipated backload of grumbling passengers from previous days’ cancelled flights. Since my flight did not go that day, it meant that I was placed at the end of the back log, therefore, the next time the gods granted Lukla good weather, the people scheduled for that day would fly out and only after that days’ schedule was complete, would they start flying out the backlog of people, beginning with the first people who had missed their flight a couple of days before myself.
For the first two days the western mass was polite and complacent. By the third day, I had figured out the entire hierarchy of the Tara Airlines operation. The boss of the Lukla branch of Tara airlines was a short corpulent man, a strange sight among the characteristically thin Nepali population. Below him in rank were two ‘supervisors’ and below them a series of versatile ponds who filled in where needed. By the fourth day I was debating whether bribing the boss would actually do anything, when a couple of friends I had made shared with me a recent discovery.
Lukla airport comprised of three main rooms and one hallway lined with offices. The fist large room I walked into was a general area with bathrooms and a corner devoted to the sale of snacks and tea. Down a shallow flight of stairs led to the check-in counters and baggage check. This is where the most hopeful people would wait to get boarding passes and descend down the last flight of stairs to the ‘gate area’. a closed off area behind security that was starting to feel like some kind of promised land - promised by a false corpulent god. What my friends had discovered was that for the very few planes that did land each day the ‘Tea’ Lady who manned the snack stand in the first room was running out every time and renegotiating new manifests. We discovered that if one was so inclined, and had the right connections, AND THE MONEY, one could purchase a sold seat for three times the original price. Suddenly it made sense why she seemed so friendly with all of the Tara Airlines’ employees. I witnessed as an Australian couple watched their flight take off - FULL - while they were still waiting to check - in with ‘confirmed‘ seats. They were first in line the entire time and yet somehow the flight had ‘filled up’. By the fifth day two guys from Poland were so upset with the people at Tara Airlines that they threw one of Tara Airlines’ desk chairs through a window. In a reflecting rain of shattered glass the chair smashed into the tarmac below and stayed there for an hour before someone removed it.
For a people who believe in Karma, it wasn’t hard to spot the blasphemers.
On the seventh day I didn’t even go to the airport. I stayed in my lodge and chatted with a wonderful Australian couple the entire day. The weather was shit - I figured there was no reason to match my mood by sitting in the airport. In the evening, on a whim I went to the Tara Airlines’ office (something we were instructed to do every time we asked for help. This had led to nothing and seemed to be implemented only to placate the grumbling customers. On showing my tattered ticket, however, I was asked if I wanted to be on the first flight out, the next morning, to Rameschap.
“Is there a bus to Kathmandu from there?”
“Yes”
“How long is the ride?”
“12 hours”
“Yea, I’ll go to Raaameemsshappp --- wherever you said.”
“Check in, 7:15 am, second flight.”
At 7:00 am I watched the first flight take off into clear skies. The second one rolled in and I was first in line at the check-in counter. Hopeful and painfully anxious, I handed one of the supervisors my ticket, certain that this flight had to be the one I was getting on. He looked at it, and without looking at me, he said
“Not yet, next flight.”
I had heard this before. I had heard this many MANY times before. After being stuck in the tiny little town 3,000 meters up in the Himalaya for eight days, watching nothing but the uninterrupted triumph of greed and corruption, being unable to eat, and spending each night hoping that I’d be able to sleep the whole night without getting sick, I had felt as though I’d reached a bit of an impass with how much I was willing to put up with. I said it to myself, but loud enough so that everyone in the near and crowded vicinity could hear what it was. Anyone reading this right now certainly would have thought it, and most of you would have joined me in saying it, because, when you’re faced with a situation as paralyzing as mine - feeling like a fish in a bucket and all you want is the sea, only one thing comes to mind, and at that moment it came to my lips.
“What the FUCK!”
The Nepali man who had told me ‘next flight’ looked up from the ticket he was looking at and anger brimmed over the lens of his glasses.
“DON YOU SAY THAT WORD!”
He paused, paralyzed with anger. I was taken aback, feeling simultaneously embarrassed but also restraining the enormous impulse to laugh. The only thing that went through my head was Hey, look at that! I got a reaction!
“ALWAYS THIS WORD! FUCK, FUCK, FUCK, FUCK, FUCK! ALWAYS, YOU PEOPLE FEEL YOU NEED TO SAY THIS WORD! DON SAY THIS WORD, EVER! YOU PEOPLE, YOU BRING THIS WORD FROM YOUR COUNTRY, BUT YOU ARE IN NEPAL! KEEP THAT WORD IN YOUR OWN COUNTRY!”
I bit my lip, I bit my lip hard and swallowed the convulsion to laugh. Here this man was, an integral part of the most corrupt organization I’ve had the opportunity to witness on such a detailed level, making thousands of dollars a day off of the desperation of trekkers who for fear of missing international connections were succumbing to the opulent, corrupt costs, and he was giving me a morality lecture on the use of profanity? Oh, this is good, I thought. I held his gaze for a moment and then responded.
“Well, airplanes also came from my country, and if it weren’t for that, you wouldn’t have a job.”
He looked back down at the ticket he’d been looking at, and when, a moment later, the Tara Airlines’ employee at the next kiosk called my ticket number (unbeknownst to me), the man in front of me instantly recognized it and ferried me over to get immediately checked in.
Profanity exists for a good reasons.
That low grade piece of shit card paper that my boarding pass was printed on felt like a sheet of gold in my hands. I hurried through security after throwing my bag in the right pile and entered the forbidden holding room. How pathetic, I thought, I’m actually ENTHRALLED with what this room looks like…I’ve been in Lukla way too long.
When, ten minutes later, my flight was called and I found myself running across the open tarmac towards a small one engine prop plane, painted green and white and tipped with the floppy Tara Airlines’ ‘star’ logo, I felt as I imagine a prisoner does upon waking and finding all the guards handcuffed in a vindictive pile. I scanned the people lining the fence to see if the Australian couple I had become friends with were watching. Hyperventilating, I crawled up into the plane with my pack, squeezing myself in so that just barely, they could slide the door shut. Ten people in all, including the pilot fit into the plane and I thought to myself that Sardine Can had never been more appropriate. The single engine buzzed and then buzzed louder - this engine simply wasn’t going to roar, no matter how much fire it was fed. Nonetheless it perked up the plane and pulled it out onto the runway. The pilot pressed the breaks and made the engine buzz just a little bit louder before letting its long smooth winged teeth have at the mountain air. The tilt of the little plane was so high and the runway was sloped so far down that all I could see through the cockpit window in front of me was clear bright morning sky.
Lukla airport is said to be the world’s most dangerous airport, averaging one crash a year. (In 64 years of operation there have been 63 crashes) A fact that I did not learn until after I had flown into the airport a month earlier. When, on approach, a month earlier, I had looked over the pilot’s shoulder to get a peek at the runway, I’d said “You’ve got to be joking” and thought Holy Shit and Hell Yea!, all simultaneously. Staring up at the sky through that cockpit as the little plane put putted down the runway, I knew that we were headed for a cliff edge. I looked at the wing just outside my window. The sheet metal riveted to the frame rattled and shuddered and I said a prayer to the god of aerodynamics. Luckily, all of the risk for crashing is with landing at Lukla and almost none of the crashes had been on take-off.
I always feel a rush when a plane veers up and lifts up on to invisible tracks of air. I remember clearly when I took off from Boston, and everything - the hope for adventure, fear of the future, and the memory of everyone I’m leaving pulling at me - condensed into one moment. That similar electricity of emotion was with me but this time it was something more as Lukla shrank in isolation behind me.
The Nepali people as a whole impressed upon me a wonderful picture. Their kindness and harmony with their lives seems to give them an almost meditative quality. The steadfast porters, carrying unfathomable conglomerations of weight exemplified this immensely and it was as if the culture is without complaint. This compassion is, of course best exemplified for me by my experience with Sanjay Kulung.
But, as with every country and every place, there are the kind and then there are also the crass. I couldn’t have been happier for my time in Lukla to be over.
Once in Rameschap, I took off my coat and bore my face upwards to feel the heat of the sun, the air hot for the first time in weeks. How my childhood days in Florida have branded me to be at odds with the cold forever. I quickly found the bus and asked the bus driver if I could sit on top of the bus with all the luggage. He waved his hands upwards and I clamored up the ladder on the back of the bus and finagled myself between a guy from Spain and the inside edge of the luggage rack. I found myself sitting on steel bars that were unfortunately spaced. I knew it was going to hurt, but I knew it would be better than being on the inside after the horrors I’d heard of with regards to Nepali bus travel.
The ride was everything one could wish for in a scenic mountain drive. How did I phrase it in my journal? It was like watching the more scenic parts of an Indiana Jones movie while continuously achieving the sorest ass that memory or imagination could recall. I didn’t care terribly. I was happy to be out of Lukla and on my way. I knew that soon I would be in Kathmandu, with a good room, shower, food, and soon after that India with a good friend already waiting.
One of the friends I had made in Lukla was in the bus behind mine and when at the end of the night we sat in an Irish pub in Kathmandu recounting the journey, he said I’d looked like a scene from ‘Into The Wild’
“the one where he’s just left, and he just looks free. You looked so free up there on that bus.”
The weather was very poor that day and the deep green valley that I remembered seeing during my first week in Nepal, almost a month ago, was laid blind by the thick grey and ubiquitous cloud that draped the lower Himalaya. I thought nothing of it and breathlessly made my way to the lodge I had stayed in before. Dropping my bags and sleeping and eating. For the third time in two weeks I got sick, and two days later when my flight out of Lukla was supposed to take off, I stood in the airport all day with the constipated backload of grumbling passengers from previous days’ cancelled flights. Since my flight did not go that day, it meant that I was placed at the end of the back log, therefore, the next time the gods granted Lukla good weather, the people scheduled for that day would fly out and only after that days’ schedule was complete, would they start flying out the backlog of people, beginning with the first people who had missed their flight a couple of days before myself.
For the first two days the western mass was polite and complacent. By the third day, I had figured out the entire hierarchy of the Tara Airlines operation. The boss of the Lukla branch of Tara airlines was a short corpulent man, a strange sight among the characteristically thin Nepali population. Below him in rank were two ‘supervisors’ and below them a series of versatile ponds who filled in where needed. By the fourth day I was debating whether bribing the boss would actually do anything, when a couple of friends I had made shared with me a recent discovery.
Lukla airport comprised of three main rooms and one hallway lined with offices. The fist large room I walked into was a general area with bathrooms and a corner devoted to the sale of snacks and tea. Down a shallow flight of stairs led to the check-in counters and baggage check. This is where the most hopeful people would wait to get boarding passes and descend down the last flight of stairs to the ‘gate area’. a closed off area behind security that was starting to feel like some kind of promised land - promised by a false corpulent god. What my friends had discovered was that for the very few planes that did land each day the ‘Tea’ Lady who manned the snack stand in the first room was running out every time and renegotiating new manifests. We discovered that if one was so inclined, and had the right connections, AND THE MONEY, one could purchase a sold seat for three times the original price. Suddenly it made sense why she seemed so friendly with all of the Tara Airlines’ employees. I witnessed as an Australian couple watched their flight take off - FULL - while they were still waiting to check - in with ‘confirmed‘ seats. They were first in line the entire time and yet somehow the flight had ‘filled up’. By the fifth day two guys from Poland were so upset with the people at Tara Airlines that they threw one of Tara Airlines’ desk chairs through a window. In a reflecting rain of shattered glass the chair smashed into the tarmac below and stayed there for an hour before someone removed it.
For a people who believe in Karma, it wasn’t hard to spot the blasphemers.
On the seventh day I didn’t even go to the airport. I stayed in my lodge and chatted with a wonderful Australian couple the entire day. The weather was shit - I figured there was no reason to match my mood by sitting in the airport. In the evening, on a whim I went to the Tara Airlines’ office (something we were instructed to do every time we asked for help. This had led to nothing and seemed to be implemented only to placate the grumbling customers. On showing my tattered ticket, however, I was asked if I wanted to be on the first flight out, the next morning, to Rameschap.
“Is there a bus to Kathmandu from there?”
“Yes”
“How long is the ride?”
“12 hours”
“Yea, I’ll go to Raaameemsshappp --- wherever you said.”
“Check in, 7:15 am, second flight.”
At 7:00 am I watched the first flight take off into clear skies. The second one rolled in and I was first in line at the check-in counter. Hopeful and painfully anxious, I handed one of the supervisors my ticket, certain that this flight had to be the one I was getting on. He looked at it, and without looking at me, he said
“Not yet, next flight.”
I had heard this before. I had heard this many MANY times before. After being stuck in the tiny little town 3,000 meters up in the Himalaya for eight days, watching nothing but the uninterrupted triumph of greed and corruption, being unable to eat, and spending each night hoping that I’d be able to sleep the whole night without getting sick, I had felt as though I’d reached a bit of an impass with how much I was willing to put up with. I said it to myself, but loud enough so that everyone in the near and crowded vicinity could hear what it was. Anyone reading this right now certainly would have thought it, and most of you would have joined me in saying it, because, when you’re faced with a situation as paralyzing as mine - feeling like a fish in a bucket and all you want is the sea, only one thing comes to mind, and at that moment it came to my lips.
“What the FUCK!”
The Nepali man who had told me ‘next flight’ looked up from the ticket he was looking at and anger brimmed over the lens of his glasses.
“DON YOU SAY THAT WORD!”
He paused, paralyzed with anger. I was taken aback, feeling simultaneously embarrassed but also restraining the enormous impulse to laugh. The only thing that went through my head was Hey, look at that! I got a reaction!
“ALWAYS THIS WORD! FUCK, FUCK, FUCK, FUCK, FUCK! ALWAYS, YOU PEOPLE FEEL YOU NEED TO SAY THIS WORD! DON SAY THIS WORD, EVER! YOU PEOPLE, YOU BRING THIS WORD FROM YOUR COUNTRY, BUT YOU ARE IN NEPAL! KEEP THAT WORD IN YOUR OWN COUNTRY!”
I bit my lip, I bit my lip hard and swallowed the convulsion to laugh. Here this man was, an integral part of the most corrupt organization I’ve had the opportunity to witness on such a detailed level, making thousands of dollars a day off of the desperation of trekkers who for fear of missing international connections were succumbing to the opulent, corrupt costs, and he was giving me a morality lecture on the use of profanity? Oh, this is good, I thought. I held his gaze for a moment and then responded.
“Well, airplanes also came from my country, and if it weren’t for that, you wouldn’t have a job.”
He looked back down at the ticket he’d been looking at, and when, a moment later, the Tara Airlines’ employee at the next kiosk called my ticket number (unbeknownst to me), the man in front of me instantly recognized it and ferried me over to get immediately checked in.
Profanity exists for a good reasons.
That low grade piece of shit card paper that my boarding pass was printed on felt like a sheet of gold in my hands. I hurried through security after throwing my bag in the right pile and entered the forbidden holding room. How pathetic, I thought, I’m actually ENTHRALLED with what this room looks like…I’ve been in Lukla way too long.
When, ten minutes later, my flight was called and I found myself running across the open tarmac towards a small one engine prop plane, painted green and white and tipped with the floppy Tara Airlines’ ‘star’ logo, I felt as I imagine a prisoner does upon waking and finding all the guards handcuffed in a vindictive pile. I scanned the people lining the fence to see if the Australian couple I had become friends with were watching. Hyperventilating, I crawled up into the plane with my pack, squeezing myself in so that just barely, they could slide the door shut. Ten people in all, including the pilot fit into the plane and I thought to myself that Sardine Can had never been more appropriate. The single engine buzzed and then buzzed louder - this engine simply wasn’t going to roar, no matter how much fire it was fed. Nonetheless it perked up the plane and pulled it out onto the runway. The pilot pressed the breaks and made the engine buzz just a little bit louder before letting its long smooth winged teeth have at the mountain air. The tilt of the little plane was so high and the runway was sloped so far down that all I could see through the cockpit window in front of me was clear bright morning sky.
Lukla airport is said to be the world’s most dangerous airport, averaging one crash a year. (In 64 years of operation there have been 63 crashes) A fact that I did not learn until after I had flown into the airport a month earlier. When, on approach, a month earlier, I had looked over the pilot’s shoulder to get a peek at the runway, I’d said “You’ve got to be joking” and thought Holy Shit and Hell Yea!, all simultaneously. Staring up at the sky through that cockpit as the little plane put putted down the runway, I knew that we were headed for a cliff edge. I looked at the wing just outside my window. The sheet metal riveted to the frame rattled and shuddered and I said a prayer to the god of aerodynamics. Luckily, all of the risk for crashing is with landing at Lukla and almost none of the crashes had been on take-off.
I always feel a rush when a plane veers up and lifts up on to invisible tracks of air. I remember clearly when I took off from Boston, and everything - the hope for adventure, fear of the future, and the memory of everyone I’m leaving pulling at me - condensed into one moment. That similar electricity of emotion was with me but this time it was something more as Lukla shrank in isolation behind me.
The Nepali people as a whole impressed upon me a wonderful picture. Their kindness and harmony with their lives seems to give them an almost meditative quality. The steadfast porters, carrying unfathomable conglomerations of weight exemplified this immensely and it was as if the culture is without complaint. This compassion is, of course best exemplified for me by my experience with Sanjay Kulung.
But, as with every country and every place, there are the kind and then there are also the crass. I couldn’t have been happier for my time in Lukla to be over.
Once in Rameschap, I took off my coat and bore my face upwards to feel the heat of the sun, the air hot for the first time in weeks. How my childhood days in Florida have branded me to be at odds with the cold forever. I quickly found the bus and asked the bus driver if I could sit on top of the bus with all the luggage. He waved his hands upwards and I clamored up the ladder on the back of the bus and finagled myself between a guy from Spain and the inside edge of the luggage rack. I found myself sitting on steel bars that were unfortunately spaced. I knew it was going to hurt, but I knew it would be better than being on the inside after the horrors I’d heard of with regards to Nepali bus travel.
The ride was everything one could wish for in a scenic mountain drive. How did I phrase it in my journal? It was like watching the more scenic parts of an Indiana Jones movie while continuously achieving the sorest ass that memory or imagination could recall. I didn’t care terribly. I was happy to be out of Lukla and on my way. I knew that soon I would be in Kathmandu, with a good room, shower, food, and soon after that India with a good friend already waiting.
One of the friends I had made in Lukla was in the bus behind mine and when at the end of the night we sat in an Irish pub in Kathmandu recounting the journey, he said I’d looked like a scene from ‘Into The Wild’
“the one where he’s just left, and he just looks free. You looked so free up there on that bus.”
Tuesday, November 30, 2010
Promised Pictures
This first picture is of myself and Sanjay Kulun, whom my last entry was about. We are standing next to one of the sacred lakes of Gokyo, the tribute to which is just behind us on the right.
I took this picture from the summit of Gokyo Ri. Gokyo is barely visible just below the center of the picture. The glacier I crossed which I recounted in my last post is also fully visible, extending down the valley where I made my jump. Two of Gokyo's sacred lakes are also visible.
Here I am with the giant bolder that signals Everest Base Camp. Many people say that there isn't much to see at Everest Base Camp, however, a friend and I kept walking past this touristy boulder and eventually found a makeshift kitchen encampment (made out of stone) left over from the last season of Everest attempts. The site also provided a nice view of the Khumbu Icefall where the real climb up Everest begins.
Atop Kala Patter, I'm standing with Mount Everest behind me (Everest is the darker pyramid shaped mountain closer to the middle of the photo. Not the taller one off to the right, Nupste, which appears taller because of perspective.) I was extremely fortunate while on the summit here because shortly after I finished the climb, the dozens of tourists already there headed down and I was completely alone with the view. I spent about an hour drawing the mountain scape into my journal.
Wednesday, November 24, 2010
The Hands of Sanjay Kulung
To put this entry into context, I had crossed the Cho La pass the day before. It took me close to 14 hours because I had become sick the night before in Dzongla after walking from Gorak Shep. In the 48 hours it took me to get from Gorak Shep to Thagnag (including going up and over the Cho La pass [5,300 meters]) I had only had a bowl of museli with milk, half an energy bar, and nothing else because I was sick and simply couldn’t stomach any food. This left me very weak going over the pass, and very dehydrated. I should have anticipated being so dehydrated from the nature of my illness, but being tired and weak, I did not. Getting down to Thagnag where this story starts was very long and difficult. Thagnag is the town just before the destination of Gokyo, which is just on the other side of a glacier flow.
November 9th 2010
I left Thagnag later than everyone else who had been there the night before. The woman who cleans the rooms was embarrassed and confused to see me. 2 egg omelet and a tuna sandwich. Luckily I managed to get them down without a problem.
Still dreary and weak I started off and hit the moraine (per someone’s suggestion) a little north of Thagnag. I simply couldn’t see where the path would be and on gaining the top of the moraine, I saw farther south 4 porters whistling along on a well-beaten path. I slowly made my way around the mountainous (at least it felt like it) unlevel part of the moraine. I found the well-beaten trail and made my way into the glacier. This glacier, unlike the two I had crossed had huge deep pools of water that were more like lakes than pools, slowly draining southward. I followed the path down to a split between ridges that was separated by water. Too much water to pass. I tried to find another path, inventing my own as I went. I slowly made my way south down the middle of the glacier. Frustration set in quickly as the cairns I DID find let to dead ends or paths disappeared into bolder strewn geography.
Me weakness and my frustration both worked against me, it was some of the slowest going yet. My aimlessness aided these enemies and each time I gained a ridge I became more confused as to which way people crossed the glacier.
Looking back there must have been a better path to the north - the direction I had originally set out for before seeing the porters. God only knows where those porters came from - probably walked through the water, though it hadn’t been worth it at the time for myself.
I continued slowly, slowly, slowly, trying to be mindful of my foot falls. I knew in my condition it would be far too easy to sprain another ankle or get a foot trapped, or even break something. Bolder hopping was a Devil’s dance, taunting slips, slides and falls. So I rested often, and tried to focus while watching my boots waiver and fall solid onto some askance angle. Farther and farther south I went.
I seemed to be getting closer to the second moraine, but the slowly flowing lakes were starting to compound and bunch up between that moraine and the land I was gaining. When I reached the closest ridge to the moraine, my unfortunate suspicion proved real. Between the moraine and ridge upon which I stood was no longer a slowly flowing drain from the higher glacier lakes. Before me was a loud and joyously angry river that seemed to explode at every point. It gorged itself with ice up against the largest most massive boulders that held way at points in the rush. Between these points was a gush, an utter ejection of water. No place presented path for crossing the icy blood of the glacier.
I looked up. The sun was still high, but the mountains to the west of me were huge dark shadows. Sunset was not for many hours but soon I would be in shadow, which I feared, being the foreboding prequel of the night. Crossing the Khumbu glacier at night, however dangerous had been more than doable thanks to the clear path. This glacier was a hot mess and a desperation to get across it was rising in me.
I followed the river south and as I did it became steeper, faster and more angry. But there seemed to be more boulders and possible places to cross the cold crashing curse.
I went farther down and I could see down into the valley where there was another village. And just across the icy rage, high up was a stone fortified pathway that I presumed went to Gokyo. Just a little farther down, I thought I could see a conglomeration of boulders that might separate the waters enough for my ancient refuge nation of one.
Down I went and climbed out on to the preliminary rocks. It looked like I could make it. I attempted to look at the final space between boulders from as many angles as I could. It seemed feasible. The problem was that I couldn’t get a perfect understanding of the distance between two crucial rocks until I was on the closest of the two. Getting to this rock, however, required me to jump down to it, just far enough so that if I needed to get back up, I wouldn’t be able to. I turned on my belly and with two excellent handholds, slowly lowered myself, pack and all, down on to the boulder. It was situated essentially three quarters of the way across the river. My feet barely touched the rock and I let go; on the rock I turned around to look at the gap. It was too far to jump. If I had been at full strength, and had I not had the large pack, I knew I could have jumped it, but the day had already been long - long after two very long and debilitating days. To make matters worse, the river had splashed up water on each rock, which in turn had frozen, making the farthest, most useful part of the rock inaccessible for risk of slipping on the final jump. The second rock presented a symmetrical danger. In essence, to make the jump, I would only be able to use half of the boulder I was on (ice portion included, I could probably take three full strides on the boulder) and would have to propel myself far enough to land in the middle of the second boulder. Realization of my situation set in and I started looking around for a way out. My eyes frenetically shot around at other boulders, all unreachable, and then my gaze went to the sky. Up on the stone fortified pathway, there was a lone porter, resting his load against the wall and watching me. With the roar of the river drowning out any sound, it was the only gesture I could think of that would transcend all barriers of language: I put my hands together and raised them, as if in prayer and looked at the porter for mercy. That young porter’s name was Sanjay Kulung, a 15 year old boy from Gokyo. He walked up the path towards Gokyo a dozen paces and then placed his load down on a ledge and proceeded to effortlessly and quickly descend the rocks until he was on the boulder adjacent to my own. He spoke almost no English and beckoned me to come across the gap. I shook my head ‘no’ and then realized that he was talking about my pack. I took it off quickly and practiced a few swings with it to see if I could hurl it the distance. My chest was echoing with the pound of my heart. An idea came into my head. I put down the pack and dismantled parts of it. The compression sac with my sleeping bag hanging off the back, I threw it to Sanjay. The small tent, I threw, my water bottle… until the pack was bare and then I practiced the swing once again. I felt confident I could get it across. I heaved it back and forth and finally lifted it with my whole body into the air and watched as it sailed over the rushing water and landed with a crash on the rock, Sanjay’s hands grabbing it simultaneously and dragging it to a safer spot. There was only one thing left to get across the gap.
Sanjay looked at me and his hands beckoned for me to jump. I looked down at the gap - the rushing water, impatient, and crying for me to fall. If it happened, there would be little chance. The pressure would slam my stunned body into boulders and there would be little life in it as it tumbled down the rest of the way into the valley. I looked back at Sanjay’s beckoning hands, I looked back at the gap and I took the two steps back to the edge of the boulder. I looked at the rocks on either side of the gap and visualized myself taking the steps and flying across the gap. I inhaled very deeply, consciously, several times and looking one last time at Sanjay’s beckoning hands, I closed my eyes. I thought of my Mother and my Father, my family, and all my friends. I thought of everything I had done in life, everything I had accomplished - everything that had led up to this moment. And then I thought of everything I wanted to do - my hopes, my dreams. I opened my eyes, said to myself, “Not Today.” and I jumped.
November 9th 2010
I left Thagnag later than everyone else who had been there the night before. The woman who cleans the rooms was embarrassed and confused to see me. 2 egg omelet and a tuna sandwich. Luckily I managed to get them down without a problem.
Still dreary and weak I started off and hit the moraine (per someone’s suggestion) a little north of Thagnag. I simply couldn’t see where the path would be and on gaining the top of the moraine, I saw farther south 4 porters whistling along on a well-beaten path. I slowly made my way around the mountainous (at least it felt like it) unlevel part of the moraine. I found the well-beaten trail and made my way into the glacier. This glacier, unlike the two I had crossed had huge deep pools of water that were more like lakes than pools, slowly draining southward. I followed the path down to a split between ridges that was separated by water. Too much water to pass. I tried to find another path, inventing my own as I went. I slowly made my way south down the middle of the glacier. Frustration set in quickly as the cairns I DID find let to dead ends or paths disappeared into bolder strewn geography.
Me weakness and my frustration both worked against me, it was some of the slowest going yet. My aimlessness aided these enemies and each time I gained a ridge I became more confused as to which way people crossed the glacier.
Looking back there must have been a better path to the north - the direction I had originally set out for before seeing the porters. God only knows where those porters came from - probably walked through the water, though it hadn’t been worth it at the time for myself.
I continued slowly, slowly, slowly, trying to be mindful of my foot falls. I knew in my condition it would be far too easy to sprain another ankle or get a foot trapped, or even break something. Bolder hopping was a Devil’s dance, taunting slips, slides and falls. So I rested often, and tried to focus while watching my boots waiver and fall solid onto some askance angle. Farther and farther south I went.
I seemed to be getting closer to the second moraine, but the slowly flowing lakes were starting to compound and bunch up between that moraine and the land I was gaining. When I reached the closest ridge to the moraine, my unfortunate suspicion proved real. Between the moraine and ridge upon which I stood was no longer a slowly flowing drain from the higher glacier lakes. Before me was a loud and joyously angry river that seemed to explode at every point. It gorged itself with ice up against the largest most massive boulders that held way at points in the rush. Between these points was a gush, an utter ejection of water. No place presented path for crossing the icy blood of the glacier.
I looked up. The sun was still high, but the mountains to the west of me were huge dark shadows. Sunset was not for many hours but soon I would be in shadow, which I feared, being the foreboding prequel of the night. Crossing the Khumbu glacier at night, however dangerous had been more than doable thanks to the clear path. This glacier was a hot mess and a desperation to get across it was rising in me.
I followed the river south and as I did it became steeper, faster and more angry. But there seemed to be more boulders and possible places to cross the cold crashing curse.
I went farther down and I could see down into the valley where there was another village. And just across the icy rage, high up was a stone fortified pathway that I presumed went to Gokyo. Just a little farther down, I thought I could see a conglomeration of boulders that might separate the waters enough for my ancient refuge nation of one.
Down I went and climbed out on to the preliminary rocks. It looked like I could make it. I attempted to look at the final space between boulders from as many angles as I could. It seemed feasible. The problem was that I couldn’t get a perfect understanding of the distance between two crucial rocks until I was on the closest of the two. Getting to this rock, however, required me to jump down to it, just far enough so that if I needed to get back up, I wouldn’t be able to. I turned on my belly and with two excellent handholds, slowly lowered myself, pack and all, down on to the boulder. It was situated essentially three quarters of the way across the river. My feet barely touched the rock and I let go; on the rock I turned around to look at the gap. It was too far to jump. If I had been at full strength, and had I not had the large pack, I knew I could have jumped it, but the day had already been long - long after two very long and debilitating days. To make matters worse, the river had splashed up water on each rock, which in turn had frozen, making the farthest, most useful part of the rock inaccessible for risk of slipping on the final jump. The second rock presented a symmetrical danger. In essence, to make the jump, I would only be able to use half of the boulder I was on (ice portion included, I could probably take three full strides on the boulder) and would have to propel myself far enough to land in the middle of the second boulder. Realization of my situation set in and I started looking around for a way out. My eyes frenetically shot around at other boulders, all unreachable, and then my gaze went to the sky. Up on the stone fortified pathway, there was a lone porter, resting his load against the wall and watching me. With the roar of the river drowning out any sound, it was the only gesture I could think of that would transcend all barriers of language: I put my hands together and raised them, as if in prayer and looked at the porter for mercy. That young porter’s name was Sanjay Kulung, a 15 year old boy from Gokyo. He walked up the path towards Gokyo a dozen paces and then placed his load down on a ledge and proceeded to effortlessly and quickly descend the rocks until he was on the boulder adjacent to my own. He spoke almost no English and beckoned me to come across the gap. I shook my head ‘no’ and then realized that he was talking about my pack. I took it off quickly and practiced a few swings with it to see if I could hurl it the distance. My chest was echoing with the pound of my heart. An idea came into my head. I put down the pack and dismantled parts of it. The compression sac with my sleeping bag hanging off the back, I threw it to Sanjay. The small tent, I threw, my water bottle… until the pack was bare and then I practiced the swing once again. I felt confident I could get it across. I heaved it back and forth and finally lifted it with my whole body into the air and watched as it sailed over the rushing water and landed with a crash on the rock, Sanjay’s hands grabbing it simultaneously and dragging it to a safer spot. There was only one thing left to get across the gap.
Sanjay looked at me and his hands beckoned for me to jump. I looked down at the gap - the rushing water, impatient, and crying for me to fall. If it happened, there would be little chance. The pressure would slam my stunned body into boulders and there would be little life in it as it tumbled down the rest of the way into the valley. I looked back at Sanjay’s beckoning hands, I looked back at the gap and I took the two steps back to the edge of the boulder. I looked at the rocks on either side of the gap and visualized myself taking the steps and flying across the gap. I inhaled very deeply, consciously, several times and looking one last time at Sanjay’s beckoning hands, I closed my eyes. I thought of my Mother and my Father, my family, and all my friends. I thought of everything I had done in life, everything I had accomplished - everything that had led up to this moment. And then I thought of everything I wanted to do - my hopes, my dreams. I opened my eyes, said to myself, “Not Today.” and I jumped.
From Dark Ice to Dim Light
This entry is from my journal which I have kept everyday since I left Boston. To give a little background to the entry, I had started my trek less than a week prior and had done little other than slowly make my way up the valley. On the first day of my trek, I met a young woman two years older than myself, originally from Europe but recently having come from the northwest of the United States. She told me in those first few days of her seemingly extensive climbing experience, which reassured me since, when it came to mountains, I really didn’t have much of a clue as to what I was doing. The most I had done with regards to mountains was crossing the Cascades and the Rockies by bike two summers ago. For this entry I will refer to this young woman as ‘N’. The day before this entry I had spent the time hydrating myself and trying to rid my blood of as much CO2 as possible because the night prior I had experienced some mild symptoms of Acute Mountain Sickness (AMS). For the day this entry records, our plan was to trek one of the passes: Kong Ma La, which links the towns of Chuckhung and Laboche, apparently a 10 hour trek.
November 3rd 2010
Yesterday was the most challenging, terrifying, and affirming day of my life. N and I awoke by 5:30 and luckily I slept very well. I had muesli with hot milk and N had Tibetan bread with cheese. We were on our way before light had touched any of the mountains, though the sky above was growing a dim blue. We had to trek a bit north to cross the small but icy stream to the eastern side of Chuckhung. My hands were very cold but this would prove to be the very least of my worries. After crossing the stream we headed south and started on a diagonal climb up the eastern ridge of the valley. This light climb brought us high above the valley as we traveled south and the valley fell farther below us. By the time we turned east, presumably for a more formidable section of the climb, the whole valley was before us and I could not only see all the way back to Thyangboche (where we had stayed several nights prior), but I could even see (barely) the high altitude hotel on the mountain opposite Namche Bazzar.
N was already having a lot of trouble breathing before the climb started getting steep. This was the first time I offered the possibility of turning back and taking another day at Chuckhung to acclimate.
The day before I had spent the entire day drinking water (6+ liters) and I knew that I would be better prepared for the altitude since I’d given my body the opportunity to rid itself of as much CO2 as possible. N had spend the day attempting Chuckhung Ri (5,500 meters. Chuckhung is situated around 4,700 meters). She came back from the day trip very happy and in good spirits, though she had said that it had been difficult and that her lungs hurt. These details were coming back to me then on the edge of the valley. Two other trekkers were gaining quickly on us due to N’s frequent stops to catch her breath. I certainly wasn’t in a race but the speed by which the trekkers overtook us worried me, because, while one was a young man, the other was a much older man, and its sensible to think that a 23 year old male and a 25 year old female should at least be able to keep up with this pair. This worried me a little but I figured since we would be sleeping at an altitude not much higher than Chuck hung (Laboche is around 4,930 meters, an acceptable 200 meter increment) I wasn’t terribly worried. As long as we got down from the pass we should be ok. Slowly, we made our way over some high hills with still a growing distance from the trekkers who had passed us. I would take pictures while N caught her breath or attempted to get a little ahead. When we found the first major ridge, N was already speculating about which high point was the summit. In lieu of her condition I was hoping for the same possibilities. My worry was starting to gain a very nervous edge. When the grassy slopes started to turn into a rock strewn lunar landscape, we took a break and another group of four over took us. One of them (a - as N put it - ‘crazy’ French woman) had been with N on Chuckhung Ri and started to talk about how difficult of a time N had had on the Ri. (I learned a few minutes after their departure from N that her jubilant mood had been more from the fact that she’d broken up with her boyfriend on a phone call)
On the first rocky ridge that was something more akin to steep, the histrionics that would mark the rest of the day began to show themselves. N was stopping more frequently and on top on this her complaining was starting to gain a more desperate nature. At a few points she broke down and started crying. The headache she had briefly mentioned earlier was now very painful and she was now dizzy. Asking her if she wanted to turn back had grown to be a common punctuation of our intermittent conversation, and asking her then would be far from the last time. She was adamant that there was no way she would turn back. By this point I was very worried and I tried to take comfort from all the mountain experience she had been raving about. We had both convinced ourselves that the summit had to be just over the ridge we were on. I beckoned her on (seeing no other alternative), telling her that we were almost there and that she would make it! When finally after more stopping, and goading her on, we made it up over the ridge the summit wasn’t in sight and our path banked to the right. We passed a small lake and N sat down, declaring that she would go no farther and that I should leave her. Before us was a snow covered hill - not a terribly formidable task - and I knew that N could make it up and over. She was petulant and unyielding. My position was beginning to feel more and more constricted and compromised and was making me feel desperate: She would not turn back. Encouraging words slowly got her to the top of the white hill.
The sight that awaited us broke N down into tears. Before us was another gorgeous blue mountain lake, and to the north of it our path banked before slamming into an almost vertical ascend of about 100 meters. At the top of that distant rocky ridge, multi-colored Tibetan prayer flags stretched from one high rock to another as if mockingly signaling the end of a race. N was down on her knees crying. She said that she couldn’t go on any farther and that I should leave her. I knew by this point that she was also hallucinating - seeing black dots, which meant (based on my reading of the last few days) that she was experiencing symptoms of pulmonary edema and cerebral edema - both extremely critical life threatening afflictions. I also knew that the altitude we were at (approx. 5,400 meters) had not taken its full affect on her and that if she were to stay at the altitude for somewhere between 6 and 12 hours her condition would worsen as the CO2/Oxygen levels became more unbalanced. Considering the symptoms she was telling me, it seemed reasonable based on my reading that if she stayed she had a good chance of lapsing into a coma and possibly dying. At this point panic was boiling inside of me and I worked through my options at a machine gun rate. My only choice was to get her up over the summit and down as fast as possible. I told N that I couldn’t and wouldn’t leave her. She asked me:
‘Why?’
“I just couldn’t“, I said. She asked me why I cared? The question seemed irrelevant to me. I told her that we needed to get to the summit and get down, or she risked falling into a coma and possibly dying. She looked around at the gorgeous display of mountains behind us.
“Its a good place to die“, she said. You’ve got to be joking, I thought. She seemed serious.
“Why do you care?” She asked again, “No one else would care if I died.” Panic had more reason, but terrified as I was, I told myself I was finished with this nonsense. I started walking forward a few steps and looked back with the parental expectation that she would follow. Underneath I was terrified that I might be pushing her too hard. She got up slowly, and slowly we ascended the last rocky wall. N made if first, and when she got to the small space that felt as though it teetered between the two incredibly steep inclines, she was ebullient. Memory of the last several hours seemed to have been washed from her. For good reason too, the view was unlike anything I had ever seen:
The entire landscape before me and in back of me truly looked as though the world was mid explosion, yet the action was so still! White jagged peaks, peppered brown and black where true hard color shown through. The motion of millions of years condensed and pressed into a single moment of observation. All the sound that trickled out from that vast expanse of movement was a light whirl of wind on the rocks.
I could have sat on that pass for days - weeks - months in awe, with still more to find. But the sun was not going to wait and N had to get down. The other side of the pass was the steepest terrain I had seen yet on the trip. Nearly 600 meters of downward rock pile. And at the base of it - flat ground that led up to the Khumbu Glacier moraine wall. In-between the two glacier moraines was a convoluted maze of rock piles, valleys and pools. And just beyond the second moraine was a clutter of buildings which I pegged for Laboche. I was entirely aware that crossing the glacier would be difficult, and the last push to Laboche.
We started down from the pass, and I immediately had trouble. My right knee was painful from Petella-femeral syndrome which had been developing over that last week. Luckily I was familiar with the syndrome from training for cycling across North America. Basically one side of my leg had gotten stronger than the other side much faster (or just tightened up) and was pulling my knee cap out of the groove created by the joining of the femur and the tibia. Time and more exercise is really the only cure. (other than a good PT). N gave me one of her trekking poles to help, but after much pain and slow going, I was nearing the bottom and felt not only that the syndrome was getting worse but it was now starting to develop in my other knee. I had been using a wooden staff in my right hand for a few days, about the same time the syndrome started developing in my right knee. In my frustration and pain, I determined that the use of the staff and now the pole was creating some kind of imbalance in the way my legs were holding up my body. I became upset, gave N back her trekking pole and then destroyed the wooden staff against a bolder. (I was right about the imbalance, as the problem has slowly resolved itself ever since, and not once has it gotten at all worse.) I stormed down the rest of the rock-hoping decline and quickly made my way across the flat ground towards the moraine.
The moraine rose seemingly unnaturally from the earth and the gathering dark mist made me feel that I was truly on another planet. In all honesty the monolithic quality of the wall of rock and dirt looked like something out of a sci-fi movie. Great horns and shaking strings sounded in my head as every epic soundtrack began to conglomerate and announce the arrival of a final obstacle.
When I had caught my breath I ascended some of the moraine, perhaps 50 of the 100 meters, running up the path. I looked back to see N hunched over her trekking poles, gasping for breath, not a quarter of the way I had amounted. She looked up after a minute and said it was impossible. Very slowly, she ascended to my level on the verge of tears, and told me that she felt as though her lungs were filled with something like mucus and that she could only really take half a breath. The sun was going down and I knew that Laboche was just on the other side of the glacier. N didn’t want to go on, but what was I supposed to do? She was back at a safe altitude, but I couldn’t leave her, and if her condition somehow worsened, it would be best if we were in Laboche. At the same time, however, I was afraid that if I pushed her too hard, it might also make her condition worse. The top of the moraine was just above and I managed to quell N’s tears and convince her to just go to the top of the moraine to see what the path looked like.
When she glimpsed what lie beyond the moraine, she collapsed once again into tears, sobbing uncontrollably saying that it was impossible. Somehow, I convinced her to continue, and as the sunset it was a constant series of emotional breakdowns. She would sit on the ground, cry and say once again that it was impossible. Every time we got to the top of a ridge and our pathetic headlamps illuminated yet another ridge she would become an emotional mess. She told me to leave her, to go on. Ridiculous. The only choice was to continue, as terrified as I was… and this is something I want to make clear: I have never been more terrified in my life as I was that day, and that night when I was making my way with N through that glacier. The whole time I had a SPOT device which is primarily a GPS unit for notifying family and friends of one’s whereabouts and letting them know that everything is alright. It is, however, equipped with a Panic button which backs $100,000 of search & rescue. My trembling finger hovered above that red Panic button all day, and never before had I so strongly considered pushing it than during some of N’s breakdowns that night in the Glacier. Fear was a constant layer of clothing that ran up and down and all around my body, telling me of the danger that was beneath my feet, the cold at my throat and the degrading systems in N’s body. The stress of that fear was so intense that at several points in the glacier, I attempted to make myself cry, just to relieve some of the feeling, but something irresolute had grown solid inside of me. I could not cry, however much I wanted to. Something, whatever it was, felt solid - monolithic in my chest, and its voice in my mind told me to go on, and that I would succeed, to keep going, keep going…
N would accuse me of saying that it would be our last ridge when we surmounted it, only to see more ridges. I had done nothing of the sort. The moraine, which would be our final climb (based on what I had seen from above at the pass) was visible in the distance as a gargantuan black wall - this I had said would be the last. But through her tears and anger she accused me of trying to trick her. I did my best to remain hopeful and optimistic, but I was terrified to the core, and constantly questioned whether or not I was doing the right thing. I am thousands and thousands of miles away from home, in a country I don’t know, I am in the midst of a cold rocky glacier, navigating in the dark, the young woman I am with is breaking down emotionally and physically, and I have no way of contacting anybody save for the Panic button. But I knew we were close! I saw Laboche from the pass! I knew my eyes had not deceived me.
Luckily the last 3rd of the trail was generally downhill and looked as though it was heading for a depression in the moraine. I egged her on with positive words and finally we reached the top of the moraine, but I could see nothing. The trail through the glacier had bent slightly southeast by my feeling of it, so I knew (and hoped) that Laboche would be just north along the moraine. After a few more breakdowns, I felt something in the back of my mind flicker… I thought….maybe…oh please let it be so… I told N to turn off her headlamp, and through babbling teary complaints she did. I did the same. Barely, through the dark cloud and the fog, there was a dim luminescence.
I yelled to N, “There is light!, there is Laboche! We are almost there!”, she responded:
“…but its so far away!” and started crying. Continually she had resigned her fate to her present spot, but now, finally, she conceded and said:
“I trust whatever you do…”, and followed me. I kept walking in the direction of the nebulous light, all the while tracing the steps in the snow, of the trekkers from the morning. When I thought I heard voices, I yelled “Help!” but no one would answer. We crossed a shallow stream and shortly I was on a well-beaten path that I knew had to be the main trail to Laboche. The lights were brighter and I could make out windows, and I could see people in the buildings! I kept yelling to N, “We are here! We are here! I can see people! We are in Laboche!”
Finally, I stumbled into a lodge and asked for a room over and over: “Room? Room? Room?” - No room. I went to the next lodge and walked in and collapsed on a bench. The dinning hall was full and predictably no one noticed I had come through the door. I asked someone who I should talk to and directed myself to the young boy who seemed to be orchestrating the operation.
“room?” - Yes.
I looked back to find N on the bench that I had left and motioned for her to come. Through a flag-covered doorway, stone steps, a left turn, more stone steps. The end of a dark hallway - room 30. N went in first and dropped her bag, I did the same and the moment I sat down I broke down in sobs. I said through my convulsions that I had been so worried about her, that I hadn’t been sure what to do, that I had never been so scared in all my life. She apologized and told me that I’d saved her life.
Epilogue:
The next day, I found that I was rather angry with the position that N had put me, unwilling to turn back when its exactly what should have happened. I told her that she needed to see a doctor, that she needed to go down to Perische. She would have nothing of it and planned to go up to Gorak Shep. I thought it was an unwise decision. It was amazing to see how quickly she forgot how difficult the previous day had been for her. And on top of it all N told me that prior she had had a very serious case of pneumonia and thought it was what she had now in Laboche. Not ten minutes up the lightly inclined trail she was once again down on her knees gasping for breath. I convinced her to stay in Laboche another night to rest. The next morning, against my protestations we started again up towards Gorak Shep, and again the same result, though it was obvious she was trying to hide her symptoms and pace herself more efficiently, moving very slowly. I argued with her, urging her to see a doctor, telling her that I would go with her to Perische, but she was unyielding. A Godsend, two Swedish guys, who were obviously having a lot of trouble breathing stopped to talk to N while I was up on the moraine. (I could easily run up to moraine, and walked along it as the path to Gorak Shep was along it. I had separated myself from N to try and figure out what to do.) When I came back down I learned that the Swedish guys had told N that two days ago a woman had died after returning to Laboche from Gorak Shep. Her stubborn wall seemed to be teetering on an unreliable base. The Swedish guys came up to the two of us and I introduced a conversation I could not loose.
“So guys, if you thought you had pneumonia, would you still be on your way to Gorak Shep?” There expressions instantly changed, as though they’d suddenly walked into a situation way over their heads.
“No way.”, they responded. I looked at N and replied
“Yea, niether would I, pretty dumb idea if you ask me.” I was pissed.
It convinced her to descend and turning my back on Base Camp, Kalla Pattar, and Everest herself, I led N down to Perische. 900 meter descend over 10 kilometers. When we got to Tukla (an intermediate town close to Perische) I agreed to stop for some tea, and N made it physically apparent that she was intending to stay. After the Tea I got up and walked a few paces out of Tukla, turning around to confront her petulant expression. I had a flashback to my childhood and realized I was standing in my Father’s shoes. I took my cue from his actions and N got up, grudgingly and followed me. I stayed ahead of N so that she protestations, if there were any, could not reach me, and once when I agreed to her arm waving and waited for her to catch up, she started yelling at me:
“I COULD BE IN GORAK SHEP RIGHT NOW!-”
“YEA, AND YOU COULD BE FUCKING DEAD!” I yelled right back at her before turning back and briskly gaining distance from her slow pace.
I was determined, though I still questioned whether I was doing the right thing or not. I wondered what my family would think or do, my friends? I endeavored to make Perische long before N and did so. I found the medical post as quickly as I could and when I found the doctor - a young woman from Ontario, I told her all of N’s symptoms and the events of the last few days. I also told her that N was very upset with me, and before N got there I paid the $50 for the medical consultation so that when N arrived she could not protest.
Sure enough, she had a chest infection, of which the doctor said had no chance of healing up at Laboche or Gorak Shep.
Though I wanted to head back immediately, N begged me to stay and leave in the morning, I agreed. That night at The White Yak, there was a nice group of people and we had a generally fun time. N and I noticed that the older gentleman of a german couple was looking at N and I. We commented on it, and after a few minutes I forgot about it. Perhaps an hour later, N said:
“Caught it.”
“What?” I said, having no idea what she was talking about. She rolled her eyes and said:
“Ugh, you have no imagination!” I couldn’t figure out what she was talking about and then I remembered the greman man and realized that she’d meant that she’d ‘caught’ his glance. After a moment I decided that her reaction to my puzzlement had been a bit mean.
“You know, you can be a little mean sometimes.” I said. Without changing her expression or missing a beat, she looked at me and said:
“You deserve it.”
The next morning I left. Good riddance. I climbed the 900 meters ascent over the 10 kilometers and I did it in under 6 hours. When I told a Sherpa what I had done he furrowed his eyebrows and sucked air through pursed lips. “You verdy stron man! Verdy stron man!” That day, I was a Sherpa.
November 3rd 2010
Yesterday was the most challenging, terrifying, and affirming day of my life. N and I awoke by 5:30 and luckily I slept very well. I had muesli with hot milk and N had Tibetan bread with cheese. We were on our way before light had touched any of the mountains, though the sky above was growing a dim blue. We had to trek a bit north to cross the small but icy stream to the eastern side of Chuckhung. My hands were very cold but this would prove to be the very least of my worries. After crossing the stream we headed south and started on a diagonal climb up the eastern ridge of the valley. This light climb brought us high above the valley as we traveled south and the valley fell farther below us. By the time we turned east, presumably for a more formidable section of the climb, the whole valley was before us and I could not only see all the way back to Thyangboche (where we had stayed several nights prior), but I could even see (barely) the high altitude hotel on the mountain opposite Namche Bazzar.
N was already having a lot of trouble breathing before the climb started getting steep. This was the first time I offered the possibility of turning back and taking another day at Chuckhung to acclimate.
The day before I had spent the entire day drinking water (6+ liters) and I knew that I would be better prepared for the altitude since I’d given my body the opportunity to rid itself of as much CO2 as possible. N had spend the day attempting Chuckhung Ri (5,500 meters. Chuckhung is situated around 4,700 meters). She came back from the day trip very happy and in good spirits, though she had said that it had been difficult and that her lungs hurt. These details were coming back to me then on the edge of the valley. Two other trekkers were gaining quickly on us due to N’s frequent stops to catch her breath. I certainly wasn’t in a race but the speed by which the trekkers overtook us worried me, because, while one was a young man, the other was a much older man, and its sensible to think that a 23 year old male and a 25 year old female should at least be able to keep up with this pair. This worried me a little but I figured since we would be sleeping at an altitude not much higher than Chuck hung (Laboche is around 4,930 meters, an acceptable 200 meter increment) I wasn’t terribly worried. As long as we got down from the pass we should be ok. Slowly, we made our way over some high hills with still a growing distance from the trekkers who had passed us. I would take pictures while N caught her breath or attempted to get a little ahead. When we found the first major ridge, N was already speculating about which high point was the summit. In lieu of her condition I was hoping for the same possibilities. My worry was starting to gain a very nervous edge. When the grassy slopes started to turn into a rock strewn lunar landscape, we took a break and another group of four over took us. One of them (a - as N put it - ‘crazy’ French woman) had been with N on Chuckhung Ri and started to talk about how difficult of a time N had had on the Ri. (I learned a few minutes after their departure from N that her jubilant mood had been more from the fact that she’d broken up with her boyfriend on a phone call)
On the first rocky ridge that was something more akin to steep, the histrionics that would mark the rest of the day began to show themselves. N was stopping more frequently and on top on this her complaining was starting to gain a more desperate nature. At a few points she broke down and started crying. The headache she had briefly mentioned earlier was now very painful and she was now dizzy. Asking her if she wanted to turn back had grown to be a common punctuation of our intermittent conversation, and asking her then would be far from the last time. She was adamant that there was no way she would turn back. By this point I was very worried and I tried to take comfort from all the mountain experience she had been raving about. We had both convinced ourselves that the summit had to be just over the ridge we were on. I beckoned her on (seeing no other alternative), telling her that we were almost there and that she would make it! When finally after more stopping, and goading her on, we made it up over the ridge the summit wasn’t in sight and our path banked to the right. We passed a small lake and N sat down, declaring that she would go no farther and that I should leave her. Before us was a snow covered hill - not a terribly formidable task - and I knew that N could make it up and over. She was petulant and unyielding. My position was beginning to feel more and more constricted and compromised and was making me feel desperate: She would not turn back. Encouraging words slowly got her to the top of the white hill.
The sight that awaited us broke N down into tears. Before us was another gorgeous blue mountain lake, and to the north of it our path banked before slamming into an almost vertical ascend of about 100 meters. At the top of that distant rocky ridge, multi-colored Tibetan prayer flags stretched from one high rock to another as if mockingly signaling the end of a race. N was down on her knees crying. She said that she couldn’t go on any farther and that I should leave her. I knew by this point that she was also hallucinating - seeing black dots, which meant (based on my reading of the last few days) that she was experiencing symptoms of pulmonary edema and cerebral edema - both extremely critical life threatening afflictions. I also knew that the altitude we were at (approx. 5,400 meters) had not taken its full affect on her and that if she were to stay at the altitude for somewhere between 6 and 12 hours her condition would worsen as the CO2/Oxygen levels became more unbalanced. Considering the symptoms she was telling me, it seemed reasonable based on my reading that if she stayed she had a good chance of lapsing into a coma and possibly dying. At this point panic was boiling inside of me and I worked through my options at a machine gun rate. My only choice was to get her up over the summit and down as fast as possible. I told N that I couldn’t and wouldn’t leave her. She asked me:
‘Why?’
“I just couldn’t“, I said. She asked me why I cared? The question seemed irrelevant to me. I told her that we needed to get to the summit and get down, or she risked falling into a coma and possibly dying. She looked around at the gorgeous display of mountains behind us.
“Its a good place to die“, she said. You’ve got to be joking, I thought. She seemed serious.
“Why do you care?” She asked again, “No one else would care if I died.” Panic had more reason, but terrified as I was, I told myself I was finished with this nonsense. I started walking forward a few steps and looked back with the parental expectation that she would follow. Underneath I was terrified that I might be pushing her too hard. She got up slowly, and slowly we ascended the last rocky wall. N made if first, and when she got to the small space that felt as though it teetered between the two incredibly steep inclines, she was ebullient. Memory of the last several hours seemed to have been washed from her. For good reason too, the view was unlike anything I had ever seen:
The entire landscape before me and in back of me truly looked as though the world was mid explosion, yet the action was so still! White jagged peaks, peppered brown and black where true hard color shown through. The motion of millions of years condensed and pressed into a single moment of observation. All the sound that trickled out from that vast expanse of movement was a light whirl of wind on the rocks.
I could have sat on that pass for days - weeks - months in awe, with still more to find. But the sun was not going to wait and N had to get down. The other side of the pass was the steepest terrain I had seen yet on the trip. Nearly 600 meters of downward rock pile. And at the base of it - flat ground that led up to the Khumbu Glacier moraine wall. In-between the two glacier moraines was a convoluted maze of rock piles, valleys and pools. And just beyond the second moraine was a clutter of buildings which I pegged for Laboche. I was entirely aware that crossing the glacier would be difficult, and the last push to Laboche.
We started down from the pass, and I immediately had trouble. My right knee was painful from Petella-femeral syndrome which had been developing over that last week. Luckily I was familiar with the syndrome from training for cycling across North America. Basically one side of my leg had gotten stronger than the other side much faster (or just tightened up) and was pulling my knee cap out of the groove created by the joining of the femur and the tibia. Time and more exercise is really the only cure. (other than a good PT). N gave me one of her trekking poles to help, but after much pain and slow going, I was nearing the bottom and felt not only that the syndrome was getting worse but it was now starting to develop in my other knee. I had been using a wooden staff in my right hand for a few days, about the same time the syndrome started developing in my right knee. In my frustration and pain, I determined that the use of the staff and now the pole was creating some kind of imbalance in the way my legs were holding up my body. I became upset, gave N back her trekking pole and then destroyed the wooden staff against a bolder. (I was right about the imbalance, as the problem has slowly resolved itself ever since, and not once has it gotten at all worse.) I stormed down the rest of the rock-hoping decline and quickly made my way across the flat ground towards the moraine.
The moraine rose seemingly unnaturally from the earth and the gathering dark mist made me feel that I was truly on another planet. In all honesty the monolithic quality of the wall of rock and dirt looked like something out of a sci-fi movie. Great horns and shaking strings sounded in my head as every epic soundtrack began to conglomerate and announce the arrival of a final obstacle.
When I had caught my breath I ascended some of the moraine, perhaps 50 of the 100 meters, running up the path. I looked back to see N hunched over her trekking poles, gasping for breath, not a quarter of the way I had amounted. She looked up after a minute and said it was impossible. Very slowly, she ascended to my level on the verge of tears, and told me that she felt as though her lungs were filled with something like mucus and that she could only really take half a breath. The sun was going down and I knew that Laboche was just on the other side of the glacier. N didn’t want to go on, but what was I supposed to do? She was back at a safe altitude, but I couldn’t leave her, and if her condition somehow worsened, it would be best if we were in Laboche. At the same time, however, I was afraid that if I pushed her too hard, it might also make her condition worse. The top of the moraine was just above and I managed to quell N’s tears and convince her to just go to the top of the moraine to see what the path looked like.
When she glimpsed what lie beyond the moraine, she collapsed once again into tears, sobbing uncontrollably saying that it was impossible. Somehow, I convinced her to continue, and as the sunset it was a constant series of emotional breakdowns. She would sit on the ground, cry and say once again that it was impossible. Every time we got to the top of a ridge and our pathetic headlamps illuminated yet another ridge she would become an emotional mess. She told me to leave her, to go on. Ridiculous. The only choice was to continue, as terrified as I was… and this is something I want to make clear: I have never been more terrified in my life as I was that day, and that night when I was making my way with N through that glacier. The whole time I had a SPOT device which is primarily a GPS unit for notifying family and friends of one’s whereabouts and letting them know that everything is alright. It is, however, equipped with a Panic button which backs $100,000 of search & rescue. My trembling finger hovered above that red Panic button all day, and never before had I so strongly considered pushing it than during some of N’s breakdowns that night in the Glacier. Fear was a constant layer of clothing that ran up and down and all around my body, telling me of the danger that was beneath my feet, the cold at my throat and the degrading systems in N’s body. The stress of that fear was so intense that at several points in the glacier, I attempted to make myself cry, just to relieve some of the feeling, but something irresolute had grown solid inside of me. I could not cry, however much I wanted to. Something, whatever it was, felt solid - monolithic in my chest, and its voice in my mind told me to go on, and that I would succeed, to keep going, keep going…
N would accuse me of saying that it would be our last ridge when we surmounted it, only to see more ridges. I had done nothing of the sort. The moraine, which would be our final climb (based on what I had seen from above at the pass) was visible in the distance as a gargantuan black wall - this I had said would be the last. But through her tears and anger she accused me of trying to trick her. I did my best to remain hopeful and optimistic, but I was terrified to the core, and constantly questioned whether or not I was doing the right thing. I am thousands and thousands of miles away from home, in a country I don’t know, I am in the midst of a cold rocky glacier, navigating in the dark, the young woman I am with is breaking down emotionally and physically, and I have no way of contacting anybody save for the Panic button. But I knew we were close! I saw Laboche from the pass! I knew my eyes had not deceived me.
Luckily the last 3rd of the trail was generally downhill and looked as though it was heading for a depression in the moraine. I egged her on with positive words and finally we reached the top of the moraine, but I could see nothing. The trail through the glacier had bent slightly southeast by my feeling of it, so I knew (and hoped) that Laboche would be just north along the moraine. After a few more breakdowns, I felt something in the back of my mind flicker… I thought….maybe…oh please let it be so… I told N to turn off her headlamp, and through babbling teary complaints she did. I did the same. Barely, through the dark cloud and the fog, there was a dim luminescence.
I yelled to N, “There is light!, there is Laboche! We are almost there!”, she responded:
“…but its so far away!” and started crying. Continually she had resigned her fate to her present spot, but now, finally, she conceded and said:
“I trust whatever you do…”, and followed me. I kept walking in the direction of the nebulous light, all the while tracing the steps in the snow, of the trekkers from the morning. When I thought I heard voices, I yelled “Help!” but no one would answer. We crossed a shallow stream and shortly I was on a well-beaten path that I knew had to be the main trail to Laboche. The lights were brighter and I could make out windows, and I could see people in the buildings! I kept yelling to N, “We are here! We are here! I can see people! We are in Laboche!”
Finally, I stumbled into a lodge and asked for a room over and over: “Room? Room? Room?” - No room. I went to the next lodge and walked in and collapsed on a bench. The dinning hall was full and predictably no one noticed I had come through the door. I asked someone who I should talk to and directed myself to the young boy who seemed to be orchestrating the operation.
“room?” - Yes.
I looked back to find N on the bench that I had left and motioned for her to come. Through a flag-covered doorway, stone steps, a left turn, more stone steps. The end of a dark hallway - room 30. N went in first and dropped her bag, I did the same and the moment I sat down I broke down in sobs. I said through my convulsions that I had been so worried about her, that I hadn’t been sure what to do, that I had never been so scared in all my life. She apologized and told me that I’d saved her life.
Epilogue:
The next day, I found that I was rather angry with the position that N had put me, unwilling to turn back when its exactly what should have happened. I told her that she needed to see a doctor, that she needed to go down to Perische. She would have nothing of it and planned to go up to Gorak Shep. I thought it was an unwise decision. It was amazing to see how quickly she forgot how difficult the previous day had been for her. And on top of it all N told me that prior she had had a very serious case of pneumonia and thought it was what she had now in Laboche. Not ten minutes up the lightly inclined trail she was once again down on her knees gasping for breath. I convinced her to stay in Laboche another night to rest. The next morning, against my protestations we started again up towards Gorak Shep, and again the same result, though it was obvious she was trying to hide her symptoms and pace herself more efficiently, moving very slowly. I argued with her, urging her to see a doctor, telling her that I would go with her to Perische, but she was unyielding. A Godsend, two Swedish guys, who were obviously having a lot of trouble breathing stopped to talk to N while I was up on the moraine. (I could easily run up to moraine, and walked along it as the path to Gorak Shep was along it. I had separated myself from N to try and figure out what to do.) When I came back down I learned that the Swedish guys had told N that two days ago a woman had died after returning to Laboche from Gorak Shep. Her stubborn wall seemed to be teetering on an unreliable base. The Swedish guys came up to the two of us and I introduced a conversation I could not loose.
“So guys, if you thought you had pneumonia, would you still be on your way to Gorak Shep?” There expressions instantly changed, as though they’d suddenly walked into a situation way over their heads.
“No way.”, they responded. I looked at N and replied
“Yea, niether would I, pretty dumb idea if you ask me.” I was pissed.
It convinced her to descend and turning my back on Base Camp, Kalla Pattar, and Everest herself, I led N down to Perische. 900 meter descend over 10 kilometers. When we got to Tukla (an intermediate town close to Perische) I agreed to stop for some tea, and N made it physically apparent that she was intending to stay. After the Tea I got up and walked a few paces out of Tukla, turning around to confront her petulant expression. I had a flashback to my childhood and realized I was standing in my Father’s shoes. I took my cue from his actions and N got up, grudgingly and followed me. I stayed ahead of N so that she protestations, if there were any, could not reach me, and once when I agreed to her arm waving and waited for her to catch up, she started yelling at me:
“I COULD BE IN GORAK SHEP RIGHT NOW!-”
“YEA, AND YOU COULD BE FUCKING DEAD!” I yelled right back at her before turning back and briskly gaining distance from her slow pace.
I was determined, though I still questioned whether I was doing the right thing or not. I wondered what my family would think or do, my friends? I endeavored to make Perische long before N and did so. I found the medical post as quickly as I could and when I found the doctor - a young woman from Ontario, I told her all of N’s symptoms and the events of the last few days. I also told her that N was very upset with me, and before N got there I paid the $50 for the medical consultation so that when N arrived she could not protest.
Sure enough, she had a chest infection, of which the doctor said had no chance of healing up at Laboche or Gorak Shep.
Though I wanted to head back immediately, N begged me to stay and leave in the morning, I agreed. That night at The White Yak, there was a nice group of people and we had a generally fun time. N and I noticed that the older gentleman of a german couple was looking at N and I. We commented on it, and after a few minutes I forgot about it. Perhaps an hour later, N said:
“Caught it.”
“What?” I said, having no idea what she was talking about. She rolled her eyes and said:
“Ugh, you have no imagination!” I couldn’t figure out what she was talking about and then I remembered the greman man and realized that she’d meant that she’d ‘caught’ his glance. After a moment I decided that her reaction to my puzzlement had been a bit mean.
“You know, you can be a little mean sometimes.” I said. Without changing her expression or missing a beat, she looked at me and said:
“You deserve it.”
The next morning I left. Good riddance. I climbed the 900 meters ascent over the 10 kilometers and I did it in under 6 hours. When I told a Sherpa what I had done he furrowed his eyebrows and sucked air through pursed lips. “You verdy stron man! Verdy stron man!” That day, I was a Sherpa.
Sunday, October 10, 2010
A sneeze in the direction of travel writing
There is a kind of trepidation, a simple anxiety that seems to rise when one finds their life about to be uplifted, upturned, uprooted, folded aerodynamically and hurled towards some imaginary point. That anxiety bubbles, even when one has chosen it, chosen the trip, chosen the places, chosen the change. Places I've heard of and Googled, ogled at on monitors and book pages but places that have still not flooded my senses and dizzied my understanding. The restraint of people and places so familiar lean hard against those roughly imagined unknowns. Today was a spectacular day. A great part of my family came together for a farewell dinner, and I was flattered, over joyed, elated, but humbled. The question of why I would leave this arises all too easily. There are people, many people here who care deeply about me - plenty for any human heart to bath in here and yet still, a stubborn part of me holds dear to what hard won treasures may wait - traipsing through the unknown. I moved back for these people and yet I so quickly found myself watching my bank account tick steadily upwards, the calculator always near, and my mind always on the planes in the sky. The realistic observation is met by another one: there would have been no dinner had I not decided to leave. And I remember my Father's observation that our communication is always healthiest when I'm flung far from home. What sweet sustenance is in the act of missing somebody. How perfect may our image be of that person, framed and hung so nicely on the reassuring walls of our mind. Imperfections and faults, arguments and disagreements fade from the paint and print, and we rest comfortably in our own realities. It is a fantasy, however, because memories fade, sanded down by the ever present carving of the day-to-day. And eventually the inevitable finds its way and we come back. But why go? Why go? I go on the word of others whose eyes marvel in memory at the talk of such adventures already gone and done. I go for the simple curiosity. I go for the obligation of such unbounded luck that my situation presents me. I go to rack up miles in my legs and to marvel at the commonplace of others. And I go because my restless spirit, so bent on wanderlust has proved not to be aimless, but fruitful, as if following some guiding scent of the unknown. I'm following a sense of life that reaches for all its wide forms. Why go? Just for the experience, I suppose.
Wednesday, September 8, 2010
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