How Bizarre

April 30, 2010
Tengboche to Khumjung – somewhere around 13,000 feet

The walk up to Tengboche was tough enough. The lodge was crap, and the night that followed, extremely cold. It didn't help that sometime around midnight I discovered my rented sleeping bag was devoid of down filling in the sections between my hips and knees. The smell of sewage from the unclean squat toilet hung in the thin air as a constant reminder of where I was. I tossed and turned most of the night and needless to say, woke up in a rotten mood.

I was cranky because I had been fairly uncomfortable during the night, but also because my time climbing to new heights was over. I would be turning around this morning and heading back down towards Lukla. And, despite my trouble getting a full night's sleep, I felt okay. Sure, my body was tired and sore, but as far as the altitude was concerned, it was not really affecting me. I sat with a San Jose woman at breakfast who was so ill I couldn't believe her guide was pushing her to go higher. I had expected to get sick, and embarked on the trek armed with diamox (a high altitude drug) and a satchel of other remedies. Turns out, at least at almost 13,000 feet, I needed none of them. I wanted to keep going and was disappointed that I couldn't. (Though after one night shivering in my sleeping bag, I kind of knew going higher could result in frostbite.) The walk down would be long; I wanted to eat breakfast and get on with it.

And so less than 16 hours after I'd dragged my ass up the steep pass into Tengboche, I was about face and descending it. My mood continued to drop with the trail, especially since Phurba virtually vanished. He'd just skip along, way ahead of me until he was out of sight, then stop and wait for me at 30 minute intervals.

“Is problem? Knee is paining?” he said when I caught up with him at a natural resting point.

Let's see, I was moving at the pace of an arthritic geriatric patient, wincing with each step, holding up traffic, watching my knee swell - “Yes, Phurba, IT'S PAINING.” While I had told him to go ahead the previous day, no such words had been uttered today. I was scared I might fall and break my leg, and he'd be nowhere in sight. What if I had to be carried down by the smelly porters, or worse, strapped to the back of a yak for the 2 day hike to an airstrip? With these doomsday scenarios whizzing through my head, I gobbled some Advil and got down the pass as quickly as I could.

We were headed to Khumjung, a Sherpa village near Namche Bazaar. Most trekkers visit Khumjung during a rest/acclimatization day on their way up to base camp, but I'd arranged to spend the night on my way back to Lukla. Like Namche, it is a village carved into the mountainside, reminiscent of an ancient Greek amphitheater. We arrived sometime in the early afternoon to the eerie feeling that Phurba and I were the only people in town. Aside from the school kids kicking around a deflated soccer ball (following his ascent of Everest, Sir Edmund Hillary built a school in Khumjung, as well as hospital nearby), I saw nobody. I asked Phurba what was up, and he told me that most of the climbing Sherpa came from Khumjung. The ones lucky enough to land a place on an expedition were high up on Mount Everest working, probably already plotting for the summit. Some, he solemnly remarked, would not return. Where their wives and families were, I wasn't sure.

Aside from climbing Sherpa and Hillary's school, Khumjung has another claim to fame, one of which would take me by surprise. The village houses an old Buddhist monastery, and Phurba (who confessed that he would one day like to land a job as an Everest Sherpa) wanted to visit and ask the Buddha to keep safe his colleagues who were headed up to the death zone. I was more than happy to take a walk over with him; I felt pretty good. The village was not as steep as Namche, and it was an easy and charming walk. Aside from a couple of nuns cleaning the prayer wheels, the only people there were Phurba, a monk who showed us around, and me. As I always do, I put a few rupees in the donation box. The monk came scurrying over to me and took me by the wrist. He led me to a locked cabinet and took out the key. Was he trying to extort more cash? Is that where the “real” donations were kept? I did not know what was going on. Phurba had a shit-eating grin on his face and asked me if I was ready. Confused and a little bit scared, all I could muster was an unsure, “Sure...” Inside the cabinet, resting atop a '50s-style beauty school bust sat the monastery's prized earthly possession: the scalp of a yeti.

Now of course, as luck (and legend) would have it, I had left my camera at the lodge. The innkeeper had electricity behind the counter and was charging my battery. As in life, the yeti is apparently camera shy in death. Nobody was going to believe me. Hell, I could not even believe it myself. I asked the monk if he had seen a live yeti, and with what frequency. He told me that it was very rare now but when he was a boy he would see them often. He did say that weather like today's (cold, foggy, gray) sometimes brought one around this time of year, looking for food. Interesting stuff. I wondered how tall the tales would grow if I'd made a larger donation. I turned a couple prayer wheels and retreated to the warmth of my guest house.

The date was April 30th, one day before the May Day celebrations. We knew this was a national holiday of sorts, and we also knew, via news trickling up and down the trail, that May 2nd was going to be a day of Maoist demonstrations. I was set to fly back to Kathmandu and start volunteer work on May 3rd. All sorts of rumors were flying around, and I was overjoyed when we got back to the tea house to find the soothing sounds of Nepali screaming out of a television set. I ordered a lemon tea and took a seat in next to a couple from Arizona I'd met a few days earlier. Happy to be in the company of Americans, we quickly got to talking. Rumors had been flying and we were trying to discern what was actually going on. It's no secret that Nepal suffers from bouts of political instability. There was chatter up and down the trail; rumors of airports closing, imminent riots, martial law, mass starvation. Up here in Khumjung, the demonstrations in the capitol mattered little. All any of us really wanted to know was would we be stranded in the Himalayas, and for how long. As I don't speak Nepali, watching TV was little comfort. There were shots of the Prime Minister and the Maoist leader, but not one of the 10 Sherpa or porters would translate anything for us.

I kept asking Phurba “so, what is going on? Is the domestic airport going to close? How will we get back to KTM? Will we have to walk (this was a real possibility – and one that would take over a week)?”

Some people speculated that the protests/strike would go on for a month. Problem was, these guys are so used to it, they really didn't seem to give a shit. They also did not want to relay any bad or disappointing news to foreigners, lest we think poorly of their country, so instead all we got was nebulous information. “Maybe will be OK I think,” or “He is Maoist leader, is saying protest tomorrow.” Gee, thanks guys. Informative and reassuring.

As I passed the time talking with my new friends Lisa and Kris about home – turns out the couple had recently been to a wedding at The Brownstone in NJ, where my sister got married; Lisa's family was from NJ and Italian; they had both eaten the spaghetti for lunch and recommended I try it for dinner - some excitement arose from the Sherpa gang, who were all crowding closer to the TV. Excellent, I thought, some news. The scene that we witnessed was so unbelievably bizarre that had I been alone, I'd have assumed I was having high altitude hallucinations. Every Nepali in the room (save for the woman who ran the lodge) had moved his chair close to the TV. The volume was turned way up. As the sun set behind the giant mountains, we, along with probably the only other people in town, settled in for a three hour long session with the WWE. Wrestlemania had reached one of the most remote parts of the world, and carried with it far more weight than something so futile as, oh, a Maoist-imposed national strike!

This was serious business. The thin air suddenly became thick and heavy, as if the Sherpa were high rollers with millions resting on the Kentucky Derby. Having worked in heavy metal, I was embarrassed to admit I knew some of the wrestlers and moreover their theme songs. I was hearing Killswitch Engage at 13,000 feet. I had even met a couple of the wrestlers, news I kept to myself lest a riot break out. The excitement in the room was bananas. At one point, Phurba got so worked up his chair was rattling. I asked if the featured wrestler (I think it was Darren Young) was his favorite. “Oh yes, He is very good player!” and then I was shushed so the match could be watched in silence. It was truly hilarious, and I had not laughed that hard in a long time. Proud of my country's fine entertainment exports, I focused my thoughts on dinner.

I have to admit, I was nervous about ordering the spaghetti. It was on every menu, but I usually thought it best to stick with dal bhat. We had been talking about food all afternoon, and I was sick of dal bhat. My friends assured me that it was good. So after the innkeeper fired up the stove with yak dung, she went to work (sans washing her hands, I should note) chopping up fresh tomatoes, onions and garlic, and I was presented with a giant plate of spaghetti with fresh marinara sauce and a heaping mound of grated yak cheese. And it was actually delicious. I declined to accept Kris's recommendation to sample the “Hot Tang,” (by far the most curious menu item I had seen on the trek) but thought that if I ever started a band, that would be a great name. The afternoon turned into evening, the Wrestlemania marathon carried on long past sunset and my last day high in the Himalayas was a blast.

I was in bed by 8PM, haunted by dreams of being abducted by a spaghetti-eating, tang-drinking, Maoist-wrestling yeti. Bizarre, indeed.

Shangri-La: On My Own

APRIL 29
Namche Bazaar to Tengboche (12,687 ft)
Part 2

I had met a couple of kids from Denver during my two night stay at the Khumbu Lodge in Namche Bazaar. They were “doing research” (whatever that meant) in the region for a few months and had been trekking all around the Khumbu range. While drinking my first altitude headache away (with water) in the dining area one afternoon I started asking them about the trail ahead. I'd had a very hard time getting into Namche on the near vertical incline and wanted to know from a non-Nepali, in no uncertain terms, (Nepalis, like Indians, often lied to foreigners when the news was less than savory, not wanting to disappoint or disrespect) what lay ahead. They both told me that the trek up to Tengboche was one of the most beautiful days on the trail...walking through a storybook of pictures, over the river and through the woods, so to speak. The first half of the day was to be easy breezy, and the second half “would sting a bit,” though it supposedly was not as hard as coming up to Namche. I felt good about it.

The lodge was fairly cozy; I'd had a hot shower (my first in 3 days) and the room, while tiny and shed-like and housing a small population of horse flies, came equipped with an ultra thick and plush blanket. That, on top of my sleeping bag, was enough to keep me very toasty once night fell. Aside from the obligatory bladder call at 2AM (during which one would don a headlamp and shiver in the pitch black down the hallway to the toilet and inevitably wake up half the lodge in doing so), I slept pretty well and woke before my alarm at 6 AM, quickly dressed and packed and was ready to go before Phurba even knocked on my door.

It was cold that morning and the first day I had to wear long underwear as well as gloves and a hat when we hit the trail. Leaving Namche is a serious workout, as it's all uphill. There's no slight upgrade or flat ground to warm up; it's zero to 60 in about 10 paces. My chest was heaving before we even got out of town and I struggled to keep my omelette down. But I had glimpsed our path the previous day, and it looked spectacular. As soon as we hiked out of and above town, we were in a giant mossy green meadow with the sand colored path snaking through it as far as the eye could see. Once the sun peeks out from behind the mountains, the temperature heats up pretty rapidly. The latitude of the region actually lies almost within the tropics and, despite the altitude, it was soon 80 degrees and I was trading my fleece for a sun hat and sweatband. The sky was crystal clear, and I felt like I was on the yellow brick road, inching my way towards the Emerald City - in this case Mount Everest - whose sharp wedge-shaped peak was in plain and glorious view for the better part of an hour. With the trail relatively flat, it was a pleasant morning.

Before we hit a turn, Phurba pointed out a little red roof on the top of a hill that seemed impossibly far away. That, he said, was the monastery at Tengboche, and our destination. Tengboche was about half way to EBC, and as high as I would be going, due to time constraints. I had chosen Tengboche as my turn around point for its famed monastery, the highest and largest (and maybe oldest) Tibetan gompa in the Khumbu region. The monks performed ceremonies twice daily, and I was eager to witness one. Seeing as how the monastery looked to be on an entirely different mountainside, I turned and asked Phurba what was up.

He, in turn, pointed down. “Must walk all the way down to river, then climb up other mountain. Is how path goes.”

It was not long before that pretty, fun morning stroll came to an abrupt end.

As I have mentioned before, it is easier (or rather, less challenging) for me to climb uphill than to go down. Descending is really difficult for me. The path is covered in scree and almost always steeper than I'd like. When you are ascending, if you lose your footing, you usually will fall face first into the path, with your arms or knees to break your fall. If you step unwisely while going down, aside from breaking a leg or twisting an ankle or shattering a few vertebrae, you could gain enough momentum to end up sliding off the trail and plunging 200 feet to your death, possibly taking a yak or fellow trekker with you. With none of these sounding like pleasurable options, and being one who has the tendency to fall while walking on grass, I was taking it painfully slow. I was shit scared of falling, and concentrating on not doing so, when out of nowhere, the pain in my right knee resurfaced. We were on an hour long descent and with each step, it hurt more and more. After a few minutes it was throbbing – a pain I'd never felt before. I'm not sure if this was an injury that was old and had resurfaced (not to look like a whimp and the slowest trekker Phurba had ever guided, this is the story I went with) or if I did something to create a new injury, or if my knees are just weak, but climbing down this hill was the least fun I'd had since the Kumbh Mela. With nobody to talk to (Phurba was so far in front of me, he was mostly out of sight) my mood turned foul pretty quickly.

We finally stopped for lunch in a breathtakingly beautiful hamlet somewhere near the river, and the combination of a good meal and a little shopping (fleece lined hand-knit booties, like my grandmother used to make), my mood was elevated and I was ready to face the uphill battle for Tengboche. I was taking it easy, realizing that this trek was, if nothing else, not a race. It was my vacation and I would go as slow as I needed to. After about 20 minutes into my newly reduced pace, Phurba dropped a bomb. He told me, very matter of factly, that it was possible we might not get a room that night. I stopped dead in my tracks and asked him what the hell he was talking about.

“Tengboche very small. Many people on trail today. You walking very slow. I think maybe rooms full.”

I wanted to scream; Phurba had been on this trail a hundred times and should have known in the morning that there was heavy traffic, and made advance arrangements. He was being paid to guide me and cater exclusively to my needs, and I was pissed. I wanted to bite his head off, but knew it would do no good. After taking a second to calm down, I did the only thing I could do. I made sure that the trail was clearly marked. I took note of the time. I checked that I had enough water. And then I told Phurba to go ahead of me, to run and knock people off the trail if he had to, but to make sure that I had a room to sleep in. I would catch up with him later. So, for the next few hours, I was climbing alone. Of course I wasn't really alone; there were plenty of porters whizzing by me and trekkers heading to the same destination. There were the dzo and yak bells ringing in the distance as a warning to let them pass. There was the occasional helicopter heading up to Everest Base Camp to rescue sick or injured climbers. And with Phurba gone ahead, and nobody to really keep up with, I was able to take my sweet time and enjoy the truly spectacular scenery. I stopped to take photos, to help a couple of trekkers who were really suffering, daydream that friends or family were with me, or just to try and catch my breath in the constantly thinning air. I played mind games with myself like “no water for 15 minutes,” or, “gotta make it to that giant mani stone before a snack,” who knows, I might have even been talking out loud to myself. It was slow going and took a long time, but eventually, after a few hours, huffing and puffing, I rolled into Tengboche with the afternoon clouds.

Tengboche is a picturesque clearing no bigger than 10 or 20 acres. It consists of the giant monastery, about 3 tea houses, a bit of space for camping, and unadulterated views of Nuptse, Lhotse, Thamserku, Ama Dablam and Mount Everest. It is remote and remarkable and cold. I needed my down jacket as soon as I'd changed from my hiking clothes. It's the first place we had been where I got a true taste of high altitude life – the lodge defined rustic, and not in the “charming villa in Provence” kind of way, but in the true sense of the meaning. There was a main common room used for dining, with a wood burning stove in the middle that didn't actually burn wood. We were too high for that, so instead, it used dried yak dung as fuel. Dinner was cooked over an open flame out back, using the same fuel. Attached to the common room was a hallway with about 10 or so rooms. Mine had 2 beds (which were carpet covered wooden planks so close together that my backpack did not fit in between them). The walls were unpainted cheap plywood with a couple of nails for hanging wet clothes, and the drafty window was barely covered by a tattered sheet pinned to a string. The other most noticeable element was the toilet at the end of the hall – it was a squat toilet that was literally overflowing with crap, and its pungent and sickly odor reached the dining room. There was no sink. (I later discovered that the sink was outside. When the temperature reaches -10 and you have to stand in line in a down coat, headlamp and hat to wash your face in water that is almost frozen and then brush your teeth with the contrasting boiled water in your bottle in the dark, well let's just say you learn to appreciate indoor plumbing and Purell. A lot.)

The monastery sits on a sacred site with very clear views of the surrounding sacred mountains. It is the most important monastery in the region to the Sherpa people, and is steeped in rich Tibetan Buddhist history. The site was deemed special by a rimpoche 350 years ago, and currently houses over 40 monks and the presiding lama. The original building was destroyed by an earthquake in the '30s, was rebuilt, and burned down in 1989. All of the ancient murals, scrolls and texts were lost. The giant Buddha inside was salvaged, and the monastery once again rebuilt. Surrounding the building are prayer wheels and giant mani stones, everywhere repeating the mantra “om mani padme hum,” and strands and strands and strands of prayer flags. I had gotten to town too late for the 3PM ceremony, but we found a monk who was willing to unlock the doors and show us around. I turned the prayer wheels and went inside, where I was joined by Phurba and a few trekkers from Kathmandu. The place was stunning, and we were getting a special private tour. I felt like I didn't belong there, and got an eerie feeling as I thought about all the people, monks and sherpas and mountaineers alike who had stood where I was, went up higher and never made it home. The scary paintings of various bodhisattvas didn't help. I turned to leave but the Kathmandu trekkers would not let me. They spoke to Phurba and the monk in heated Nepali and I was sure I had made some fatal culturally insulting mistake and was about to be asked to leave. Phurba translated , and I was floored to learn that they had never met an American before and were requesting a photo shoot. We posed and smiled all over the monastery, unable to talk to each other but all seemingly feeling happy to have met.

We exited the building, and were about to part ways when the cloud cover suddenly lifted, and the setting sun gleamed out from behind the mammoth Thamserku, casting a golden light on the monastery. The dragons and prayer wheels and paintings reflected back, and a giant rainbow stretched across the sky. One by one, all the weary trekkers crawled from their tea houses and tents, along with a few monks and porters to catch a glimpse. I'd reached my goal, and with it, surrounded by prayer flags and strangers, found the fleeting moment of a real life Shangri-La.