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.