Adventures of J Godoy

Everest Trekking, Day 23
Tuesday, November 24, 2009
Gorak Shep to Thukla

Just when you thought you were safe, s**t happens yet again. It was Tamio’s turn. Our plans of maybe spending another day at the highest point of our trek were shattered along with his strength. He was going back and forth to the toilet all night and by morning was a wreck. He was in such bad shape I thought it might be better to stay there than march back down, but in the end we decided to descend. Stowing my camera, I carried both of our packs and we set out after the sun was high enough to keep us warm. People on the trail were concerned. He looked awful and kept stopping every few meters. If we would have been going up, I’m sure someone would have tried to stop us.

The more we descended the better he felt, and we were able to make it to Thukla, less a town than a one-yak, one lodge stopover for the can’t-hackits or those coming over the Cho-la pass. He slept all afternoon and didn’t want much to do with dinner.

Day 24
Thukla to Pangboche
The next day we stopped At the clinic at Pheriche and got some anti-biotics. Not knowing what was in our beloved seirougan, the doc told him to start taking it the next day. But as we descended his symptoms decreased, and by the time we made it back down to Pangboche he was feeling a lot better.

We took a rest day in upper Pangboche, a nice little village surrounding a 600-year-old temple (lower Pangboche which was more or less a long strip of lodges). We ate, slept, and generally did nothing all day. We were planning to head out for Gokyo the next day. And then I caught it for the third time on the trip

Day 26
Pangboche to Phortse

He was feeling weak, and had been thinking about going down. Now I was down and out, it seemed like the thing to do. But he had another idea: go back down to Namche Bazar for a rest before forging on like before. It was a practical suggestion, but there was no way I would be going one step higher once I started down. Once I descended at all my goal would be the plane, Kathmandu, a shower and a real bed inside a real building. I knew that if we went to Namche I would have to let him go on without me and go down by myself. And I wasn’t having any of it.

So I drank up the sports drink, stocked up on toilet paper, and got ready to go. I took the antibiotics and he carried most of our load.

Once on the trail I had moments of regret, but also moments of victory. The trail towards Gokyo to Phortse (where we would stop for the night) was beautiful and there was practically no one on it.

But the going was rough. The trail had quite a few climbs and the antibiotics weren’t magical. By the time I saw Phortse over the last ridge I wanted to weep with relief.

We chose a lodge at random to find we were staying at the best-organized place with the most delicious cooking in the whole Khumbu (most of it wasn’t hard to beat). I crashed out in the dining room and the lady in charge kept asking if I needed a blanket. She gave us plenty of extras when we went to sleep.

Day 27
Phortse to Thore

The next day I was feeling much better. As we looked at the map, the lodge-lady pointed out that if we stayed on this side of the valley, we wouldn’t have to make any big descents, whereas if we crossed to the other side we would have to go down and then back up around 300 meters. “Less work? Great.” Famous last words, if there ever were any.

So we continued on the western side of the valley. And no, there weren’t any large descents, but it seemed like the succession of sharp ascents and little dips would never end. We couldn’t figure out whether we were on a detour or not when we found ourselves passing through a small abandoned herder’s village.

The tiny village was beautiful, and after it was all over we were glad we had gone by that route. But at four in the afternoon when we neared the closest small village after walking all day, morale was at a low ebb.

A woman was standing at a bend in the trail calling in her yaks. She was probably in her thirties and had a healthy-looking face and wore earrings. When she saw us, she told us she had a lodge and to follow her. She strode over the uneven path like it were a parking lot and we trailed behind her. Eventually we saw a lodge below the trail, another lady and her son in front beckoning us. The place was the epitome of shabby and the woman pitifully cried that we could stay for free (anticipating our dinner orders). But we passed her by and headed to the yak woman’s lodge up the hill.

It turns out they were sisters from Phortse. The lady who ran our lodge said she was used to staying there by herself and keeping her 18 yak. She divided her time between them and us, finishing bringing them in after dinner and going out to milk them after serving our breakfast.

The lodge itself was a cobbed-together shack. The ceiling of the hall was tarpaulin and the front wall was made partly of stones. The earth floor was uneven and covered in Astroturf. The beds were of the standard piece-of-foam-on-a-board type, and the pillowcases seemed to enclose a chunk of loam wrapped in a plastic rice sack.

At dinner came the ultimatum: we were going all the way to Gokyo tomorrow or not going at all. It was time to put up or shut up.

Day 28
Thore to Gokyo

The morning was not so bad. We had a few hours of gradual descent to the river where we would be able to cut west across the valley and pick up the trail to Gokyo on the north side. When we had come about the right distance, the trail split into a high and low trail, but we couldn’t see the crossing at all. Just at the junction was a huge, old, moss-covered prayer stone where we sat trying to figure which way to go. A wrong turn at this point would mean precious energy wasted. At the time, my mind was mostly content with the fact that for the moment I could take a break without worrying about lagging behind. And then I spotted, near the base of the rock, scrawled in tiny letters: <– Na-la

So on we headed. After we crossed the river we started to feel the cold wind from over the glaciers. I felt powerless but my stomach was not welcoming any chocolate. I straggled on, up rock steps, over repeated considerations of giving up right here and now, past water flowing over huge boulders to the dishwater-colored river below, and finally to a huge area filled with innumerable cairns. The trail flattened out. The test was over. It was mid-afternoon and the aquamarine lakes of Gokyo were under an hour away.

Day 29
Climbing Gokyo-Ri

The next morning we headed up Gokyo-Ri. We took our time, and met few people. Most were on a schedule and had gone early in the morning and were already headed down, or would not be headed up until later when they arrived from a town midway down the valley. We got to the summit in the afternoon and had it all to ourselves for two hours. They were right, the views were absolutely amazing, and we scrambled around, gaping and taking photos in every direction. Clouds cast shadows over the enormous snow fields of Cho-Oyu to the north, and to the northwest we could see Everest with its characteristic tail of snow being swept off the peak in the wind. Looking south, the way we came, we saw the bright blue-green lakes of Gokyo, and to the east was another jagged and dramatic range. In that direction lay the Renjo pass, a trail that was said to have similar but even farther views. A trail that we would not be going down on this trip.
It was over. After nearly a month, we were done.
Day 30-32
Back down

It took us three days to get down to Lukla. We had meant to do it in two but I was so exhausted that instead of making it to Namche in one day, we stopped at a place called Mong La. Our lodge that night was substandard, but worth the memory of moonrise over Aba Dablam, one of the single most beautiful sights I’ve ever seen.

Everest Trekking, Day 22

Monday, November 23, 2009

Everest Base Camp (5300 meters / 17388 feet)

We set out for Everest Base Camp after breakfast to avoid the chilly morning shadows. The trail would be long but without significant gains in altitude, along the glacier to where the valley of ice more or less dead-ended at base camp. About mid-morning, before Everest came into view, altitude sickness started trying to drag me down. There was nothing to do but push on. Unless I was in a life-threatening state, my point of must return would not be this close to the goal.

We had already seen the trail, the ice fall, and the glacier from the top of Kala Pattar the day before, but it didn’t make walking there any less profound an experience.

The glacier was on our right. Towards the beginning of the trail, it resembled an ordinary scree slope inset by the occasional frozen grey eyeball of a lake. There are words that you learn and words that you understand—glacier was one of the former until this trip. I learned that a glacier meant, basically, a huge mass of ice. Walking in the khumbu I came to understand a glacier in some places as rock and ice that have been together so long they can’t be told apart.

Everything at 5300 meters is intense. The light at midday is blinding white. The UV rays are 50-60% stronger than at sea level. And, because we were there on a clear day, it was silent as a vacuum.

In the silence we could hear avalanches. They take your breath away: you hold it to hear their distant thunder, to trace the sound to the white cloud of snow where it pours from a higher cliff like sand at a refinery.

With the intensity of the sunlight, a snowball’s only chance was is in the shade. Huge rocks stood on pillars of ice created by their own shadow. Maybe a huge awning could stop glacial melt for a little while.

Glacial melt. Sounds like the beginning of a disaster movie until you see them clearly and perhaps irrevocably melting, right before your eyes: the rasp of black gravel sliding down the ragged face of the ice, the trickling of tiny streams below your feet running down to a river at the foot of the ice fall.

We reached a huge boulder around noon that said “Everest Base Camp,” so we sat down and had lunch. The ice fall was a Martian field of white-blue waves from the other side of the galaxy. Could they be translated? The sun was too bright to see whether I had taken a photo or not.

The “real” base camp took us another hour or so. It didn’t look like a camp at all. Where would the tents go? Eventually I wandered close enough to the end of the world’s most famous ice cul-de-sac and started to see the flat places, the rotten carrots and dung left in the wake of retreating yaks, something red and unidentifiable frozen in the ice. There is talk of heaps of oxygen canisters and forgotten stashes of German power bars, but I didn’t see any, partly because by then it was well past noon and time to get started back before the sun went down.

As we started back, we ran into a group of Nepali trekkers who we had passed at Tengboche and Pangboche. They were all fairly young and fit men, all similarly outfitted with sunglasses and baseball caps. When we first met them I started to ask one something about the trail, and then realized they were relying on their guide as much as any other trekkers would. Feeling a bit competitive and not wanting to get stuck behind an entire group, I had raced ahead of them a couple of times on the lower trail. We hadn’t seen them in a few days and they were surprised to see us at base camp. They had taken an extra day at Lobuche to acclimatize, explained their leader in good English, but despite that some of their men had to stay behind and some had only made it partway up the trail to base camp. I think he was mystified that the scrawny pair of us had kept up such a respectable pace, until we told him how long we’d been at altitude. It was my jaw’s turn to drop when I found out that the guys eating our dust all that time were Gorkha soldiers!

Exhausted, but with base camp safely under our belts, we headed back. Whatever happened at this point, we could turn back without major disappointment. But our plan was to press on to Gokyo, which everyone gushed had the absolute best view—not just of Everest, but of everything. But for the time being, we enjoyed our celebratory pizza at the lodge, unaware things were about to get hairy.

Everest Trekking, Day 20

Saturday, November 21, 2009

Pheriche to Lobuche

On day 17 we made it to Namche for two days’ rest. On the third day I was ready to go again. Our pace since then has been exemplary and the sky unbelievably, scathingly, anti-gravity blue.

We felt so good that on the way back up we changed our minds (again) about going straight to Gokyo and decided to retrace our steps towards Chukung and head for Everest Base Camp. We were on familiar ground until Pheriche where the ice lays thick in the shade.

From Pheriche the trail towards Thukla starts as an easy walk along a broad valley surrounded by the Cholatse, Tabuche, Nangka-Tshang and Pokalide peaks. I missed a crossing and found myself searching for one in vain on the wrong side of a small but freezing creek. When my situation started to get ridiculous, I took off my boots, rolled up my trousers and waded through it.

I crossed the frozen tussocks of grass, my feet numb, feeling their sponginess but nothing else. On the other side I sat down and dried my feet, warming them in the sun. I couldn’t feel my little toe, but was satisfied that the color seemed to be returning.

We arrived in Thukla for lunch. We ran into the Canadian couple who we had met at Tengboche. They had made it to Base Camp and were on their way back down. When I asked the woman how it was, she admitted that it was very difficult for her and hoped that she had taken enough pictures to look back and enjoy it more in retrospect. I can commiserate with her somewhat now. There is something about being more than 5,000 meters above sea level that the body just doesn’t take to kindly.

Small and located in a corner of town, out of five stars the lodge where we stayed in Lobuche gets an eclipse. My abiding memories are of the menfolk not knowing how to keep the stove from belching black smoke, Tamio getting duped by the proprietor into paying for cold water (everywhere free for guests), and sitting in the darkness of the ill-lit dining room, impatiently chewing on a dour novel until our rice and lentil curry came one hour late.

Day 21

Lobuche to Gorak Shep, climbing Kala Pattar

The final push to Gorak Shep, the last town before Base Camp. From Lobuche, the trail only gains around 200 meters but sure takes its time about it. I made the mistake of starting out sans gloves and had to do a panicked costume change, the words “white, waxy limb” ringing through my mind thanks to the lecture on altitude sickness and other maladies I heard at the Himalayan Rescue Association in Pheriche.

This was one of the days when Tamio took most of the stuff out of my pack and carried it himself. I had felt a headache coming on and didn’t know if I would be up to climbing Kala Pattar in the same day as planned. But by the time I got to the lodge (both the highest and the nicest we stayed at) I was feeling fine so up we went.

Kala Pattar, rather than Base Camp, is for many the ultimate goal of the Everest trek. From the top, the southern approach to Everest across the infamous Khumbu Ice Fall is fully visible, with Nuptse looming stark in the foreground. The climb itself seems more like a desperate attempt to touch Pumo-Ri, an enormous egg-shaped peak that fills the entire northern horizon. The sky was again relentlessly blue and we could see everything. At 5,500 meters, Kala Pattar is the highest point on which I have had the thrill to stand. The summit is a finger of rock pointed brazenly at the sky, so after Tamio had his fill of looking over the sheer drop we sat a little way below and took in the view.

Everest Trekking, Day 15

Monday, November 16, 2009

Chukung (4730 m / 15,518 feet) to Tengboche (3860 m/12,664 feet)

The weather was good for descent: cloudy, cool, not too windy. Too cloudy to consider taking pictures one has probably already taken on the way up. We shot down from Chukung, stopping for ramen (“ra-ra noodle soup with vegetable”), tea, ramen and potatoes, and finally for the night.

We ate at the same little Himalayan Tea Shop on the road between Dingboche and Orsho we had on the way up. The same young woman was there, shaking a pack of noodles as a rattle for her baby.

The last time we’d come the baby was asleep in a basket slung from her mother’s forehead. That time when we motioned we wanted food, she asked “dal baht?” and I said yes, thinking that she had already prepared the day’s meal of lentil curry and rice. But she went about frantically making it from scratch. And older man with a spot low on the back of his shirt worn from carrying a porter’s basket helped her. He peeled and cut boiled potatoes while she struggled to get the gas fire started.

The inside of the small structure was smoke-blackened. There was one small room with a raised platform to the left of the front door. We were in the room to the right of the door: the kitchen/dining room/tea house/bedroom. The back wall was lined with shelves holding metal bowls and plates, glass mugs, and three or four large thermoses in addition to spices, pots and other cookware. We sat on a bench against the front wall, a small window behind us looking out on the trail. To our right was the wood-burning stove, low and made of clay like the walls. Above it was a large metal chimney, a small gap in the pipes letting in a single smoke-filtered ray of sun. Next to the wood fire was the gas cooker. On the left of where we sat was the bed, with curtains which doubled as kitchen towels.

As we were eating our potato curry and rice, two other girls came in and had tea and chatted with the woman. All three looked to be around 18. The two were headed to Chukung that day, what would be a 2-day journey for us.

The second time we stopped at the tea shop, a younger man, presumably the woman’s husband, was there. He had a knack with the gas cooker, we ordered instant noodles, and she seemed more relaxed.

We made it back to Tengboche Monastery in record time. When we arrived at around 4pm, the monks were chanting. It could have been their daily afternoon service, but it continued into the evening so I asked. It turned out that we had arrived on the last day of a week of prayers, when people from nearby villages came to receive the high lama’s blessing.

We stayed at Trekker’s Lodge, the same place we had stayed after my recovery on the way up. When we came down for dinner, the dining area was full of Sherpa women and a handful of trekkers from around the world. After the women had shared soup and stale doughnuts they disappeared. The person at the gift shop had told me there would be Sherpa dancing that night, so we followed them. The women went to the temple, looked a little confused, spoke to one of the monks and then dispersed into the night. We asked the monk when the dancing would start, and he had no idea. So we went back and chatted with the soldier from Brazil who was working with the UN mission.

The placement and replacement of people like this in Kathmandu constitute a presence, I thought, and it occurred to me to wonder just what UMIN was doing. I gathered from what he said that they were there to help Nepal’s chronically contentious political parties realize the comprehensive peace agreement. One of the terms, he explained, is that captured Maoist fighters be integrated into the army. But as an army man himself, he could understand the objections on the part of the Nepalese military: a general in a militia could hardly step up to become a general in a professional army.

Finally the woman from Canada who was trying to overcome her doubts and difficulties to reach Base Camp said her husband had seen dancing through the monastery windows.

In the courtyard of the monastery Sherpa women, proprietors of lodges for miles around, stood in a large semi-circle. The older they were the more traditional their dress, but most wore Tibetan-style multi-colored woven aprons. The younger girls wore jeans and stood together, following the steps shyly. Everyone stood in a large semi-circle, holding hands with the person beside their neighbor, arms crossed behind one another’s backs. They shuffled and swayed in time to slower folk songs, kicking and scuffing their feet, closing in and expanding the circle during faster ones. The mesmerizing steps had an intricate rhythm which changed with each song.

Some of the monks came around pouring tea as we watched. Everyone was still dancing and the women from our lodge refused it, only to have the rhythm broken when the men on the other side stopped for a drink. The monk offered us tea, sweet, milky, hot and slightly curdled. Tamio was entranced by the dance and kept time with their steps. One of the women invited him to join. He tried his best, but kept throwing off the steps of the women on the end. The younger monks sitting on the monastery stairs stared in disbelief and doubled over with laughter. He was relieved when the song ended, and the women seemed so too.

When we woke up the next morning in Tengboche, the ground, trees, and porter’s tents were all covered in snow. We enjoyed the changed landscape briefly and then started down. On the way the clouds rushed and retreated, now obscuring now revealing the mountains. Fog covered the trail bringing visibility to a dozen feet. But all along the way down to Namche Bazaar the Sherpa women we passed on the trail or met at lodges and restaurants laughed when they recognized their erstwhile dance partner.

*I regret that the following 20 entries or so about my adventures around Mount Everest and in Nepal and India are being published months after the actual events.  I hope you enjoy them nonetheless.

Everest Trekking Day 9

Monday, November 10, 2009

Tengboche (3860 m/12,664 feet) to Pangboche (3930 m/12,893 feet)

On the day we left Tengboche I washed my socks and handkerchief. I set the handkerchief down for a minute and it froze. But that’s just morning for you.

We stopped in Deboche, the nunnery associated with Tengboche. From an ascetic standpoint, the nuns seem to have the upper hand. The cold reached a hand out to flick me in the nose when I peeked into the curtained doorway of the main hall. Inside the paintings were impressive, fierce deities holding skull cups and anthropomorphic animals. I left a donation and thanked the fuzzy-headed nun outside, who seemed to be under a vow of silence.

Day 11

Acclimatization in Dingboche (4410 m / 14,468 feet)

We stayed in the lodge for the second day while it snowed outside. The lodge was run by Sona Hishi, a climbing Sherpa who participated in the record 1972 ascent of Everest’s southwest face. Again too tired to be social with the large groups congregated there, the highlight of the night was looking through Sona’s old photos of the American west.

Day 12

Dingboche (4410 m / 14,468 feet) to Chukung (4730 m / 15,518 feet)

Halfway on the walk from Dingboche I started to feel like I was finished. A sprightly Sherpa sat down where we were resting and rattled off the names of the surrounding mountains. Everest was easy (he’d climbed twice) compared to Aba Dablam, he said. We’ve been able to see Aba Dablam since before we even reached Tengboche Monastery: the impossible peak that now stands exactly opposite our lodge with its accompanying glacier. I felt better then, and soon we were in Chukung.

There was a British guy there with his guide who he described as a friend of the family. The guide, Binay, was a small, energetic man with a ready smile. We started to talk about Nepal. He told me how he tells foreigners never to send money to NGOs in because 80% won’t go to the people; how he has organized charity treks to build schools in rural Nepal; and how they always ensure there is a solid plan to run the school. He spoke impassionedly as one who knows: he came from a poor family and started working as a porter in high school. He went to a government-run school and worked as a porter on his long holiday in October. For many porters, he said, this is the end of their education and the beginning of their career.

Now the porters sit in their corner of the lodge, listening to Nepali music, sometimes talking and playing cards. One small man wearing a Dhaka-cloth cap was sitting with the sick Australian girl whose group had gone on to Island Peak without her. She tried to order for him, but seemed shy and was unable to explain to her that porters only ate their lentil curry and rice after the trekkers had finished.

Day 13

Climbing Chukung-Ri (5404 m / 17,729 feet)

Everyone rushed outside. The sunset was the most exciting thing they’d photographed all day. “Makes it all worth it,” a Scot said, and I was inclined to agree.

The clouds were ranging across the sky, fire embossing the edges, momentary as the light on the fin of a dolphin. Beautiful as life, and you could tell the second it was gone.

The fog below was another tribe, another species. Dancing, rioting and curling upwards, the white of robes. It reached a height, dissipated across the valley, lost its ambition and settled down for the night.

Day 14

Climbing Chukung-Ri, again

This time at 5:30am. Better view. Showered! In a stall made of corrugated plastic after the lady of the lodge filled the tub on its roof with hot water.