NEPAL DIARY - 1990 - PART 5 (FINAL)

 

Concluding the diary, recorded on the trail while trekking in Nepal.......

 

Yesterday, Thursday, Mohandra implemented his previously-announced change of itinerary, and we had a very long day's walk bringing us down to just short of Tengboche - Tengboche, the place with the barren hillside and the monastery being rebuilt.  Tengboche for the next couple of days, coinciding with the full moon, is the site of a local festival and we're promised plenty of things to see during that time.  The camping spot at Tengboche where we were a week ago was most inhospitable and it was, I recall, the first occasion where we had a really cold night and frosty morning. Today we're camped about twenty minutes walking distance on the upside, in one of the most attractive sites we've been. There's simply a lodge

 

Tape 4 - Side 2

 

and a sort of open cookhouse and a large field where the tents are pitched which we share with the occasional yak.  But completely surrounded with mountains and craggy tors; and we have one of the most splendid views of Everest that's been obtainable. Next to it Lhotse, looking majestic; and closer to us, much closer to us, Ama Dablam - the most beautiful of all.

 

So Thursday had us getting up very early despite the tiredness left over from the day before, and had us trekking for - on the road - for some eight hours.  A big day, but it was nearly all downhill, and pretty easy going, not much scrambling down over rocks and ledges.  I'm sure we were all glad to have made the effort to come this far.  The start of our journey was over land we'd traversed before, but after a while we were on a new track - because on the way up the mountain we'd come across, cross country, from Dinboche.  We weren't going back that way, and instead we carried on through Periche, the place where the medical clinic is located.  That gave the opportunity for Pam to see the doctor about her persistent cough, and gave me the opportunity of getting a fresh supply of suppositories.  Otherwise everyone was well, and not in need of medical attention at all.

 

It's an indication of the length of the day's trekking that we didn't have our lunch stop until about one p.m.  Typically we've been fed at eleven-thirty, or at least stopped at eleven-thirty wondering why the heck we were not hungry.  But by one o'clock yesterday I think we were hungry.  In the afternoon we were re-tracing some marvellous scenery that we'd visited previously, a lot of it around the side of hills looking down into a very steep canyon some thousand feet below us, the river rushing wildly.  

 

A group of children and adults is passing by at the moment, obviously on their way to Tengboche and to the festival.  It promises to be quite a gathering from the nearby hills although, as I've remarked previously, in this part of the world there's not much evidence of isolated farmhouses.  It's too steep, with no terracing, no agriculture, and no basis upon which people can subsist; they must therefore be coming from outlying villages.

 

We did a detour on the way down, to a place called Pangboche; and there's a monastery there, and the town is quite delightful.  It has about the same look as Namche Bazaar because the houses are built in a semi-circular fashion around a hill of the same shape, and the place is totally filled with pine trees.  Most attractive.  The monastery is the usual collection of wood and tired paintwork, and pathetically poor. Quite a small affair - I suppose the building would be forty feet square.  But downstairs, which we couldn't visit, it would contain a large statue of the Buddha, and a couple of other statues, and is presumably the place of worship.  

The first floor contains sacred writings and statues, and just a general open space. That's the place where the tourists are taken and that's where the collection box is; and in this particular monastery it's the place where they keep the so-called head of the yeti.  The famous abominable snowman hasn't been seen by any of us, sad to say.  There hasn't really been any talk of it, but in quite a few places the name is incorporated into the local yeti lodge or yeti teahouse.  The guide books tell us that the dried hairy skull kept by the monks at Pangboche is a fraud and is the skull of one of the former monks nicely dried and tarted up to look like something abominable.  

Pangboche was a delightful detour.  We met there the elderly Swedish gent who'd been tagging us in the early part of our trek from day one.  Sadly, he's not been well, and again this morning we saw him on his way down - he's trying to get an early flight out of Lukla.  His health has deteriorated.  Somewhat surprising, because when we'd seen him in earlier times he was obviously looking fit, wiry, and striding it out.  Accompanied by his guide and his porter he was doing a sentimental journey to those parts of Nepal that he was very familiar with from years ago when he was involved in the tour industry.

 

We arrived here in camp around four yesterday and I think most of us took to our tents, just to keep warm, rug up until dinner time. I think the bit of a rest did us all good, and after dinner there was a fair bit of cards played until around nine o'clock; and to hear tell most people had a very good sleep and a restful night.  Very cold though.  

 

Now that we've descended in altitude I'm casting off, have already cast off the thermal underwear, and with any luck they'll never be used again.  That part of the trail we traversed yesterday brought us back through the birch forests, those beautiful salmon pink birch trees.  You see further up on the hills the older specimens - much more gnarled, bark perhaps blackened, but essentially it's the colour that's quite unusual and charming. Mixed in with the birch are some of the spruce with the lovely grey tips; and a lot of juniper.  At this altitude the juniper is a tree that looks rather like a Mallee pine.  It grows to about fifteen or twenty feet and is covered in the small blue berries. Yesterday morning when we left the camp and came downhill through quite barren and desolate uplands - the sort of country I would expect the Russian steppes to be - there was this stunted pine tree species, covering the mountainside really.  Very small specimens, no higher than a foot to eighteen inches; and, looking closer, I could see they too had the blue berries. So it's clear that there's more than one type of juniper, depending on the altitude, and/or the soil I suppose. Makes me wonder whether juniper is indigenous to this part of the world only, or whether it also exists in the cold lands of northern Europe.  Did the English invent gin or did they discover it when they got to India and then make it their own? Gin is not made from juniper.  It is distilled from a mixture of grains, and is flavoured with juniper.  It originated in the Netherlands and "took off" in England in 1688 when it became illegal to import French brandy.  The juniper is not confined to the uplands of Nepal.  It is widespread in the Mediterranean region.

 

One of the features that surprises us is the lack of birds.  I've mentioned previously the eagles that fly high near the smaller mountain tops, and I've mentioned crows - which seem to be everywhere - but not many small birds at all.  Right at the top, at our highest campsite on Wednesday  - Tuesday and Wednesday - there were some delightful birds twice the size of a sparrow, big round chests, russety-coloured under-bellies, very attractive birds: but even they were feeling the cold and actually nestling under the flies of the tents - obviously a warmer spot than right out in the exposed air.  Otherwise not a sound from this forest here.  All the walk yesterday afternoon produced not a tweet, no movement in the trees.

 

This morning has been R & R, really.  Some have been down to the creek for a bathe. Not yours truly.  I managed to scrounge the water left over from the pre-breakfast ablutions and have done some laundry in a small basin.  The tents are now connected by clothes lines, with clothing hanging everywhere, and the sleeping bags draped over the tents, being aired.  It's a beautiful sunny morning.  Hard to tell what the temperature is but possibly fifteen degrees, but with no wind at all, not the faintest of breeze - not at this moment anyway.  It's not cold, and I've made the change back to short-sleeved shirt, and I should think by tomorrow I'll be back into shorts. 

We had a late start, no six-thirty wake up.  Back on Wednesday when Pam and I were the solitary occupants of the camp [the others having left early for Kala Pattar], the 2IC cook boy, Jit, obviously had no idea of our need for a sleep-in, and duty over-rode logic, and at six-thirty we were awakened with the obligatory cup of tea.  Ten minutes later we were given our hot bowls of water for washing with the message that breakfast would be in about fifteen minutes' time.  Oh!  We coped with that; but after breakfast were told that lunch would be at ten-thirty. This was too much - because I had already promised Pam lunch in the lodge, where we could have a total change of scene and work our way through the menu.  So it took some convincing Jit that we didn't want lunch at all; and certainly didn't want it at ten-thirty.  At around eleven-thirty he came back to say "now had we had lunch or was it all organised with the lodge", and I said "no, we hadn't got around to that yet, there was  no hurry".  Then at twelve-thirty he arrived with the message that "lunch is served". Not at the lodge!  So we had once more to have a trekker's lunch and to miss out on the joys of something cooked by the local lodge.

 

This morning we were not awakened until eight, and even then not really wakened - they just set up tea in the mess tent, and if you wanted to stay in bed you could.  It's been totally leisurely all morning, the message being that lunch isn't until one.  The cook boys, taking advantage of that, have been playing cards all morning.  Three of our number, Dunbar the First Sherpa and Owen and Brad, decided last night that they would climb the mountain behind the campsite, and they set off around seven to do just that.  Just the three of them.  We've been watching for them quite anxiously, and we saw them on a lower ridge around a quarter past eight, but we haven't seen any sight of them on the top - which certainly would have been another hour's hard work to get there.  As I look now there's still no sign of them; and I can but believe that they were there, they waved at us, we didn't see them, and they're now well on their way back.

 

There was a small party of Americans camped at this site last night.  Shannon had a long chat with one of them and it happens that they are part of a large expedition that climbed Mount Lhotse.  Lhotse's the one right next to Everest and very tall indeed, so they've done famously well to climb such a mountain.  Apparently, after having achieving that the group then broke into two parts.  There were some who wanted to go on to conquer another peak and others, those who were camped near us, who'd had enough and decided to evacuate back to Lukla. It must be a very well organised expedition and very well financed.  They're taking several more days to get to Lukla because they have to meet up there with the specially chartered helicopter that will take them out to Kathmandu.  The woman with the group we've noticed a couple of times in the last week or so, very overdressed and prim and proper looking, and riding a yak.  It appears she's one of the ladies financing the expedition.  Hard to tell the age, but she could be sixty; and doing it somewhat in style.  There was a problem yesterday because the yak got a potato caught in its throat and was quite unwell.  They didn't manage to get it well again until someone put his arm down the throat and physically removed the spud.  So the yaks we had in the campground last night were the lady's riding yak and their porter yaks.  At the moment they have left, and they've gone off to the festival at Tengboche and left us alone and yackless.  Very docile beasts, although we have a cry on the trail "yak alert" - which means get off the trail because there's a yak caravan passing through, and they stand aside for no-one.  Nonetheless, we've seen no violence from them and no sign of a short temper that you might expect from a beast of burden.  I'm amazed at their hoofs.  If you got horses to walk over the rocky ground that these yaks traverse daily they'd need to be shod regularly.  Yet there's no sign of the yaks wearing yak shoes, and they just must have hoofs made of much tougher material.  Horses' hoofs grow continuously.  In the wild, as with Australian brumbies, there is enough day-by-day wear to compensate for that growth.  Workhorses and racehorses, however, are shod to counteract the greater wear inflicted by their environments.  But their hoofs continue to grow beneath the shoes, and re-shoeing is typically necessary every four to six weeks.  I was wrong to suggest that because yaks are not shod their hoofs must be "of much tougher material".  That material is keratin, likewise with many other animals, including horses.  Working beasts such as bullocks are sometimes shod, but because their hoofs are cloven it is necessary to put two "half" shoes on each hoof.  I have not ascertained whether yaks have ever been shod, but presume not; and presume that the natural growth of their hoofs is nicely balanced by the abrasion over rocky terrain.  Today a lot of the yaks passing by seem to have ribbons through their ear holes and I suppose this is to do with the festival.  Everybody, even the yaks, has got to get into the spirit of the thing.

 

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It's Monday morning, and it's great to be alive. And we all are alive.  I think all the major ailments have left us behind and the only problem seems to be the persistent Khumbu cough.  Pam's has got no better.  She saw the doctor again yesterday and the diagnosis once more was: "no real problem, nothing in the chest, a bit of pharyngitis, stick with the Strepsils".  The cough really is pervasive. Quite a number of us have had it at various times through the day and during the night, but the real feature is that it starts up in the mornings the minute we hit the trail, the dusty trail.  The Khumbu cough is directly related to the Khumbu dust, very fine dust in many parts of the trail, which is half dust and half yak shit. It's no wonder that our tender throats and lungs are not used to this, and react in fits of coughing.  The doctor yesterday indicated that everybody in the region has the cough so we shouldn't feel as though we're being discriminated against!

 

We left Namche Bazaar this morning.  We spent Sunday night there in the backyard of the same lodge as previously.  The wretched barking dog was at it again, but Shannon either felled it or frightened it with a well-aimed stick, and it gave up for the rest of the night.  I'd forgotten what a climb there was up to Namche Bazaar, but it was brought home very clearly this  morning.  We've descended about 2000 feet to the river below.  It's been the busiest track we've encountered so far.  I guess all the trekkers who spent the night there are on the way down - all left town around the same time.  But there've been plenty of porters; and plenty coming up the hill as well. Not so many yaks, so at least it was reasonably easy to negotiate.  But I suppose just within observing distance of our group there would have been close to a hundred people on the trail, and all raising the dust and adding to the Khumbu cough problem.

 

On Friday and Saturday nights we camped a little short of Tengboche.  It's not correct to say we camped above it, although in one sense we were on the upside, but the campground was some twenty minutes short of Tengboche but down in a valley below it.  There had been snow in the area since we were there a week earlier, and the twenty minutes climb up to Tengboche - which we did on Friday afternoon - was extremely difficult, quite steep, all uphill, and alternating muddy slush (very slippery) and parts of the track that were frozen ice and mud (even more slippery).  The purpose of our excursion to Tengboche was to see the annual festival where the monks bless the people.  When the blessing came there was a great crush of people, and any semblance of an orderly queue was soon abandoned.  The idea is to have a scarf and to roll some money in the scarf, and in the process of passing by the lama the money is taken and you are splattered with sacramental oil and no doubt come away a much better person.  What Anne hadn't realised was that the scarf would be whisked away as well.  Having just bought the scarf for all of eighty cents she was somewhat miffed - not for the value, but that it was a very fine nice white fabric, not one easily replaced.

 

The blessing ceremony was preceded by almost an hour of lead-up during which various of the temple instruments were played - the gongs, the cymbals, the short trumpets, and the long Tibetan horns. Surprise, surprise, these horns collapse in sections so that you can actually have one of these ten- or twelve-feet-long instruments all squashed up into about two feet.  Even with the joy that goes with being blessed by the lama I think it's fair to say that not too many of our number regarded it as a scintillating afternoon.

  

Down the slippery slope and back to camp, and another cold night; and an early night - the lodge attached to the campground had no space for us to use indoors, and our meal was served in the mess tent, and it was rather too cold for us to stay up playing cards for very long.

 

The Friday night  we'd been the only group in the campground.  Come Sunday there were three or four other groups, perhaps fifty tents all told.  Quite a tent city.

 

Saturday we mooched around in the morning and then broke camp so as to arrive back in Tengboche around lunchtime.  The big event of the day (as I've previously indicated) was the early-morning excursion of Owen and Brad with our Sherpa, Dunbar, to the top of a peak behind the campground.  They set off at first light, and didn't arrive back in camp till around one o'clock, just on time for lunch.  But they'd mastered it; and it turned out to be a peak just a little bit lower than Kala Pattar.  They were deservedly proud of their achievement.

 

Reverting to Tengboche and to the second day of the festival - which is described as the dancing part of the festival: well, interminable delay again before anything happened, and when it did happen it was once more the monks filing into their marquee.  I guess, in normal times when the monastery is rebuilt, this will all occur within the walls of the monastery, but at the moment it's under temporary canvas awning - and rather more accessible to the crowd as a result.  Despite the fact that this is an annual and important festival there were far more trekkers standing around than there seemed to be Sherpa people.  Eventually the monks arrived and then they went through the ceremonial music-playing procedure once more, and it was well over an hour before the dancing started.  Then it was simply half a dozen of the monks dressed up - very colourful clothing - staging in succession three formal stately traditional dances.  No sign of the people at large being involved, and to our western minds a rather strange sort of festival.

 

We had to leave around three to get to our next camping ground.  The plan was to detour, and not to traverse the track we'd come up from Namche Bazaar; and over the next day-and-a-half, Saturday afternoon and Sunday, we had a most diverting time on tracks with far fewer people, and sights and scenes that were most rewarding.  The trail took us through some higher country, but not too difficult to manage, and we didn't reach our Saturday night camping ground and lodge until it was almost dark.

 

The lodge seemed to be recently built, with a large central room where we were able to have our meal, saving the bother of pitching the mess tent; and we were able to play cards until a respectable hour, I suppose around nine o'clock!  The camping ground was a little constricted, but very picturesque with great craggy rocks behind us.

 

In the morning, Sunday morning, up and over, behind where we'd been camping.  And into some lovely plateau country; and the great surprise of finding a village that appears to be considerably larger than any village we'd seen previously in this upland country.  Certainly bigger than Namche Bazaar, but somehow a little off the main trekking route, and not what you'd call a major commercial centre.  Khumjung.

 

Sunday's the start of the week in Nepal and we were able to visit the local school, primary and secondary, and to see the school week start with assembly and saluting the flag and callisthenics. Three-hundred-and-eighty pupils. The school at Khumjung ,while not exactly founded by Edmund Hillary, was given a new lease of life by him, and he and his supporters set up the secondary school and a boarding arrangement for children from outlying regions.

 

 

Then from the school back through the town - which, like Namche Bazaar, and like Pangboche, is sited on a round sweeping hillside, semi-circular in shape - to visit the old temple.  Everything about it is old - the building, the decorations, the ornaments.  There's a stark contrast in my mind between the old churches of Europe and other old temples of the East.  The Nepali ones, certainly, are really just filthy, ill-kempt.  I guess a simple reflection of the way in which the people here regard life and the after-life and cleanliness in general.  I find hardly anything about their temples attractive at all.

 

Then, to conclude our visit, the lady who was the keeper of the key produced for us the yeti skull, or at least the scalp - which some of our number immediately pointed out as a fake, or at least so their guide books told them.  And then we went from the temple, across quite a distance to the hospital.......words missing.....  Throughout all of this travelling across country we were passing down walled tracks in built up settlements.  So this place, all told - although it may comprise two or three separately identified villages - is quite a large community.

 

I've commented a number of times on the scarcity of people and the fact that a lot of the places where we've stayed or pulled up for lunch carry a name, but have two or three houses only.  The answer I suppose lies in the fact........

 

Tape 5 - Side 1

 

......the reason simply is that above Namche Bazaar, that is to the north and to the east, there are a mere eight thousand Sherpa people.  So one can't expect to see the countryside dotted with villages with hundreds of houses in each.

 

The hospital was set up by Edmund Hillary, or more specifically by a Canadian charitable foundation that bears his name, and is manned by volunteer Canadian doctors, and funded by donations and fees charged to trekkers.  It's pretty primitive but gets by.  There is a three-bed ward for in-patient treatment and then there's a six- or seven-bed ward for long-stay patients. Rather inhospitable.  Each of the beds is in a sort of cubicle with little outside light, and to stay there I fear may be rather equivalent to a jail sentence. The regular doctors were away on furlough and the hospital was being looked after by a relieving doctor who'd flown in especially from Canada.  That doctor was an elderly lady, a most charming and vibrant person, who gave us a conducted tour and told us quite a deal about the local health situation. She'd done this relieving stint quite a number of times over the years, and was obviously pleased to come back again and again, even though it must have been extraordinarily arduous for her at times.  She said sometimes she'd had to walk in from Jiri, as we did; other times she'd been able to fly in to a point closer.  But you're never very far away from steep rocky climbs, whether up or down, and walking is the method of transport.

 

Amongst the local people the most serious health complaint, and quite prevalent, is tuberculosis.  There's a lot of conjunctivitis, and the usual coughs and colds. Otherwise there seemed nothing particular worth mentioning.  There's no local requirement to register births and deaths, so there's no indication of what the infant mortality rate might be.   The doctor said they sometimes give some prenatal assistance, and then hear no more, and no child appears and they slowly ascertain that the child was born at home and died and that was that.  She estimated, very roughly, that there could be an infant mortality rate of as high as twenty percent, but has no real evidence to go on. Though some of the mothers come forth for some sort of prenatal treatment, certainly none ever come for postnatal assistance........unless there's a drama with the birth, and then the hospital will be called in.  The hospital is equipped to do some surgery, but they prefer not to.  Their x-ray machine is broken.  All in all a noble effort, principally because the community has not learnt and will not learn the value of hygiene.

 

I omitted to point out that the village down by the school has the longest mani wall we've seen - far and away, at least a kilometre long.  The word mani comes from the most widely used Tibetan Buddhist mantra, om mani padme hum.  There is a belief that saying the mantra (prayer) out loud, or silently to oneself, invokes the powerful benevolent attention of Chenrezig, the embodiment of compassion.  The written words are often carved on tablets and placed on view - hence the mani walls, prayer walls.  The prayer wheels are called mani wheels.  I think I've mentioned previously that when somebody dies in these upper reaches they're cremated, and their ashes are scattered further up in the mountains. That's only half the story.  A commemorative tablet is then made and that tablet is placed on or by a mani wall.  So we have these rock walls with tablets standing up beside them, or sitting on top of them.  The local superstition is that you must always pass the mani wall on the left. So many times our trail up and down the mountains has been split by a mani wall with two tracks, one each side......and we non-superstitious westerners sticking to the left, with most of the local people totally ignoring the wall, and passing to the right if it so suits them!.  The younger generation, it seems, have lost the belief.  This mani wall, as I said, went for a kilometre right across the plain. A most impressive edifice given that it was all done in a random sort of way without a guiding hand.

 

From the hospital we went up and over the not very steep hill towards Namche Bazaar, coming by what you might call the back way. Most spectacular; and it represented for us a wonderful bonus.  Our detour off the main track had given us the hospital and the school and a large settlement; and also gave us relief from all the other trekkers on the trail who were taking the direct route between Tengboche and Namche Bazaar.

 

Passing over the top of this great hill we came upon an airstrip.  The airstrip was built by the Japanese a few years back at the same time as they built a five-star hotel.  Japanese workers have very short annual holidays, and certainly would not have the time to do a four-week trek as we have had, and that means they also don't have the time to acclimatise themselves to altitude, and are therefore prone to succumbing to altitude sickness.  So the idea of this plush hotel was to fly them into their own landing strip, get them into the hotel, ply them with all good things, provide them with personalised oxygen, and to flash them up and down the mountain continually supplying oxygen to keep them free of the illness.  We don't have this as an authentic story, but we're told that the whole venture is in disarray because so many Japanese tourists have become ill nonetheless.

 

I had to pause to conserve my breath while going up a steep pinch, over the top, straight down the other side - and then confronted by a waterfall, about seventy feet.  Not great volume but most attractive indeed.

 

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Here we are fifteen minutes later with a few ups and downs in between - and another waterfall.  This time twice the height, this would be a hundred and fifty feet. Cascading into a Tarzan/Jane-type rock pool.  Has Hollywood discovered this place?

 

So yesterday afternoon we appeared over the rim of this great baffle board upon which Namche Bazaar sits.  The steepness from the brow of the hill was at least equivalent to the steepest gods level in any theatre; and then we had to scramble down the hill to our lodge and waiting tents. It hadn't been a long day, despite our detours to the school and the temple and the hospital, so we had plenty of time in the afternoon to visit the shops, to have a hot shower, and to call into one of the cafes for apple pie, hot chocolate, cheese on toast.

 

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It's Tuesday afternoon.  We're in Lukla.  Again a brilliant sunny day.  We're in our last camp and tomorrow  morning, weather permitting, we fly to Kathmandu.  The way from last night's campsite up to Lukla this morning was quite steep in parts, certainly upward all the way, but there was a spring in our step.  The trek for all practical purposes is over, and I think to a man we're now anxious to get back to Kathmandu, catch up with a bit of news, get some clean clothes, do some shopping, and be on our separate ways.  Our campsite last night was at a place named, rather unfortunately for Western ears, Phakding.  We'd been there before, on our day up the mountain, and had not taken much notice of the place.  Last night it was extremely crowded.  There were literally a hundred tents, trekkers going in both directions, but most of them outward bound, not so many having concluded their treks like we had. We were able to eat inside a lodge so it was rather more cosy than in the mess tent where we'll be eating tonight. The weather's much warmer than it was some days back above Namche and it brings with it rather happier dispositions. The only blemish on our night there was the fact that Pam's boots were stolen.  Our tents comprise a standard tent with a fly over the top, and there's a zip on the tent and a zip on the fly, and frequently we've left our boots outside the tent but under the fly.  This was the case with Pam's boots last night, but some louse nicked them. She had to use her runners for the walk up today, suffered no harm - but thank goodness none of us lost our boots any earlier in the trek otherwise we'd have been in severe trouble.  Our boots have been marvellous; heard no one complain. Some of us have worn plaster on our heels and toes to prevent blisters, but the boots have really made the walking easy.  There have been a few sore knees.  On occasions Anne has borrowed an elastic bandage to put around her knee for downward stages, but no one has suffered at all to speak of with their feet or legs, and that's been a great blessing.

 

Lukla is quite a big settlement in local terms, but it's further down the mountain and, once again, we've encountered the smell of human excreta as we've approached the town.  So the people in this part of the world seem to be that much less fastidious than the people above Namche Bazaar - the Sherpas who somehow disguise the smell or are a bit more discreet about where they lay it down.

 

Tremendous amount of building going on here, as you'll have heard in the background. Hammers and saws.  A new lodge is being put up; new buildings.  And every Nepalese house seems to be of some substance.  A number of rooms, two floors, sometimes three depending on the slope, and here there's no exception.  I guess typically the buildings are being constructed not solely as private houses but as private houses plus trekker accommodation.  All made of stone.  There seems to be a lot of sizing and shaping and trimming of the stone so that it fits fairly neatly, although not always into square blocks. The intriguing part is the wood, which has obviously just come out of the forest somewhere.  It's all pale yellow, looks like pine, but never seems subjected to drying first.  Some very accomplished joinery for the doors and windows, the woodwork put in as the stone is raised around it, and I presume never to bend and bow and sweat again. Sometimes it seems to stay for a long time unpainted.  Usually the exposed woodwork is painted bright blue or green, so quite a colourful architectural landscape.

 

We arrived this morning to see two inward flights of the fifteen-seater that will be taking us back to Kathmandu.  There are usually four flights out a day per plane, but not necessarily four planes.  It's a forty-five minute journey only.  And we've also seen three helicopter landings.  There's quite a small 'copter that's brought in some people, and then there's a rather larger one that seems to hold around the same number as the conventional plane.  The airstrip is not very long and, as I've remarked before, somewhat like a ski jump. Very dusty.  It's been sealed, if you can use that word, with small rocks, but there's a lot of dust around as the plane gathers momentum and takes off. It's even worse when a helicopter takes off because of the dispersal of the dust in all directions by the rotor.

 

As we've been told many times, flights can be cancelled - but usually because of thermal currents, obviously experienced by the previous plane on a given day.  Or sometimes cancelled because of fog at Kathmandu; and I guess they can be cancelled by very inclement weather up here at Lukla.  There's absolutely no sign of that, and we should be okay for an early morning departure tomorrow.  There is a limit on the amount of weight each person can carry in terms of baggage, so our instructions are to put on the World Expeditions fleecy parkas and to fill the pockets with the heaviest things that we have - cameras, books, and so forth - so that our luggage (the combination of our duffle bags and our backpacks) will weigh in collectively at less than fifteen kilograms per person. If we overtip the scales then something gets left behind; and Mohandra, our guide, says that what will be left behind is his bag, his clothes.  He can always pick up some more in Kathmandu, and have one of the porters carry his bag back to Jiri and then on the bus back to Kathmandu in a few days' time

 

Tonight's the last night, and there'll be something of a party both for us and for the porters.  They'll be paid off in the morning.  We're each asked to put in five hundred rupees for distribution amongst the porters and the kitchen staff, and that will all happen this evening.  We're also leaving behind any clothes that we don't want, and those will be distributed among the porters.

 

The porters were recruited at Jiri at the end of our bus ride three weeks ago, and because Dunbar our Sirdar, our chief Sherpa, comes from that district most of the porters are known to him.  This has - we've only just found out today - this has added immeasurably to the amount of loyalty and co-operation that we've received from them.  Typically on these treks it seems that the porters arrive in camp each day, dump the tents and everything else, and then just settle down for the night, light themselves a fire, go into a huddle, and that's the last that's heard of them. And it's up to the Sherpas to see that the tents are erected and the bags are distributed and so on.  This hasn't been the case at all with our trek, and the porters every night have helped to erect the tents, and then brought our duffle bags to our tent, and been totally co-operative and extremely friendly.  The message that we've been getting back from Mohandra is that this has been one of the friendliest and happiest groups that he's led - and it's permeated right through, from top down and from bottom up. 

 

 

Tonight's the last we'll see of Dunbar and of Cheering our boy Sherpa.  Both of them live at or near Jiri, and they'll be skedaddling tomorrow down the mountain, and apparently will make it from Lukla to Jiri in one day.  The uphill equivalent took us four or five, I think.

 

There was an incident on the trail this morning. We came upon a chap who'd fallen off the edge.  Quite a distance.  It seems he and his mate come from a remote area of Nepal, and they had two water buffalo that they'd been droving up the mountain for some time preparatory to selling the beasts in Namche Bazaar.  He was leaning over the edge of the cliff cutting some grass with a sickle, and fell over - tumbled head first down about seventy or eighty feet.  Quite a fatal drop I should have thought.  We were on the scene very soon after he'd fallen, and Dunbar and Tendi raced down the rocks to do what they could do for him. After a thorough examination it turned out that he had no broken bones, but a severe gash on the head and no doubt shock and concussion.  They managed to pick him up.  He was walking wounded; then up to the trail.  With Mohandra's help, and the help of a passing person with medical training, they decided that he'd have to come up to Lukla for some medical attention; and certainly couldn't keep on his way to Namche bazaar.  He was quite groggy, understandably.  They left the two buffalo just tethered on the track. Goodness knows what will happen to them, and how the owners will be able to retrieve them; and whether they'll be able to continue on their way.  A very nasty incident that could easily have been fatal for the man involved.

 

When we got to Lukla there in one of the small shops was a row of Foster's cans, and some of the fellows - for sentimental reasons only! - decided to have one each.  There was a well-expired date on the cans but it seemed to make no difference to the enjoyment.  Later.  That great frivolity was the sound of our Tuesday night party, our farewell party to Lukla.

  

 

*************************

And now it's Wednesday morning and we've commenced the long wait for our flight out.  We're booked on the fourth flight out of Lukla but, according to Mohandra, the fourth flight doesn't necessarily leave in fourth place, and we could easily be on the first flight.  The logic escapes us.  We were told to be ready by eight; it's now twenty-five to nine.  There have already been three flights in, but they've been two army aircraft and a helicopter.  It seems, however, that the army planes are conscripted into civilian use, Lukla being a very busy place, an exit point for so many trekkers who've walked in from Jiri and who want to fly out from Lukla.

 

The party was great fun.  With our evening meal we managed to have some rum and coke, and before the meal we'd had some local concoction which they affectionately call rocket fuel - fairly noxious flavour, and no doubt fairly noxious effect.  We also had our first and only taste of yak butter tea.  As the name says, it's made from yak butter, and tea - with a lot of salt.  Very salty.  It appealed to some of our palates, but not many.  And at tea-time we had some of their more palatable local liquor, called chang.  Also known as chhaang.  Chang is made from millet.  It doesn't seem to ferment for very long because successive doses of it had different flavours.  Before the meal had concluded we were outside.  The kitchen boys and the porters had set up with bongo drums and pannikins to rap on the table, and the party began.  A great time was had by all - except the trekkers in nearby lodges who wanted to sleep, and asked........[words, possibly expletives, missing]......to bed at around twelve-fifteen.

 

Our bags have been packed, our daypacks as well. They've been taken over to the airport, about a hundred yards away from where we've camped, to be weighed.  We're all now sitting around waiting for the call. We've got our heavy parkas on with the pockets stuffed with heavy things like cameras and books, and I suspect that a period of great boredom is about to begin.  The tents have not been struck just in case there's some hiccup today and we're stranded here - if so we'll have to crawl back into the tents tonight. Last night there was a collection of cast off clothing from our group, and just now Tendi has laid all the clothing out on a tarpaulin and the porters have been helping themselves to old beanies and raggle-taggle jumpers and dirty tee-shirts.  In fact we can be sure that every piece of clothing they've taken off our hands is dirty, if nothing else.  The only unfortunate aspect of last night's entertainment was that somehow Anne has lost her parka.  When I say her parka, it's a parka belonging to World Expeditions.  It remains to be seen whether it's covered by insurance and we don't have to make good the loss.  Neither of us has any recollection of what transpired.

 

************************

Endnote: In re-reading the transcript I am conscious of a recurring complaining tone, not too persistent, but there nonetheless - principally about Nepali toilet habits, lack of sanitation, and poverty generally.  I think that today I would be more accepting, and less concerned with such matters. The Nepali people might have resented the trekkers and the adverse impact intruders were having on their country, but we saw none of that - they were universally friendly and welcoming. The grandeur of their country speaks for itself, although I employed many of my  35000 words speaking for it.  

 

There is no doubt that for Anne and Gary the trek was a milestone experience; not that it changed us in any spiritual way - it was just a great thing to have done.

 

Gary Andrews

 

 

 

NEPAL DIARY - 1990 - PART 4

 

Continuing the diary, recorded on the trail while trekking in Nepal......

 

On Wednesday evening, about five o'clock, the whole group headed up to the area where the Park headquarters is located. Our specific objective was to have a sunset view of Everest.  Well, we were rewarded: although typically at this time of year the cloud comes in in the afternoons, it was a brilliant clear sky and we saw the sun set on Everest, to its right and forward Lhotse, and to the right again Ama Dablam.  Not just content with the mountains in front of us, there were snow-capped mountains to the right of us and behind us - we were fully surrounded by great peaks. Not as much snow as we'd expected on Everest, quite a lot of bare spots including the South Col, which looked streaky white.  This is the great feature of Everest, this huge humped ridge that rises on the southern face right to the summit.  Looks like a deformity, a distended spine.  Lhotse in front of it actually looks taller from where we've been standing, partly because it's pointed.  Everest is away a little to the back.  But the most spectacular of all, far and away, is Ama Dablam.  This one truly does look awesome. It has a huge central tor, fully snow-covered, which points away at an angle, sixty to seventy degrees, then two ridges running out - one on either side - rising up to two peaks like the arms of a bat.  In fact the whole mountain is reminiscent of the space shuttle, including its launch angle. So we stayed on top of the hill for half an hour or more

 

Tape 3 - Side 2

 

watching the colours of the sunset change the snow, and watching the peaks disappear into darkness one by one, leaving Everest the last.

 

**************

We've come down as far as the stream and are now crossing the suspension bridge.  

One of the more sensible designs because the planks are sideways.  Most of them have had their planks in the direction of the walk, and often the nails come out and you step on one end and the other end flips up. Somewhat disconcerting.  They must be strong, though, because the yaks use them, as well as the people.  I haven't got much of a swing up this time - Andrew can't be on the bridge with me.  He likes to cross in a rather larrikin fashion.  And now we start to rise, immediately confronted by another dozen yaks.  Stand aside trekkers!  We're proving at the moment that it's a bridge of at least six yaks capacity, though the people coming downhill behind them (and towards us) are a bit diffident about getting on the bridge with them.

 

The stream is another glacier-fed stream, with lovely cloudy grey water.  You won't be able to discern, but we're just a few feet further on, and around the brow of a hill the noise of the stream has fallen away.

 

Well here we've arrived at lunch, strategically placed just before the big climb-up this afternoon to Tengboche.

 

I've seen a number of roses by the roadside today, growing wild and unkempt, big bushes.  No sign of flowers at this time of year.  Noticeably, every one of them has huge thorns.  Indeed, quite a number of the shrubs along the roadside have massive thorns.  Is this a response in a country frequented by goats?  Actually, what is surprising is that so few shrubs have thorns; maybe there just aren't that many goats.  The previous sentence is evidence that when you don't know what you're talking about the safe course is to have an each way bet.  The azaleas, for instance, don't seem to have been cropped down by goats.

 

Geoff is just lying in the sun waiting for lunch and has been visited by a friendly - not even mangy - black and white dog.  It took some shooing away.  Reminded me of the last two nights in Namche.  We played some cards in the lodge on Wednesday night after the slide show had finished, but it was pretty early to bed.  Anne had gone off around eight and I went about nine, our tent right next to the external kitchen.  And even after the lights went off for the night there was a lot of talking, rather jocular goings-on amongst the staff or the family of the establishment.  We couldn't get to sleep until around midnight when everyone had finally gone to bed; and then there was this almighty ruckus from a dog that seemed to come down the slope behind the lodge and run back and forth through our tents the whole of the night, barking incessantly.  Every time it finished a stream of barks we could hear it growling to itself and I, and a number of the others it transpires, were quite concerned that it was a rabid dog, and we were not at all anxious to leave our tents to go out to throw stones at it.   The noise did not give up until morning.  Someone else suggested that it might have been a bitch with small puppies, but really that was no explanation at all; and then last night it started up again, although nowhere near as incessant, and not so close to us as it had been the night before.  It just seems that it's a dog that barks all night and sleeps all day.  But we've collectively agreed, on our return to Namche after reaching the heights, that we'll club the damned thing to death if it does it again.

 

Trekkers' tents are very cosy - ours are very spacious too - but they do not keep out sound, and someone talking in the next tent, someone snoring three tents away, can be heard quite clearly.  We were last night each issued with our second sleeping bags. These are of finer make, filled with down, and - I'm not sure which - to be used inside or outside our existing sleeping bags when it becomes really cold. Since I haven't yet spent one night inside the first bag it's going to have to be very very cold for me to get full use out of both of them.  And as it gets colder we'll be wearing our thermal underwear, and that should take care of most of the problem.  I don't think the difficulty is going to be getting warm enough to go to sleep, but rather those transitional times of day - getting up, changing into day clothes, attending to a bit of cursory washing, standing around waiting for meals - those times when we'll be really cold and rugged up inside our parkas with the hoods up, balaclavas on, gloves on, and scarves across our faces.  Who knows?

 

The on-coming stream of trekkers has abated and I think that's because what we've been passing all morning are those who left Tengboche at first light heading for Namche Bazaar; and for the rest of the day there won't be so many trekkers.  People don't normally set out at lunchtime for their next destination. But the stream of yak caravans carries on unabated.  The ones going past just now are quite large specimens and each of them has five gunny sacks, so it doesn't pay to make a premature observation.

 

Yesterday, Thursday, at Namche Bazaar, was our first rest day.  The height 3440 metres.  We've been higher, many days ago when we crossed the Lamjura Pass, but we haven't slept higher.  From here on, as I've said before, it's a slow 300 metres maximum rise per day in terms of our resting places.  Yesterday was the first time that we weren't wakened officially at six with a cup of tea; but because of the dreadful sleepless night we were more or less awake anyway.  The day got off to a very slow start.  I went off downtown with Anne and Pam and Kaye who were each purchasing a shower; and they had some washing to do.  When you are going downtown in Namche the words have some real meaning.  We poked around the shops, bought a few trinkets, some furry scarves.  There's no great merit in buying things on the way up the hill, it only saddles the porters with more to carry.  So coming down is the time to look seriously - and even then......

 

Around eleven o'clock we all went up the hill to the National Park Headquarters, where we'd been the evening before to see the sunset, and looked through the display centre I've already described.  In the afternoon we mooched around.  I've started seriously to read a book now. Some of the party went off to a nearby monastery, but it was generally a very relaxing day.  In the evening we had some more slides, and then played blackjack till a little after nine o'clock.  The night before the fellows had played with matchsticks and had had some difficulty in converting them into rupees, but last night all went well. Andrew had conducted a major transaction with the Bank of Nepal, and arrived at the blackjack table with two hundred one rupee notes, worth all of four cents each.  Very orderly game, and a lot of fun had by all.  If we're in anything resembling a lodge tonight, or a shelter other than our mess tent, I'm sure the game will get going again with renewed vigour, and a few more players - those who have now concluded that standing on the sidelines means missing all the fun.

 

********************

It's now Tuesday afternoon, and we're in Lobuche.  This is our highest camp, some 4930 metres.  We'll be here for two nights and then start the descent.  Tomorrow, the objective is to set off very early, perhaps three or four a.m., and to head for Kala Pattar.  Kala Pattar is a mountain of some 5545 metres.  The kitchen boys will be going with us and set up a camp half way, and from that point our people will leave their day packs behind, simply carry water and cameras, and make the final assault on Kala Pattar, returning some hours later to the base camp.  Those of a mind to will then be able to head off in a different direction, two or three hours to the Everest base camp.  As Mohandra points out there's been more than one Everest base camp established over the years and, given the strenuous nature of the day, those attempting base camp will simply go to the first one and not seek out others further afield.

 

The weather remains brilliant.  Through the course of any one night we can have cloudy periods, but generally the skies are crystal clear.  The moon is becoming larger all the time.  But even after the moon is set there's a considerable amount of light from the stars.  Every morning is sunny, but because of the altitude and because of the clear skies, the nights are freezing.  Shannon has a thermometer which he hangs on the outside of his tent, and it has read as low as minus fifteen degrees.  The last few nights the tents have had a coating of ice, and no longer is anybody doing laundry and pinning it to the back of their daypacks hoping to dry it in the sun as we trek along.  For one thing the water is too damned cold to put your hands into; another thing: as we climb higher there are fewer streams.  Further down we typically stopped by streams at lunchtime, and there was ample time to attend to a bit of washing.  Now we don't seem to be stopping by streams and, although the sun has plenty of sting in it, nobody is bothering.

 

Today as we crossed streams on our way to Lobuche we found that they were filled with ice.  Often they looked frozen solid but you could see the water trickling along under an ice capping.  Again this morning there was a great rush of people coming downhill in the opposite direction from ourselves; all looking very spry.  They'd been to their destination, were heading down, were feeling better with every step.....while we struggled upwards with our Frankenstein monster walks developed to an art form.     

 

 

Anne and I both have colds, simply a head cold in my case, although the occasional cough.  Yesterday I managed to use a whole toilet roll in lieu of tissues. We've long since used up all the hankies and any tissues we brought with us, and since we're not washing clothes we've had to resort to toilet tissue. for our noses. Anne has also found sleeping very difficult.  It's almost as though every second night she has a bad night and hardly sleeps at all. Although insomnia is one of the signs of altitude sickness, in Anne's case we're sure it's not so, she just simply can't sleep.  So we're hoping for a good night tonight, and that she'll have all her strength tomorrow for the climb to Kala Pattar.

 

We have had a somewhat concerning couple of days. Andrew succumbed to altitude sickness and had to be sent down; the trek is over for him, and he's on his way home. He had a foretaste of this way back on day three, I think, when we crossed the Lamjura Pass.  The altitude there was 3400-odd metres and he felt giddy at the time.

 

On the way up to Namche a few days ago he'd felt giddy again.  Namche is almost exactly the same height - 3440 metres.  So on our way from Namche to Tengboche on Friday, while the first part of the day - when I last recorded - was downhill, after lunch we had quite a climb to Tengboche and to an altitude of 3860 metres.  This was the highest point we'd reached so far, and certainly the highest point where we had to spend the night.  At around the lunchtime Andrew felt giddy and woozy and not his normal self, and through the climb up on the Friday afternoon he was nursed along.  Everything seemed to be fine that night.  Next day, Saturday, was another climb - to Dingboche, to a height of 4300 metres; and certainly on the Saturday afternoon Andrew was far from well.  Anne acted as his guardian angel and stayed back with him and Mohandra to make a slow ascent.  The weather turned a little cool in the afternoon and Anne had been in shorts, and although she put on some warm clothes, by the time she got into camp she was cold and shivering.  She climbed into her sleeping bag but the shivering didn't stop.  I didn't realise that what was happening here was a case of hypothermia.  We filled a couple of water bottles with boiling water and she hugged them to herself; but when Mohandra realised what was going on he took some instant action, and we massaged her feet and really tried to warm her up.  It was quite some time before the shivering stopped and before she returned to normal, although even an hour later she was not fully recovered.

 

Meanwhile, Andrew had gone straight to his tent and was not a well person.  So it was resolved that the next day, which was a rest day anyway, the Sunday - and when most of the group were going off on a side excursion - that Andrew, with Mohandra, would go across the hill about three kilometres to a settlement where there was a medical centre, Periche.  In the meantime we had two other walking wounded.  Naomi had arrived in Tengboche with a severe headache - migraine as she said - and scrounged around for some asprin.  Someone produced some Mersyndol, and whether it was through confusion or just plain stupidity she went to bed and took four of them.  When she awoke in the morning she fainted on her way to the lavatory.  So it was decided she at least ought to speak to the doctor.   The doctor pointed out, as we all knew, that Mersyndol contains codein, and that codein is absolutely forbidden at high altitudes because of its effect on the respiratory system - it is a relaxant, slows down the rate of breathing, and the very last thing the body needs when there's a shortage of oxygen is to breathe less frequently.  It has to breathe more frequently; and many people have simply expired when they've taken codeine or tranquilisers or equivalent drugs in these parts of the world.

 

Yours truly was the third walking wounded having, quite without warning, developed a hemorrhoid on the Saturday afternoon. This didn't seem the sort of problem that was going to go away and, although in Mohandra's medical kit we found some rectal suppositories, I thought maybe the doctor could do something in the form of a first aid treatment that would make life a bit easier in the week ahead.

 

So we set out around nine, the three sickies with Mohandra and Tendi, and one of the porters carrying Naomi's and Andrew's daypacks. Tendi, the 2IC Sherpa, customarily had the role of Sirdar - in charge of the porters and kitchen staff.  The role of Dundar, the chief Sherpa, was to look after the trekkers. On this occasion Dunbar stayed behind with the main party while Mohandra was absent.  A fairly easy climb around the ridge, and then a pretty steep descent into Periche. Andrew had to stop half-a-dozen times up the slope.  By the time we got to the crest he was done in.  Down the other side towards the settlement he had one of us holding him up on each side - his legs weren't functioning, he was virtually being slalomed down the hill.  It wasn't a rocky hillside this time, it was more pebble and shale, and he was just being dragged down.  This is Andrew - the extrovert of the group - six feet three, twenty-five, young, fit, runner, basket-baller, cyclist.  There are no rules about this mountain sickness.  He's long and lean and has an El Greco face, aquiline nose.  As we lowered him to the ground about a hundred yards back (while Mohandra went to see whether the doctor was in attendance) he looked for all the world, with his two weeks' stubble and pallid drawn face, like Christ being lowered from the cross.

 

There were two doctors on duty, an American chap and a French woman.  Both young. Been there just a couple of weeks. They sign on for the season, although the medical post is closed in the winter round about Christmas.  Much coveted job apparently, a lot of good experience for those who intend to practise in later life in any area to do with altitude afflictions.  They were very relaxed about the way they approached Andrew's treatment - starting with a long interrogation of Andrew, so far as he was able to answer, and the rest of us so far as we were able to contribute; and then they settled down to some medical examination.  The blood pressure was good, the oxygen level in the blood not so bad, no pulmonary oedema - but they were quite sure that he had cerebral oedema which, when you look in the brochures, is described as a swelling of the brain inside the skull. Not at all fun, and it leads to dizziness and lack of coordination and weakness and disorientation.  And if not treated is fatal.  The treatment, as I've said previously, is to descend.  Insofar as the first aid post is concerned the treatment is to put the victim inside a pressure bag, somewhat similar - although I imagine reverse in effect - of a decompression chamber used by divers who ascend too quickly and get divers' bends.

 

So Andrew was put into this bag thing, and a couple of the park rangers took turns in operating the pump, the pump being exactly the same as an old-fashioned motor-car tyre pump.  By this process the pressure is increased inside the bag so that the victim is effectively reduced to a lower altitude where the pressure is greater.  The doctors initially indicated that the treatment would take about an hour, but in the end it was somewhat over an hour-and-a-half before they were satisfied that Andrew was sufficiently well to be set free and sent on his way.  Quite miraculous that it can be done so easily.

 

Plenty of the literature says that if you get signs of altitude sickness you should go down to your previous level of comfortable living, stay a day or two, then start off again ascending; and this way, by slow degrees, you can reach the heights.  It seemed to me that there was no way that this was to be Andrew's fate and that it would have been suicidal for him to try to ascend again simply because he'd had some first aid treatment.  

 

So agreed; and as the afternoon drew on we were making plans for Andrew and Mohandra to go down the mountain.  The porter had been sent back to Dingboche, where we were camped for the two days, to get Andrew's duffle bag and all his gear.  Sadly they omitted to put into the bag his walkman and his torch and his toilet paper, so the three most necessaries of life when you're on your own in a strange place were denied him.   The porter then raced off downhill to meet up with Andrew and Mohandra later that evening.

 

We found ourselves, during the long waiting period in Periche.....[words missing]......the local lodge had some extraordinarily good noodle soup.  When Andrew was finally released we took him in there and fed him up, because he hadn't had breakfast.  He hadn't eaten the night before, and was probably suffering a degree of weakness anyway through being underfed.  So he tucked into a big plate of rice and eggs.  We had to refill his water bottle because he'd run out by this time; and we saw them off.  The good news, which we didn't hear until this afternoon when Mohandra arrived back in camp - caught us up in Lobuche - was that Andrew did indeed continue to improve as they went further down, but decided, very wisely I think, to keep going rather than to wait five days for us to return and catch him up.  And armed with his doctor's certificate and a note from Mohandra he's heading for Lukla and for the plane out.  Because of the mountain sickness situation he will have priority on any flight, and so won't have any problem about getting the first flight out of town down to Kathmandu and then home.  On catching up with Andrew after our return to Melbourne we heard that he'd had difficulty in Lukla, and had to offer a sizeable bribe to get on to a plane. He was very upset at the way things had turned out and, rather than feed his disappointment in Kathmandu, had - very sensibly in my view - flown straight out for home.  He wrote a little note - which Mohandra brought back to us - and wished us well. Mohandra tucked the note into his bag and said he'll make sure that that at least gets to the top of Kala Pattar.

 

The doctor was not able to suggest any first aid treatment for my haemorrhoid.  Tried to manipulate it back inside, but not all that successfully; and since then it's popped out again and become somewhat worse.  Not painful but rather uncomfortable.  Naomi, perhaps, has learned her lesson, and may not go on a codein binge again.

 

Harking back to Friday and our uphill climb to Tengboche: this place had been 

 

Tape 4 - Side 1

 

publicised as a centre of Sherpa culture, with an important monastery and museum, etc.  Well, any place more like the arse-end of the universe I've yet to see!  It's on a small sloping plateau surrounded by the inevitable mountains.  The monastery is at the top of the rise, as are the few buildings.  There's a trekkers' lodge, another place where you can buy bits and pieces, but that's about it.  The monastery houses about forty monks, maybe a few more, ranging down from the lama to boys of eleven or twelve.  The life they lead is so austere as to be criminal.  The monastery was built as recently as 1916 and was, sadly, destroyed by fire in 1989 - just eighteen months ago.  Because of its importance it's being rebuilt at a very rapid rate, and there's a large community of stonemasons and carpenters and other tradesmen who are currently living in Tengboche and are currently occupying the few lodges that would otherwise be used by trekkers and their porters.  This being the case we, as always, were in our tents.  But our porters weren't able to find much by way of shelter, so they resourcefully managed to take an old broken-down barn with one back and one side wall only and not much of a roof, find some bits of metal and wood, and turn it into quite a cosy place where they lit a couple of fires on the floor, and spent a comfortable night I think.  As far as we were concerned - with the tents being erected on this exposed plateau - we encountered our first really freezing night, and started to have, I think, some misgivings about the nights ahead.  We haven't been disappointed.  Every night has been extremely cold, although I have to say that once tucked into the sleeping bags we're not really cold.  I hadn't used the thermal underwear - until last night - and even then only the bottom half.  And I've not used the second sleeping bag and have pulled up on top of the sleeping bag only the poncho - and my gortex jacket for the purpose of keeping the condensation off. There's a certain amount of condensation inside the tent, and best to keep that away from the sleeping bag because it inevitably seeps through.  The thing that's started to concern us a little bit is the fact that these places we pass through, if less than charming, we'll have to pass through on the way back - and Tengboche is not hospitable in any sense.

 

Round about dark on the Friday night Mohandra indicated that it was prayer time and that if we cared to we could go up to the monastery and listen in.  The monks are meeting in a sort of temporary monastery tucked around the back of the new structure, and we were able to sit in a sort of anteroom while they continued with their prayers.  Because it was some festival time, instead of the usual twenty minute ceremony it went for about an hour.  We left before it was all over.

 

The thing that's really sticking in my mind is the abject poverty in which these people live, these religious adherents.  They have their yellow shawls, not the fine silky things that we see with the Hare Krishna in Melbourne, but rather thicker.  Nonetheless, bare arms, and feet in sandals.  And they have a rug that they wrap around their shoulders. How often they wash, or are able to wash, is a moot point.  Their food would be pretty poor.  But their lives are........well all you can say is that they must have their minds on higher things than their day-to-day surroundings.  And in a town where there'd be no more than twenty permanent residents who do they preach to?  Obviously this form of Buddhism is very much an inward looking religion.  

 

On Saturday, the road from Tengboche to Dingboche - from 3860 metres to 4300 metres - was a most attractive day's journey. Most of the morning was spent going through birch forests; the usual rush of people passing us in he morning but thinning out in the afternoon. 

 

 I've learned that it's not wise to make too many predictions.  I'd said earlier on that many of the plants had thorns, obviously to stop goats from eating them.  Well next thing I see on Saturday is a yak munching quite happily on the thorniest bush you'd ever see.  Also, there was an earlier question of whether we'd see any musk deer, and some people had thought that they did, and Mohandra said "no", their description was not a musk deer.  But when we arrived in Tengboche Kay saw one just on the outskirts of town.

 

And I guess another thing it's unwise to make predictions about is mountain sickness.  You just don't know where, and when, and whom it will strike.  So far everyone is pretty good in anticipation of tomorrow's final assault.  Julianne had a very severe headache last night but that has gone today and she's feeling fine. There've been a couple of latent headaches today but, with the weather so severe, with the wind so piercing, it's not surprising that people get headaches just from cold on the forehead or cold in the ears.  The wind has indeed been piercing.  As I've said, the days are sunny and lovely, and you can have the crazy situation of getting sunburn on the face while at the same time being subjected to the bitterest cold.  Despite the fact that it gets down to minus fifteen at night, by the time we're on the move in the morning the temperature is quite warm - five degrees say - and twenty minutes out on the track and we're figuring out how to arrange our clothing, what to take off because we're already too hot.  Today was the first day, I think, when even though the sun was warm and we would ordinarily have been stripping down a bit, people didn't take off any clothes because we knew that by the time we got over the brow of the hill we'd be in the breeze and really quite cold.  There's been some snow lying on the ground today, and while I've been speaking there's been just the tiniest fall of snow here in Lobuche. Not enough to sit on the ground, but if the same sort of cloud cover persists this evening through the night then we may well wake up to some snow in the morning.

 

The cold sore that I developed after about the second day through getting sunburnt on the lips has persisted throughout because it had several heads - quite a nasty looking thing - and has just about dried up and gone now.  Fortunately there's been no recurrence. I've been using Lipease very purposefully.  

 

While I've been speaking the village campsite at Lobuche has filled up remarkably.  We're literally surrounded by half-a-dozen other groups of trekkers, all manner of tents, several portable toilets now erected; and there's going to be a big time in town tonight - not amongst our people though because they'll be wanting to get an early night given that they'll be wakened very early.  But others, who've come down the mountain having reached their goal, may be living it up a little.  There seem to be three or four lodges and the tents really are just pitched in their backyards or on the ground nearby.  It's not correct to call it a camping ground, although that's the very purpose that it serves when the trekkers are around.

 

As I said, the track from Tengboche to Dingboche was very pleasant, through the forest in the morning and then in the afternoon rising up and traversing a long sloping plateau - I think the first of such terrain we've encountered.  So much so that the track is no longer a single track but a series of roughly parallel tracks running across this upland country.  Right at the end of all this was Dingboche, another less than bustling metropolis.  Half a dozen houses-cum-lodges, and a hundred or so small fields separated by metre-high stone walls.  The Nepali, certainly the Sherpa people and those in the high country, are like the Chinese in this respect - they've got this passion for walls; and the small fields that they enclose really are small, quite minute, some of them just like vegetable patches.  Undoubtedly it's a characteristic born of convenience, because the ground is filled with stone, and the walls are the way of disposing of the stone that's been ploughed up over the generations. 

Our tents were crammed into a vey small yard, and part of the yard was taken up with a circular rock pile against which were lent tiny sheaves of some grain crop.  Our toilet tent was erected in the next field down the slope and, somewhat unwisely, somebody had removed some of the stones in the wall so that we could have easy access down to the tent through the night.  Unfortunately, some of the yaks which were in the lower paddock came up into the area where our tents were and did a lot of trampling through, and dropping everywhere.  The proprietor and family were somewhat dismayed in the morning at the mess that had been caused, and for the second night, the Sunday night, the fence had been rebuilt and the toilet tent had been moved up to the level where our sleeping tents were.

 

The grain was the most pathetic grain imaginable. It looked rather like barley because it had quite a beard around the grain, but I suspect it was just an old degraded strain of wheat.  The grains themselves were shrivelled up little things, and it makes you wonder whether anyone has thought of giving aid to this country in the form of some new strain of seed that's both cold resistant and fruitful.  The grain was being stored and bundled up ready for threshing.  In fact some threshing was going on a hundred yards away at some other lodge - hand threshing in the same fashion that we'd seen some ten days earlier much lower down the mountain. 

Half a dozen people get hold of these threshing sticks that have a rotating wooden end that is crashed down on to the wheat, and swivels around each time the stick is raised, and then crashed down again; and they move around in a circle, hopefully then covering all of the stalks and driving the grain out of the ears. The whole thing is done on a canvas sheet, and then they sweep it up and separate out the stalks; and everything that's left - which is grain and broken bits and pieces - is then winnowed in some fashion.  We didn't see that being done, but no doubt it is so that they can finish up with as much pure grain as possible in order to make their bread and other foods. When the threshing passion is upon them the clock has no meaning, and in more than one place we've heard the threshing going on through the night.  A bit of moon to work by, and plenty of clothes against the cold air, and they work mechanically at their task.  The threshing that was going on in Dingboche on Saturday night was causing Anne some distress because, as you'll recall, that was the night when she'd had her brush with hypothermia, and it had left her with a headache, and this thudding that was occurring - quite some distance away - was nonetheless reverberating through the ground and making sleeping almost impossible.

 

The schedule had us going from Dingbouche to Lobuche in one day.  It's from resting points of 4300 metres to 4930 metres.  Quite early on Mohandra had decided that that part of the trek ought to be split into two days and, accordingly, we had given up one of the rest days that we were to have much further down, at Junbesi, I think.   So yesterday, Monday, we had effectively a half day trek from Dingboche to Dughla - a steady climb and not hard at all, although our shuffling pace has diminished quite a lot.  And then today from Dughla to Lobuche, also half a day; so we, on both of those days, haven't had lunch on the trail - we've arrived at our destination in time for lunch.  Dughla was another non-event place.  They seem to become more and more austere.  Life for the local people is harsh indeed.

 

At lunch on the trail the other day we'd spied a party of mountaineers scaling Ama Dablam.  The chaps with the telephoto lenses set them up, and we all had a marvellous view of the exciting adventure way across on the far mountain with these tiny figures of black against the white snow quite obviously heading for the summit.  They reached the crest while we were there, and about half-an-hour later we saw them coming down again.  Victory was theirs.

 

And today, coming up towards Lobuche, we saw another group attempting to scale a mountain, I think named Lobuche the same as the town. They had quite a way to go when they passed out of our view.  Lobuche mountain is, I guess, a bit of a midget in local terms, a mere 6145 metres. Ama Dablam, that spectacular mountain, [that was a call for me to join in a game of poker, which I shall certainly do in a moment] Ama Dablam is 6856 metres.  But when you compare all of that with Everest of 8848 metres it's easy to see why in the minds of mountain climbers Everest is the ultimate, and everything else is a training ground.  Not that they're free of danger.  In a couple of places, back at Tengboche behind the monastery on the brow of the hill, and today as we came up a pass between Dughla and Lobuche, there were memorial cairns erected to climbers who have died in the mountains.  Many cairns.  And many of them were memorializing Sherpas, not only foreigners.

 

If you die beyond a certain distance up in the mountain country you are cremated, and your ashes are taken higher up and scattered. If you die below this rough point you are cremated and the ashes are thrown into a stream in the belief that the stream ultimately finds its way down to the Ganges, the holy river.  I'm not sure how all that squares with the fact that in the lower country the Nepali are basically Hindu and in the higher country they're basically Budhhist.  Surely the two traditions are not demarcated by altitude.  We heard today that although there is a helicopter rescue service it's not available for bringing bodies out, only live people, so I guess the only difference with a non-Nepali who dies up here is that you may be able to prevent the ashes from being  scattered and to take them home, but you certainly can't repatriate the corpse.

 

For many days I've been admiring my tanned hands. Never before have they been so brown. But now with the more severe country, and despite the wearing of gloves, my hands have become not only a bit puffy, but pitted and cracked and spotted -- quite reptilian in appearance!

 

I've decided not to go tomorrow with the group to Kala Pattar and Everest base camp.  I still have a week's walking down the mountains before Lukla, and really daren't take the risk of my haemorrhoid problem being worsened by the additional 600 metres of altitude that they'll be ascending tomorrow.  I can't take the risk of a haemorrhage or strangulation, and considering that they'll be traversing some very steep and rocky country, and the first several hours by torchlight, I'm resigned to ending my ascent here and to listening to the exploits of others by way of consolation.

 

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Well here we are, it's Friday morning, exactly three weeks since leaving home.  What en eventful three weeks!  On Wednesday the group set out for Kala Pattar, the principal objective of the whole trek.  In the end Pam also stayed behind.  Pam had arrived in Nepal with a cough, an it's never left her.  Intermittently worse, then a little better, and she's suffered quite a bit from it.  This general area of Nepal, the north-east, is known as the Solu Khumbu, and yesterday when visiting the doctor the doctor simply said "Oh, Khumbu cough". Close examination revealed no problem in the chest and, indeed, not even a red throat - just the persistent cough. The standard remedy - Strepsils - which were dispensed in large sheets.  The Internet abounds with descriptions of Khumbu cough, with explanations, and with remedies.  We trekkers attributed it to the constant inhaling of yak poo-infused dust. So Pam and I stayed behind and basically spent the day in our tents.  It was icy cold, and although there was a full sun it didn't really have the strength to compensate for the brisk breeze.  We've had lots of breezy weather in the past few days.  A breeze that at home you'd regard as really just a pleasant puff, here with the ice and snow, the altitude, even a tiny puff of wind has an enormous chill factor and makes it necessary to wear heavy clothing and gloves and beanies to keep out the cold.

 

The contingent set out about four a.m., and the first were back in camp around two in the afternoon.  The group was accompanied by a number of cook boys, and the objective was to set up a camp half way along, where the cook boys would stay, and from which the assault on Kala Pattar would take place; then returning to that camp everyone would get some warm food.  Then those who wanted to would be able to go in the other direction to the Everest base camp.  [I think I've recounted some of this previously!]  Everest base camp is something of a misnomer because there've been countless base camps over the years, and my impression is that they're identifiable merely by the amount of trash that's been left behind by various climbing parties.  Anyway, the idea was to head for base camp, whatever that meant, simply so they could say they'd been there.  In the end, some came back without attempting to go to base camp, and those who did go on to base camp weren't able to make it, and - so the guides said - came back after getting about half way.

Dear Anne was in the first group back, and was thoroughly exhausted, and had to be carried under the armpits for most of the way back from the luncheon point.  She didn't really find it such a struggle to the top although it's very rough going - a lot of travelling over boulders near the top of Kala Pattar - but upon arriving burst into tears, tears of exhaustion, jubilation, relief, excitement.  All of these mixed in together....and from then on she didn't have the energy to make it back unassisted.  She was in quite a bad state and, indeed, a group of Italian trekkers who were camped right next to us gesticulated quite wildly suggesting that we should take her thereupon down to the doctor at Periche.  But if we'd tried that she would need to have been carried the whole way, and it was some two hours distance.  We thought, in the end, that the problem was not one of mountain sickness - she hadn't been affected in any way previously other than the mild headache which most people have had -  but simply one of sheer exhaustion, and that what she needed more than anything was a warm drink and sleep.  Our diagnosis proved to be correct, and next day she was much improved.

 

Naomi had also had trouble, and she came back with the advance party.  She'd had headaches on previous occasions, as I've mentioned before, and apparently this has been fairly consistent over a number of days; and on the way down from Kala Pattar she fainted.  So it was certainly wise for her to return and not to attempt to go to base camp. Since then she's been fine, so it's all worked out for the best.  Shannon and Julianne have been something of the tough guys of the trip, and I've no doubt they would have had the stamina to get to base camp or to get as far as the others reached, but they decided they'd had enough.  And that turned out to be very good news for Anne because they were instrumental in supporting her on the way back - as was young Cheering, our boy Sherpa, who generally follows up at the rear of our column each day. He assisted Anne nearly all the way down the hill.

 

Just stopped for a moment there because of the noise of a helicopter.  We've had a couple of them pass right over our camping site today, and just circle around and return as though there's something important and strategic about the place where we're located.  Let's hope it's not reconnaissance for a later visit from some dignitary.

 

The base camp group returned much later in the day and, without exception, they were thoroughly knackered, the hardest day's work ever done by any of them!  Interestingly, although they'd all ascended some 2000 feet above where we'd camped, they didn't seem to experience difficulty in breathing.  So it wasn't the thinness of the air that undid them, simply the strenuous nature of the climbing.  While it was certainly an occasion for great jubilation, everybody was so tired that any thought of a party was out of the question - plenty of opportunity yet for us to live it up.  So Wednesday night was a night for rest and recovery.

 

To be continued...........