More of the diary recorded on the trail while trekking in Nepal........
It's now about quarter past eleven on Sunday. We've been here for an hour, waiting.........
Tape 2 - Side 2
........and the kitchen boys have been working frantically on lunch - and it's now arrived.
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Well, here we are. It's Monday night and we're camped at a settlement below Lukla. Lukla is the township where two weeks from now we end the trek, and from where we fly back to Kathmandu. We haven't gone into Lukla and we're not going to, but some time tomorrow we'll reach the trail from Lukla heading northeast, and from there on we'll be on a trail that we will have to retrace having got to the top.
It's been another glorious day, sunny most of the day, although we have been travelling in the shade on the lee side of the mountains for quite a lot of the day. But it's been an easy walk, and in fact we're camped now at a point quite a bit lower than we have been over much of the last week. The campsite is at 2300 metres, which is higher than Mount Buffalo and Mount Hotham and higher than (I guess) anything in Australia except Kosciuszko. Wrong! Kosciuszko is 2228 metres, and we were higher than that. We're way below the snow line here. With this country more or less the same latitude as Brisbane it's that much hotter, and the snow line is at around 4000 metres, 13000 feet.
Last night, Sunday night, we camped at a place called Bhupta. It was a shade further along than the standard itinerary because Mohandra, our guide, wanted to get us a bit further down the track, and in fact away from the settlement where we were scheduled to stay. It was fairly crowded there with trekkers, and we moved on for an extra hour climbing to Bhupta - and we're glad to have done it. [A game of soccer is going on here at the moment as I'm lying in the tent dictating this. The ball's already come in once and I think there's a little bit of a challenge to see whether they can kick it into the open tent again.] The Bhupta stop had us perched once more right on the top of a cliff.
There was a monastery there, absolutely scruffy looking place. We couldn't go into the monastery proper. There was a separate building in which there was a prayer wheel - a huge drum with paintings around the surface of the drum. Turning on a spindle; and the idea is to turn it clockwise with your hand and say your prayer. Looked awfully ancient. We were surprised to read that the place had been built only fifty years ago. It looked much older. We were also surprised this morning when the monk came around begging for some offerings, making us sign some greasy book with our names and the amount we gave.
It wasn't the best of nights because we were assailed off and on by barking dogs. There was obviously a bitch on heat, and every dog in the vicinity was brawling with every other dog. Needless to say it didn't keep me awake for very long, but Anne had a fairly restless night.
Up at the usual time, about a quarter to six, tea in the tent at six. We don't waste any time. We're busy packing straight away, putting our sleeping bags into their covers, putting our small inflatable mats back into their covers, deciding what changes of clothes (if any) we're going to have, and shoving things back into our plastic bags and the plastic bags back into the duffle bags. After about twenty minutes our bowls of hot water arrive, and we attend to whatever ablutions we fancy. Typically it's not very fancy.
We've been washing our hair in the river where possible, and in fact this morning we washed our hair under the village tap at Bhupta. By the time breakfast is ready the eating tent has been struck. Several of the porters sleep in there each night, just curled around on the floor and one of them on the table. But they pull the tent down at first light - the weather has been fine - and we're left with the table and the camp stools set around it. And by the time breakfast comes we've already packed our bags and the porters are starting to strike the sleeping tents and pack them up, ready to be on the road; and long before we've finished breakfast the trail of porters has moved off. Last ones to leave camp are the kitchen boys, because they have to clean up the dishes after we've finished and gotten on our way. It doesn't take them long to catch us up - they're travelling fairly light. Earlier on I'd remarked at the heavy loads of the kitchen boys - "baskets full of potatoes and onions", "metal tables and chairs". What happens each day is that some, carrying much lighter loads, race ahead to organise morning tea (and later, lunch), and those with the heaviest loads catch up later. There are seven or eight of them and the heaviest load they have to carry is the stove - kerosene stove. It has a sort of square frame so they can cook several pots on it at one time. It's the heaviest thing. There's also the kerosene, and some food. We've been buying food along the way, it seems, and that keeps us in the eggs and some flour and some vegetable produce. As we get further up the mountain supplies are scarcer and we'll be eating rather more humdrum food.
At Bhupta this morning we saw a most intriguing sight. It was a pair of Siamese dogs. They were, it seemed to me, both intact. They each had four legs but they were joined rear to rear; their four back legs were sort of interlinked. Of course one of them had to walk backwards as the other walked forwards. They each had a full spine and each had a tail, one jammed leftwards and one jammed rightwards. They seemed to be joined by a sort of bridge of flesh between their rear ends. Gosh knows what it contained. When I went back to photograph them they'd gone, but they were clearly a part of the village scene and no one seemed to take any notice of them.
The walking has been really quite easy today, not much up, quite a bit of down. The only problem has been that it's a very rough down track. There was the old track from Lukla to Bhupta, but it was very steep and some of it washed away some time ago. So we've been on a reasonably new track, a lot of which was blasted off the hillside. The views have been quite spectacular. A lot of the trail has taken us around the edge of the hillside, the cliff face - somewhat reminiscent at times of that old film The Lost Horizon and the track into Shangri La. Because it's reasonably new, and to an extent manufactured, there is a lot of stepping down; and sometimes a step is as high as your knee, and quite jarring. People have found it a bit hard. But we thank heavens every day for our boots. They've been superb. We haven't had any blisters. I'm wearing tapes on my heels to prevent blisters, but there's been no spot of soreness anywhere on the feet. We thank our stars for our legs. They seem to be as fit as anything, although each of us tonight .......[just had to get rid of the ball]...... has got a bit of knee trouble. It's something that's sure to go away by morning! Yesterday our legs were a bit sore, but by morning all the soreness had gone. Ray has a sore right knee. Yesterday he was a bit inattentive and slipped on the trail. His left leg went off the edge and his right knee crashed on to the path; and it's been a bit bruised and a bit sore today - and not at all helped by the fact that he's had to carry his weight on it through the downward clambering that we've done.
We've discovered the origins of the luculia shrub that grows wild over the hillside; at this moment it's in full flower. It seems to be off season compared with when it flowers in Melbourne, and it could be the explanation is simply that it flowers for an extended period. Anne's making a list of all the flowers that we see that are known to us at home. At the moment there seem to be about twenty different flowers on it. It would be interesting for us to find out some time whether and how many of them are indigenous to this area, and how many are introduced here the same way they're introduced into Australia.
Everybody seems very fit at the moment, apart from the occasional knee! Why am I harping on this? The trots have gone away. We're obviously becoming acclimatised to the food, and looking after ourselves by drinking only the treated water and soft drink along the way.
Today we got a view of some magnificent snow-capped mountains. Enormous height, towering above their nearby neighbours. Not Everest, although our trip is called Classic Everest. We had our chance to see Everest on about the second or third day and after that we won't and can't see it until we get right up near it in about a week's time.
Well darkness has just about fallen, it's around quarter to six, and dinner is on. Tonight, instead of having it in the mess tent as usual we're having it in a hut just near where we're camped; and it will be interesting to see whether it's as warm, or perhaps not as close - the mess tent has caused us a bit of fatigue because the portagas light gives off a lot of heat (as well as the fourteen bodies), and sometimes we've been happy to get out as soon as the cup of tea arrives, to get out into the fresh air again.
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It's now Wednesday lunchtime, and a day-and-a-half has passed since I've put microphone to lips. It's another glorious day, as was yesterday. We are stopped in what's really the bed of a stream. The canvas is down, the table is set up, and the camp stools are around it; but each of us is lying on a rock or a bit of sand, sunning ourselves.
We've been promised a two-hour lunch break, which is pretty typical and indicative of the leisurely way in which Mohandra, our guide, is treating us. Generally, I think, we've been finding that two hours is a little too long, but I suspect that's because we haven't - even yet - learnt to use our leisure time effectively. There's only one or two who pull out a book; mostly people are content just to watch the passing parade, dabble with their diaries, and do little else.
Yesterday was another splendid day, a very easy walking day.
It's basically two days from Lukla to Namche Bazaar. Namche is a major centre and the centre where we really reach some respectable height. The trail we've been on for the last day-and-a-half is, as I've already mentioned, the trail that we have to retrace later. It'll be interesting to see, when we're doing that, whether it's a tad boring or whether we look at things with different eyes, with a different perspective through having attained the heights.
I've travelled in shorts every day, as has Anne. She started off with a reasonably good suntan and I had none whatever. I've applied the sunscreen a couple of times a day, but not lavishly, and the legs and arms are the brownest they've been for years. Because the trail weaves in and out of the mountains it's a little hard to know in advance whether we're going to be on the sunny side or not. So it's always safer to have the sunscreen in your daypack so it can be slapped on if it appears likely the walk is going to take us through a long stretch of exposed sunlight.
Two nights ago, Monday night where we had our meal inside a hut, we had our first touch of group entertainment. It was pretty slow getting started. Eventually we got on to a game of charades, and a game of twenty questions, or who am I. It was rather fun, and it's to be hoped that we have some more indoor evenings so that we can do it again and get a little more involvement from those who were just a shade standoffish.
The guide book tells us that there are a number of different ethnic groups, tribal groups, through Nepal; and we have certainly noticed changes in the physical appearance of the people as we've come further along. Up here they're looking more Mongul, a little bit wilder, a little bit bigger, more like Sherpas. We're now in the Sherpa country.
The gardens seem to be more orderly. Nearly every house seems to have a patch of cabbages. We've seen broccoli, often pumpkins; and sometimes left right out in the field there's an enormous pumpkin, two, three, four times bigger than anything you'd see in the shops at home. Sometimes they've been picked and they're just left sitting on the roof or beside the house. There have been fields of peas - not ground peas - each one climbing up its own stick, no attempt to make trellising. I guess that's because the field is later cleared, the pea plant ploughed in, and the field used for some other crop at a different time of the year. Beans are also grown up single sticks in that fashion. We've seen lots of them well and truly ripe; and I suppose they're not eaten as a green vegetable (as we would) but rather allowed to mature until they're as big as possible, and then the bean seed taken out of the pod and dried and used for meal or some such. Lots of spinach-type plants. At first I thought it was a type of lettuce but now I'm pretty sure it's a spinach. In fact we had some for dinner last night. Along the track today we saw some comfrey. Didn't seem to be cultivated and I wonder whether Nepalese know of the plant's medicinal and herbal qualities - why wouldn't they? The most prevalent small shrub we've seen along the track today has been a sort of wormwood. It's not pale grey like our "old man" wormwood at home, instead a darkish green colour; but it has the same sort of pungent odour, or almost a mixture between the wormwood smell and a mint smell. Again, I wonder whether it's used in cooking or in medicine. Certainly no shortage of supply - it covers the hillsides.
Again last night, Tuesday night, we were in a campground where there were several huts and a couple of other groups of trekkers, and we again ate indoors, and indeed shared an eating room with a group of Americans who were in another corner.
Last night we really got worked up and there were a couple of games of cards going, and a little bit of gambling. The first time we gambled, a game of progressive poker, we gambled for a chocolate bar. The object of the game is to be the last one standing, so it's an elimination type of game. Five or six of us playing, the winner on a promise of a chocolate bar - value around a dollar! Up here it's around twenty-five/thirty rupees for a small block of Cadbury's Dairy Milk. That's the only sort of plain chocolate that's available in the little shops. There's also a sort of Mars Bar, also made by Cadbury's - Cadbury's in India. A bit sticky. What with cards last night it was far and away the latest night we've been up, not going to bed until around nine o'clock!
It will be interesting, when we get to Namche, to see just what the range of goods is there; we're promised that it's quite a place, that everything is available, and that there'll be lots of local textiles and scarves, interesting things to buy. We'll be having a rest day there tomorrow.
The ground has never become any softer. I think we have restless nights; it's not possible to sleep straight through with the combination of the hard ground, the cold, and the occasional tummy upset. There are plenty of things to wake you up every couple of hours - but we get a pretty good night's sleep just the same. After those first couple of nights when Anne couldn't sleep, we've done well since then. I'm still finding the sleeping bag far too hot. It's a great bulky thing, and it's big enough to turn around in. We've each got an inner sheet, which is in the shape of a bag. I generally start the night off sleeping in that with the sleeping bag sort of pulled over me. But after an hour or so even that's too hot and I have to get out from inside the inner sheet and just lay it over the top of me, with the sleeping bag tucked around. I spend most of the night that way, turning from side to side. I've never yet been able to sleep inside the sleeping bag and zip it up. Tomorrow at Namche we're going to be issued with a further set of sleeping bags to pull around the first ones. Big bags with extra padding. I'm blowed if I can see how it will be of any use to me.
We're getting very efficient in the mornings. In the time after waking we've been to the toilet, the washing water has arrived, we've had our cup of tea, and we've packed our duffle bags and are standing around waiting for the porters to pull down the tents; and waiting for breakfast to arrive. Sad to report the trots are back again. I had it yesterday, and again today. It's a most unusual form of diarrhoea because it sends me with a rush in the morning and again in the evening and - thankfully - nothing at all through the day - not any symptoms, occasionally a bit of gripe in the gut, but absolutely no feeling of illness or discomfort. I decided this time, unlike last week, just to keep eating and not to bother taking any of the bung-up medicines. I've also given in at last to my sinus. It's been playing up all the way, and while I've been perfecting the finger-on-one-nostril-snort-over-the-cliff nose blow (much to the amusement of most of the group who seem not to have ever done it - and don't know how), while I've been perfecting it it's still a blessed nuisance, and so this morning I started a course of antibiotics to see if I can clear it up.
We had an easy walk this morning to this spot. This afternoon will be difficult. It's apparently the steepest climb we have to face, so it will be shades of a week ago where we had a couple of very strenuous days. It's also the day where we climb our greatest vertical distance. The difference between where we camped last night and where we'll camp tonight is some 800 metres - 2600 odd feet - and I think most of that will have to be climbed after lunch. So let's hope lunch is not too stodgy. Last time we did the heavy climbing, a week ago, I was quite weak because I had purposely not been eating. This time I don't feel at all weak, but it's still going to be fun to see how we go. I think we've become a little bit soft in the last few days because we haven't had any really arduous work to do, and this will almost be the same as it was when we started off yesterday week ago. Anne's knee, her right knee, is quite sore but she's not upset at the prospect of climbing uphill because the knee doesn't cause much trouble then. It's the downhill clambering that really causes distress.
Yesterday Mohandra left us and went up to Lukla, did some business there, and then re-joined us last night. His principal task was to re-confirm our bookings on the Lukla flight for when we have to go back to Kathmandu. It's quite a business because there just don't seem to be enough flights to cater for all the people who want to fly out. As I've indicated earlier, if the flight doesn't go because of weather conditions, those who are booked on it are moved to the end of the queue. Mohandra came back with the news that we're booked on the fourth flight on the day. Now, there seem to be three or four planes that do the journey back and forth, and it can't be all that distant, but I don't know how many flights there are a day. It all sounds a bit tentative to me, especially when we've had our bookings for the Classic Everest trip for some eight months - it surprises me that the flight booking wasn't made eight months ago. Maybe it was, maybe there are just so many people that the system can't cope. Certainly the traffic on the track has increased dramatically in the last day since we've passed Lukla and we're now on the main trail to Namche Bazaar and all points north. We're passing people all the time; and we're also passing lots of cows or yak-crosses bearing packs and goods up and down the mountain.
The variety of food has changed and improved, and each of the little lodges, guest houses, we pass has a sign out front listing the things that they have available. It's not just showers and toilets as it was several days ago, but it's now apple pie and peach pie and cinnamon rolls, omelettes - almost invariably every single word spelled incorrectly.
This morning we came to the edge of and entered the National Park. The local name for Everest is Sagarmatha, and this is the Sagarmatha National Park. From here on we'll be in the Park. Clearly they've created a national park where people already lived, and I suppose they haven't been able to impose a standard park rule like "thou shall not cut down trees for firewood". We've passed houses where there are great stacks of firewood, obviously claimed out of the forest very recently; although there are still plenty of pine trees around here. They do seem to be of a similar vintage and size, and although they're not planted in a plantation format - perhaps because the slopes are too steep - it's a little hard to know whether they have indeed been planted. If they have been planted then I can understand there'd be a certain amount of policing of who takes the trees, and when and why. If they're naturally occurring perhaps they're fair game - although surely not within a National Park! I have never sought to explain this enigma!
There's a tremendous amount of building along the way, new lodges and houses being built, and it's done quite superbly. Obviously there's stone everywhere, and the local stonemasons slice it into thin pieces, anything between three inches and six inches; and when they place it they do it with plumblines, and they get the most perfect corners. The houses have big bulky windows, and I gather that the carpenters just go into the forest and fell a tree with a broad saw and then they cut it up into bearers and planks on the spot. We see them being carried down the hillside, most awkward material to manipulate, and all this timber then goes straight into houses. They cut floorboards, the whole works, by hand! You would think they've been mill hewn. There's no kiln drying, so I guess they've got to get the timber in, and surround it with the stones very quickly, so it won't go out of shape.
At the beginning of the National Park there's an information centre and there's a table showing the number of tourists year-by-year for the last number of years. Nineteen-eighty-seven was the peak year,
Tape 3 - Side 1
with just under nine thousand visitors to the Park or, at least, through the gate. In eighty-eight it fell away a bit, with eighty-nine almost back to the eighty-seven levels. If you consider that the trekking year lasts for something less than six months it works out at about fifty trekkers per day passing through the checkpoint. We thirteen were certainly doing more than our bit.
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It's now Friday morning. A glorious morning, and we're walking within clear sight of Everest. I was wrong when I said earlier that we don't see Everest until well after Namche Bazaar; in fact we could see it before we got to that town on Wednesday afternoon. After our riverbed luncheon it was quite a steady climb up to Namche. In fact we climbed, in the course of Wednesday, some 800 metres, 2600 feet - some rough climbing, but nowhere near as difficult as it had been way back on days two and three of the trek.
This is the first time I've recorded while on the move and, not surprisingly, I've chosen a downhill section. The weather has been sublime - clear sunny days. Early on we had the typical days for this time of year, with the cloud coming in around lunchtime and obscuring the view, but for the last few days even that hasn't happened and it's stayed clear well into the afternoon. The nights have generally been cloudless, certainly no cloud when we get up in the mornings. This has made for pretty crisp nights. But even this morning in Namche at an elevation of 3440 metres the morning temperature was one degree, not yet freezing. On the way up this morning we've seen patches of frost, the first we've seen in our travels. I'm starting to puff now. Even a flat track in Nepal soon turns upward, and I'm having to get back into the accustomed zombie step, eyes downcast. As Geoff says, you walk on your face. The most comfortable walking is to adopt a steady beat - left right, left right - and if you really start to puff you should breathe in and out in time with the steps - huh, huh, huh! The air is thinner here but not that much thinner. Before we finish we'll be at nearly twice this altitude. Then we'll know what gasp breathing is all about.
The kitchen boys are still producing boiled water for us, so we haven't yet got to the altitude where it's necessary to purify with the iodine.
Today we're trekking from Namche to Tengboche. We've been able to see Tengboche almost since we left this morning. It's a settlement that sits almost on the ridge of a hill ....[words missing].... surely our route. Although basically flat, this morning takes us some 300 metres downwards to a river, and then this afternoon we have to travel 600 metres up to Tengboche.
It's been a most eventful morning in terms of wildlife. We've seen a couple of yaks grazing way up on the hillside - a good view obtainable only through binoculars or through somebody's telephoto lens. According to Mohandra there's no such thing as a wild yak, they're all tamed, and these yaks up the hill must be owned by somebody. Pity the yak boy who has to go and corral them. Also some wild goats. First we gave a lot of attention to the lone specimen but then later on we were able to be somewhat blase when a small herd of them was spotted - on the most precipitous slope you cold imagine. [That whistling is from some porters passing me. And Ian Ridgeway has just called out: "And me. I'm passing you too!" The whistle is usually used to let you know that someone is coming up behind you, or to give a signal from porter to porter across a distance.] We've seen some marvellous eagles, starting with one huge specimen that was gliding across the cliff-face using the thermals; and we're hopeful that some of the group with fast shutters and telephoto lenses have been able to capture the majesty of this great bird - which we think had a wingspan of around seven feet.
Someone thought they'd spotted a musk deer, another animal that lives in this part of the world, in the mountain areas of Nepal. A musk deer grows no horns or antlers. It grows, instead, small tusks. A quick look through the binoculars confirmed that it wasn't a musk deer, just another goat! We'll have to wait till some other time. Otherwise, on the whole track the wildlife has been pretty scarce. We saw one small lizard on the side of the track; and one night, overlooking camp, Pam and I watched a small stoat-like animal frisking in and out among the rocks of a stone fence. The birds have been pretty scarce although, according to the information centre, there are one-hundred-and-twenty species of birds to be seen in the Park. I think we've seen no more than half-a-dozen. The most ubiquitous has been the crow, a rather more thickset version than the Australian crow, also with a thicker beak - looks more suitable for crunching than for pecking. And its cry doesn't tail away to the forlorn sound of its Australian counterpart. According to Mohandra, as we go further up the crows give way to ravens.
I've pulled off the track again to be passed by a couple of yaks, one with a light load, the other with nothing at all, and their driver with a couple of small yak calves - quite furry things - black and white, although the big yaks are both black. The yaks are very much acclimatised to this part of the world; they don't occur naturally below 4000 metres. So any we've seen along the trail further down have been yak-cow crosses or yak-water buffalo crosses. The true yak has horns that point backward. Further down the hill the animals have been somewhat smaller, with their horns curving forward and inward. The animal is quite docile. Because they're used to inhabiting the track, and often have wide loads on their back, they're not about to give way to mere people; and the rule of the road is "stand aside, indeed stand well back, in a crevice if you can find one, and certainly make sure you don't stand on the cliff-edge side". One thing that surprises us is that often they carry so little. Often two duffle bags equivalent, yet our porters carry three, with a bit extra!
The arrangement was to be that at Namche Bazaar a number of the porters were to be paid off, and World Expeditions was to hire some yaks for the rest of the journey upwards. But there are so many major expeditions going on in Nepal at the moment that all available yaks have been hired by the mountaineers. So our porters continue. I suppose they're happy with the extra money, possibly even with the extra work.
Namche Bazaar is the biggest settlement we've been to after Kathmandu. It's bigger than Jiri, the commencement of out trek, but even then it probably has no more than a hundred buildings. My 1990 impressions were way off, I fear. The latest population figures are: Namche Bazaar 1647 (perhaps not inconsistent with "a hundred buildings" thirty years ago), and Jiri 13638. This figure is for the Jiri region, not simply the town, but I expect that thirty years ago the town must already have had many more inhabitants than Namche. But where it differs from the smaller settlements further down is that there's not a vast rural community close by. In the lower regions, settlements were quite small but you could stand in the settlement and look around the nearby hills and see literally hundreds of farm cottages. It's not the case up here. There's no longer any terracing for agricultural purposes, and no need therefore for people to be scattered around the hillsides. The brochures say that Namche is set on a natural amphitheatre, and indeed it is. It's the most perfectly curved sweep of mountainside, and the houses run around the semi-circle. It does mean that there's a lot of work to be done tracking up and down from the bottom of the village to the top; and it was a bit tiresome Wednesday afternoon, having made the long climb up the trail to Namche, to find that the place where our tents were sited was through the town about two-thirds of the way right to the top of the hill. There's not much spare or flat ground in Namche Bazaar, and our tents were pitched in what is really the back yard of one of the trekking lodges. As is the standard arrangement, we had the run of the lodge - eat indoors, can come and go, use the facilities such as they are. The toilet was, dare I say, up to par. I was being ironic! It was in an upstairs room. There were three rough holes cut in the floor. It was a room six or seven feet square. One wonders whether it is the intention that three people should crap together, but three holes there were. And over in one corner of the room was a great pile of compost-like material, probably mostly cattle dung. I think the idea was that if your aim was not too good and the rim of the hole got soiled you just scraped a bit of this compost down the hole with your boot. The holes fell through to the room below which, hopefully, was not used for any other purpose; and it may well be that what dropped through was, after some time, shovelled up into the top room again to be used once more as the cleansing agent. Who Knows? The porters soon had our toilet tent erected a little way down the rise, and I don't think anyone thereafter used the facilities at the lodge.
Already staying at the lodge was a group of five Indian people - three men and two women - and three people I took to be Polish. They were living in dormitory-type accommodation, and eating the foods prepared by the lodge keeper. Jolly good it looked too. (We later on checked out a number of lodges further down in the town where a lot more people stay, and the menus they offer are quite extensive, including Western, and Indian, and local foods.) The son of the household seemed to be in his thirties - quite a remarkable chap. He put on a slide show for us on the Wednesday night and again on the Thursday night. Yes, a slide show. They have electricity at Namche. It's a local hydro plant, and the power comes on from six till ten at night. The availability of power hasn't caused an avalanche of stoves and microwave ovens, and there's still great destruction of the local trees, and big wood heaps beside every lodge. But at least the people are able to acquire some Western creature comforts. This chap would like to be a mountaineer, and in pursuit of his ambition has been associated with a number of mountaineering expeditions, up Everest and up some of the other mountains. Some of the slides he showed were of an expedition he was associated with in Alaska, an expedition that climbed Mount McKinley last year. So somehow he's put together the necessary funds to travel, to obtain some sort of sponsorship or friendly leg up. The great wonder of the man is that he's deaf. He wasn't always so; he was rendered deaf by an attack of meningitis. He apparently speaks five languages, and he speaks English very satisfactorily. The commentary he gives with his slides is extraordinarily good. As he can't hear himself speak he speaks with a sort of sing-song voice; and, to our ears, his inflection is all wrong - rising when we wouldn't expect it to rise. Such a jolly, happy, fellow though - you get the feeling that whatever he strives for he'll achieve.
I haven't ascertained whether the word "bazaar" in Namche Bazaar means the same as we take it to mean. Certainly it's a trading post. I think it must be. The word bazaar is originally Persian for a market place - so spot on. Not surprisingly, the spelling of Bazaar has two letters "a" - except, curiously, in our detailed map of the trekking area, where it's printed Bazar. Trade, I think, is its historical reason for existence, and trade is what it lives on today; all related to trekking, either selling accommodation, or hot showers, or food, or goods, to the tourists passing through. It has a market day, one day a week, which we won't be seeing. There are about a dozen shops, all of them with the same sorts of merchandise; but a very considerable range, from all sorts of camping gear, climbing gear, fuels, torches, film, food, chocolate bars - a sort of impulse-type stock which is just right for the nature of the clientele. Most of the trinkets and fabric and textiles is of Tibetan origin, which is rather sad. We'd like to get our hands on something that we could be sure was authentically Nepalese, but they say everything comes from Tibet - as did the Sherpa race! They came from Tibet into what is now Nepal some four hundred years ago and settled in the north-east corner of the country. All of the Sherpa territory is now within the Sagarmatha National Park. Whereas they were traditionally nomads and herded their yaks, with small settlements appearing over time, it's the advent of trekking and mountaineering that has really added to their lot. According to the brochures it's enabled them to have a more settled existence, to use the yak for earning income, and to develop trade as a way of life. They're Buddhist, although of a specific sect; and seem to live very colourful lives. Some of the slides we saw showed wedding festivals and other festivals, and on those occasions they don the most beautiful clothing, quite a contrast to the rather drab garb that they wear in day-to-day life.
I'm passing through a small settlement at the moment, as you can hear from the rooster. There's been a clear change in the atmosphere as we've come further up the mountain. The smell of human excreta in the villages and by the houses has diminished quite markedly, and now you can walk on your face and yet not know when you're about to pass a house. The word magic has been somewhat overworked, but this morning's walk has been just that. For the last half hour, as we've moved around to the lee side of the hill and descended quite a bit, we've been passing through some forest country. The first forest was silver birch. Not like our silver birch; at least there are two major differences. The first is that the bark isn't silver, it's more a salmon pink, russet colour, beautiful. The other difference is that they're old and gnarled. Some of the trunks are two feet through. Our birches are always prized for being tall and straight and slender. These, growing naturally in the forest, have no pride in themselves. Hanging off the trees have been masses of an air plant. Back home we call it old man's whiskers. Similar sort of thing except instead of being a grey colour here it's a soft green colour.
After we've swung around a little through the birch forest we've come into a forest of pine trees. In fact, we just now passed a pine tree nursery set up by Edmund Hillary. The track has become awfully busy. We'll well surpass the fifty a day tourists average. This is the main beat - Namche Bazaar upwards. Anne is fast developing the view that to be here in spring would be inspirational. This is because the whole of the hillside is covered with azaleas, all pink and white although not flowering at the moment. In springtime primulas and polyanthus grow naturally, though again this is not the right time of year.
The only complaint is that the trail is dusty. It was about two days the other side of Namche that we encountered our first dust. Up till then for all those days the track had been damp, and in many places running as a stream. But as we got higher it became drier. At first I thought the track was dry because there was that much more traffic drying out the damp soil, but now I think not. I think it's just that there's less precipitation up here, and certainly fewer streams, and it's dusty in spots. If you get into a wind gust you have to turn your head to keep the dust out of your eyes or, as importantly, out of your nose.
It's absolutely easy walking, mostly downhill - I've been dictating. People coming towards us have been puffing quite heavily, and are giving us a foretaste of what we'll have this afternoon when we climb out of this valley up to Tengboche. Mind you, I think a number of them have been puffing because they're doing the short tour. I think they've flown into Lukla. It might even be possible to drop into Namche Bazaar - certainly there's a helicopter pad there - and they've walked over the mountain and walked down again, and I suspect that they haven't been as fit - and they haven't had the ten days of preparation that we've enjoyed in the lower reaches.
We're being passed by far and away the longest yak train that I've seen. So far they've been in twos and threes, this time there are about a dozen, with several drivers. Again I'm surprised at how little they're carrying - two gunny sacks, maybe three, but not very heavy parcels at all. Our little group of trekkers are all standing back to the wall.
Right at the top above Namche Bazaar is the headquarters of the Department of National Parks and Wildlife. That's where the helicopter pad is, and that's where they have a major display centre. There's a visitors' book with a comments column, and one idiot - just before we arrived - had written the comment "bum". The display is far from bum. It's a typical national park display centre, with one display devoted to the local botany, and one to the geology, and one to the birds, one to the animals, one to the local people and their customs and culture, and so on. Maps and weather charts. Some of it's done in an amateurish way, some of the English spelling is wrong, but it's a very fine effort considering the poorness of the country. It was not difficult at all to spend an hour looking at the display, reading every word, and to an extent steeping ourselves in the feel of the place.
It's hard to remember whether, when we arrived in Namche on Wednesday afternoon, we were looking forward to the Thursday rest day or not. I think there was some apprehension that a day off the trail might cause our legs to seize up, might make it hard to get going again. That hasn't proved to be the case and we all seem to be in fine spirits this morning.
There was a promise of hot showers, but at the lodge where we were camped the shower was out of order. Some of us settled for a bucket of hot water and a personalised dousing, which was certainly good enough for me; others went downtown to one of the lodges where showers were available for about a dollar. Some went on the Wednesday night, others yesterday morning.
Just passed a group of Canadians coming back from Kala Pattar, out destination a few days hence. They said how very cold it is, and how we must wear all the clothes we've got.
To be continued..........
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