28 Days in the Solu Khumbu
. . . And back again! We returned yesterday to Kathmandu early in the morning after a slight delay in Lukla due to fog and low clouds at the Kathmandu airport. The small, short-take-off-and-landing (STOL) aircraft that service the typical starting point for the Everest region trek are often delayed due to weather, sometimes for days, which backs up the airport terribly with impatient tourists. Apparantly, sometimes it can turn into a real riot after a few days of delays, with all sorts of pushing and side deals being made to get on the first available flight. We didn't have that problem.
The weather our entire time in the Solu Khumbu was perfect, actually. Clear and crisp, no storms. This was good, because our itinerary included almost all the mountain passes between the major valleys, which would have been impassable with just one good snow. I apologize for the current lack of a map and the town names, peaks and passes will be tossed out like you had your brilliant topographic map of the Himalayas spread out before you, but you won't. With a little reaching out, courtesy of Google or whatever, you can no doubt pull up a second window with some map and follow along. I will add one soon for those who don't want to be bothered by finding such a thing (go ahead, be confused, if you want!).
I should start at the beginning, however, and take you with me through the journey. We were six: Micah Jessup, whose geology Ph.D. research project we were here to support, Laura Duncan, his girlfriend and a fellow geologist from Virginia Poly-Tech, Trish and Dennis Newell from New Mexico, Trish a biologist and Dennis a geology Ph.D. student from the University of New Mexico where I study (I know, I know - - when I'm there!!), John Cottle, a New Zealander who is starting a Ph.D. at Oxford with one of the same advisors (Mike Searle) Micah has (he is involved in a curious joint Oxford-Virginia Tech project), whose field area was really in Tibet but was along as additional geologic support and myself.
At the start, fog delayed our flight out of Kathmandu on the way to Lukla, first fog at Kathmandu and then in Lukla. When it finally cleared, we lost in the process to get the best flights and ended up catching the last flight to Lukla that day, a real grocery cart of an airplane with a few broken eggs on the floor. It wasn't even the airline we had bought tickets on, Yeti Air (yes, that's really the company).
Great flight, though. A Twin Otter aircraft, typical around here, and I sat mountain-side on the way out, with great views of the Himalayas.
The landing in Lukla is exciting. The runway is uphill to shorten the landing and because it's also the only spot really to build a runway. It used to be shorter a few years ago, too, I guess, until they lengthened it a bit. You can see right into the cockpit and watch the pilots line it up and then just dive for it. The airport also serves as the main regional military base and so you hop out onto the tarmac in a barbed-wire enclosure with a bunch of Kalishnikov and AK-47 toting youths stomping around.
It was a great relief to leave Kathmandu and, as trite as it sounds, I felt the peace of the mountains immediately. No motorcycles, people aren't trying to sell you every damn thing under the sun as you walk by and it just felt so good to be on the way!
That peace was shortly broken when later that night when I began puking and visiting the bathroom rather often. Dawn broke on a rather dehydrated and bummed-out traveler. I had gone from loving it to hating it all in a rather quick turn-about. Welcome to Nepal!
I was finally holding water that next morning, and decided that I could hike to Namche Bazaar. Whoof! Naseau assailed me continuously that morning and I went back and forth from being really happy to be here, here in the Himalayas, trekking!, wow!, to wishing I would just die and what the hell was wrong with this place anyways? The afternoon turned into a purgatory, with the uphill slog to Namche Bazaar becoming some wheel I was tied to and could not ever find the end of. I had no energy, as last night's dinner was lost to me in the early morning and simply felt wasted. Whee! This is a Vacation!
Miscommunication left me stranded from my companions in the wrong bakery at Namche after dark and in a complete fog, both real and mental ("Did we say the first bakery? I thought we said the second bakery!"). Order was eventually restored and the porters were found, too (they also dragged behind, but for the simple reason of pacing themselves with all our heavy junk!).
Ah, the porters. Wow. We hired five porters in Lukla and also we had Dawa Sherpa with us, our trusty, barely English-speaking "guide." A good man, and despite the language thing. Much time over the next month was dedicated to determing the best combination of the limited words he knew to gain all sorts of complicated results, sometimes receiving something you were sure you didn't ask for, or chasing after him when you realized you had just somehow asked him to buy that yak ("snack? have snack?").
So, Lukla to Namche in one day (a six hour or so trek - - nothing is done in distances in the Khumbu, but rather as time). Usually it was done in two days, but we were a strong crew and it seemed reasonable. Even sick I managed, but it sure was a trial. It went down as the single-most worst day of the trek, and remained unsurpassed for the rest of the trip, although the time two days after was a close second, and the day we tried to get to Tibet a distant third, however that day was just long - - no trailside stops or bitter hatred of all things.
It was obvious I needed a day, and Dennis and Trish got hit with the bug that evening, too. Of heartier or luckier stuff, they recovered faster, though. I spent the next day at our lodge, wrestling with a bowl of porridge for three or four hours. I won and ate the damn thing, but I didn't get to cruise down into Namche proper and eat lots of sticky buns, yak steaks, pizza and pasteries. Namche has great bakeries, but I would have to wait three-and-a-half weeks for redemption. I got mine, though, in case you are worried this trip is just one trail of vomit, and ate the hell out of everything I could get my hands on when we next passed through. This story does get better!
But, for then it was a bit of a trial. One rest day in Namche and then a push to Deboche, a spot slightly beyond Tyangboche, a Buddhist monestary town with a big gompa (temple) surrounded by rhododendrons and simply stunning mountains. The idea of food still made me feel slightly sick, and so the calories were still not plentiful enough to make the day pass well. I scared some trekkers by stopping to lean on one knee, letting out my breakfast, wiping off my mouth and then cruising by them on the uphill. Just another day in the Khumbu. Even beat down I was still faster than most other trekkers on the trail. Seriously. People have the full trekking poles deployed and are crawling up hills at unbelievably slow rates, wearing full hard shells and sweaters, bottles and useless carabiners hanging off them ("danglers," we call them)looking miserable. I was not back up to speed and as fast as our crew, though, which left me again that day, resulting in me taking a "short-cut" up and over an unnescessary steep bit through the town of Khumjung. Very pretty, but it wiped me out for later in the day and once again arrived at the next lodge a complete mess.
It was there in Deboche I was able to kick-start my stomach again and return to the living. Anyone who has ever completely emptied their system can relate - - it's hard to get it all going again. Chicken broth and rice brought it all back, and another rest day later I was doing a hell of a lot better. During that rest day the crew hiked to the Ama Dablam base camp, a pleasant 1000-meter day for them. Those became typical in our itinerary, which makes for a good appetite and solid sleep that night!
Another night further up the trail in Dingboche and we had turned off the "punter's route" to Everest base camp and Kala Pattar. You would not believe the reduction in people. We were lucky to have Micah with us, who having been in the Khumbu many times before, knew what towns to avoid as pits of despair and dust, directing us to the ones nearby or shortly before where peace and quiet are to be found.
I can not stress enough what a goal Everest base camp and Kala Pattar, a 5000-meter plus hill near the base camp with good views of Everest, are to people. This route is trodden by so many people who maniacally race up this one route, worrying and fretting about altitude sickness, jostling, fighting and racing betwen towns with others to gain a spot at over-crowded lodges with grumpy lodge-owners, wallowing in the dust at limited, filthy campsites that their guide-book insists are the only ones, arriving at basecamp (where you can't see Everest from!), returning like they have climbed Everest itself and in general having a hell of a time.
The route we took after the "turn-off" in Dingboche was really unusual, and we have Micah to thank for it. Very few people and amazing heights on uncrowded peaks and passes were ours for quiet contemplation for almost the rest of the trip, with just one exception when we passed over the punter's route.
We arrived in the town of Chukkung one week after we left Kathmandu and settled in for a week of geologic research. This was the area Micah had focused on during his last few field seasons and wanted to continue the clarification, with us to be critical at each step, add our measurements and provide a little perspective.
Chukkung is great! The magnificent Lhotse-Nuptse wall, a 3000-meter plus monolith looms over the village, a testpiece of high altitude mountaineering that hides Everest, which is "just over the ridge" on the other side. The Lhotse-Nupste wall has repelled most attempts to climb it, with a party of Russians just last year putting up a signifigant route, but it remains one of the "unsolved problems" in the Himalayas. The jet stream rips at the summit ridge most days, and you can hear the dull roar of it and see the vast clouds of spindrift streaming off. It is a creepy presence to hear that sound, like the wall itself is speaking to you.
We went right up to base of the wall numerous times over the next week to collect samples and it was here I got my introduction to the truly wearing and mind-numbing monotony of the Himalayan rock glacier. We were not to start fully crossing them yet, but skirted the edges and cut across corners to reach outcrops. Later we would slog many an hour across them. More an endless gravel pile than what you might think of as a nice Alaskan glacier with happy seals and punters in boats, these are the deflated remains when a majority of the ice in your typical glacier goes away. The "trail" across winds up and down and up and down and up and down, weaving around glacial lakes where ice peaks through and the surface is frozen or around crevasses rimmed with more gravel. Never direct, and almost personally affronting after you nearly go in circles for the millionth time, never a straight path and always seemingly so far from your goal that is tantilizingly near. The entry to these things is always a steep drop-off gravel slope, the lateral morraine, and the other side is the acompanying lateral morraine, another incredibly steep wall that mocks you as the last bit before more solid trail. This is you are lucky enough to simply cross the glacier, perpendicular to its length, rather than walk the length of the beastly thing to arrive at the head of the glacier, for whatever nebulous goal you might be tryingt to achieve, such as the border of Tibet or some suicidal mountaineering testpiece.
Chukkung is at 4750 meters (15,580 feet) and the first night there I had my only issue with altitude, which was a series of frantic dreams, the content of which I don't remember, but were so busy and repetitious that they continuously woke me up. After that night I was fine, and none of us in the group were bothered a bit by the altitude the whole trip, aside from sucking air on the uphill sections above 5000 meters. It was outside Chukkung, on the hill Chukkung Ri, that I got to one of the highest points I got to over the entire trek at 5,500 meters (18,040 feet), the only other one being a peak called Pokalde (5806 meters, 19,043 feet), although I didn't summit the last 30 or so meters of that as it required a bit of 5.4 or so free climbing over nicely exposed bunch of loosely stacked books of schist in my super-clunky boots. Call me what you will, but I just didn't feel like it was worth that last bit of chossy, exposed climbing. So be it.
The day we went up Chukkung Ri was also the day I fell in the partly frozen glacial stream, an embarassing moment that no one let me forget the rest of the trip. Amusing for them but wet and cold for me. The rest of that day was damp feet and hiking in long underwear with a pair of frozen pants lashed on the outside of my pack (yes, they froze stiff as a board).
Anyways, a week in Chukkung. Great times, and the porters were psyched. One week paid rest in Chukkung, hanging out with other porters, eating dahl baht. Oh the dahl baht! Rice, with a lentil soup to pour over it, and bits of vegetable this and that on the side to mix in with it. We ate a lot of dahl bhat, too. Good stuff, and it keeps coming until you are full, all for one fixed price. The menus at each lodge are very similar, and after a month we were able to order without looking at the menu, although we would pore it over with the hope that something unusual or new might just turn up. It usually didn't. My favorite meal was a couple of fried eggs over chips (good old french fries) soaked in ketchup. A damn fine load of grease for your 7000-calorie-a-day lifestyle. Other favorites were momos: a variety of things folded into bite-size patches of dough and either fried or steamed. Fried rice or noodles was also a good standby. The occasional yak steak or buffalo bits to supplement it all and then some Mars bars or Snickers for desert. One night we got the kitchen to wrap a Mars bar in dough and fry it for us. Mmmm. Plenty of milk tea and "hot lemon" or "hot orange" (hot Tang, anyone?) to wash it down and you were good to go. Pancakes are a good option, too. It was here I regained my appetite and starting worrying people with the amount I was eating. Everyone in our group spent about $10 US on food, but I was averaging $15 or so. I never seem to get enough. Mmmm, food.
It was here in Chukkung that I had my first sip of liquour in over two years, too. The mountain Island Peak (Imja Tse, as it is sometimes called) is found near here, a 6000-plus meter peak that many come here to climb. A mostly "clip and jug" affair with fixed lines to the top, it offers a "mountaineering experience" (ahem) to a lot of people. We got to watch the education of a crowd of trekkers who were outfitted with full body harnesses by their trekking comany, given lots of great stuff to dangle off their belts and feel cool about, and then tied together to tromp through the dust of the courtyard and practice not kicking their crampons into each others calves. It was a good afternoon's entertainment for us. "Tibetian T.V.," as the crew that had been in Tibet called it (John, Micah and Laura). Anyways, there was a team of Russians (not the ones lashed together in the courtyard) who went and slogged up this trophy peak and upon returning were celebrating with a bottle of homemade plum brandy they had brought with them. They had been trying to communicate with John, Micah and myself all night, but seemed ill at ease until the bottle came out and they realized they could offer it to us as a simplified form of a communication. It seemed poor manners to refuse, so I had a sip. Clear as water and like eating a bouquet of flowers. The taste remained for an hour and it served to quiet my stomach right down, as it was freaking out a bit after something fried I ate. Micah commented that it was okay to drink above 4000 meters if you don't usually drink - - it somehow doesn't count . . .
Well, that is two weeks worth of accounts! Three hours in this computer shack in the Thamel of Kathmandu, with motorcycles, taxis and rickshaws whipping by ten or so feet away. Oh the horns. How I missed the constant beeping. Brakes, no, horn, yes. The only way to drive in Kathmandu!
I will continue with more stories tomorrow, and should be able to post pictures as well. The next two weeks we mostly camped and Dawa and the sherpas cooked for us. Sort of. And we tried to go to the border of Tibet, a laborious process that only Dennis and Micah completed after a 12-hour walk that got them back two hours after dark!
I'm back, all is well and I'll answer my emails soon!!
The weather our entire time in the Solu Khumbu was perfect, actually. Clear and crisp, no storms. This was good, because our itinerary included almost all the mountain passes between the major valleys, which would have been impassable with just one good snow. I apologize for the current lack of a map and the town names, peaks and passes will be tossed out like you had your brilliant topographic map of the Himalayas spread out before you, but you won't. With a little reaching out, courtesy of Google or whatever, you can no doubt pull up a second window with some map and follow along. I will add one soon for those who don't want to be bothered by finding such a thing (go ahead, be confused, if you want!).
I should start at the beginning, however, and take you with me through the journey. We were six: Micah Jessup, whose geology Ph.D. research project we were here to support, Laura Duncan, his girlfriend and a fellow geologist from Virginia Poly-Tech, Trish and Dennis Newell from New Mexico, Trish a biologist and Dennis a geology Ph.D. student from the University of New Mexico where I study (I know, I know - - when I'm there!!), John Cottle, a New Zealander who is starting a Ph.D. at Oxford with one of the same advisors (Mike Searle) Micah has (he is involved in a curious joint Oxford-Virginia Tech project), whose field area was really in Tibet but was along as additional geologic support and myself.
At the start, fog delayed our flight out of Kathmandu on the way to Lukla, first fog at Kathmandu and then in Lukla. When it finally cleared, we lost in the process to get the best flights and ended up catching the last flight to Lukla that day, a real grocery cart of an airplane with a few broken eggs on the floor. It wasn't even the airline we had bought tickets on, Yeti Air (yes, that's really the company).
Great flight, though. A Twin Otter aircraft, typical around here, and I sat mountain-side on the way out, with great views of the Himalayas.
The landing in Lukla is exciting. The runway is uphill to shorten the landing and because it's also the only spot really to build a runway. It used to be shorter a few years ago, too, I guess, until they lengthened it a bit. You can see right into the cockpit and watch the pilots line it up and then just dive for it. The airport also serves as the main regional military base and so you hop out onto the tarmac in a barbed-wire enclosure with a bunch of Kalishnikov and AK-47 toting youths stomping around.
It was a great relief to leave Kathmandu and, as trite as it sounds, I felt the peace of the mountains immediately. No motorcycles, people aren't trying to sell you every damn thing under the sun as you walk by and it just felt so good to be on the way!
That peace was shortly broken when later that night when I began puking and visiting the bathroom rather often. Dawn broke on a rather dehydrated and bummed-out traveler. I had gone from loving it to hating it all in a rather quick turn-about. Welcome to Nepal!
I was finally holding water that next morning, and decided that I could hike to Namche Bazaar. Whoof! Naseau assailed me continuously that morning and I went back and forth from being really happy to be here, here in the Himalayas, trekking!, wow!, to wishing I would just die and what the hell was wrong with this place anyways? The afternoon turned into a purgatory, with the uphill slog to Namche Bazaar becoming some wheel I was tied to and could not ever find the end of. I had no energy, as last night's dinner was lost to me in the early morning and simply felt wasted. Whee! This is a Vacation!
Miscommunication left me stranded from my companions in the wrong bakery at Namche after dark and in a complete fog, both real and mental ("Did we say the first bakery? I thought we said the second bakery!"). Order was eventually restored and the porters were found, too (they also dragged behind, but for the simple reason of pacing themselves with all our heavy junk!).
Ah, the porters. Wow. We hired five porters in Lukla and also we had Dawa Sherpa with us, our trusty, barely English-speaking "guide." A good man, and despite the language thing. Much time over the next month was dedicated to determing the best combination of the limited words he knew to gain all sorts of complicated results, sometimes receiving something you were sure you didn't ask for, or chasing after him when you realized you had just somehow asked him to buy that yak ("snack? have snack?").
So, Lukla to Namche in one day (a six hour or so trek - - nothing is done in distances in the Khumbu, but rather as time). Usually it was done in two days, but we were a strong crew and it seemed reasonable. Even sick I managed, but it sure was a trial. It went down as the single-most worst day of the trek, and remained unsurpassed for the rest of the trip, although the time two days after was a close second, and the day we tried to get to Tibet a distant third, however that day was just long - - no trailside stops or bitter hatred of all things.
It was obvious I needed a day, and Dennis and Trish got hit with the bug that evening, too. Of heartier or luckier stuff, they recovered faster, though. I spent the next day at our lodge, wrestling with a bowl of porridge for three or four hours. I won and ate the damn thing, but I didn't get to cruise down into Namche proper and eat lots of sticky buns, yak steaks, pizza and pasteries. Namche has great bakeries, but I would have to wait three-and-a-half weeks for redemption. I got mine, though, in case you are worried this trip is just one trail of vomit, and ate the hell out of everything I could get my hands on when we next passed through. This story does get better!
But, for then it was a bit of a trial. One rest day in Namche and then a push to Deboche, a spot slightly beyond Tyangboche, a Buddhist monestary town with a big gompa (temple) surrounded by rhododendrons and simply stunning mountains. The idea of food still made me feel slightly sick, and so the calories were still not plentiful enough to make the day pass well. I scared some trekkers by stopping to lean on one knee, letting out my breakfast, wiping off my mouth and then cruising by them on the uphill. Just another day in the Khumbu. Even beat down I was still faster than most other trekkers on the trail. Seriously. People have the full trekking poles deployed and are crawling up hills at unbelievably slow rates, wearing full hard shells and sweaters, bottles and useless carabiners hanging off them ("danglers," we call them)looking miserable. I was not back up to speed and as fast as our crew, though, which left me again that day, resulting in me taking a "short-cut" up and over an unnescessary steep bit through the town of Khumjung. Very pretty, but it wiped me out for later in the day and once again arrived at the next lodge a complete mess.
It was there in Deboche I was able to kick-start my stomach again and return to the living. Anyone who has ever completely emptied their system can relate - - it's hard to get it all going again. Chicken broth and rice brought it all back, and another rest day later I was doing a hell of a lot better. During that rest day the crew hiked to the Ama Dablam base camp, a pleasant 1000-meter day for them. Those became typical in our itinerary, which makes for a good appetite and solid sleep that night!
Another night further up the trail in Dingboche and we had turned off the "punter's route" to Everest base camp and Kala Pattar. You would not believe the reduction in people. We were lucky to have Micah with us, who having been in the Khumbu many times before, knew what towns to avoid as pits of despair and dust, directing us to the ones nearby or shortly before where peace and quiet are to be found.
I can not stress enough what a goal Everest base camp and Kala Pattar, a 5000-meter plus hill near the base camp with good views of Everest, are to people. This route is trodden by so many people who maniacally race up this one route, worrying and fretting about altitude sickness, jostling, fighting and racing betwen towns with others to gain a spot at over-crowded lodges with grumpy lodge-owners, wallowing in the dust at limited, filthy campsites that their guide-book insists are the only ones, arriving at basecamp (where you can't see Everest from!), returning like they have climbed Everest itself and in general having a hell of a time.
The route we took after the "turn-off" in Dingboche was really unusual, and we have Micah to thank for it. Very few people and amazing heights on uncrowded peaks and passes were ours for quiet contemplation for almost the rest of the trip, with just one exception when we passed over the punter's route.
We arrived in the town of Chukkung one week after we left Kathmandu and settled in for a week of geologic research. This was the area Micah had focused on during his last few field seasons and wanted to continue the clarification, with us to be critical at each step, add our measurements and provide a little perspective.
Chukkung is great! The magnificent Lhotse-Nuptse wall, a 3000-meter plus monolith looms over the village, a testpiece of high altitude mountaineering that hides Everest, which is "just over the ridge" on the other side. The Lhotse-Nupste wall has repelled most attempts to climb it, with a party of Russians just last year putting up a signifigant route, but it remains one of the "unsolved problems" in the Himalayas. The jet stream rips at the summit ridge most days, and you can hear the dull roar of it and see the vast clouds of spindrift streaming off. It is a creepy presence to hear that sound, like the wall itself is speaking to you.
We went right up to base of the wall numerous times over the next week to collect samples and it was here I got my introduction to the truly wearing and mind-numbing monotony of the Himalayan rock glacier. We were not to start fully crossing them yet, but skirted the edges and cut across corners to reach outcrops. Later we would slog many an hour across them. More an endless gravel pile than what you might think of as a nice Alaskan glacier with happy seals and punters in boats, these are the deflated remains when a majority of the ice in your typical glacier goes away. The "trail" across winds up and down and up and down and up and down, weaving around glacial lakes where ice peaks through and the surface is frozen or around crevasses rimmed with more gravel. Never direct, and almost personally affronting after you nearly go in circles for the millionth time, never a straight path and always seemingly so far from your goal that is tantilizingly near. The entry to these things is always a steep drop-off gravel slope, the lateral morraine, and the other side is the acompanying lateral morraine, another incredibly steep wall that mocks you as the last bit before more solid trail. This is you are lucky enough to simply cross the glacier, perpendicular to its length, rather than walk the length of the beastly thing to arrive at the head of the glacier, for whatever nebulous goal you might be tryingt to achieve, such as the border of Tibet or some suicidal mountaineering testpiece.
Chukkung is at 4750 meters (15,580 feet) and the first night there I had my only issue with altitude, which was a series of frantic dreams, the content of which I don't remember, but were so busy and repetitious that they continuously woke me up. After that night I was fine, and none of us in the group were bothered a bit by the altitude the whole trip, aside from sucking air on the uphill sections above 5000 meters. It was outside Chukkung, on the hill Chukkung Ri, that I got to one of the highest points I got to over the entire trek at 5,500 meters (18,040 feet), the only other one being a peak called Pokalde (5806 meters, 19,043 feet), although I didn't summit the last 30 or so meters of that as it required a bit of 5.4 or so free climbing over nicely exposed bunch of loosely stacked books of schist in my super-clunky boots. Call me what you will, but I just didn't feel like it was worth that last bit of chossy, exposed climbing. So be it.
The day we went up Chukkung Ri was also the day I fell in the partly frozen glacial stream, an embarassing moment that no one let me forget the rest of the trip. Amusing for them but wet and cold for me. The rest of that day was damp feet and hiking in long underwear with a pair of frozen pants lashed on the outside of my pack (yes, they froze stiff as a board).
Anyways, a week in Chukkung. Great times, and the porters were psyched. One week paid rest in Chukkung, hanging out with other porters, eating dahl baht. Oh the dahl baht! Rice, with a lentil soup to pour over it, and bits of vegetable this and that on the side to mix in with it. We ate a lot of dahl bhat, too. Good stuff, and it keeps coming until you are full, all for one fixed price. The menus at each lodge are very similar, and after a month we were able to order without looking at the menu, although we would pore it over with the hope that something unusual or new might just turn up. It usually didn't. My favorite meal was a couple of fried eggs over chips (good old french fries) soaked in ketchup. A damn fine load of grease for your 7000-calorie-a-day lifestyle. Other favorites were momos: a variety of things folded into bite-size patches of dough and either fried or steamed. Fried rice or noodles was also a good standby. The occasional yak steak or buffalo bits to supplement it all and then some Mars bars or Snickers for desert. One night we got the kitchen to wrap a Mars bar in dough and fry it for us. Mmmm. Plenty of milk tea and "hot lemon" or "hot orange" (hot Tang, anyone?) to wash it down and you were good to go. Pancakes are a good option, too. It was here I regained my appetite and starting worrying people with the amount I was eating. Everyone in our group spent about $10 US on food, but I was averaging $15 or so. I never seem to get enough. Mmmm, food.
It was here in Chukkung that I had my first sip of liquour in over two years, too. The mountain Island Peak (Imja Tse, as it is sometimes called) is found near here, a 6000-plus meter peak that many come here to climb. A mostly "clip and jug" affair with fixed lines to the top, it offers a "mountaineering experience" (ahem) to a lot of people. We got to watch the education of a crowd of trekkers who were outfitted with full body harnesses by their trekking comany, given lots of great stuff to dangle off their belts and feel cool about, and then tied together to tromp through the dust of the courtyard and practice not kicking their crampons into each others calves. It was a good afternoon's entertainment for us. "Tibetian T.V.," as the crew that had been in Tibet called it (John, Micah and Laura). Anyways, there was a team of Russians (not the ones lashed together in the courtyard) who went and slogged up this trophy peak and upon returning were celebrating with a bottle of homemade plum brandy they had brought with them. They had been trying to communicate with John, Micah and myself all night, but seemed ill at ease until the bottle came out and they realized they could offer it to us as a simplified form of a communication. It seemed poor manners to refuse, so I had a sip. Clear as water and like eating a bouquet of flowers. The taste remained for an hour and it served to quiet my stomach right down, as it was freaking out a bit after something fried I ate. Micah commented that it was okay to drink above 4000 meters if you don't usually drink - - it somehow doesn't count . . .
Well, that is two weeks worth of accounts! Three hours in this computer shack in the Thamel of Kathmandu, with motorcycles, taxis and rickshaws whipping by ten or so feet away. Oh the horns. How I missed the constant beeping. Brakes, no, horn, yes. The only way to drive in Kathmandu!
I will continue with more stories tomorrow, and should be able to post pictures as well. The next two weeks we mostly camped and Dawa and the sherpas cooked for us. Sort of. And we tried to go to the border of Tibet, a laborious process that only Dennis and Micah completed after a 12-hour walk that got them back two hours after dark!
I'm back, all is well and I'll answer my emails soon!!
posted by JAshby at 1:50 AM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home