THE NEPALI FLAT
Gordon Alexander
www.gordonalexander.org
“A smooth, captivating and enjoyable read.. Add this to your bookshelf and you will not regret it! 4/4 Stars”. – Onlinebookclub.org
Unless otherwise stated, photography by Gordon Alexander.
Additional photography by Subash Gurung and Nima Sherpa
Map Illustration © Tara Sola Y Cirera
Additional illustrations © Soham Gangopadhyay
Text copyright © Gordon Alexander, 2016
Photographs copyright © Gordon Alexander, 2016
The right of Gordon Alexander to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act (1988).
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the copyright owner.
‘Stop worrying about the potholes in the road and celebrate the journey.’
Fitzhugh Mullan
A special thanks to…
Clinton and Catherine Fearon for giving me permission to reproduce the lyrics of Clinton’s song Feelin’ The Same. www.clintonfearon.com
Lonely Planet, for the excellent guidance and allowing me to use their work. Reproduced with permission from Lonely Planet. © 2009 Lonely Planet – Trekking in the Nepal Himalaya [9th Edition].
Hayloft Publishing, for allowing me to reproduce quotes from Ruth Hanson’s excellent biography of Maurice Wilson: A Yorkshireman on Everest.
Soham Gangopadhyay and openclipart.org for illustrations.
Wikipedia, for all the facts and figures they make it so easy to come by.
A holy man permits me to photograph him on my first day in Kathmandu...
Contents
Chapter One: Arriving In Kathmandu
Chapter Two: Having A Wander
Chapter Three: Hiring A Guide
Chapter Four: The Journey Begins
Chapter Five: Let The Trek Begin
Chapter Six: Shivalaya To Bhandar
Chapter Seven: Bhandar To Sete And Over The Lamjura Pass
Chapter Eight: Glimpsing Everest And Getting Sick
Chapter Nine: Joining The Khumbu Highway
Chapter Ten: The Path To Namche Bazaar
Chapter Eleven: Acclimatising In Namche
Chapter Twelve: Into The Mountains
Chapter Thirteen: Attempting The Renjo La Pass
Chapter Fourteen: Gokyo And Traversing The Ngozumba Glacier
Chapter Fifteen: Tackling The Cho La Pass
Chapter Sixteen: To Gorak Shep And A Change Of Plans
Chapter Seventeen: Everest Base Camp
Chapter Eighteen: Downhill
Chapter Nineteen: Lukla
Chapter Twenty: From Trekker To Tourist
Chapter Twenty-One: Summing Up
Chapter One
Arriving in Kathmandu
They say that humans are made up of 60% water. Well for a Scotsman named Andy, who was sitting next to me on the flight from Kuala Lumpur to Kathmandu, that may be a little on the light side. About halfway through the flight, I looked over to see him, in the aisle seat with no one in between us, begin to flow (there is just no other word for it) in a downward motion towards the floor. I was reading Lonely Planet: Trekking in the Nepal Himalaya, but I closed the book and put it aside, for there was a far more interesting spectacle unfolding right next to me.
The flow was a little slow at first, but then accelerated after reaching the point of no return - a little above the hip region - and within seconds Andy’s whole body was on the floor of the plane. The only thing preventing him from going further was the seat-belt, which was now secured around his neck.
I better do something, I thought.
I nudged him awake, and he looked around, utterly confused.
‘Oh Jesus not again!’ he cried out loud. ‘I’ve got to stop falling asleep with my seatbelt on.’
‘I think that’s exactly what you’re supposed to do,’ I countered.
‘Aye, but you won’t end up choking yourself.’
His facts were irrefutable, so I opened my book once again, smiling as I heard his seatbelt un-click. Moments later I glanced over and realised that the human waterfall was in full flow once again. I gained some kind of guilty pleasure in watching this, like picking your nose at a set of traffic lights; because let us be fair, travelling is wonderful, but flying is about as boring as bat shit.
We were sitting in the first row of economy, with only a curtain separating us and business class. As the flow progressed, Andy’s feet ended up in the front cabin, followed by his legs. He slipped entirely off the chair without even flinching, his lower body now in business class, with the rest of him in the aisle in economy. I let it go. He could no longer harm himself.
‘Sir, sir! You can’t do this!’ hissed the air hostess once she realised what had happened. She scurried off towards the back of the plane, with Andy still out for the count, and came back with a glass of water. ‘Wake up, wake up and drink!’ she pleaded further.
‘Oh not again!’ Shouted Andy once again, this time loud enough to disturb people a few rows back. ‘How long since I almost strangled myself?’
‘That was literally about three minutes ago.’
‘She’s trying to give me water, look. She thinks because I’m Scottish I must be drunk.’
If it’s any consolation to her, I thought that too.
*
This was my first time in Nepal. I had been planning to come here to trek in the Himalayas for almost a decade, but life sometimes gets in the way of living. The opportunity finally presented itself again and this time I seized it with both hands.
I arrived in Kathmandu on the last day of February, 2014. I arrived in a different world. We wandered like sheep through an old, tired-looking red brick building and it immediately became obvious who had been here before and who hadn’t. The experienced few had printed off their visa documents, filled them out, had two passport photos ready and bee-lined for the two immigration officials waiting to process the entire flight.
I sensed a shit-fight, so I quickly filled out my visa application form, before fumbling in my bag for the passport photos that I thought I might need. They must be in here somewhere, I thought, although I was fast approaching the last possible hiding place.
‘Do you want these in a little envelope so you don’t lose them?’ I remember my girlfriend at the time, Jo, asking me before I left.
‘Nah, they’ll be alright just flapping around loose in this book,’ I’d said, or something ridiculously stupid like that. Well they were lost. Of course, she was right.
There was a little Nepali guy wandering around with an ancient camera, offering poor souls such as myself the opportunity to have their passport-sized photos taken. For $5 US, he could make it happen.
‘I need photos, but I only have Australian dollars,’ I said, immediately and naturally dumbing down my accent so that he could properly understand me.
‘No problem, sah, just change money over there,’ he said.
I wandered over to the only currency exchange place in the terminal and just kind of stood there and waited in front of an empty desk.
‘We’re closed!’ boomed a voice from somewhere that I couldn’t see. That was the end of that. I spied a solitary ATM a little way down. I skipped off towards it, but was dejected as I read the words ‘OUT OF SERVICE’ sticky-taped across the screen. I sighed and headed back to my little photographer mate.
‘Sorry man, that place is closed and the ATM is out of service.’
‘No probl
em, you got little money?’
‘I only have fifty dollar notes,’ I said while staring sheepishly at the floor.
The man looked at me with pity. He probably guessed this was the first time I had travelled anywhere. In my defence, I had not been to an airport without 24hr currency exchange and/or a working ATM; and when I’d asked the exchange man in Kuala Lumpur if he had Nepali money, he just laughed without even dignifying my enquiry with a response.
‘No problem I fix,’ he said while ushering me into his little photo booth. He snapped my tired-looking face. ‘Get in queue.’
The queue was huge. Every single person on the plane was ahead of me and the line was not moving. I saw Andy ahead at the front and he was trying to get my attention. He was frantically waving at me to join him, but I made a gesture that said I’m still waiting for my passport photos, holding an imaginary camera up to my face and clicking the shutter button. He gave me a strange look and then turned back around. It was the half British part of me. I was just too good at queuing. All of a sudden the little camera man forcefully grabbed my arm and to my horror began to drag me to the immigration officer.
‘You pay him visa,’ he said.
‘Australian dollars no problem?’ I asked.
‘No problem.’
The first mistake I’d made was to book the trip for 32 days instead of 30. The difference in visa price ended up being $100 US instead of $30. At that moment though, I really didn’t give a shit. I gave the immigration officer $150 AU and he gave me change in American dollars. I gave the photographer $5, and then he reached into my hand and grabbed another $5 note and held it, still in my grasp, while making eye contact with me, as if asking for permission to take it. I nodded and he helped himself.
‘You a very lucky mans,’ he said. ‘Many people in line and I get you straight to front.’
I thanked the man before stepping through to a second processing person, whose sole job, as far as I could tell, was to make sure his colleague before him had done his job, and to make the whole process half as efficient. I could feel 200 pairs of eyes boring into the back of my skull, but quite frankly I didn’t really care. The whole process had taken well over an hour, even after leap-frogging everyone. But when I made my way through to baggage claim the bags still were not on the carrousel.
‘Welcome to Kathmandu,’ said Andy, who was leaning up against a pillar with a fed-up look on his face.
‘It’s not so bad, you just gotta bribe the photographer.’
The carrousel whirred to life. It sounded like an airplane was taking off inside the terminal building. As luck would have it, my bag was the second one out. I grabbed it and went to put it through the baggage scanner, but the customs official scolded me in a language I didn’t understand. Disgust was oozing through his skin, and then he softened a little and waved me through. I sucked the part of my face between my lips and chin into my mouth while widening my eyes, as if to say, what did I do to deserve that?
I had arranged an airport pickup through the hotel as I wanted as little hassle as possible, and sure enough a big, burly looking Nepali man with a huge moustache was there, holding up a sign reading ‘Mr. Alex’. It must be me.
‘Hotel Friend’s Home?’ I asked him and he nodded and pointed towards his car. I jumped in and went to fasten my seatbelt, but I felt his hand on my arm, preventing me.
‘No need seatbelt, sah,’ he said. I think I had offended him.
‘Ok, you must be good driver.’
‘Yes,’ was his only response.
It was after midnight now and very dark. Kathmandu lacked streetlights. We cruised past a gigantic looking showground with rides and fluorescent lights everywhere. What the hell is going on?
‘This is Lord Shiva festival,’ said the taxi man, as if reading my mind. ‘Only day of the year that smoking the hashish is legal. Maybe you come one day too late.’
‘Maybe,’ I answered, shocked that his English was so good. He hooned around a group of stoned adolescents walking on the road, beeping his horn furiously. The roads were pretty empty, it was approaching 1am after all. But the drivers still found a way to make it chaotic. They beeped, throwing their headlights into high beam to alert oncoming traffic of their existence – the only real outcome, however, was to blind anyone coming the opposite way. He shot round a blind bend and successfully negotiated a pair of cows trotting down the middle of the road. Where the hell was I? I’d travelled Southeast Asia fairly extensively, as well as many places in the Middle East, but this was just something else entirely. It was poorer, it was crazier. It was better! I was in love.
In the absence of traffic lights he turned in front of oncoming traffic and just expected them to stop or slow down. They did. I had jumped into the taxi a tired man, but now the adrenalin was pumping and I was thrilled.
He pulled into a narrow alley, barely wide enough for the taxi, and floored it down to a dead-end. He switched off the engine, turned to me and smiled. I looked out the window and read the sign, ‘Hotel Friends Home’. Well we were here. I had no idea where here was, but we were there nonetheless. I paid the man the $10 US that the hotel advised me to pay while I was still in Australia, and was checked in by perhaps the politest man in the history of mankind. I’d booked this place mainly because of websites such as Trip Advisor, which unanimously ranked it the best hotel in Thamel, Kathmandu’s lively tourist district.
‘I will carry your bag upstairs, sir,’ he told me after all the formalities were out of the way.
‘That’s ok, mate,’ I answered him. ‘I need the exercise, I’ll carry it.’
He gave me a look that cried sorrowfulness, picked my bag up and looked at me with puppy-dog eyes, as if asking permission to take it, just as the photographer at the airport had done with his bribe not more than two hours before. I smiled and gave him the smallest of nods. He returned my smile three-fold, and within two seconds he was up the stairs and out of sight, while I tried my hardest not to be out of breath at this most mediocre of tasks.
I like tipping people in the poor places of the world that I visit. The gratefulness and smiles that I receive make it all worthwhile. I knew I didn’t have any Nepali currency and that the smallest note I had to give this man was $5 US for carrying my bag upstairs; so once he had shown me the room, which was immaculate, comfortable, and exactly like the pictures on the internet, I held out the note for him. He bowed his head and thanked me, but left without taking the money. I don’t know why. Perhaps he was embarrassed to take so much money for such a simple task. Perhaps he carried the bag out of the kindness of his own heart, and it wasn’t in fact in his job description. I stared at the back of the door in amazement. I turned and did a bad impression of the Fosbury Flop right onto the bed, which was so hard that it seemed as though the designers had taken their inspiration from a slab of cement. It literally knocked the wind out of me and I felt like I’d been hit by a falling tree.
‘What the f…’ I began to say, but never got to finish the sentence as I was already fast asleep.
Chapter Two
Having a wander
I awoke with golden sunshine streaming in through an unclosed slit in the curtains. I had a blanket over me, but was horrified to find that I was soaking wet (It was sweat. I know, you thought I’d pissed myself!). I had set the air conditioner on the coldest setting when I’d gone to sleep, but now an eerie silence filled the room. I fumbled around for the remote control, found it, then pressed the on/off button repeatedly but the damn thing was dead.
I went to switch on my lamp. It was dead. TV – dead. I had no power in my room. I was as groggy as could be and in no mood to move, so I went and opened my window and collapsed back onto my bed. I drifted in and out of consciousness for a while, before being brought back to reality by two short, sharp beeps, announcing the air conditioner coming back on and the end to my first Kathmandu power cut.
*
I had come to Nepal to trek the Himalayas, but more specifically to undertake the
challenging ‘Three Passes Trek’, as it has become known. I had a whole month, so I wanted to ‘walk’ into the mountains through the foothills of the Himalaya, starting at a small town called Jiri, a day’s bus ride from Kathmandu. Many trekkers now fly directly into the mountains to a place called Lukla at an altitude of 2860m (9380ft), landing on a short, steep runway carved into the face of a mountain. Having done a bit of research into acute mountain sickness (AMS) and the type of fitness these three passes would require of me, I decided that walking in from Jiri was the best idea. The seven-day trek to Lukla would take me up and down, up and down, all day, every day. Climbing up ridges before dropping down into the next valley, and then repeating.
It didn’t sound like the most fun in the world, but it was necessary. In the course of seven days, I would ascend to a maximum altitude of 3530m (11581ft) over the Lamjura Pass (a good 1300m higher than Australia’s highest mountain, Mount Kosciuszko), which would get the altitude acclimatisation ball rolling. It was still some way short of my highest intended point of the trek, the Kongma La Pass at 5535m (18160ft). But anyway, I’m jumping the gun. First I had to find some poor soul to guide me there, and have someone agree to carry my bag for me.
I’d decided to wing it, so I’d organised absolutely nothing before leaving Australia with the exception of the room in Kathmandu for two nights; my rationale being that a huge part of this poor country’s economy was based on tourism, so there would be plenty of people willing to take me. I was getting a little excited lying in bed and thinking about what the new day might hold, so I leapt up, showered, dressed and left my room. I bounded down the stairs with the enthusiasm of a man on a mission.
The same man was at reception and he greeted me with an even bigger smile than the night before.
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