‘C … c … cold,’ he stuttered. Tashi saw that his lips were already blue.
The dragon was two-thirds deflated. Air was hissing out of a small pinhole; there was barely enough pressure to support the boy’s weight. Waves were cresting over his head. He was swallowing water, beginning to choke.
Tashi half pushed the inflatable toy, half towed it towards the shore. The wind was against her now, making it quite a struggle, but she kicked out hard with her legs as the boy cried for his mother.
Five metres from safety the plastic dragon finally sank.
‘Put your hands on my shoulders,’ Tashi told the boy.
They got to the shore, but the spot was not an easy place to exit the lake. There was a small embankment and the waves were lapping aggressively against it. After a few false starts the boy was dragged awkwardly up the bank by the other children. Tashi reached for her father and got a hand out.
A woman ran down from the village, screaming for her son. When she saw that he was safe she wrapped him in her shawl and carried him away without so much as a word of thanks to Tashi.
‘There’s gratitude!’ her father said.
Tashi shivered. The wind was biting now.
‘Dry yourself with the fleece,’ her father told her. Tashi dried herself as best as she could then slipped on her clothes.
Tashi’s father put his arm around her shoulders.
‘Come on. We need to get you back to the hostel.’
Tashi pulled away, turning back to the lake.
‘And the vision?’ she asked. ‘We’ve been here three days and nothing’s happened.’
Her father sighed. They stood side by side, looking out across the wind-tossed waves of the lake. The storm had intensified, a brooding mass of cloud was now hanging low over the water. Rain was falling on the far side of the lake.
‘Maybe it was too much to ask,’ he said sadly. ‘Perhaps we are not worthy.’
Tashi screwed up her eyes, trying to find a shape amongst the clouds, anything out of the ordinary. Then she tried the same trick on the water, blurring her vision so that the reflected clouds became distorted.
Nothing.
Tashi felt the cold biting hard. She needed to get warm soon. Then she hesitated. She saw something … an item of clothing was bobbing up and down in the choppy waves. It was the boy’s T-shirt. As the other children had pulled him out of the water it must have been ripped off his back. Now the garment was floating in the lake, suspended just beneath the surface, the printed front facing upwards. The image was a graphic representation of a mountain, beneath it the caption:
EVEREST 8848
The effect was mesmerising. Magnified by refraction, the movement of the crystal clear water made it seem like the mountain on the T-shirt was rippling, dancing. At that moment a blaze of sunlight suddenly burst through the storm clouds, a single ray painting the garment with brilliant light.
Tashi turned to her father. Her eyes were shining, the cold forgotten.
‘That’s it,’ she said. ‘That’s our sign.’
Tashi and her father rushed back to their lodging house, keen to tell their fellow pilgrims about the vision. In return they got a lot of information, including advice from a man who had been on a three-month pilgrimage to the Rongbuk monastery at the very foot of Everest.
‘There is a community of Tibetans working at Everest Base Camp,’ the pilgrim told them. ‘They run the yak transport taking the expedition equipment up to the mountain.’
Tashi smiled at her father. Running yaks was second nature to them.
‘Is there plenty of work?’ Tashi asked. ‘Do you think we would get an opportunity there?’
‘There are new people arriving every year,’ the man said. ‘But the work is so hard that many quit. The journey up the glacier takes three or four days and goes to the very limit of what the yaks can manage.’
‘My cousin tried it one year,’ another pilgrim said. ‘He lasted three weeks and ended up losing fingers to frostbite.’
‘It’s cold up there,’ the first man nodded, shuddering with the memory. ‘Cold like you cannot imagine.’
Tashi felt a tingle of excitement. Working at Everest Base Camp sounded exotic and challenging.
‘There is no proper trail,’ the man warned. ‘Much of the journey is on ice. Yaks are lost almost every day, falling in crevasses, dying of exhaustion.’
‘What about the money?’ Tashi’s father asked. ‘Is the pay good?’
‘I believe so,’ the man replied. ‘Most of the teams up there are Westerners. They pay a bonus if their stuff arrives safely.’
His words fired off strange emotions in Tashi. To work at Base Camp would mean contact with foreigners. Tashi had never spoken to anyone from outside of Tibet or China. She had seen the occasional tourist group, trundling at speed across the plateau in their minibuses and Toyota 4x4s.
But to actually speak with one … It was an outrageous and curious thought.
Tashi and her father arrived home two days later, fired with determination to follow up on the vision. Tashi had feared her mother might be against the idea. Going to work at Everest Base Camp would immerse them in the wildest and coldest region of Tibet, living at an altitude of almost six thousand metres. But she was enthusiastic from the start:
‘The sooner the better,’ her mother exclaimed. ‘We need to get out of this town, out of this situation.’
Best of all, Tashi’s father had a friend who could help them to make some contacts. His name was Tenzin, a driver with a road construction team. He was working on a highway project just twenty miles from Everest Base Camp. He promised to put out feelers to see if the family could find work.
Three weeks later he called round to share his news.
‘I spoke to my friends,’ he told Tashi and her parents. ‘And they’ve agreed to help you.’
Tashi beamed at her father. Tibetan solidarity had come good just as she had hoped. The plan was coming together.
‘There are markets where you can buy yaks,’ Tenzin told them. ‘You’ll have to pay for forged papers as well.’
‘No problem,’ Tashi’s father agreed.
‘It can be deadly up there,’ Tenzin warned. ‘Three yak drivers have been killed by avalanche in the last couple of years.’
Tashi’s father made contact with a local fixer, a man who was known to help Tibetans go secretly into exile in India and Nepal. The man had a four-wheel-drive truck and an encyclopaedic knowledge of the lonely back roads and tracks which would avoid police checkpoints.
‘You understand that you cannot come back,’ the fixer said. ‘The authorities will imprison you for years if you show your faces in this town again.’
‘We’ve thought it through,’ Tashi’s father said. ‘Living here under the Chinese is the same as a prison sentence anyway.’
A sum was agreed. The family tent was retrieved from the storeroom at the market.
Five days later, on the next moonless night, Tashi and her family were spirited away from the mining town. Their 3 a.m. departure was not noticed.
By the time they were missed, they would be hundreds of kilometres away, their disappearance written off as another Tibetan family gone into exile, never to return.
Tashi watched the fading lights of the mining town through the back window of the truck. She made a promise to herself. Whatever happened she would never be a slave again.
For the first time in a year she felt free.
Thirty hours later the clandestine journey was over. The truck revved up the final steep mountain road and the family got their first view of their destination.
Tashi’s father was the first out of the cab. He jumped down and she heard him give a quiet exclamation of delight.
‘What a place!’
Tashi climbed down to join him, feeling a shudder of e
xcitement run through her body.
The scene in front of her was even more impressive than she had imagined. In her mind she had pictured that Base Camp might be a couple of dozen tents and an equal number of yaks.
Now she saw so many tents she could hardly count them, hundreds upon hundreds of domes, dotted across the valley in a riot of vivid yellows, reds and greens. Climbers were hard at work amongst their temporary homes, sorting out piles of climbing equipment, coiling endless kilometres of ropes. On the grazing area, next to a collection of Tibetan nomads’ tents, was a small army of yaks.
‘It’s like a city,’ Tashi said in wonder.
‘So many people want to climb this mountain?’ Tashi’s mother asked in amazement.
To the left of the expedition area a spectacular monastery hugged the valley walls.
‘The Rongbuk. One of the most ancient religious centres in Tibet,’ her father said with satisfaction. ‘Later we will go and pray there.’
They unloaded their possessions and Tashi’s father announced he would go off to find the contact who had promised to help them.
Tashi and her mother took the opportunity to wander around the camp, enjoying the chaos of the scene, eavesdropping on more foreign languages than they could have imagined existed.
‘It’s the start of the season,’ Tashi realised as they saw stack after stack of newly arrived supplies. ‘We’ve arrived at exactly the right moment.’
Above all there was a delicious energy to the scene. A sense of purpose in the way the climbers moved amongst the tents, from the laughter and the chat a feeling of community which was entirely unexpected.
‘I think we’re going to like this place,’ her mother said.
‘Like it?’ Tashi smiled. ‘We’re going to love it!’
Tashi’s father had found the chief yak herder, a wise-looking old nomad without a single tooth in his head. He welcomed them all warmly and showed them to a vacant patch of ground where they could pitch their tent. There wasn’t much grazing, but it was flat and dry.
Tashi spotted a circular area where the rocks had been cleared. A tent had been pitched in the same place quite recently.
‘What happened to the last people who stayed here?’ Tashi asked.
‘Oh,’ the chief replied. ‘There was a storm and the man got lost. He was out on the glacier for two days in this blizzard and we couldn’t find him … ’
He didn’t need to say more. Two days lost on the glacier was a death sentence for sure.
The chief’s tale was a sombre reminder of the risks the family would face but Tashi soon forgot about the story as they put up the family tent. It was a nostalgic experience for them. Every wooden strut felt like an old friend. Every piece of fabric was familiar to the touch.
‘Can I give you some help?’ said a voice.
Tashi whipped round. Her mother gasped.
A figure was standing before them, dressed in a Western climber’s fleece and trekking trousers. He was burned by the sun, a little taller and stronger than before.
‘Karma?’ Tashi’s heart pounded in her chest. She thought for a moment that she might be seeing a ghost.
Then he smiled and she knew for sure.
‘Karma!’
Tashi ran to her brother and wrapped her arms around him. Next moment her parents were joining in, the four of them holding each other tight in a joyful reunion that had the people around them laughing with pleasure.
‘I prayed so hard,’ Karma said. ‘I never doubted that you would come.’
‘Let’s finish the tent,’ their father said, finally. ‘Then we can share our news.’
Karma and Tashi were in heaven, running around happily, helping to erect their family home.
Two neighbours came to welcome them, cheerful nomad women bearing gifts of barley and meat.
The family ate a good meal together that night as Karma told his story.
‘I had a hard time the first winter,’ he told them. ‘I was working in an illegal mine in the mountains of the East. I injured my hand and got sacked with no pay.’
Tashi reached for Karma’s hand and saw the jagged scar stretching right across the back of it.
‘Then I heard about this work helping out with the yaks at Base Camp and thought it sounded all right. I haven’t been able to buy my own animals but it’s really OK up here.’
‘We’ve got the money for three yaks,’ their father said. ‘Is there enough work?’
‘Definitely,’ Karma replied. ‘More and more expeditions come every year.’
After the meal the family went to pray at the Rongbuk monastery.
Tashi kneeled next to Karma, filled with pure joy to have her younger brother back by her side. The sign at the lake had been more than just a pointer to a new future, she realised now; it had provided the pathway to reunite the family.
That night, safe in the tent with the people she loved around her, Tashi felt she had been truly blessed.
Word went out. The family were in the market for pack animals. Plenty of offers came in, all of them boasting of wonderful creatures in the peak of health. Closer inspection revealed the truth: the yaks for sale were ancient and sometimes lame. Tashi smiled every time she heard a trader singing the praises of an exhausted old beast.
Her family had spent their entire lives working with these animals. The idea that they could be conned into buying a dud was laughable.
Finally, some days later, they travelled to the monthly market at the town of Tingri. Nomads from all over the plateau came to this famous trading place and, sure enough, it wasn’t long before they had spotted three animals for sale.
‘It’s a bit more money than we expected,’ her father said after some negotiations. ‘But they’ll give us five years of service if we treat them right.’
A deal was struck and Tashi’s father handed over the cash. Tashi knew it was the last of the family savings. Everything would depend on these yaks.
If things didn’t work out here at Everest Base Camp there was only one last option in front of them: exile. Leaving Tibet for good. The very last thing that any of them wanted. They had to make this work.
The first days with their new yak team were filled with a thousand tasks. Getting to know the quirks of each animal was vital.
‘We’ll take them on a test trek,’ their father said.
They loaded a small weight on to each yak and took them on a ten-kilometre round trip up the glacier. The ice was starting to thaw with the spring melt and the trails were slippery and dangerous.
For Karma it was business as usual. He had worked on the glacier for more than a year, but Tashi only now began to appreciate just how tough the transport work was going to be for the beasts and themselves.
Her father was also on a steep learning curve.
‘There’s nothing to breathe,’ he complained.
He stopped frequently to rest, coughing hard and wheezing in the thin air. The altitude was more of a problem than Tashi had imagined. They were almost two thousand metres higher here than the height they had previously lived at.
‘It’s his lungs,’ Karma said. ‘I’m not sure he can handle it.’
Their father was grey in the face and wobbly on his feet by the time they got back from the test trek.
‘We only did a quarter of the trek up to the North Col camp,’ Karma said quietly to Tashi. ‘And it almost finished him.’
Tashi nodded sadly.
‘It’s going to be down to you and me,’ she said. ‘I don’t think Father’s going to be well enough to do the big treks.’
Karma agreed. He had already worked it out.
Tashi realised very quickly that she would have to speak English to be able to communicate with the Westerners. Karma already had a working knowledge from speaking with his clients but their parents were too old to begin to
learn a new language.
‘Textbooks,’ she told Karma. ‘English textbooks and tapes are what we need.’
The two youngsters seized every opportunity to speak English, borrowing some textbooks from another nomad family and studying every night. They would often work together until two or three o’clock in the morning, up to the point when their fingers were so frozen they could no longer turn the pages.
During the day Tashi would look for chances to chat with the Western climbers. Her natural confidence soon won her a bunch of friends and she learned the words which were vital for the family’s new job.
Knot, barrel, tent, blanket, string, rope, jacket, hat, boots, sleeping bag …
She wrote all the vocabulary down in a small notepad and kept it with her constantly so she could slip it out and practise.
Then, in the tent one evening, their father made a proud announcement.
‘We’ve got our first job,’ he said.
They had to report at 5 a.m. the next morning, to the tents belonging to a Czech expedition.
This was their big chance, Tashi knew, and they had to get it right. She was so excited, she could hardly sleep that night.
She could not know that death would haunt their first trip up the glacier.
Chapter 6
When they arrived at the Czech camp, Tashi thought there had been a mistake. The pile of gear was so high it looked like the expedition was off to war.
‘We’ll never get all that on the yaks,’ she told Karma.
‘There’s no choice,’ Karma said grimly. ‘That’s the job.’
Tashi was astonished at how much weight the poor yaks were forced to carry. The expedition had tons of gear and wanted to pay for as few animals as possible. Two forty-kilogram barrels was standard, one loaded on each side of the beast.
Then other things would be laden on top. Tables, camera tripods, stoves, all the gear that couldn’t fit into the barrels.
The creatures grunted and groaned as the weight was added to their backs. They were intelligent enough to understand that more kilos meant more pain. Tashi could see their legs shaking with the strain.
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