“It will work,” he said.
I dared to dream of Kathmandu. I could be there tonight, rather than facing three days’ trekking, discussing the same issues over and over again, reminding me of our collective failure.
“How do you know they can take me?” I asked.
The others listened in on the conversation, adding nothing. I didn’t feel too bad about jumping to the head of the queue for the space in Damien’s helicopter, nor did I feel they begrudged me my speaking out to claim it. I knew him best, and if the tables were turned, I felt sure that none of them would have turned down a chance of a helicopter flight out.
“It is my helicopter, so there will be space for you.”
“I’m not Belgian; I’m not part of your team.”
“It should be OK – don’t worry, it should be OK.”
Jeepers, I thought. Now I had time to reflect, it was not so easy a decision to make. Should I trek down with the others, or sit it out with Damien at Gorak Shep and hope there would be space on his helicopter, if it even turned up – helicopters were in very short supply. Anyway, shouldn’t the helicopter be doing emergency work? Was it right to use a helicopter? I rationalised that there was no harm in my jumping in the chopper, as it was coming anyway for Damien, so I would not be depriving anybody more needy of it.
If the chopper pilot refused to take me, it would be late and it would be dark. I wouldn’t be able to trek down the Khumbu Valley at that time; it would be too dangerous, if I got stranded out in the open. The temperature would drop; I had no camping gear. I wouldn’t survive the night – shit!
“What the hell,” I said to Damien, “I really want to get home.”
I took a sip of lukewarm lemon tea – it never tasted so good.
Soon after, John, Paul and Louise got up to go. We said our farewells, but it felt like we were leaving at the end of a funeral reception; our faces were sad, expressing our sorrow one last time.
“We should find our bags,” said Damien, as the door closed after the others.
Oh shit, my bag… I’d strapped it to the back of some yak up at Base Camp. It could be anywhere down the Khumbu Valley by now.
It was going down to Kathmandu and would be left with the expedition team there. I could just contact them afterwards and get them to send it on. There was no way I was going to find the correct yak; it would be like finding a needle in a haystack.
My bags were safe on the yak; it would be simple enough to get the expedition management team to send them on to me when I was at home in the UK.
Damien spent the next hour or so pulling over yaks as they passed and looking for his belongings. I sat and watched, keeping half an eye out for my own, but not really rating his chances.
“Jules! I’ve got it!”
He dragged a huge, brightly coloured kit bag off the back of a yak, a big grin spread across his face. I clapped my gloved hands.
“Very impressive!” I said. “Now we just need the helicopter!”
Our spirits were reasonably high as we sat in the lodge waiting for our ride to arrive.
An hour passed. No helicopter.
Two hours passed. Damien rang again. Nothing turned up.
This wasn’t looking good.
Slowly, as we waited, we became silent, staring at the phone on the table, praying for it to ring, or for some news – any news.
At some point, I had to make a decision whether to stay there or to pack it in and head on down to Pheriche to catch up with my expedition. It was a three-hour trek and I might end up doing the last part in the dark.
Damien rang again. His face lit up.
“ ’Alf an hour!” he said, as he hung up. “They will be half an hour – it is all gud.”
My heart lifted slightly. I dared to dream of Kathmandu again.
We had some more soup to pass the time, staring out over the courtyard at the mound of stones that acted as a helipad. Time crept by as if it, too, was struggling with the altitude.
Suddenly, I thought I heard something, a constant, quick thumping in the distance. It grew louder, unmistakable – the sound of helicopter blades.
Damien and I rushed over to the door of the rickety hut. The helicopter, an anachronism of shiny metal against the ancient stone of Gorak Shep, whistled over the buildings and levelled out, preparing to land on the stone mound.
A Nepalese woman pulled on my sleeve.
“I go with you?”
I looked at Damien, who shrugged.
“Yes, OK,” I said, smiling ruefully.
The wind from the blades battered us with cold but refreshing air.
I looked up at the helicopter hovering above. It was a little chopper with a large glass dome at the front. I could see the pilot’s feet through the glass. It was so tiny I wondered where the three of us were going to fit.
The helicopter hit the ground and the door swung open. There were two seats at the front for the pilots, with a two-seater bench very close behind. The pilot remained in his seat, focused ahead – the engine was still running.
The three of us rushed forwards, crouching almost double, and jumped aboard. We shut the door behind us, shutting out the roaring sounds of the wind and the blades.
I couldn’t quite believe that the helicopter was real.
The pilot turned around. He had two plastic tubes shoved up his nose. For a second I thought he was ill, flying our plane at death’s door. I followed the tubes with my eyes and saw that they were attached to canisters under his seat.
Oxygen.
It made sense – these guys were flying up and down the Khumbu Valley on a daily basis, the changes in altitude were pretty bad for them, and the last thing they wanted was to become light-headed while in the air, so they hooked themselves up to oxygen cylinders.
The helicopter started to lift, dipping forwards slightly as it did. We were off!
But wait…something didn’t seem quite right… The helicopter seemed to be labouring, unable to take off properly.
I felt it land back down on the stone helipad.
The pilot turned and shouted.
Oh shit, we’re too heavy; he’s going to kick me out. I’m going to be stuck here after all.
I strained to hear what he was saying.
“Bags! Out!”
Damien flung the door open.
“We come back, we come back!” the pilot shouted.
At that point, I didn’t really care if they came back or not. I chucked my rucksack, containing my laptop – which is one of my most precious items – warm clothing and all of my electrical items, onto the stones below. I didn’t care. I just wanted to get the hell out of there. Damien launched his bag out after mine.
The pilot shut the door again.
This time, the helicopter rose higher, dipping forwards before banking sharply right and heading down the Khumbu Valley in the direction of Kathmandu.
I glanced up towards Everest, the imposing figure that had towered above me constantly for the past five or six weeks. I felt oddly numb as I looked at her peak one final time.
The helicopter turned so that I couldn’t see the mountain any more, and for that I was thankful.
Fifteen minutes later, the helicopter swung down and landed in Pheriche – it would have taken three hours to trek all that way; we’d shot down like a rocket.
“I thought we were going straight to Kathmandu?” I shouted to Damien over the whir of the propellers.
“Me too!” he shouted back, shooting me a quizzical look.
“Everybody out!” shouted the pilot.
“Are we going further, what’s happening?” I asked.
“Yes, yes, I come back, I get bags,” he said without turning.
We jumped out of the helicopter, followed closely by the Nepalese lady, and ran clear of the blades. The helicop
ter lurched suddenly into the air and headed back up the valley.
Damien and I exchanged a look.
“Is this because of the thin air?” I asked.
“It must be.”
The air was so thin up at Gorak Shep that the helicopter couldn’t fly with a large load – it couldn’t physically lift off. The air was much less thin down here – I could already feel it as I breathed in – so we would be able to take our luggage with us…after he went back and picked it all up.
I went to a nearby lodge to grab some drinks while Damien waited for the helicopter.
As I entered the building, I saw Donat and Iwan seated inside, having just trekked, like finely tuned Polish rockets, the three hours down the valley. They were way ahead of the rest of the expedition team.
“Hey Jules! How it going man?” said Iwan when he spotted me.
“Yeah, good,” I responded cheerfully.
“Where is everyone else?” asked Donat.
“Still walking down the valley – I got a helicopter ride.”
“Hey you lucky fucking bastard!”
There was a hunger in their eyes to get away; I’d seen the same look in the faces of Louise, John, Paul, all the rest. I strongly suspected I had that same mad glint in my own eye.
We shook hands, exchanged email addresses and I headed back to Damien, who was standing in the middle of the semi-dry riverbed next to the makeshift helipad. As I left the building, I could hear them shouting after me: “You lucky fucking bastard, we want helicopter, too!”
I arrived back at the pile of rocks as the helicopter was touching down once more. I could see a pile of bags in the back.
A Nepalese man approached us.
“I fly?”
He did not speak much English, but what the hell…the more the merrier! It was going to be a tight squeeze. The helicopter was a four-seater, but with all the bags and kit, there was barely enough space for the pilot and the three of us – me, Damien and the Nepalese woman.
We opened the door and were faced by a near impenetrable wall of kit bags.
“Everyone in!” shouted the pilot.
I clambered aboard, climbing on top of the bags, wedging myself in with my head stuck up against the ceiling. As long as I was on the helicopter, I didn’t care how uncomfortable I was.
“This is cosy,” said a voice near my right ear.
I craned my neck and saw Damien, wedged in an awkward position behind me.
“Beats trekking down the valley,” I replied.
“Yeah, man!”
Once the four of us had somehow managed to squeeze ourselves aboard, the helicopter took off again. I spent the following 15 minutes staring at somebody’s luggage, which was wedged in front of my face.
I felt us descending.
“Why are we stopping again?” I asked, my voice muffled by the bags.
“Refuel!” shouted the pilot.
There was a crunching noise, the sound of the helicopter landing on another rudimentary landing pad. The propellers died down and the door opened. I practically fell out of the helicopter, feeling slightly woozy from the journey.
I looked up, taking in my surroundings… Lukla. This was where my journey had really begun, the start of the ten-day trek, all those weeks ago, when I had flown here from Kathmandu at the start of the adventure. There was a small amount of damage from the earthquake – a few buildings had collapsed – but the short runway still jutted out into the valley like a nail, ending suddenly with an almighty drop.
“Are we not going to Kathmandu?” I asked the pilot, who had disconnected himself from his oxygen tube.
“Later, later,” he replied. He took off again.
Damien and I walked away, towards the nearest lodge. There was a large sign hanging above the doorway that read ‘coffee’ and which drew us closer, like moths to a flame.
“Coffee and cake on me, if we can get it,” I said.
“Stop! Stop!” shouted a female voice from behind us.
We turned to face the Nepalese woman who was hitching a ride with us.
“You stay,” she said, pointing to where the helicopter landed. “You leave, you no get back on helicopter. You stay to get back on helicopter to Kathmandu.”
I looked at Damien.
“I’ll go and get us a couple of coffees and some cakes and bring them over,” I said.
It was the least I could do – I was so grateful to Damien for getting me out of there, he could have asked for anything at that point.
I walked over to the lodge and bought two coffees in polystyrene cups – there were no cakes. I took them back to Damien at the helipad.
After 30 minutes, the helicopter returned.
The pilot jumped out and topped up the petrol from a jerrycan before beckoning to everybody to jump aboard. I jumped in, followed closely by Damien. The bags were now in the lockers in the tail of the chopper, and we were joined inside by two French trekkers.
The chopper took off and we flew the last 30 minutes to Kathmandu. I looked out of the window at the devastation below. As we flew over more built-up areas, I could see collapsed buildings, people running around like ants… The sun occasionally reflected blindingly on shattered glass in the streets.
Soon, we were flying over Kathmandu itself. The city was awash with activity; cars, people, bikes milling in the streets. Many of the newer buildings seemed to have escaped without serious damage, but some of the more ancient structures had been utterly destroyed. I could see people crawling over rubble, digging frantically at bricks. The sound of sirens, the sound of blaring horns, was everywhere.
As we descended towards the airport, I could see the location where once the monolithic Dharahara Tower had stood. Now, the sky was empty. The monument had collapsed, leaving only a stump like a felled tree; it was surrounded by white rubble that seemed like a thousand tiny headstones.
“Shit,” I said, exchanging a look with Damien. There weren’t many other words to describe it.
The helicopter touched down for the final time at the exact spot that I had taken off from nearly six weeks previously. We climbed out.
“What now?” asked Damien.
His question was answered when an open-backed truck screeched to a halt next to us.
“Passports?” said the driver. We showed them to him. “Jump in.”
Why not?
We jumped into the open back and the truck lurched off, weaving through a chaos of planes and traffic. We drove around the perimeter of the hectic airport for nearly two kilometres.
I could see hundreds of large crates being hauled off cargo planes by men in military gear. I assumed it must have been foreign aid from around the globe. I could see the Indian military, the Chinese and the Americans – you could tell the Americans from a mile off; huge, barrel-chested men with the biggest helicopters, barking orders at anybody and everybody careless enough to stray within range.
We arrived at the terminal, the truck skidding to a halt, almost causing us to fall off.
“Out! Out!”
We jumped out of the back of the truck, which immediately shot off again and whistled around the corner.
We were left on our own, so we wandered through to the car park, completely ignored by everybody. No one gave us a second glance as they ran around in the chaos. It didn’t seem as if anybody was really in charge.
“I’ll get a cab,” I said to Damien, flagging down the nearest one. We jumped in, slamming the door shut behind us.
The taxi driver looked back at us expectantly.
“Where to?” I asked Damien.
“I was staying in Thamel, but I don’t think there’s much left there now.”
“Let’s go there. If it’s too bad, you can come back to the Hyatt with me.”
The driver shot off in the direction of Thamel.
It felt surreal; travelling in a taxi in a city that had just suffered a major disaster. As we tore through the winding streets, we could see the impact of the earthquake. Some roads were completely covered in rubble, forcing the driver to take detours. There were people everywhere, none of whom seemed to have any real purpose. It was chaos, utter chaos. The blare of sirens, horns and people shouting was incessant.
Eventually, we arrived in Thamel, at Damien’s hotel. The area hadn’t been as badly hit as we had been led to believe by the news reports, and the hotel was still standing.
He got out of the taxi and grabbed his bag from the boot.
“Look,” I said to him, through the open window, “I really appreciate everything you’ve done for me.”
“No problem, man – I just can’t wait to crash out!”
We exchanged details, shook hands and he headed off into his hotel.
The Hyatt looked much as it had done when I had last seen it. The ornate gates still stood proud, and guards still patrolled the entrance. There were now lots of tents pitched on the hotel lawns, however. I knew there was a housing shortage in Kathmandu as a result of the earthquake, with many people forced to sleep in tents.
I paid the taxi driver and headed into the hotel, praying they would have a room for me, a proper bed that I could sleep in. I didn’t really rate my chances – there had just been an earthquake, the country was in turmoil. Were they likely to have a spare bed? If not, I thought, I’ll ask if I can sleep on the conference room floor. That would be far better than the freezing coffin tent I’d called home for the past few weeks.
I was hoping not to run into any of the others – I wanted to get out of the country as soon as possible, I wanted to avoid all the questions about the chopper, all the talk of our failure. I didn’t want to have all the same discussions we’d already had. I was done, absolutely done with it. All I wanted was to get back home to see my precious daughters.
I walked into the foyer, expecting to see collapsed walls, gaping holes in the ground, some sort of indication that there had been an earthquake. Staff were busy filling cracks in the plaster, and a large crack had formed in the marble of the stairs, exposing the metal framework beneath, but on the whole, the building was remarkably intact, remarkably normal.
Aftershock: One Man's Quest and the Quake on Everest Page 21