Beyond the summit: An Everest adventure and Romance

by Linda LeBlanc

  “They’re getting ready to kill another one,” the man said as he handed the pipe to Eric. “Smoke a little of this and you won’t give a damn. Don’t worry. The hash is plentiful, cheap, and legal. They sell it like spices here.”

  The woman spoke softly. “Come closer. They’re ready to slaughter another.”

  Determined to experience everything, Beth reached for Eric but he held both hands up as a barrier. “Do whatever you want, but leave me out of it.”

  She knew Eric was a wildlife advocate after their trips to Africa and Borneo, but Beth was still disappointed. “We stumble onto the biggest festival of the year and you’re not interested?”

  Eric returned the hash pipe. “I don’t need any of this stuff either.”

  “We came to experience another culture,” Beth grumbled under her breath as she followed the man and woman to the front of the crowd where torches dimly lit an open area in the center. Two men were holding a large buffalo, one by the tail and the other by a rope around its neck.

  “It must always be a male animal and a perfect one at that,” the green-eyed woman explained. “And the buffalo must give his consent by shaking his head. But look, they cheat by dribbling water in his ear to make him do it.”

  Swinging his sword high in the air, a soldier brought it down with the full force of his body. A mass of blood shot four feet across the square spraying everything as the head dropped to the ground with the tongue and mouth still moving, the eyes open and glaring.

  The woman smiled. “Perfect. He did it in a single blow, releasing the animal’s soul to be reborn as a man.”

  Listening to the terrified cries of the animals and sickened by the smell, Beth’s enthusiasm waned and she’d seen enough for now.

  When they returned to Eric who was pacing with his hands in his pocket, the woman addressed him quietly. “I came here to study the teachings of Buddha. He says that until we can accept life as it is and exist in the present moment, we will never be content.”

  “I’m not content watching animals being slaughtered.”

  “But, if we are to be truly aware like Buddha, we must be unflappable and accept whatever comes along as part of a divine and perfect universe.”

  When he started to open his mouth again, Beth shot an angry look that shut him up. She bowed to the man and woman and bid goodbye. “Thank you for your kindness.”

  Forget about dinner. Beth was going back to hotel and Eric could do whatever he pleased. Glaring, she took off at a swift pace.

  “What’s the matter?”

  “You were rude.”

  “Why? Because I didn’t want to get high on hash and don’t buy into being unflappable and accepting whatever comes along as part of a divine and perfect universe? How perfect was that buffalo’s universe?”

  “His soul was released to be reborn as a man.”

  “You truly believe that?”

  “I don’t know, but the Hindus do and I’m here to experience other cultures and ideas. I thought you were more tolerant.”

  Eric caught up to her and put his arm around her waist. “Let’s not fight. We also came here to have a good time together and do your story.”

  Not wanting to ruin the trip she’d waited for so long, Beth let out a long, deep breath. “You’re right. And I agree that being sprayed with buffalo blood isn’t the most enjoyable experience. Let’s just forget about it.”

  He gave her a hug. “You’ll be excited when we meet the Sherpas tomorrow.”

  Both too tired to search for something to eat, they went back to the hotel, skirting the pig and dogs still rummaging in the garbage heap. With Eric lying wrapped around her and his breathing growing deeper and longer, she was relieved they wouldn’t make love that night even though it was the last time they’d sleep off the ground for weeks. The disagreement was rare and probably resulted from fatigue. Laughter and sharing good times together wasn’t the missing element in their relationship nor was good sex. It was a kind of emotional emptiness that she hoped would pass in time.

  The next day, they waited for the Twin Otter to Lukla for over three hours. The room was small, hot, and stuffy with urine stench wafting from both bathrooms. A Nepali in a lightweight, helmet-shaped topi hat entered and announced the flight to Lukla had been canceled because there was too much fog in Kathmandu and the plane couldn’t land on its return because the airport had no radar. With a growing uneasiness about the trip, Beth tried to convince herself that nothing was wrong. Her Shangri-La was simply an adolescent country struggling to make up for hundreds of years of isolation.

  As the luggage cart was unloaded from the plane, Beth noticed two elderly ladies also waiting for their bags. “Are you up for trying again tomorrow?”

  The lady with tight, gray curls turned to Beth. “Honey, my name’s Ruth and we didn’t come this far to be turned back by a little fog.”

  So thin her spine showed like a miniature mountain chain through her shirt, the second lady pulled her wig off and pointed to her head. “We’re here to celebrate the end of my chemotherapy for breast cancer. See my hair is already starting to grow back.”

  Amazed that they were traveling alone at their age, Beth asked, “Why are you going to Lukla?”

  Helen, the second lady, replied, “We’re going up to the Tengboche Monastery to see the monks.”

  “And Everest,” added Ruth. “Don’t worry about us. We’ve been promised the best guide there is and he speaks English well.”

  “And he’s strong,” Helen added. “He carried a woman for 12 days, but that won’t be me. I’m walking every step of the way.”

  “Now that’s unflappable,” Eric whispered to Beth. “Remind me not to complain about anything else on this trip.”

  Inspired by the women’s attitude and pleased with Eric’s comment, Beth shoved all portentous feelings aside and convinced herself that she would complete her journey and find what she was seeking.

  CHAPTER 2

  Just under 17,000 feet at Gorak Shep, Dorje, ten porters, a cook, and two kitchen boys slept huddled together on the dirt floor of a yak herder’s hut. A mixture of yak dung and mud plastered the dry-set stones of the one-story building. With only loose fitting, wooden shutters covering the windows, the wind flicked its icy tongue between the slates and around rough-hewn edges. Shivering, Dorje tugged the wool blanket over his head and reminded himself that he’d survived this cold before. Barefoot and inexperienced, poor Ang Lahkpa snored loudly enough beside him to bring down an avalanche. These mikarus, the white eyes sleeping in their warm tents with foam pads and down bags, treated the Sherpas better than most foreigners Dorje had worked for.

  As a biting cold cut through him, he remembered his first porter job four years earlier in the year of the dragon, what the mikarus called 1964. Having just returned home at age sixteen after ten years in the warm Solu further south, Dorje had awakened to his first snowfall since a young boy. Excited, he ran barefoot outside and stood watching each flake, a silent and glorious thing of beauty, settle loosely on the ground. Half an hour later he ran back inside, his feet red and numb, determined his father must buy shoes for him and his younger brother, Nima. When their mother left with another man ten years earlier and took her boys with them, their father had promised he would come often, but he never did. Unable to forgive him, Dorje wanted to demand warm shoes, but his father’s presence as he strode across the room in a blood red, heavy woolen robe intimidated him. The sleeves hanging loosely off the shoulders allowed Mingma to free one arm and adjust body temperature. The high leather boots moved in a whisper but Mingma’s square features with high cheekbones and dark, glinting eyes commanded all those who came near. Tall for a Sherpa and strikingly handsome, he wore his long, black hair plaited and tied with a red ribbon, resembling the Tibetans with whom he traded crossbreeds.

  Dorje had hoped for stronger footing before he stood up to him, but this couldn’t wait. Cramming the words to the roof of his mouth, he shoved them out hard and fast with no c
hance for retreat. “You must buy us shoes and do it right now!” he said, astounding even himself with his brashness.

  Anger slowly rose through Mingma’s body and settled into his shoulders. “I can’t afford them. In winter, farmers don’t need dung for their fields or to plaster their walls and my animals aren’t producing.” In a voice that offered no allowance for further discussion, he added, “When they calve in the spring, I will sell butter, milk, and cheese to buy shoes.”

  Teetering on the precipice of the rift separating them, Dorje plunged right in. “We won’t have feet left by then. You haven’t helped us in ten years and I don’t need you now. I’ll make my own money.”

  “Doing what? Carrying bags for people who don’t belong here? These mikarus invade our land, soil our temples with their muddy boots, leave their garbage and toilet paper along our trails, and anger our gods. No son of mine will work for them. As long as you live in my house, you will do as I say and tend the yaks with your brother.”

  Dorje’s confidence faltered. After ten years of waiting and yearning for his father, he wanted to feel like a six year old again. In his head, love, resentment, and fear bickered over who was right and refused to form a single emotion he could grasp. So he banished them to their separate corners. Unable to find words to fill the vast empty space between him and his father, Dorje had no choice but to exit the room in silence.

  Frustrated, he turned to the only person he remembered from his early childhood—his father’s best friend, Pemba, who had accompanied him on trading expeditions to the north. Standing outside the man’s door, Dorje stared at images unlike the lettering in Mingma’s Tibetan scriptures. He then entered the lower level reserved for animals at night and climbed a narrow, dark stairway to the large, open room on the second floor used as a living area. As in all Sherpa homes, a bench seat and low tables stood under the front windows opposite a wall of shelves displaying the family’s wealth in an assortment of brass pots and water containers. Family life centered around a floor hearth near the door in a room otherwise devoid of furniture.

  Small in stature with ears much too large for his face, Pemba stood straight backed and explained that Edmund Hillary had just built an airstrip at Lukla to bring in supplies for an intended hospital. Tourists could now fly into the Khumbu in forty-five minutes rather than hiking two weeks from Kathmandu. “It’s easy money. I opened the first teahouse in Namche with an English sign that says SHERPA LODGE GOOD FOOD, GOOD BED and they come to me.”

  “How do I get some of that money?”

  Pemba motioned toward a man and woman on the bench seat nearest the hearth that was traditionally reserved for the senior-most male member of the household. “Those two want to see the monastery at Tengboche. Only the Japanese are foolish enough to come in winter. The porter they hired in Lukla refuses to go higher in the snow without extra pay and demands four times as much. With a schedule to keep, they need to go up tomorrow but refuse to give in to him.”

  “I’ll take them.”

  His eyes nervously flitting from one object to the next like a songbird, Pemba lifted himself taller on the bench. “Don’t tell your father I had a hand in this. He blames me enough already.”

  “Blames you for what? I remember you two laughing and sharing chang.”

  “Another time,” Pemba answered with a pinched quality to his voice. “Another time.”

  To avoid confrontation with his father, Dorje spent the night and rose early to stuff three cumbersome duffels into a bamboo basket. To put the doko on, he had to sit on the floor, slip his arms through the leather side straps, and tip his head back to fit the tumpline snugly over the top. Pemba helped him to his feet and steadied him while Dorje eyed the strangers. Their hair was thick and black like his, but their round faces lacked the distinctive, high cheekbones inherited from his father. They wore matching brightly colored pants, jackets, hats, boots, and gloves. Never had Dorje seen so many clothes on one person at one time.

  In the only shorts and shirt he owned, he started out ahead of them trying not to grimace under the weight compressing his neck. With the Japanese chattering behind him, he plodded upward, one foot after the other over frozen ground. When the Japanese man pointed to a mountain, babbling something, Dorje gave him the Nepali word for snow-covered mountain. Excitedly, the man quickly wrote it in a book and pointed to the next one. Chuckling to himself, Dorje gave the Nepali for another snowy mountain. This preoccupation with naming everything made no sense to a Sherpa whose language didn’t even contain a word for summit.

  For five hours, they climbed straight up through pine, black juniper, and rhododendron. With every step, Dorje’s legs burned and cramped. When it suddenly began to snow again, each flake was no longer a silent and glorious thing of beauty but a cold, wet, and miserable enemy. Gesturing wildly, the woman ordered him to remove the doko, untie the ropes with his frozen fingers, and unload her duffel so she could get out another sweater, heavier jacket, and a wool hat from the bottom. While she bundled up, he sat there in bare feet that had long since lost any feeling and his entire body shaking so hard he thought it would fall apart.

  At Tengboche, they went to the house of Pemba’s brother, Changjup. Sitting by the fire in his sopping pants and shirt, his feet searing with the pain of thawing, Dorje watched the Japanese change into dry things. Once the woman was warm, she began jabbering and flailing her arms at the smoke rising from the fire and fanning out along the ceiling. When she opened the shutters and leaned her head out coughing, Changjup shooed her back inside and slammed them shut.

  He threw his hands in the air and yelled in Nepali, “What would she do, heat the whole mountainside? Don’t they know how scarce wood is?”

  The snow ended during the night, ushering in a crisp, clear sky at dawn as the sun rose over the mountains and bathed the monastery in amber light. The penetrating, unearthly sounds of oboes and eight-foot, telescoping horns announced the beginning of daily prayer. After leading the Japanese up the wide stone steps, Dorje instructed them to remove their shoes and hoped their feet froze. The dimly lit room smelled of butter lamps and juniper incense. Brilliantly colored images of Buddha, various gods, lamas, and mythological scenes decorated the ceiling and walls while mandalas and cloth thankas hung from intricately carved rafters.

  Sitting in two rows facing the center aisle, sixteen monks recited the sutra from long folios open on low prayer tables before them. Their hair shorn close, they wore sleeveless burgundy robes with gold cloths draped over one shoulder. They chanted in a low, monotonous intonation to the quiet insistent beating of a drum and the moaning of long horns, punctuated only by the occasional clash of cymbals. When the Japanese crouched only inches from them snapping photos without their consent, Dorje removed the couple from the temple as quickly as possible.

  In a meadow outside the monastery, the woman started bouncing and squealing, “Everest, Everest,” as she pointed to a mountain Dorje knew as Chomolungma. Its triangular peak immense and remote with a long, graceful plume of wind-driven snow, it seemed aloof and formidable with its upper pinnacles of jagged rock rising out of steep glaciers and gleaming ice, soaring above all others. Mesmerized, Dorje knew he would someday stand on the summit like the famous Tenzing Norgay did before him.

  The Japanese woman pulled him out of his trance by shoving her camera in his face and pointing him towards Everest. Looking through the hole, Dorje watched the mountain move closer. When he used only his eyes again, Everest still loomed in the distance. Curious thing, this black box. She put his index finger on the red button and motioned for him to wait while she stood beside her husband on a rock directly in line with Everest. Thinking how they had left him wet and shivering while they added layers of clothing, Dorje tipped the camera just above the summit of Everest and pressed the button four times, shooting only a brilliant blue sky with not a cloud anywhere.

  He carried their duffels three more days down to the small airfield at Lukla and waited for their twin otter to arr
ive. When they were prepared to leave, he bowed with his palms together and flashed his most engaging smile. “Namaste.”

  “Namaste,” they replied and then did something that blew apart his angry feelings and scattered them over the mountains like gray ash. The man pulled two sweaters, four pairs of wool socks, a pair of long pants, and a wool hat from his duffel and just handed them over to Dorje. More clothes than he had ever owned at once in his entire lifetime. He stared with incredulous eyes as the man removed the coveted, brightly colored jacket and added it to the pile. Dumbfounded, Dorje flashed another smile and watched as they boarded the plane for a place beyond his comprehension. With the clothes, the agreed-upon six rupees1 per day, plus a tip clutched in his fist, he forgot about how exhausted, cold and miserable he’d been, how his head felt as though it had been shoved down his spine, how he feared his feet would never walk straight again. His strength, tenacity, and winning smile had gained him a fortune. He was indomitable.