by Adam Popescu
I say what first comes to mind. “Babu Chhiri once spent twenty one hours on the summit. Without oxygen!”
Val scrapes ice from the plaque. “June 22, 1965 to April 29, 2001. Says he summited ten times, even spent a night sleeping on the summit—how is that even possible?”
“My father told me that Babu Chhiri had the courage to try because no one thought it could be done.” I once thought of my father the same way. He was Babu Chhiri to me as a girl. Once. “If you try when everyone thinks you will fail, then you cannot fail, that’s what my father used to say.”
“What happened?”
To my father or Babu Chhiri?
“They say he was taking photos and didn’t watch his steps. Strange way for a climbing Sherpa to die.”
“Do you think something in his life, his karma,” Val responds, “do you think it had something to do with it?”
Ten meters away, Daniel, camera pressed to his face, trips and stumbles on a block of ice. He doesn’t fall, doesn’t even look down. He steadies himself, adjusts his machine, keeps shooting.
“Babu Chhiri fell into a crevasse,” I continue. “One of the greatest to ever set foot on Jomolangma. Killed by carelessness or karma, does it matter? He left behind six daughters.” “Six daughters,” she repeats. “Any of them become climbers, like him?”
I shrug. I don’t know. The wind becomes a harsh whistle, like a warning from the great Sherpa’s spirit. Then Ethan yells and gestures for us to continue—he’s already several meters ahead of us. It’s not safe for any of them to be on their own, so I run ahead.
“Let me lead,” I tell him.
He nods and I step forward. I’ve never been up here before, but I follow the cairns, the three-foot piles of rock that mark the way. When I don’t see the markers, I use my instincts and follow the tracks from boots and cloven hooves etched in the snow and ice.
“Dying on the mountain is an honor for a Sherpa, isn’t it?” Val says to me, catching up. “Regardless of how.”
“Yes, but who wants to die frozen, or suffering great pain for hours, at the bottom of a crevasse?”
Val’s eyes shine with curiosity. “And yet, if you die in great pain, your soul is trapped, wandering for all time, right?”
I nod in agreement.
“Do you believe in the afterlife, Nima?”
“I’d like to.”
A single flake of snow drops between Val’s eyes. A white bindi. What use is there to ponder the afterlife if I haven’t yet lived fully in this one?
Every breath containing less and less oxygen, I feel as if my head is somehow less connected to my body—and like someone is watching over me. My brother, Babu Chhiri, some other spirit from the past?
Apart from the snow falling and Val’s boots and mine stomping, there are no sounds. No life this high. No yaks, no tahr, no serken, no plants. No grass beneath our feet, just rock and ice. That’s all there is: massive boulders and stacks of ice, each the size of a house. Nor is there a path. We’re single file, me in the front, Daniel at the end, trudging through a wide, high valley of black ice, white snow, gray stone. The snow stops falling and the sky becomes misty, like it’s crying.
I know that Lobuche, where we’ll spend the night, lies just west of the Khumbu Glacier, the world’s highest chhaaram. At the glacier’s upper end, the Khumbu Ice Fall. There’s enough hanging ice here to crush an entire village. Our route to Base Camp will take us across the glacier and under the ice fall. I keep following north, always towards the goddess and the next cairn. The next twelve kilometers will be like this. The mikarus don’t know this, and I don’t tell them. They’re walking even more slowly, Ethan limping slightly, Daniel still with the camera pressed to his face, and Val, who keeps staring at the frozen sky.
In between the towering ice slabs, we stop at the edge of a dark crevasse. Out of breath and thirsty, we’re surrounded by so much ice, all of it frozen and locked away. I look into the crevasse, kick an ice chip, sending it into the black abyss. I can’t hear it hit the bottom.
Daniel points with shaky hands. “You’d never get out of there.”
This I understand instantly. Daniel’s hands shake so much he has trouble screwing the cap onto his bottle, and Ethan helps him. How can he take pictures with hands like that? I wonder.
“It’s okay,” Ethan says. “Diamox side effect.”
Daniel nods, puts his hands in his pockets.
The snow stops falling, but the wind blows harder, piercing my coat, pinpricking my arms and legs. I adjust my kerchief over my face, pull my knit cap snugger, all to no effect. My ears feel like they’re encased in ice.
My father used to tell me that the glaciers move. Hard to believe, looking at them. It’s a sluggish creep down, to be sure, a creep that uproots dirt and boulders. Like a very slow ru’. That frozen dirt is what we walk on now, the moraine. “In summer, when the sun makes the glacier retreat, what’s below is exposed like a rotted tooth,” he told me when I was just a girl bouncing on his knee, eyes wide with wonder. “In winter, the cold makes it expand again.”
We crunch along on that path, children in a temple of chhaaram, weaving past hanging ice towers. I’ve never seen all this, and I’m as awestruck as the mikarus.
Suddenly Val falls on the ice. “It’s okay,” she insists. “I’m okay.”
Ethan kneels, touching her leg, taking her foot in his hand.
“I said I was okay,” she says.
Val starts to pull her foot away. He pleads with her.
“Let go!” She kicks at him like a dog, and Ethan loses his balance, falls back and hits the ground. I don’t think she meant to hurt him, and Ethan grits his feet and rises.
No words now. Just the sound of four bodies panting on the frozen pathway.
Keep moving.
Below us, like giant open pores, lie the deep crevasses that can shift without warning. All around us is the blue, black, and white ice in different stages of melt and freeze, the stones bleached by wind and water. Everything is alive in its own way. And above us, the bright cold sun creeps through the clouds, as snow falls again. Sun and snow, a sign from the heavens.
Everything is dangerously beautiful up here. I understand why so many foreigners want to see this and why it’s such a holy place for us Sherpas. I can’t see the goddess, hidden in mist, but I’m beginning to feel her attraction. I can picture Norbu and I traversing the South Col, tied together on one rope, reaching for the summit.
The far off crack of ice smashing against ice sends a billowing white cloud of snow and ice. The sight takes me back to my village. I’m a girl once more, watching the ru’ wipe away my world.
All summiting teams have to conquer this passage. When ropes snap, when ladders break, even a Tenzing Norgay or a Babu Chhiri can die. And many have. The route to Base Camp takes us right along the edge of the ice fall, two days of hauling your weights beneath an awning of ice.
We follow the cairns, dung mixed with snow and ice, once part of an animal’s warm body—a sign of life, a sign that we’re closer to Lobuche. I lead the mikarus over the ridge and we claw our way out of the glacier. At last, with that monster of ice behind us, we look over a cluster of wood and brick. Lobuche. Another village without villagers.
Everything is white from snow. Too cold to grow, too cold for animals either—a sheer miracle of will that these people hauled rocks and logs to build a life so close to this vast glacier, to choose to make something here.
We try the doors to one tea house, the Himalayan Eco Lodge: locked. Bright Lady Hotel: locked. Norbu’s group must be in one of these places, since they started earlier this morning. But if they are full, the lodge keepers won’t open. The last, Mother Earth House, is two stories high, a doubly difficult construction project. The sign in front reads: 4,940 METERS. The doors are unlocked. There are no thieves to come because there is not a thing to steal. We walk in…
We eat tasteless food in a barren room. Empty plastic chairs, empty plastic tables. No oth
er trekkers, just us. This tea house is a massive cave, cavernous enough that it feels colder in here than outside. The tiny stove in the center of the room isn’t even lit, so I set about my first task: convincing the lodge’s keeper to light it.
Val wants to work, she tells me. Can we talk to him? Ask a bit about what it’s like to live here? I’ve finally understood what she does—she learns people’s stories and then shares them with others, who hopefully share them with others. So much Sherpa history is passed from generation to generation, and so much of it has been lost because it’s not written—that’s what makes Val’s work important. She uses ink while we tell our stories to whoever will listen. She can reach so many more, she can preserve my culture in a way that we cannot. An honorable endeavor. But what will she do with my story? What will outsiders think about a Sherpa woman who isn’t defined solely by climbing the peaks?
“The owner is back in Kathmandu,” the headman complains as I translate to Val. “Wanted me to close for the season, but I told him more trekkers were coming. ‘Americans don’t follow rules, they’ll be here,’ I said. He’s going to be mad, mad there aren’t more of you. Double price. Must be double price, for each. You, too.”
If he notices I’m a woman, he doesn’t say anything. Up here, any guest and any amount of money is appreciated. The meal is more water than curry, the rice stale. But we eat it anyway.
Every scrap. There’s a worn, old map on the wall next to the kitchen. The village’s location is circled in red, and above it, I read Gorak Shep. To the left, Kalapathar. On the map, the trip looks easy.
The mikarus have heavy circles around their eyes, dirt lodged in the creases on their faces. Val coughs, deep. Ethan props his right leg on a plastic chair, carefully, rubbing his knee. Daniel’s hands shake as he puts down his camera. He takes out a vial of those white pills and swallows one. He passes the pills to the others. All three are shaking now.
“Depending on the weather, tomorrow we do either Base Camp or Kalapathar,” I tell Val.
“What do you mean, either? And what’s Kalapathar?” She looks like she’d have trouble crawling into bed.
“If the weather stays like today, climbing Kalapathar gives us the best views of Everest, exactly at sunset.” I’m repeating Norbu’s words. My father told me about it, too. His clients would be so impressed it would result in a bonus when the trip was over. But I don’t care about the money anymore. I just want them to be impressed.
“And if it’s not clear?” Val asks through another throaty cough.
“Then we head for Base Camp.”
Val translates to the team. They all start speaking at once, talking over one another. Val gets up, then Daniel and Ethan follow, heading to their rooms to sleep, I hope. I hope they sleep. I hope I sleep. The mikarus move as if their feet are encased in boulders. I had hoped tonight Val and I could trade words, and I could learn more English. But Val doesn’t even bother to say good night, just trudges along down the corridor to her room.
26
MY EIGHTH DAY WITH THE MIKARUS. OR POSSIBLY NINTH, THE DAYS are starting to blend together.
The cold wind blows right through the lodge’s thin walls. I’m bundled up in the cot, wishing Norbu was beside me. I pull my knees to my chest and stare up at the ceiling, remembering his warm body. Mismatched paint flaking off in the corner. I could never be a typical Sherpa wife, waiting for Norbu, knowing what he faces on the trail. But I’m something else now. When Val writes about me, Sherpas will see—all Nepalis will see—there are choices for young women like me. We aren’t defined just by the past. And what about Soom, Shi, Nga, little Doog, when Father sells my sisters off as brides? Will any of them protest that they want a different kind of life? They’ll read about me and become inspired. And reading those words will take the place of all the guidance I didn’t give them.
I flex half-frozen fingers—there’s still a mark from where that stupid dog bit me—then I put my hands in my armpits, where they’re not quite as cold, but I’m still shivering. Last night, I put on every layer I had, I slept with the blanket over my face, and when I awoke, the top of the blanket had iced over from my breath.
A multitude of words express cold in my language. Sil, “to be cold.” Khyēwa lang, silwu, threngge, khyak—all mean “to feel the cold.” Dang mo for “cold weather.” Kyag-pa for “ice,” gang for “snow.” And so many of our mountains are named for snow and ice. We call snowy mountains “gang-ri.” Then there’s the Gangdise Range. Mount Kailash is known as Gang Rinpoche or Gang Ti-se.
The night comes and goes, and a rooster announces the morning’s trek—a creature somehow able to survive the dang mo with just a few feathers to keep warm.
I lace up my boots and head out. As I follow the corridor, I rap on the mikarus’ doors. “Breakfast,” I call in English, a word I’ve been eager to test.
The lodge keeper’s eyes linger on me as we leave an hour later. Woman porters are bad luck, they tell me. Very inauspicious. Eat. Pay. Go. Still stuck in the past, he’ll learn. I’ll make him.
I catch another glimpse of that map when I dole out the rupees, then it’s back to the glacier. I don’t need a map to know where we’re going, it’s in my bones. It’s north, after all, uphill, easy enough for a child to understand.
We wind left and right, up and around hanging ice and boulders. There are no more cairns up here, just a narrow between the slabs. I’m relieved when we have dirt under our boots instead of ice. I use the sun and the mountain to navigate: keeping the goddess straight ahead, that’s my guide. Truthfully, I’m as untested as my mikarus, but I follow the sun and the mountain’s direction. How much more confidently I’d lead if I’d done this just once before, following someone who knew the trek.
Our march is as quiet as the morning meal. No birds calling, no chiming bells from yaks. After the rooster this morning, nothing suggests life. An hour of walking like this. Then another hour. I can only imagine what’s going on for my mikarus. It’s a short way from Lobuche to Gorak Shep—at least that’s what the map suggested—but we’re all weak and the going is very slow. Another hour later, we see tin roofs glistening in the sun. We must be just outside Gorak Shep. We break. I think of my father:
How does a Sherpa’s body do this every day for an entire climbing season? Of course the men turn to chang, there’s nothing else for it.
Behind us, more mikarus. They file past, some nodding their heads, some puffing out a mumbled “namaste.” A few faces I recognize—white men with beards, Norbu’s group—but I don’t see those two girls with wild-colored hair. And then I see him, shoulders rippling under his blue jacket, with his confident stride. I see him in the distance, leading from behind. As he comes closer, our eyes catch.
I expect him to stop, to touch my hand, to smile, to say something, but he doesn’t. He walks right by, his eyes locked on mine, the only dialogue he’s willing to share. I can feel Val watching so I look away. Don’t say a word. Don’t. We’re not mikaru. We’re Sherpa. We don’t show the world what goes on in our heart.
At Gorak Shep, we stop at the Buddha Lodge. ALTITUDE 5,164 METERS, written in blue ink on a sign. The last outpost on the trail, in a windy bowl right at the glacier’s edge, this village is the saddest and smallest of them all.
It’s been about an hour since Norbu passed me on the trail, I can tell from the sun’s place in the sky. Hands buried in my pockets, I sit on a yellowed plastic chair outside a square cube of wood and tin, a shack exposed to wind from all sides. We’re waiting to see if the weather holds. Kalapathar’s peak is three hundred meters higher than where we are, and we would have to scale it before sunset. That means a return in the dark. The only light will be from the mikarus’ headlamps.
“How do you feel about that?” I ask Val.
“If Ethan and Daniel think it’s all right, I support it.”
One hour until decision time. I rub my legs with icy fingers. If the clouds roll in, we change course and head for Base Camp.
N
orbu’s group isn’t staying in our lodge. I thought if I sat out here, I would spot him. I hoped we could talk and agree that our groups could finish the journey together.
At one in the afternoon, we hit the trail. Clouds gather, scatter, gather again. “We go to Base Camp,” I announce.
Ten paces in, the sun winks his return. “Sorry, we do Kalapathar.”
Val kicks at an ice chip with her boot. We trudge over a dried-out lakebed, silt and stone crunching under us.
We’re halfway up Kalapathar when the wind pins us against the mountain. The clouds roll in so thick I can’t see more than a meter in front of me. No trail to follow, we move from boulder to boulder, me leading, slinking and shifting, using my whole body to lift myself. The wind doesn’t stop, blowing loose rock, dust, ice, my right hand clutching the kerchief over my face, the other attempting to shield my eyes. Then my cap is blown right off my head.
My nose burns, dripping into the rag, and the wind howls maddeningly, sending loose shards into my eyes. The wind pushes us all like we’re made of paper. When I turn around, the mikarus are battered, but battling.
“Just a bit more,” I coax them on.
Three quarters to the top of Kalapathar, the summit comes into view, just the very top, the clouds and the wind blocking the rest. I check back on the mikarus, to show them, and find that they’re barely moving. They can’t take out their cameras, that’s how hard the wind is blowing.
They shuffle together at the edge of the rock face.
I squint through cracked eyes, looking back at my charges. Ethan takes a step forward, and his knee buckles and he rolls back off his feet. He’s too far away, he’s going to fly right off the mountain—he’s hurtling toward the void, then he reaches a hand and stops himself on a rock face. Val screams his name and dives into the wind, grabbing his arm. The gods of the mountain shriek in answer, drowning my voice completely. I have to shut my eyes against all the debris the wind is slinging at me. I can’t see anything in front of me now. Then the outline of a body appears—it’s Daniel. I push him behind an icy boulder.