Escape From Kathmandu

by Kim Stanley Robinson

WELL, EVENTUALLY I CONCOCTED a semiconsistent story about us idealistically wanting to porter loads for an Everest expedition, although who would be so stupid as to want to do that I don’t know. Freds was no help at all—he kept forgetting and going back to his first story, saying things like “We must have gotten on the wrong plane.” And neither of us could fit Kunga Norbu into our story very well; I claimed he was our guide, but we didn’t understand his language. He very wisely stayed mute.

  Despite all that, the Indian team fed us and gave us water to slake our raging thirst, and they escorted us back down their fixed ropes to the camps below, to make sure they got us out of there. Over the next couple of days they led us all the way down the Western Cwm and the Khumbu Icefall to Base Camp. I wish I could give you a blow-by-blow account of the fabled Khumbu Icefall, but the truth is I barely remember it. It was big and white and scary; I was tired. That’s all I know. And then we were in their Base Camp, and I knew it was over. First illegal ascent of Everest.

  XVIII

  WELL, AFTER WHAT WE HAD been through, Gorak Shep looked like Ireland, and Pheriche looked like Hawaii. And the air was oxygen soup.

  We kept asking after the Brits and Arnold and Laure, and kept hearing that they were a day or so below us. From the sound of it the Brits were chasing Arnold, who was managing by extreme efforts to stay ahead of them. So we hurried after them.

  On our way down, however, we stopped at the Pengboche Monastery, a dark, brooding old place in a little nest of black pine trees, supposed to be the chin whiskers of the first abbot. There we left Kunga Norbu, who was looking pretty beat. The monks at the monastery made a big to-do over him. He and Freds had an emotional parting, and he gave me a big grin as he bored me through one last time with that spacy black gaze. “Good morning!” he said, and we were off.

  So Freds and I tromped down to Namche, which reminded me strongly of Manhattan, and found our friends had just left for Lukla, still chasing Arnold. Below Namche we really hustled to catch up with them, but we didn’t succeed until we reached Lukla itself. And then we only caught the Brits—because they were standing there by the Lukla airstrip, watching the last plane of the day hum down the tilted grass and ski jump out over the deep gorge of the Dudh Kosi—while Arnold McConnell, we quickly found out, was on that plane, having paid a legitimate passenger a fat stack of rupees to replace him. Arnold’s Sherpa companions were lining the strip and waving good-bye to him; they had all earned about a year’s wages in this one climb, it turned out, and they were pretty fond of old Arnold.

  The Brits were not. In fact they were fuming.

  “Where have you been?” Trevor demanded.

  “Well.…” we said.

  “We went to the top,” Freds said apologetically. “Kunga had to for religious reasons.”

  “Well,” Trevor said huffily. “We considered it ourselves, but we had to chase your client back down the mountain to try and get his film. The film that will get us all kicked out of Nepal for good if it’s ever shown.”

  “Better get used to it,” Mad Tom said gloomily. “He’s off to Kathmandu, and we’re not. We’ll never catch him now.”

  Now the view from Lukla is nothing extraordinary, compared to what you can see higher up; but there are the giant green walls of the gorge, and to the north you can see a single scrap of the tall white peaks beyond; and to look at all that, and think you might never be allowed to see it again.…

  I pointed to the south. “Maybe we just got lucky.”

  “What?”

  Freds laughed. “Choppers! Incoming! Some trekking outfit has hired helicopters to bring its group in.”

  It was true. This is fairly common practice, I’ve done it myself many times. RNAC’s daily flights to Lukla can’t fulfill the need during the peak trekking season, so the Nepali Air Force kindly rents out its helicopters, at exorbitant fees. Naturally they prefer not to go back empty, and they’ll take whoever will pay. Often, as on this day, there is a whole crowd clamoring to pay to go back, and the competition is fierce, although I for one am unable to understand what people are so anxious to get back to.

  Anyway, this day was like most of them, and there was a whole crowd of trekkers sitting around on the unloading field by the airstrip, negotiating with the various Sherpa and Sherpani power brokers who run the airport and get people onto flights. The hierarchy among these half-dozen power brokers is completely obscure, even to them, and on this day as always each of them had a list of people who had paid up to a hundred dollars for a lift out; and until the brokers discussed it with the helicopter crew, no one knew who was going to be the privileged broker given the go-ahead to march his clients on board. The crowd found this protocol ambiguous at best, and they were milling about and shouting ugly things at their brokers as the helicopters were sighted.

  So this was not a good situation for us, because although we were desperate, everyone else wanting a lift claimed to be desperate also, and no one was going to volunteer to give up their places. Just before the two Puma choppers made their loud and windy landing, however, I saw Heather on the unloading field, and I ran over and discovered that she had gotten our expedition booked in with Pemba Sherpa, one of the most powerful brokers there. “Good work, Heather!” I cried. Quickly I explained to her some aspects of the situation, and looking wide-eyed at us—we were considerably filthier and more sunburnt than when we last saw her—she nodded her understanding.

  And sure enough, in the chaos of trekkers milling about the choppers, in all that moaning and groaning and screaming and shouting to be let on board, it was Pemba who prevailed over the other brokers. And Want To Take You Higher Ltd.’s “Video Expedition To Everest Base Camp”—with the addition of four British climbers and an American—climbed on board the two vehicles, cheering all the way. With a thukka thukka thukka we were off.

  “Now how will we find him in Kathmandu?” Marion said over the noise.

  “He won’t be expecting you,” I said. “He thinks he’s on the last flight of the day. So I’d start at the Kathmandu Guest House, where we were staying, and see if you can find him there.”

  The Brits nodded, looking grim as commandos. Arnold was in trouble.

  XIX

  WE LANDED AT THE KATHMANDU airport an hour later, and the Brits zipped out and hired a taxi immediately. Freds and I hired another one and tried to keep up, but the Brits must have been paying their driver triple, because that little Toyota took off over the dirt roads between the airport and the city like it was in a motocross race. So we fell behind, and by the time we were let off in the courtyard of the Kathmandu Guest House, their taxi was already gone. We paid our driver and walked in and asked one of the snooty clerks for Arnold’s room number, and when he gave it to us we hustled on up to the room, on the third floor overlooking the back garden.

  We got there in the middle of the action. John and Mad Tom and Trevor had Arnold trapped on a bed in the corner, and they were standing over him not letting him go anywhere. Marion was on the other side of the room doing the actual demolition, taking up videocassettes one at a time and stomping them under her boot. There was a lot of yelling going on, mostly from Marion and Arnold. “That’s the one of me taking my bath,” Marion said. “And that’s the one of me changing my shirt in my tent. And that’s the one of me taking a pee at eight thousand meters!” and so on, while Arnold was shouting “No, no!” and “Not that one, my God!” and “I’ll sue you in every court in Nepal!”

  “Foreign nationals can’t sue each other in Nepal,” Mad Tom told him.

  But Arnold continued to shout and threaten and moan, his sun-torched face going incandescent, his much-reduced body bouncing up and down on the bed, his big round eyes popping out till I was afraid they would burst, or fall down on springs. He picked up the fresh cigar that had fallen from his mouth and threw it between Trevor and John, hitting Marion in the chest.

  “Molester,” she said, dusting her hands with satisfaction. “That’s all of them, then.” She began to st
uff the wreckage of plastic and videotape into a daypack. “And we’ll take this along, too, thank you very much.”

  “Thief,” Arnold croaked.

  The three guys moved away from him. Arnold sat there on the bed, frozen, staring at Marion with a stricken, bug-eyed expression. He looked like a balloon with a pinprick in it.

  “Sorry, Arnold,” Trevor said. “But you brought this on yourself, as you must admit. We told you all along we didn’t want to be filmed.”

  Arnold stared at them speechlessly.

  “Well, then,” Trevor said. “That’s that.” And they left.

  Freds and I watched Arnold sit there. Slowly his eyes receded back to their usual pop-eyed position, but he still looked disconsolate.

  “Them Brits are tough,” Freds offered. “They’re not real sentimental people.”

  “Come on, Arnold,” I said. Now that he was no longer my responsibility, now that we were back, and I’d never have to see him again—now that it was certain his videotape, which could have had Freds and me in as much hot water as the Brits, was destroyed—I felt a little bit sorry for him. Just a little bit. It was clear from his appearance that he had really gone through a lot to get that tape. Besides, I was starving. “Come on, let’s all get showered and shaved and cleaned up, and then I’ll take you out to dinner.”

  “Me too,” said Freds.

  Arnold nodded mutely.

  XX

  KATHMANDU IS A FUNNY CITY. When you first arrive there from the West, it seems like the most ramshackle and unsanitary place imaginable: the buildings are poorly constructed of old brick, and there are weed patches growing out of the roofs; the hotel rooms are bare pits; all the food you can find tastes like cardboard, and often makes you sick; and there are sewage heaps here and there in the mud streets, where dogs and cows are scavenging. It really seems primitive.

  Then you go out for a month or two in the mountains, on a trek or a climb. And when you return to Kathmandu, the place is utterly transformed. The only likely explanation is that while you were gone they took the city away and replaced it with one that looks the same on the outside, but is completely different in substance. The accommodations are luxurious beyond belief; the food is superb; the people look prosperous, and their city seems a marvel of architectural sophistication. Kathmandu! What a metropolis!

  So it seemed to Freds and me, as we checked into my home away from home, the Hotel Star. As I sat on the floor under the waist-high tap of steaming hot water that emerged from my shower, I found myself giggling in mindless rapture, and from the next room I could hear Freds bellowing “Going to Kathmandu”: “K-k-k-k-k-Kat-Man-Du!”

  An hour later, hair wet, faces chopped up, skin all prune-shriveled, we met Arnold out in the street and walked through the Thamel evening. “We look like coat racks!” Freds observed. Our city clothes were hanging on us. Freds and I had each lost about twenty pounds, Arnold about thirty. And it wasn’t just fat, either. Everything wastes away at altitude. “We’d better get to the Old Vienna and put some of it back on.”

  I started salivating at the very thought of it.

  So we went to the Old Vienna Inn, and relaxed in the warm steamy atmosphere of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. After big servings of goulash, schnitzel Parisienne, and apple strudel with whipped cream, we sat back sated. Sensory overload. Even Arnold was looking up a little. He had been quiet through the meal, but then again we all had, being busy.

  We ordered a bottle of rakshi, which is a potent local beverage of indeterminate origin. When it came we began drinking.

  Freds said, “Hey, Arnold, you’re looking better.”

  “Yeah, I don’t feel so bad.” He wiped his mouth with a napkin streaked all red; we had all split our sun-destroyed lips more than once, trying to shovel the food in too fast. He got set to start the slow process of eating another cigar, unwrapping one very slowly. “Not so bad at all.” And then he grinned; he couldn’t help himself; he grinned so wide that he had to grab the napkin and stanch the flow from his lips again.

  “Well, it’s a shame those guys stomped your movie,” Freds said.

  “Yeah, well.” Arnold waved an arm expansively. “That’s life.”

  I was amazed. “Arnold, I can’t believe this is you talking. Here those guys took your videotapes of all that suffering you just put us through, and they stomp it, and you say, ‘That’s life’?”

  He took a long hit of the rakshi. “Well,” he said, waggling his eyebrows up and down fiendishly. He leaned over the table toward us. “They got one copy of it, anyway.”

  Freds and I looked at each other.

  “Couple hundred dollars of tape there that they crunched, I suppose I ought to bill them for it. But I’m a generous guy; I let it pass.”

  “One copy?” I said.

  “Yeah.” He tipped his head. “Did you see that box, kind of like a suitcase, there in the corner of my room at the Guest House?”

  We shook our heads.

  “Neither did the Brits. Not that they would have recognized it. It’s a video splicer, mainly. But a copier too. You stick a cassette in there and push a button and it copies the cassette for storage, and then you can do all your splicing off the master. You make your final tape that way. Great machine. Most freelance video people have them now, and these portable babies are really the latest. Saved my ass, in this case.”

  “Arnold,” I said. “You’re going to get those guys in trouble! And us too!”

  “Hey,” he warned, “I’ve got the splicer under lock and key, so don’t get any ideas.”

  “Well you’re going to get us banned from Nepal for good!”

  “Nah. I’ll give you all stage names. You got any preferences along those lines?”

  “Arnold!” I protested.

  “Hey, listen,” he said, and drank more rakshi. “Most of that climb was in Tibet, right? Chinese aren’t going to be worrying about it. Besides, you know the Nepal Ministry of Tourism—can you really tell me they’ll ever get it together to even see my film, much less take names from it and track those folks down when they next apply for a visa? Get serious!”

  “Hmm,” I said, consulting with my rakshi.

  “So what’d you get?” Freds asked.

  “Everything. I got some good long-distance work of you guys finding the body up there—ha!—you thought I didn’t get that, right? I tell you I was filming your thoughts up there! I got that, and then the Brits climbing on the ridge—everything. I’m gonna make stars of you all.”

  Freds and I exchanged a relieved glance. “Remember about the stage names,” I said.

  “Sure. And after I edit it you won’t be able to tell where on the mountain the body was, and with the names and all, I really think Marion and the rest will love it. Don’t you? They were just being shy. Old-fashioned! I’m going to send them all prints of the final product, and they’re gonna love it. Marion in particular. She’s gonna look beautiful.” He waved the cigar and a look of cowlike yearning disfigured his face. “In fact, tell you a little secret, I’m gonna accompany that particular print in person, and make it part of my proposal to her. I think she’s kind of fond of me, and I bet you anything she’ll agree to marry me when she sees it, don’t you think?”

  “Sure,” Freds said. “Why not?” He considered it. “Or if not in this life, then in the next.”

  Arnold gave him an odd look. “I’m going to ask her along on my next trip, which looks like it’ll be China and Tibet. You know how the Chinese have been easing up on the Tibetan religions lately? Well, the clerk at the Guest House gave me a telegram on my way out—my agent tells me that the authorities in Lhasa have decided they’re going to rebuild a whole bunch of the Buddhist monasteries that they tore down during the Cultural Revolution, and it looks like I’ll be allowed to film some of it. That should make for a real heart-string basher, and I bet Marion would love to see it, don’t you?”

  Freds and I grinned at each other. “I’d love to see it,” Freds declared. “Here’s to
the monasteries, and a free Tibet!”

  We toasted the idea, and ordered another bottle.

  Arnold waved his cigar. “Meanwhile, this Mallory stuff is dynamite. It’s gonna make a hell of a movie.”

  XXII

  WHICH IS WHY I CAN tell you about this one—the need for secrecy is going to be blown right out the window as soon as they air Arnold’s film, “Nine Against Everest: Seven Men, One Woman, and a Corpse.” I hear both PBS and the BBC have gone for it, and it should be on any day now. Check local listings for times in your area.

  PART 3

  The True Nature of Shangri-La

  THEY SAY IN NEPAL that an early monsoon brings good luck but obviously they are lying through their teeth. The only thing an early monsoon brings if you ask me is more rain than usual in the late spring and early summer. Take for instance 1987, when the monsoon struck in May. Big trouble that year, for a place you probably know as Shangri-La. Now the name Shangri-La is not the valley’s real name, that’s just what it was called in a movie and they must have heard wrong because the real name is Shambhala. Shambhala is the hidden city of Tibet, the home of the world’s most ancient wisdom, the sacred secret stronghold of Tibetan Buddhism. The source of all the world’s religions, in fact. I have spent a good bit of time there myself with my teacher Kunga Norbu Rimpoche and so when Kunga came down to Kathmandu to tell me Shambhala was in trouble, I knew it was my duty to help in any way I could.

  Apparently word had gotten around that the Nepalis were planning to extend one of their hill roads up to a mountain village that was so close to Shambhala that it represented a serious danger. The road would bring so many people into the area that the secret would eventually get out, and that would be it for the sacred valley.

  As soon as Kunga Norbu explained the nature of the problem I knew that my buddy George Fergusson was the answer. George is great at oiling his way through the Nepali bureaucracy to get what he needs for his trekking business, so I figured he had expertise in just the areas we needed.