by Mark Horrell
‘Fuck you, why are you hassling me, man?’ he says repeatedly.
It’s quite some time before I realise he is talking to a western woman. When I do, it happens in a way that makes me feel quite sick.
‘I will beat you, man,’ he says. ‘I have beaten other women, and I will beat you, too.’
And then a short while later he says: ‘I just want your money, man. I want your fucking money.’
A Sherpani woman comes in to rebuke him. She also speaks in fluent English, and I assume she does so for my benefit. I am their only customer and I can hear every word.
‘This is a business phone. Why you not use your cell phone? You have been on phone for an hour and customers may be trying to call us.’
He ignores her and keeps talking. Perhaps he will beat her later too. Namche is in a beautiful setting, but it’s no paradise. I’m glad when I finish what I need to do, pay up and leave.
There are nice people here too. In the evening I meet up with my friend Siling in the Irish pub. He is a Nepalese trekking guide whom I have travelled with many times. I saw him in Kathmandu a few days ago, but it didn’t register with either of us that we would be in Namche at the same time. He was surprised when he bumped into Ian walking around the village earlier in the day. He is guiding three clients to Everest Base Camp, but they are feeling a little under the weather today, so he has a free evening.
He tells us that, despite the number of trekkers we overtook on the trail yesterday, the Khumbu region is quiet this year. He says this is mainly due to the poor reliability of flights to Lukla – the principal means for tourists to access the area. Low cloud causes frequent cancellations, and Siling says there were no flights either today or yesterday.
Some of the domestic airlines have a safety record comparable to Evel Knievel’s. They do not maintain their planes to international standards, resulting in a number of fatal accidents on Twin Otter flights in recent years. Many of the aircraft have been decommissioned, so there is now a much smaller fleet. Insurance is also becoming an issue. Some travel insurance policies now have ‘Lukla exemptions’.
Phil’s decision to send us by helicopter is looking like a wise one. Ian explains that helicopters are able to fly in worse conditions than the Twin Otters. The planes need to be able to see the runway from several miles away to land safely. Helicopters can fly much closer, and hover while they look for a landing pad.
Siling says there is now talk of building a road all the way to the village of Surkhe, a short distance below Lukla. Currently it takes five or six days to trek there from the roadhead at Jiri.
It’s quiet in the Irish pub. Kevin and Mel join us for a drink, but there are just two other small groups present. Afterwards, Siling, Ian and I go to one of only three other bars in Namche. It’s called the Liquid Cocktail Bar, and we find it down an alleyway off the main street. This time we are the only customers, although this is partially explained by the choice of music. Gentle, cheesy, 80s pop is playing when we arrive, but I believe the staff overhear us being critical. Two tracks later they start playing thrash metal. Tuneless electric guitar chords punish our eardrums while a man barks ‘you’re gonna die, you’re gonna die, you’re gonna die’ over and over again. I hope it’s not an omen for our expedition.
We say our goodbyes to Siling and return to our teahouse, The Nest, at eleven o’clock. It’s been a very late night for a trek in Nepal.
Day 4 – The plot thickens
Sunday, 6 April 2014 – Deboche, Nepal
We take an early breakfast and leave Namche Bazaar at 7.15 for the next leg of our journey. Louis is feeling a little better this morning, but has taken the precaution of sending his pack with a porter. Meanwhile his wife Dia, who is trekking to Base Camp with us, carries her own pack.
‘Look at this,’ Phil says as we prepare to leave. ‘Louis looks like a trekker while Dia looks like a climber.’
Ricardo is also feeling ill this morning, but he left it too late to hire a porter and has to carry his own pack.
I catch up with Louis and Dia and walk behind them for a while.
‘Is it traditional in South Africa to get your wife to carry your kit for you?’ I ask.
Louis is embarrassed, and a little while later I see him take the pack off Dia and carry it himself.
Above Namche the broad trail contours around a hillside. We see a pair of Impeyan pheasants, the national symbol of Nepal, prancing on a bank above us, their iridescent plumage shimmering in the light. The trail swings to the left and rejoins the Dudh Khosi Valley. For the next few miles the view is spectacular as we contour high above the river. There is forest below us, and the jagged outline of Lhotse rises in a haze of blue far ahead.
By the time we reach the village of Kjanjuma the cloud has lifted completely and it’s a glorious day. I’ve been ambling at the back, taking many photographs, and when I catch up with the others they are sitting in the garden of a teahouse, swigging soft drinks. The mountain panorama is marvellous: Taboche Peak right above us and Lhotse to the east; Ama Dablam, Kangtega and Thamserku rising in a line across the valley. Thamserku is perhaps the most dramatic from this angle, an impossible shark’s fin piercing the sky.
People are making fun of Edita. She has her phone out, and stops to tweet and post photos to Facebook from time to time.
‘Spot the blogger!’ Phil says.
‘Recognised by her mating call, “3G, 3G, 3G”,’ Kevin says.
As a fellow blogger I should probably be more sympathetic. But here among breathtaking mountains I have no wish to wander along with my phone in hand, looking for 3G connectivity. I’m happy to spend time looking for a great photo, and I will write about my experiences when I reflect upon them later in the day. But I scribble my diary on paper for posterity, and will hardly look at my photos until I get home. As for real-time status updates on social networking sites, these are ephemeral. Only a handful of people will see them if they happen to be online when I post. And they will soon be forgotten. It would be a shame to spend time tweeting if it takes something away from my enjoyment of the mountains.
Edita searches for 3G on the trail above Namche Bazaar
Beyond Kjanjuma, Robert and Scott intend to leave us and head up the Gokyo Valley. They will cross a high pass, the Cho La, and rejoin us at Base Camp in a few days’ time. I overhear Phil and Dorje suggesting they spend two nights in the village of Machermo to help with their acclimatisation.
‘I don’t want to worry you guys,’ I say, ‘but there was a yeti attack in Machermo a few years ago.’
I relate the story, which is alleged to have happened in the 1970s. A Sherpani was tending her yaks in a field behind the village when she was thrown to the ground by a seven-foot yeti, which then proceeded to assault her livestock. It hurled a calf across the field with its bare hands, and wrestled its mother to the ground by the horns. It was then said to have torn the yak’s stomach open and sucked out its entrails.
I provide as much detail as I can, but Robert and Scott just respond with matching smirks. I don’t think they believe me.
We drop steeply through rhododendron forests to the bottom of the valley, then cross the Dudh Khosi River on another long footbridge. But all this height must be regained. For the next two hours we trudge back up the hillside to the forested ridge where Tengboche Monastery looks out towards Everest.
The trail is hot and dusty, and there is only brief respite when trees above the trail provide some shade. I plod upwards, drinking frequently. I’m prepared for this climb, having come this way twelve years ago. It’s just as I remember it. Tengboche lies on a shoulder of Kangtega, a silver-saddled peak which provides a dramatic backdrop to the walk.
At Kjanjuma, Ricardo’s illness was slowing him down, so Dia agreed to carry his pack for him. A strange instinct makes him take it back off her for this part of the walk. Halfway up the hill he meets an Argentine friend coming the other way, a fellow guide he has met frequently when they were both guiding on Aconcagua, S
outh America’s highest mountain.
‘Thank God I took my pack back,’ he says afterwards. ‘I would never have lived that one down if he saw Dia carrying it for me.’
We reach the colourful Tengboche Monastery at eleven o’clock. It’s very busy. A group of Sherpas are playing volleyball, and a few people sit outside a bakery drinking coffee. A large teahouse stands opposite the monastery.
We have our first view of Everest, a giant black pyramid directly in front of us. The summit of Lhotse has disappeared behind a plume of cloud to its right. Khumbila, the mountain across the valley which stands sentinel over Tengboche, is also hidden by cloud. Khumbu-Yul-Lha is the protector god for the whole of the Khumbu region, and Khumbila is his home. It’s the most holy of mountains, and it’s forbidden for anyone to climb it.
Tengboche’s ridge overlooks a confluence of rivers. To the north the Dudh Khosi River, which we’ve been following most of the way from Lukla, climbs up to the Gokyo Valley. I explored this beautiful valley in 2009, where a series of picturesque lakes nestle beneath Cho Oyu’s enormous South Face. To the north-east the Imja Khola Valley continues towards Everest, and this is the direction we’ll be taking tomorrow.
The speedsters Phil, Kevin, Ian and Jay have been here a while. They are enjoying a beer outside the bakery when we arrive. We continue over the other side of the ridge, dropping through rhododendron forests. Ten minutes later we reach the Rivendell Lodge, our overnight stop among trees in the small community of Deboche.
We leave our bags in our rooms and meet in the large upstairs dining hall, looking out at an Everest rapidly disappearing into cloud.
I am concerned because I saw Edita descend from Tengboche ahead of me, but she hasn’t appeared at the lodge. We reached it sooner than expected and I’m sure she must have shot past and continued down the valley. Margaret is just as sure Edita must have stopped at the monastery, and is not concerned. Edita turns up half an hour later. She tells us she walked a little further down the trail after finding there was no 3G at the lodge.
As the afternoon passes, the Rivendell Lodge lives up to its name by disappearing into a thick Tolkienesque mist. We can see little more than a few metres out of the window.
At dinner time Phil tells a story that causes me to gape in shock. It follows a conversation about Sherpas – some of ours are climbing up to Camp 2 today, where they plan to rope off a section of the Western Cwm for our tents.
‘Will this work?’ I ask. ‘Or are we going to climb up there to find people camped in our spot?’
‘Sherpas will take notice of it,’ Phil replies. ‘Western climbers may ignore it and camp there, but if they do the Sherpas won’t be happy.’
We talk about the fight at Camp 2 last year, when a pair of well-known European climbers, Ueli Steck and Simone Moro, clashed with Sherpas who were fixing ropes on the Lhotse Face.
There is an unwritten rule among the commercial operators on Everest that everyone should stay off the mountain when the Sherpas are fixing ropes. The two Europeans were unaware of this rule, and last year, as the rope-fixing team made their way up the face, Steck and Moro climbed alongside them. The pair were unroped, and their action hurt the pride of the Sherpas. When the climbers moved above them and kicked down some ice, an altercation took place.
The Italian, Simone Moro, was reported to have used some colourful Nepali words that he is unlikely to have learned in a language class. The Sherpas threw down their tools in protest and descended to Camp 2 to complete the job another day. When the two Europeans returned to Camp 2, an angry Sherpa mob confronted them. The mob were armed with rocks and knives, and the two Europeans had to beat a hasty retreat to Base Camp.
‘Did you hear about our little incident at ABC [Advanced Base Camp] last year?’ Phil says.
I shake my head.
‘A South American climber came up to our camp shouting “One of you motherfuckers has shit in our toilet!” I calmed him down and explained that we had toilets of our own for people to use. I asked him not to swear in front of the Sherpas as they find it disrespectful. “I’m telling you, one of your fucking team shit in our toilet,” he repeated. I asked him again to be polite in front of the Sherpas, or I couldn’t be responsible for what happened. But he carried on effing and blinding in front of us.’
My mouth hangs open in astonishment as Phil relates the next part of the story. Believing that he was accusing them of using his toilet, the Sherpas confronted him in a manner echoing the Ueli Steck incident. They used physical force and the South American climber was made to apologise. Sherpas I know well, and have never known to be anything other than polite and helpful, behaved in a way that surprises me greatly. Phil tends to avoid controversy and often takes on the role of peacemaker, but in this story he comes across as partially complicit.
‘I’m telling you, the Sherpas don’t like people being disrespectful,’ he says.
These incidents leave an unpleasant taste in the mouth. I don’t know whom to sympathise with, if anyone. Violence is never an answer for anything. On the other hand, to be rude and abusive in a place where the law doesn’t stretch is also asking for trouble.
I look at Margaret and Edita, both of whom were at ABC last year.
‘Is this true?’
‘It’s true. I wrote about it,’ Edita says.
‘This happened a couple of days before the Simone incident, and on the north side of Everest, where it’s much quieter,’ Phil adds. ‘I was pretty relieved no one got to hear about it when that all kicked off in the media.’
Day 5 – Birthday peanuts
Monday, 7 April 2014 – Dingboche, Nepal
It’s Phil’s birthday today, and at breakfast everyone sings Happy Birthday. I don’t join in myself, for the simple reason that Phil doesn’t appear to enjoy being serenaded. In fact, he looks as sick as a parrot, and I find the expression on his face so funny that I roar with laughter for the entire song.
Everest and Lhotse are visible again across the camping ground in front of the lodge. The sun touches the front yard just as we leave at 7.15. It’s a short morning walk up to our next lodge at Dingboche, but these three hours are the best I’ve spent in a long time. The trail is not especially busy, but the scenery is as breathtaking as anything I will ever see.
I came this way in the opposite direction five years ago when I returned from Island Peak. It was a total whiteout, snow fell for much of the walk, and I could see virtually nothing of the surrounding countryside. Today I see what I was missing, and my camera is rarely out of my hand.
We start with a gentle descent through thick and gloomy rhododendron forest. We reach the valley floor and cross over the Imja Khola River on a short footbridge. On the north bank the trail climbs again to the village of Pangboche. The sun hangs high over the armchair shape of Ama Dablam, providing only a hazy view, but up ahead the black fortresses of Everest and Lhotse are clear and bright, bounded by the battlements of the Nuptse ridge.
I walk at the back with Dia and Louis for much of the way. This is Dia’s first time in Nepal and she seems to be enjoying it even more than I am.
Beyond Pangboche the broad trail winds high above the river, lined with chortens and mani walls. These are Buddhist symbols, the first a bell-shaped monument and the second a line of slabs. They are inscribed with the mantra om mani padme hum, a phrase whose literal translation – praise to the jewel in the lotus – is obscure, but full of significance. According to tradition we have to pass to the left-hand side of them, ensuring the inscribed prayers are read the right way. These diversions sometimes take us up steep banks on narrow trails.
Across the valley to our right Kangtega changes from a silver saddle to a narrow needle. Eventually we see another slender peak behind it, and I’m unsure which is the true summit.
After climbing above 4,000m I reach a broad, dry plateau strewn with boulders and scrubby juniper bushes. Here I catch up with Louis, Dia, Margaret, Edita and Ricardo. Kangtega is behind us now, and every bit as
spectacular as Lhotse in front. Everest has disappeared behind the Nuptse ridge.
We take it in turns to pose for photos. I get out my mini tripod and set up a group shot of the six of us using my camera timer, an exercise that often produces giggles when I fail to get into the shot in time.
Beyond the plateau the trail branches either side of a small hill. The left branch leads to Pheriche, where there is a small hospital and a helipad, while the right branch drops down to the river, crosses over, then leads steeply up again on the right side of the hill.
The view is magnificent. I have only ever been here in a whiteout, but I recognise the parting of the ways from the features on my map. Although Louis, Margaret and Edita have all been this way too, in much better conditions, they are content to let me lead. I stride confidently ahead and keep turning around to film them coming up behind me. Every time they reach me, instead of continuing onwards, they stop and wait for me.
‘You are the leader on our Lhotse climbing permit,’ Edita points out. This is true – on the expedition paperwork one of us had to be designated leader, since Phil himself will be climbing Everest rather than Lhotse. It fell to me to take on the role, despite the fact that the only thing I’m likely to lead them on is a merry dance.
‘But you’ve all been here more than I have,’ I reply.
We cross another plateau, crest a rise and see Dingboche across an open area between hills. As we begin our descent to the village I turn to film them again, only to find Margaret pointing her own video camera at me as she walks.
‘Ahead of us is the famous blogger Mark Horrell,’ I hear her say. We’ve bumped into a few people over the last few days who have admitted to reading my blog, and Margaret always finds this funny.