Expedition Kala Patthar

WE'VE MOVED to WWW.EKPADVENTURES.COM

2011-11-30T10:03:00.000-05:00

Yup, that's right, EKP has shifted URLs and our new website is much more user friendly.
Please check us out at
www.ekpadventures.com
Now, you can subscribe to our new blog as well, and get all our updates, trail reports and general craziness emailed right to you! See you there!

We're moving to www.ekpadventures.com

2011-11-15T12:02:00.002-05:00

Hello to all our wonderful followers! Just a heads up that Expedition Kala Patthar is once again on the move, this time to a new server and a new website. Please come join us in our new home:
www.ekpadventures.wordpress.com
The new site is more user friendly, but will still have all your favorite features! Please join us at our new site by subscribing and you'll get an automatic notification of every post!
We hope you like it! Thanks!

An end and a new beginning for EKP

2011-11-13T14:17:00.001-05:00

Friends, we have exciting news! We've been away from EKP for a bit because we've been developing an all new site. Well, that site is ready and we strongly encourage you all to jump on over to continue to enjoy our blog and The Nepal Chronicles.
Beginning today, www.ekpadventures.com will direct you to our new site. Those of you using the old blogger address (www.expeditionkalapatthar.blogspot.com) will continue to come here for a couple more weeks.
Our new site has a slicker look, with some easier to use tabs to help you find information about us, some of your favorite features or about The Nepal Chronicles. Take a look and tell us what you think.
Also, the new site makes following the adventure easier as it features a user-friendly subscription feature. Just punch in your email address, and you'll get an email asking you to confirm your subscription. Say yes, and you're in. Now every time there's a new post at EKP, you'll get an email notifying you to stop by and have a look!
We'll have the conclusion of The Nepal Chronicles, the return of Bizarre Snacks and much more as we look toward 2012 and many more adventures. Thanks for sticking with us, and we hope to see you at our new site: www.ekpadventures.com

Input wanted for our postcard series

2011-10-24T11:51:00.000-04:00

Hi all, we're looking for some input on our postcard series. We have five potential postcards for The Nepal Chronicles and we'd like to know which one (or ones) you like best. The most popular one will get turned into real postcards!
Please let us know, here are your choices...

World's highest webcam set up on Kala Patthar

2011-10-07T10:20:00.000-04:00

Our view from Kala

Some news we found interesting was that a German company in conjunction with the National Research Council has set up an Everest Web Cam from atop Kala Patthar, the mountain we climbed last year. On a clear day, the images of Everest are pretty amazing. The cam is updated every five minutes.
Pretty neat to see Everest from the view that we had... good, cold memories!

You can check out a story on the webcam here: http://www.physorg.com/news/2011-10-world-highest-webcam-everest-internet.html

You can check out the actual webcam here: http://www.evk2cnr.org/WebCams/PyramidOne/everest-webcam.html

Two roads contest!

2011-10-06T11:47:00.000-04:00

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood, And sorry I could not travel both...

Welcome to fall! We came upon this wonderful cross-roads last week. Guess where it is and win a White Mountain related prize! On Friday morning, we'll randomly select a winner from among the right answers. Good luck!

September 48 Campaign a success, EKP returns!

2011-10-05T10:26:00.000-04:00

Above the clouds on the campaign trail: Dan tags number 14, Mt. Adams, early on in the September 48 Campaign.

Aaaaaand we're back! Did you miss us? We missed you!
On behalf of Meena and myself, we're so proud to announce that our September 48 Campaign was an unqualified success. With Meena's crucial ground support, I was able to summit all 48 of New Hampshire's 4,000 foot and above mountains in 20 days. All told, I hiked nearly 225 miles to accomplish our goal!
More important was the fact that we raised a tremendous amount of money for our charity, the Manchester Family Learning Center.
You can read all about our campaign at our website: www.september48.com
You can see pictures from all the peaks here: http://danandmeenakshi.phanfare.com/5267005
So, EKP Adventures is back and we have some exciting things we'll be working on this fall and winter.
First up, the final chapter of The Nepal Chronicles will drop in the next couple weeks.
Then, there will be plenty of White Mountain adventures on tap, including some 48er finishes, some frozen lake snowshoeing and a trip to Quebec.
Finally, by popular demand, Bizarre Food Reviews will return, and this time we'll have a couple new judges to help us try the goodies!
Thanks for your support and patience. We're looking at some new designs for EKP and will have a subscription service set up pretty soon.
So stay tuned!
D and M

On hiatus until October

2011-09-08T15:29:00.001-04:00

Hello friends!
Yes, we're still here, but we are currently involved in our September 48 Campaign. During September we are attempting to hike all 48 of the state's 4,000 foot mountains for charity and it's a project that's taking up pretty much all our waking moments.
EKP will return to conclude The Nepal Chronicles in October. Until then, please stop by our campaign website and help us hike for a cause!
www.september48.com
Thank you everybody!
D and M

The Nepal Chronicles - Chapter 17

2011-08-25T00:11:00.000-04:00

Follow the river: The Milk River roars down the valley toward Lukla.

Return to Lukla
Tuesday, Oct. 26

Karen is sick. She had slept nearly all of the day and evening before, and though feeling better this morning, is nowhere near being well. Perhaps it's the altitude. Maybe she ate something that did not sit well. My feeling is that her and Tim spent far too long in Tengboche.

Whatever the case, as we get ready to leave Namche, Tim has packed most of her gear in his pack, and we offer to stick with them on the way back.

The difference between Namche and Lukla is only about 1,000 feet, but it's ten miles. There's a lot of ups and downs and even though we are ready to hit the road at 7 a.m., the day is already hot and the sky cloudless.

After breakfast, as we make the final checks of our gear, our offers one final gesture that nearly brings tears to all our eyes. He gives each of us a kati scarf, a lightweight, gold offering of safe travel. We each bow forward as he wraps them around each of our necks.

I truly feel like a traveler, and I know now I'll miss this place more than any other.

On the way out of Namche, we catch an emergency helicopter leaving the pad we had explored the day before and I wonder who's aboard.

Our final day of walking begins serenely enough. We are fully acclimatized now. Our bellies are full and we've had two full evenings of sleep. We keep track of Karen, who is clearly tired, and try to cheer them both with stories and conversation. Tim is concerned though, and sometimes seems obsessed with getting her down and to some relative safety. He'll move ahead, then seem frustrated when we're unable to follow at that speed. Even healthy, we're no match for Tim's speed and strength.

We move like this, a little mismatched foursome, back down the Namche plateau and past beautiful lookouts that were covered in mist on our way up.

At one such switchback in the path, there is a kind, older woman selling small wrinkled oranges which she has lined up on a blanket alongside the path.

Valley beauty: Above, a wonderful cabbage orchard. Below, marigold heaven!

We cross back over the high suspension bridge, then move down to the shores of the Milk River once again. At this stage Karen's spirits seem to lift and we bid our friends farewell. We'd see them again at some point in Lukla, but for now they appear driven enough to move much faster than us.

Here in the sun, at the edge of the river, the valley is magical. I spend some time taking pictures of the white, foamy water, roaring so loudly we have to move close to each other to hear. We move at a pleasant pace, past vast cabbage orchards, and back through the villages we struggled through a week and a half ago.

We come again to Dingboche and stop for an early lunch amid the marigolds. There were meet a team of three climbers, two westerners and one Sherpa, who have just finished their expedition to Mera Peak. Even though they have scaled a vastly more difficult and technical peak than us, they are gracious and curious and we share our stories of our successes with each other. Once again, Meena and I marvel at the obvious differences between the Sherpa guides and the Sherpa climbers. This Sherpa is lean, and broad-shouldered, wearing expensive sunglasses and fine outerwear. No flip-flops here.

A half hour later, and we're back in Ghat, the site of our original night. We have an important task to attend to here. Days earlier, a Sherpa guide Meena had chatted with had asked her to inform his wife that he would be several days late in getting home. He was going to accompany a client the long way back, over the Cho-La Pass. Could we tell his wife as we passed through?

I marvel over this simple but crucial responsibility as we searched for the man's house. There are no addresses of course. Meena has a vague description of the house and the Sherpa's name. No email. No phone. No post office. This is how messages are sent from village to village.

After a few inquires we find the lodge, and find the woman, a child on her waist. Meena and her chat for a while, and we're done. She invites us to stay, but we politely decline, wanting to reach Lukla by that evening.

Gonna be a bright, bright, bright, sunshiny day!

The day wanes on and afternoon comes quickly. About two miles from Lukla we're startled to run into Tim, who is heading in the other direction. Turns out, Karen was too tired to make it all the way to Lukla so they got a room in Dingboche. Then Tim went on to Lukla to confirm their flight for the next day and is now coming back. I marvel at his strength, but am horrified to hear that the Tara Airlines office in Lukla closes at 4 p.m. and we must confirm today in order to assure our flight for tomorrow.

A word again about domestic travel in Nepal. We have our tickets. The tickets are paid for. We are scheduled to leave Lukla and fly to Kathmandu tomorrow.

In Nepal, that means nothing.

It's 2:30 p.m. and we're two miles from Lukla. I leave some gear and all my water but a half bottle with Meena. We agree to meet at the Tara Airlines building. I give her a kiss and head out, not exactly at a run, but as near as I can manage.

I make good time too, skirting the valley, and assaulting the final climb up to Lukla within an hour. Even after a traffic jam within a half mile of town thanks to a slow moving yak train, I manage to motor into the noise and ruckus of Lukla with 10 minutes to spare! A few more blocks and there's the airline building.

And another line.

I groan. Again, in Nepal the word “line” is fairly relative. The line in front of the tiny Tara Airlines building is really more of a rowdy half circle of angry people all talking at the same time. Inside the one room barn-like building frazzled airline workers lazily mark down notes on paper grids. No computers. No electricity. Nothing.

Four p.m. comes and goes, and my patience with this system begins to erode. Finally, at 4:30, after having stood there for nearly 45 minutes, Meena joins me, a big grim on her face. She knows how things work around here.

I have had enough, and for five minutes all semblance of wakefulness evaporates and I decide that being nice does not work here. I leave my pack with Meena and begin to cut. I am unapologetic in my rudeness.

A few people eye me, but no one seems surprised. I shove my way to the front of the line and thrust my boarding passes down toward the oldest man at the table, the one who appears to be in charge.

“Dia!” I bark.

He looks up and I shove the tickets into his hand for verification. He takes them, and I see him write our ticket numbers down in the chart that says 10 a.m. He scribbles something on the ticket and hands it back to me without looking. We're done. I'm exhausted.

We drag ourselves back to the outskirts of town as neither of us have any interest in having to deal with the chaos. If anything, Lukla is more riled up than the first time we passed through, and it seems like there are more people. Near the center of town, the thump from a second floor dance club reverberates into the ground. We finally settle on a small lodge next to the memorial archway and order dinner for later that night.

Coffee break: Starbucks, Lukla style!

After dumping our packs, and putting on some warmer clothes, we walk back into town. We have one final thing to do before our trek comes to an end; visit Starbucks.

I order a chia and Meena orders hot chocolate and we both settle back in this familiar setting to relax and try to calm our jangled nerves. Oddly, the interior of the Starbucks looks like a Hawaiian tiki lounge, with wicker chairs and tables and a small bar pushed up against a wall. In an outer room, there is a small internet cafe and we're able finally to post some pictures and notes letting people know we'll be back in Kathmandu tomorrow morning.

But of course, we wouldn't. In fact, even as we sat in the fake Starbucks waiting for our trek to be over, we didn't realize just how much more there was to come.

Our host: The owner of the Yak Hotel kept us well fed and comfortable.

Our trek concludes next week. Only one more day to go, and all we have to do is get out of Lukla. Join us next week, Thursday, Sept. 1 as do whatever it takes to get on that plane and get back to Kathmandu!
In the meantime, we'd love to hear from you - questions, advice, suggestions, you name it, we'll do our best to respond!

Until then, check out this weeks pictures at our digital picture site. See them at: Return to Lukla.

This is Neil's fault

2011-08-18T11:01:00.000-04:00

What we mean is that it's Neil's fault that Chapter 17 of The Nepal Chronicles has been delayed. He somehow managed to convince Dan to take a Hooky from work day and day hike Mts. Washington and Monroe (and Clay). The result of which was am awesome hike, but no new chapter.
So, to save some face, here's a trip report of the day!

Going my way: I tried to hitch a ride with the Cog Railroad, but sadly they wouldn't pick me up!

It was a perfect day. No, really! We chatted with the croo at Lakes of the Clouds and they said that they had rarely seen such an absolutely perfect weather day for Mt. Washington!
If only we can get some of that kind of weather in September.
For our work hooky training day, Neil needed Mts. Monroe and Washington for his 48 so we decided to tackle the classic Ammonoosuc Trail up Jewell Trail down loop, a very fine hike. Indeed one of the most scenic and varied hikes in the White Mountains.
Now, by perfect day, here’s what I mean; perfectly blue sky with beautiful wisps of undercast in the valleys, a slight breeze to keep us cool and keep the bugs at bay, a recent two day surge of rain which left the trails dry enough but the waterfalls lush and running high and a mid-week hike to keep the tourists and flip-floppers to a minimum. It literally all came together!
We headed up the Ammonoosuc 7:30 a.m. sharp under clearing skies and temps in the high 50s and it only got better as we ascended. We reached Gem Pool (2.1 miles) in an hour, a great time for us and began the hard work of climbing up to Lakes of the Clouds Hut. But time flew by, mostly because the series of falls along the trails were spectacular, in some places pouring down in splits of three and four. Just stunning!
Made the hut in under three hours and were standing on Mt. Monroe in 3.5, number 42 for Neil!

Picture perfect: Heading down to the Lakes of the Clouds Hut after summiting M. Monroe.

After a quick break back at the hut where we were scolded for sunning ourselves on the alpine grass (our bad!) the march up to Washington began. By then, there was a long line of hikers rolling upward, but we made great time and found ourselves at the summit by 12:30. There were far more people up there than we had expected but the weather was such that lots more people than us had snuck out of work to enjoy this beautiful day.
Once at the top, we got in line for the summit! Yup, there was a line of about 30 people queued up to get their picture at the summit sign. Oh well! We got into a pleasant conversation with a couple on a vacation trip with their Hasidic Jewish congregation from New Jersey. They were on a bus tour of New Hampshire for ten days, staying in Lincoln. They could not have picked a better day to come up.
After a bowl of chili and the guilty pleasure of a Coke at the cafeteria we were off. It didn’t take much convincing to get Neil to tag Mt. Clay as well. It doesn’t count as an official 4,000 footer, but it’s a sadly overlooked summit. We were joined on the climb up by a dozen boys of the New Jersey congregation who were giddily making their way over to Mt. Jefferson and back before their bus left at 6 p.m. We shared the summit with them for 10 minutes as they peppered us with questions about hiking and winter climbing and just who Clay was and how many mountains there are. It was nice.
But alas, the best days must come to and end, so we scrambled down off Clay to the junction with the Jewell Trail and two and a half hours later were back at the car.
I felt pretty strong, though I’m going to have to attend to a couple hot spots on my feet. Maybe it’s time for new liners before September.
Total Summits: Monroe / Washington / Clay
Total Miles: About 9.5
Total Time, including breaks and rest: 10 hours

Postcard #5: When the Sun is Shining

2011-08-13T00:53:00.000-04:00

Here is the fifth Postcard in our series. The picture is taken at a small outlook just under Namche Bazaar at about 10,000 feet. In the valley below, the Milk River roars. As always these images are available as digital images and will soon be actual postcards! Let us know if you'd like one!
Thanks for your support and tell us what you think!

The Nepal Chronicles - Chapter 16

2011-08-11T07:58:00.001-04:00

Monastic colors: The brightly painted Namche Monastery is one of the oldest in the region.

Tourists in Namche
Monday, Oct. 25

When the young Sherpa woman shopkeeper starts throwing punches, we all freeze in place.

Perhaps it's the shock of seeing an actual, down and dirty, fists flying fight in the middle of the Namche market. Or perhaps it's that nobody really seems to take it seriously. Maybe it's the armed Nepali military guy standing off to the side, smoking, watching.

After all the kindness, goodwill and seeming peaceful nature of the Khumbu we had experienced up until this point, witnessing a fight in broad daylight in the middle of one of the most heavily tourist-populated streets in town is amazing. Nobody does anything. We don't do anything.

But then, when the older Sherpa woman, who until this point has been on the receiving end of most of the punches, picks up a large, heavy walking stick, the honorary mayor of Namche finally steps in.

Yak Hotel owner Chime Kalden has had enough. He gets between the woman and I don't need to understand the language to know what he says. This is bad for business. Tourists are watching. Take it inside. The two woman stalk off, grumbling, cursing each other over their shoulders. And slowly life returns to normal.

“Crazy huh,” a voice says beside me. It's Tim! They had finally made it out of Tengboche and as coincidence has it are also staying at the Yak Hotel, but Karen is sick and Tim has run down to find some stomach meds. If I had stayed for four days in Tengboche, I would have been ill as well.

We feel bad for Karen, but it's late in the day and we're happy to see a friendly face.


Exploring Namche: Above, a yak herd pauses on the helipad thousands of feet above the Milk River. Below, Namche is the center of Sherpa culture and trade. Most goods come in on the backs of shaggy yaks like this one.

That morning we had slept in, not leaving the comfort of the Yak Hotel until 9 a.m. We were beat, but elated. We ate ravenously at breakfast, brushed our teeth, ran cold, cold water over our heads and washed our faces. I used a western toilet. It was heaven. We luxuriated in a world that had suddenly and wonderfully become slow and perfect. The weather was warm, and we strolled through the streets and trails of Namche without a care in the world and no deadline or elevation to tackle.

After breakfast we wandered up a long nearly hidden trail to a deep overhang and rock wall, used we found out, in the annual Dumjee Festival, a boisterous affair that celebrates the accomplishments of a local lama. Participants dress in their finest wear and Sherpa elders toss handfuls of tsampa - barley flour - at the rock outcropping, which they believe watches over the town.

We followed the trail to the farthest northern corner of the town, where it breaks out over the ridge and discovered a helicopter pad settled into the very edge of the cliff, thousands of feet above the Milk River. We watched in amazement as a yak herder brought the shaggy beasts down to the platform to take inventory before heading into town.

On the way back to town, we wandered over to Namche Monastery, a beautiful, deeply colorful building far older then its more popular sister in Tengboche. Inside, a lone monk swept the floor of the prayer room as Meena and I sat before the detailed murals and soaked in the warmth and smells of the ancient building.

Meena helpfully translated the monk for trekkers as they came in, and for a little while, we became docents to other trekkers' journeys.

We visited the Sherpa Life Museum, a wondrous place created by a deaf Sherpa named Lhakpa Sonam, who survived a 200 foot avalanche on a Swiss expedition and had traveled all over Europe and America for his education. Here, he ran a museum, a library and a lodge and curated the largest collection of Sherpa climbing artifacts likely in the world.

For lunch, we decided to go Western. It was a terrible mistake. A small outdoor cafe near the center of town provided us with a rich menu of western lunch options. I order a personal pizza while Meena picked a cheese sub. The pizza was a soggy mess, uncooked dough under a gooey smear of burned yak cheese. Meena's sandwich was even worse, so bad in fact we took a picture.

The Khumbu version of a cheese sub apparently was grated cold yak cheese and sliced tomatoes on top a thick bed of yellowing, salty mayonnaise. Neither of us could eat the thing. We laughed, understanding what Nepalis apparently thought our western food was like.

Namche food and worship: Above, the notorious cheese sandwich. Below, a huge Stupa towers over guests at the Sherpa Museum.

And now, as dusk began to settle over Namche and our sense of calm satisfaction over our trip buzzed pleasantly in our heads, we did the only thing left to do; we shopped.

We each bought a new pair of hiking socks and liners to make our final long push back to Lukla tomorrow more comfortable. We bought new wicking shirts and immediately changed into them.

Finally, Meena left me in the internet cafe as she went to barter with a shop owner over a spectacular Marmot jacket I had my eye on. It was a fake, of course, as most high end gear here was, but it looked so... European! I had to have it. And by this time, we knew that if a white boy showed up the price would be twice as high. Sure enough, a grinning Meena appeared twenty minutes later having bought the jacket for 1,700 rupees, about $35. The deal of the trip.

Later, as we sit in the common room, eating dinner, our host tells us the story of the fighting Sherpa women. Both shopkeepers, the older woman had accused the younger one's son of stealing from her shop. In most situations, it was a slight that normally would be dealt with out of public, after hours. But the older woman had no credibility with other Namche shopkeepers. She recently opened her store, and dared to compete with other business owners, breaking the Namche unwritten rule of solidarity and equal pricing.

Capitalism had split Namche, and erupted into a street fight. I don't know whether to laugh or cry.

We stay up later than normal that evening, taking a walk through the streets after dark, wandering no place in particular, wearing our new clothes like tourists, feeling warm and content.

In a side alley, away from anyone that could see, I give Meena a squeeze and kiss the top of her head, wanting my joy at being here to include her presence as well. Tomorrow we'll aim for Lukla. If all went well, in two days we'd be on a plane heading for New York.

The trek is winding down, and even as I stand on its narrow streets, I already miss Namche Bazaar.

Big wheel keep on turning: At left, a beautiful prayer wheel at Namche Monastery shines in the sun.

After an easy day of shopping and rest at Namche, we have one more challenge in front of us; getting back to Lukla and somehow talking our way back onto a plane to Kathmandu. Join us next week, Thursday, Aug. 18 at 8 a.m., as we race against the clock to make our way home.
In the meantime, we'd love to hear from you - questions, advice, suggestions, you name it, we'll do our best to respond!

Until then, check out this weeks pictures at our digital picture site. See them at: Tourists in Namche.

Pic of the day

2011-08-08T13:53:00.000-04:00

Training weekend in the Whites to prepare for our September Campaign.
www.september48.com

Glorious views: Franconia Ridge and Mt. Garfield from atop South Twin Mtn. For more pics, stop by our digital album site: http://danandmeenakshi.phanfare.com/5231159

Announcing our newest quest - 48 in 30!

2011-08-04T07:46:00.000-04:00

It's Thursday and that means a new installment of The Nepal Chronicles. Normally, yes, but EKP is also a hiking site and we're taking this week to introduce our newest hair-brained hiking project.
In September 2011, Dan will attempt to hike all 48 of New Hampshire’s 4,000-footers; all 48 in 30 days. After trampling around the White Mountains for a decade he decided to put his worn boots to good use, and he'll be climbing with a cause.
Our efforts will be on behalf of the Holy Cross Family Learning Center of Manchester, a truly wonderful organization that helps refugees and immigrants learn English and create a better life for themselves. We hope our efforts will raise awareness about the needs of these folks, and provide some amount of relief as they settle into their new lives.
With Meena's logistical and car spot help, we feel this is going to be both doable and exciting. Fundraising has already begun and we're proud to announce three major business sponsors and many individual sponsors who have stepped up to support our effort.
There are several ways you can help. You can A) subscribe to our new website feed via your email and read along with our journey at www.september48.com B) come hike with Dan and help him raise money for this cause by gathering your own pledges – his schedule will be updated daily C) become a sponsor and pledge to the cause.
Our campaign will be updated in nearly real time through the month of September so supporters can watch as we attempt this challenging campaign.
Our plan is to finish the trekking section of The Nepal Chronicles before September, then turn our attention toward the September 48 website until October. So, for now, please stop over there and check us out, then enjoy the final three chapters of The Nepal Chronicles starting next week.
Once again, our campaign site is www.september48.com
Thanks and we'll see you on the trails!

Book Review: Following Atticus

2011-07-28T07:43:00.001-04:00

Following a big guy and a little dog

They like Ike: Atticus and Tom on the summit of Mt. Eisenhower. Courtesy photo

Following Atticus: Forty-Eight Peaks, One Little Dog and an Extraordinary Friendship, by Tom Ryan, William Morrow, 2011, 273 pages

William Morrow is going to have a tough time labeling Tom Ryan's thoroughly engaging memoir.

Following Atticus defies theme and style. The book is at once a simple story about a guy and a dog trying to hike New Hampshire's biggest mountains, but at the same time a deeply personal transformative journey about self-discovery and what's important in life.

After a decades long newspaper career in Newburyport, Mass., Ryan decided to pay tribute to a friend who died of cancer by raising money for charity through hikes to the White Mountains with his then puppy Atticus. The result of those hikes is both the unexpected bond that grows between man and dog, as well as Ryan's dissatisfaction with his current life. Ryan also begins to seek closer bonds with his family, in particular a distant father.

For the sake of full disclosure, two things need to be revealed. First, for the past few years, though I have never met Tom or Atticus, I have been an enthusiastic follower of their blog. Second, and perhaps most crucial, I am not a dog person.

I've hiked the White Mountains with friends' dogs. I've invited friends' dogs to my wedding. I even like some of my friends' dogs. But though I'm not one of those extremists who believe dogs should not be allowed on trails, the fact is I could go either way and it wouldn't matter much to me.

And I'll be the first to roll my eyes when a someone lays on the anthropomorphism about his or her pet so thickly that it makes me think they are spending a little too much time in the woods.

Which is why, though Ryan's journey of discovery does involve a tiny 5 pound miniature schnauzer, the heart of his story is really more internal. In Ryan's life, Atticus becomes his conscience, Hobbs to Ryan's Calvin if you prefer. The book blurs the line between the physical and focuses on the deeper connection that grows between the two creatures.

Does Ryan – middle-aged, overweight, unhappy with his newspaperman career and looking for guidance – allow Atticus to become a tool of escape? Or is Atticus really “different” as Ryan and many others comment in the book, a Little Buddha, whose endurance in the mountains and calm friendship becomes the perfect counter balance that leads Ryan to find a new path in life?

Either way, like any good spiritual journey quest, the pilgrim often finds himself thrust back into his real life not liking what he sees. “Without the mountains we both languished,” Ryan writes.

And together, Ryan and Atticus forge on, an organic relationship that surprises both by where their friendship leads.

Like his blog, Ryan's writing is crisp and short, the words of a reporter familiar with leaving florid stylings to the delete button. And it works.

During a rare warm day winter climb up Mount Washington, Ryan and Atticus eat lunch a the summit as a team of heavily geared and sweating men arrive at the summit. Ryan writes: “They'd come to challenge the great Washington, with its high winds and frigid temperatures. They'd come to spit in the eye of death and return to their offices the following Monday to brag about it. But instead of death, they came upon something that horrified them even more: a little dog and a fat guy sitting and eating a peanut butter and jelly sandwich below the summit sign as if they were having a picnic on Boston Common in the middle of summer.”

Ryan understands well how unlikely a pair of mountaineers the two make. Following Atticus is a book for dog lovers and a book for hikers. But it's mostly a book about seeking something bigger and more meaningful out of life. Ryan finds that path with a friend who happens to be a canine, but the message of Following Atticus transcends the travels of a fat guy and a little dog. It's also a message of life without limitations.

Following Atticus will be released on September 20. This review is based on an Advanced Reader's Edition from the publisher. The final hardcover edition will include photos and be 288 pages.
Tom and Atticus will kick off a series of book signings around New England starting at White Birch Books in North Conway on Sept. 20. Check their blog for more adventures and signing dates: www.tomandatticus.blogspot.com

The Nepal Chronicles - Chapter 15

2011-07-21T08:01:00.001-04:00

Mani Rimdu: A monk dances at Tengboche's annual festival.

The dancing monks of Mani Rimdu
Sunday, Oct. 24

The young monk arches his back, sucks in as much air as he can, leans over the enormous ceremonial bugle, and blows.

“Brauwwwwwwwk!” Again. “Brauwwwwwwwk!”

Over and over, he and his companion, blow into their instruments. There is no difference in tone. The six-foot bugle can play only one note, and in the square courtyard of Tengboche Monastery, that one note echoes off the surrounding mountains like an air siren.

The single note song accompanies eight dancing monks, dressed as colorful, tantric magicians. They do a slow motion turn on the heels of their pointy shoes.

“Brauwwwwwwwwk!”

It is the amazing and perplexing annual Mani Rimdu Festival, the sacred Buddhist Dance Drama enacted by the monks of Tengboche, and we have front row seats.

We sit on the steps of the courtyard entrance, about 5 feet above the courtyard stage, and right next to the bugle monks. During a unaccompanied moment, the teenage monk sheepishly reaches into his robes and removes a small digital camera. He snaps a couple quick pictures of his fellow, older, monk dancers, and just makes it back to his bugle in time for another low, deep, “Brauwwwwwwwk!”

I'm delighted to watch this unfold. I wonder who he'll send the photos to; his family I suppose in some other small village someplace in the Khumbu. He is a monk, but he's a student also, and like all students, over every subject, everywhere, he doesn't take things too seriously.

The mid-day sun shines gloriously down on the courtyard as we watch the dances unfold.

After a bittersweet goodbye that morning to Chori Tenzing and her mother, we left Pheriche under a deep azure sky, and bee-lined for Tengboche. We knew that the festival was sometime around when we would be near, but only last night were we told that the Dance, the main attraction and high day, would be taking place on the exact day that we would be trekking through. We were determined to haul all the way back to Namche Bazaar, and along the way, we'd stop in Tengboche to witness the largest and most important Buddhist festival in the Khumbu.


The most beautiful mountain: Above and below, Ama Dablam owns the sky near Tengboche.

We got an early start and climbed out of the Pheriche Valley, back over the plateau where we celebrated Deshain a week early, back down through the mani gate, and past the numerous small villages. On our trip up, we were lost in a fog of rain and freezing wind. But today, the valley weather is perfect and beautiful. Ama Dablem from this perspective is startling, a massive double hump of white, visible from everywhere. We stop often to take pictures.

As we approached Tengboche, the local crowd became thicker; Sherpa families hurried along the trail toward the festival, which attracts tourists and locals from all through the region. At one point, a lone, skinny, Sherpa girl, perhaps eight-years-old, flew by us, beckoning us to walk with her to Tengboche. But alas, even acclimatized and even going down we were no match for her and she moved breezily through the valley in a t-shirt, shorts and flip-flops.

Admittance to the Dance was steep for Westerners, 500 rupees, but we eagerly paid the Monk at the outside door, and stepped into a completely different world. Tim and Karen had already been there for three days waiting for the dance. We could not imagine staying in Tengboche that long, and Karen had started feeling ill.

Like most traditions and festivals in Nepal, the meaning of the rites depend entirely on who you ask and who is writing about it. For example, the Mani Rimdu Festival takes place over either a couple days or two weeks. It involves either about a dozen or fifty monks and Buddhist officials. There are three or four dances or there are a dozen dances. The festival is a ritualistic passion dance that serves to introduce the lay community to the history and concepts of Buddhism, or it is simply a socially enjoyable gathering, much like a Western carnival. Ask one of the monks which of those things Mani Rimdu is, and he would likely just smile and say “Yes.”

We had learned by now to let these sort of experiences wash over us like a cool wind, so that's what we do.

Festival of color: Above the dancers move around the ornate offering shrine. Below, the old tradition is carried forward as monks dress like ancient tantric magicians to face off against the demons of anger, jealousy and greed.

Prior to our arrival a ceremonial yak was annointed in butter in a symbolic offering to Everest, or Miyolangsangma. The lucky yak was then released to wander freely in the valley.

The dances themselves are designed for a variety of purposes, both as symbols of demons such as anger greed and jealousy that are obstacles to Buddhist faith, as well as the demons themselves who appear to illustrate the literal forces the monks must do battle with.

And it's not just for show either. Most of the tourists understand the festival in terms of theatre, but for many locals, the lamas at Tengboche are the heros of the Everest region. Let's put it in other terms. A local family from a small village in the Khumbu going to the Tengboche Mani Rimdu Festival to watch the Llamas face off and conquer the obstacles of Buddhist faith is the equivalent of a family from the Great North Woods going to Fenway to watch the Red Sox beat the Yankees. The only difference might be that the Red Sox fans hate the Yankees more than the Sherpas hate the demons, but you get the picture.

In one dance the fearsome dieties are paraded before the public, then the monks arrive. Using elaborate hand gestures and wielding ceremonial weapons they tame the demons, an illustration of Tengboche's protective role in the Khumbu. And all through the dances, the horn blows and the bells jangle, and we sit and soak in the good cheer and fine atmosphere of this place which just one week earlier had stretched thin our patience and temper.

We spend over an hour in Tengoche, far too much time considering the long walk still ahead of us, but we feel strong and the weather holds and we don't want to cut short our experience of the dances.

We tackle the long climb down, then up with vigor this time, and the afternoon goes by quickly and easily. The lower we trek, the stronger we feel. And thoughts of Namche and the Yak Hotel and electricity and a good plate of momos keeps us moving at a breakneck pace.

Looking back: No, that is not photoshop. The clouds part for one last look at the Everest range.

In fact, our spirits are so high, one important caution slips our mind. As the day creeps by and dusk begins to fall, we realize we are still three miles from Namche on the long valley-hugging path that leads around the cliffs to the town. Earlier in the week, we had heard stories about trekkers being mugged after dark in just this area, and it's nearly at that moment that I spot a lone figure, standing at a turn in the valley, nearly dead center of the trail.

But as we approach, we realized it's a sleepy porter. He had made not one, but two treks back and forth to Ama Dablem Base Camp that day, nearly twice the miles in one day that we had, with two full loads on his back. And now, he waited for us in the hope that we could accompany him back to Namche. We had never encountered a tired porter and we gladly offer him company and conversation. Well, I offer the company while Meenakshi offers the conversation.

It's dark and we're beat by the time we drag up to The Yak Hotel. The fine proprietor Chime Kalden Sherpa who had been so kind to us a week earlier, never misses a beat. He welcomes us home, and personally escorts us not to a regular room, but to the hotel's guest room. So eager is he to have us stay, that despite all the regular rooms being occupied, he lets us stay in his personal space. The room is warm, and not plywood and the mattress is as soft as a feather. Once again, we're humbled by the service of our hosts. Not only do we eagerly accept his room, but decide to treat ourselves to a hot shower as well!

There is no soap, and no shampoo and the concrete floor could use a good scrub down. But I had forgotten what hot water felt like on my skin, and as the dirt and sweat slip free from my body, an enormous wave of exhaustion overtakes me, and I let it.

Dinner that evening, in the warm, clean common room is rice and chilli and momos and as I sit there in my clean skin, contemplating how far we had come, and I listen to the anxious conversation of upward bound trekkers at the table next door, I begin to drift off. We had done it, we had returned to 10,000 feet with no ill-effects, no injuries and many, many stories. Tomorrow, we'd rest. We'd sleep in, and shop, and explore Namche.

And maybe we'd even find a good cup of coffee.

Fierce demons: At left, the monks of Tengboche are ready to do battle with emotional demons like this one at the Mani Rimdu Festival.

We are safe and sound back in Namche and looking at an easy day of leisure and shopping. Join us next week, as we explore Namche, find some surprising trails and witness an all-out Sherpa brawl!
Join us next week, Thursday, July 28 at 8 a.m. for Chapter 16 of The Nepal Chronicles. In the meantime, we'd love to hear from you - questions, advice, suggestions, you name it, we'll do our best to respond!

Until then, we offer a special giant sized picture catalog of the Mani Rimdu Festival. Check them out at: The Mani Rimdu Festival

I fought the grouse and the grouse won!

2011-07-18T00:54:00.000-04:00

Unknown Pond with The Horn at dusk: It was hard work getting here.

A quick break in the Nepal Chronicles to relate a interesting incident that took place on a hike Saturday.
On July 16, I did a out and back to Mt. Cabot via the Unknown Pond Trail from the Mill Brook Road side. It's a not much used way to get there and the trail from the road to the Unknown tent site is fairly overgrown. Nice though, not too muddy, moderate grades all the way and not a single other person the whole way to the pond.
But all that changed about a mile up the trail when I was confronted by the most p'od grouse I have ever encountered. This guy was like the Black Knight from The Holy Grail - NONE SHALL PASS!
I saw him approaching the trail out of the corner of my eye and initially thought it might be a porcupine or raccoon, he was that big. He planted himself in the trail about 6 feet away from me, reared up his tail feathers, puffed up his chest and made the most awful chicken on acid squawking noise.
I thought it was funny at first but then realized this guy meant business. I backed off, but he kept coming. It was one of those moments where a bunch of things ran through my head. Are these things dangerous? Rabies? Claws? Can they peck me into submission? Will I be found by Fish and Game with 100 holes in my body? I didn't have time to figure much out because he actually charged, half in flight. Holy cow! I did the first thing that came to mind which was raise my poles and charge right back, hoping to scare him off. It seemed to work, kind of, as he ran a couple feet off trail and I was able to get past him.
But just as I was patting myself on the back for my alpha male grouse charge, I heard that awful squawk again, and turned to discover he was attacking again from behind. This time he was chest high, fully in flight and heading straight for my head! I barely had enough time to get my hiking poles up to protect my face. He ran straight into the poles, dropped to the ground and immediately began attacking my feet, peeking and scratching.
Well, needless to say, I did what anybody would do at that point. I ran! After he chased me for about 25 yards, he turned around and headed back and I was left panting and wheezing after be bested by a crazy grouse!
Looking back I must admit that of all the wildlife to watch out for, a insane grouse was pretty low on my list. I marked the spot in the trail so I knew to be careful on the way back, but he was nowhere to be seen.
I would have taken a picture but I'm pretty sure he would have grabbed my camera and hit me over the head with it.
I know grouse can be pretty fearless when protecting a nest or little ones, but I have never heard of anybody being outright attacked by one. Lucky me, right? Anyway, here's a couple shots of the hike, hard earned because I had to do battle with a grouse to get them. For the full album, link here: http://danandmeenakshi.phanfare.com/5204976

Peaceful hike: Above, the woods and lovely dark and deep. Below, views of the Presidential Range from The Horn.

The Nepal Chronicles - Chapter 14

2011-07-14T08:00:00.002-04:00

Me and my kitty: Heading home with Hello Kitty watching my back.

3 days up, 8 hours down
Saturday, Oct. 23

The day begins with Hello Kitty.

After a week and a half on the trail, Meena and I have developed a reputation, something that often happens on long journeys like this where word travels by foot and a favorite past time of residents is trail talk.

We'd met enough locals along the way to either earn their grudging respect, or simply bewilder them by what they considered an odd sight – an upper crust Brahmin native Nepali who understood the language and spoke it with a Chicago rust belt accent and a no-nonsense attitude was hiking to Everest Base Camp with a skinny shaved-headed white boy who mangled the language every chance he could, ate whatever was put in front of him and carried a stuffed Hello Kitty.

The Sherpas shake their heads as they pass us and laugh. On the way down, Meena overhears one say “look at the little kitten on his pack!” The porters beg and plead with us often to let them carry our gear, disbelieving that we'd be able to ourselves and telling us terrible stories of tragedies that befell trekkers who tried to do it themselves. And the other trekkers? Well, more than once they seem startled and confused that my personal guide appears to be a 12 year old Nepali girl.

But now we are heading down. We have summited Kala Patthar AND tagged Base Camp. We have mountain cred.

And amazingly, as we crawl out of bed on the tenth day of our trek we feel good. We're well rested. We eat ravishingly at breakfast that morning, bread and cheese and fried eggs. All those trekkers we knew are long gone – having turned back, having tagged and left or having gone off through some other pass. It feels like we are the last to leave the mountain.

And I realize that morning as we step outside into the blazing morning sun, and swung our packs onto our shoulders, that we have acclimated! After 6 days above 14,000 feet, I can breath and my legs have lost their wobble. We're cold, sure. Tired, you bet. But to be that high and to feel that normal, suddenly, is like getting a shot of adrenaline.

So, in order to celebrate our success and pay homage to the mountains that would now be at our backs, I pull Hello Kitty out of my pack and strap her to the back of it, a white and red fuzzy mascot for those who follow behind us.

A few years ago, when my niece was tiny, she, like every 3 year old girl in the universe adored Hello Kitty. She talked to Hello Kitty. She made elaborate, and detailed life plans with Hello Kitty. So, I began talking back. On our trips, we'd drag this little Hello Kitty stuffed doll with us and take pictures to send to my niece; Hello Kitty in the Grand Canyon, Hello Kitty on Route 66, Hello Kitty in Chicago, and so forth. I'd email her the pictures as Hello Kitty, tell her about my adventures as Hello Kitty and we became pen pals.

Now, she was older, and the kitty with the red ribbon didn't seem to hold her interest as much under the glaring sleekness of Barbie. Since I was damned if I was going to fasten a Barbie to my pack, Hello Kitty stayed and became my mascot and personal talisman.


Beautiful weather for our descent: Above, the view down toward Loboche. Below, we stop to rest and let a yak train pass at the top of the Khumbu Glacier moraine.

So off we went; back over the narrow spine of the glacier, down into the first valley, past the Italian Research Center and finally back to Loboche, where we once again greedily devour a lunch of soup and grilled cheese and tea. Not wasting any time, we're back on the trail before noon, shooting down the valley, clambering back over the Khumbu Glacier run off and finally making it in one lightning decent to the somber memorial garden atop the glacier's terminal moraine.

There, we rest, and marvel at our speed! And as we sit on the sun-warmed rocks, sipping water and not saying much, we spy a curious thing. High up on the rocks, overlooking the Pheriche Valley, above the memorial chortens and monuments, is a painter. A large Japanese man sits in a folding chair, facing an easel, painting the amazing Ama Dablem. From that vantage point, the mountain careens up out of the Earth, a towering force of ice and rock. The man's red jacket billows in the wind, but his gaze is soft and focused. He's taking his time, and the scene is quite beautiful.

After a while we notice the afternoon clouds creeping into the Pheriche Valley. Time to go.

Art on the rocks: A painter sets up at 16,000 feet and creates while his guide watches and waits.

We drop down the glacier moraine and it feels like we are flying. With every step my breathing becomes easier, my feet feel lighter. Trekkers huff past us, heads down, sweat pouring from their bows. I wonder if we looked like that a few days ago.

Back in Dughla we stop for a quick milk tea and relax along the same stone wall we had commandeered last time we were here.

We continue back into the valley and as we walk once again through the yak herder village known as Tsambur, we stumble across an amazing sight – an entire pen of baby yaks. Given that yaks are generally born between May and June, these little guys must be about four months old. They squeal a little bit, sort of like an angry Guinea Pig and appear quite shy, not wanting to wander too close to the stone fence as long as we are there.

They aren't exactly cute, more like smaller versions of their moms and dads.

The domestic yaks of Nepal and the Tibet are remarkable creatures. The English word yak is a derivative of the Tibetan word gyag. Most languages use the word yak interchangeably, though females are actually called naks.

The hearts and lungs of the beasts are larger than the cattle found at lower altitudes so they are well adopted to the high plateaus. In fact, so adapted are they, that yaks at lower altitudes with temperatures over 60 degrees will begin to suffer from heat exhaustion because they have nearly no sweat glands.

So ingrained in the Tibetan culture are these 2,000 pound steam rollers that sports have begun to crop up around them: yak racing and yak polo are common now and being marketed as tourist attractions in some central Asian countries.

Our babies are a ways away from the polo grounds, and aside from keeping their distance have no interest in us what-so-ever, so we move on to Pheriche, arriving as a cold wind and light mist begins to cover the town.

It has taken us 8 hours to descend what had taken us three days to climb.

Yum: Nothing like milk tea on the trail.

We receive one more pleasant surprise that day. We make a beeline to the Nagarkot of course, hoping that little Chori Tenzing and her mom might have a room for us. Upon entering the familiar lodge, we are greeted with a profound welcome.

“You made it,” the lodge mistress says, “we were worried!”

It turns out that once again Lene Oh had inserted himself into our hike. After running across us three days ago, that crazy little man did some calculations in his head and figured we;d be back down to the Nagarkot yesterday evening. He had reserved rooms for us! When we didn't arrive yesterday, the lodge owners became worried. Plus, there were no rooms available at the lodge today.

But incredibly, thinking that perhaps we'd arrive tonight, she walked into town where her sister ran the Shangri-la Lodge, and reserved rooms there for us. Try finding service like that at the Hilton.

We were enormously grateful and more than a little shocked at the trouble they went through for us. It's easy for a jaded-eyed Westerner to look at such tactics as simple consumer Capitalism, but it really went above and beyond. We immediately and graciously accepted the room at the Shangri-la.

And as it turned out, that evening's dinner and conversation was one of the funniest of the trip. Now that we were on our way down, we figured anything goes. So, we ordered our first meat dish in over a week. We decided to try yak meat. Spicy.

A few words about eating yak, that we were only able to appreciate in retrospect. Yaks are the life blood of the Khumbu. Supplies are carried on their backs. Yak dung is the only source of heat. Yaks are used to plow the fields. Yak wool is used to make clothes to keep people warm. Without yaks, survival in these parts would be considerably more difficult. They are the Khumbu equivalent of pure bred race horses. A family's pride, reputation, success and perhaps survival depends on yaks.

That being the case, why in heaven's name would a local want to use a yak as food – particularly as food for trekkers? The answer is, they would not.

So, the plate of sizzling yak meat placed on our table was likely from a yak that was no longer a bread winner. Perhaps the yak was too old to do any more heavy lifting. Maybe the poor guy tripped and went into a gorge and they fished him out to serve. Maybe he had a disease, or a condition that made him less able to be of practical use.

Whatever the case, our yak is just terrible. The dish smells delicious, but the meat is tough and gammy and leaves an awful aftertaste. We can't eat it.

Types of yaks: Above, baby yaks graze in the Pheriche Valley. Below, ex-yaks on the dinner plate.

With us that evening is a group of eight young trekkers from the Czech Republic. Only a couple speak English, but we enjoy spending the evening with them primarily because they pump us for as much information as they can. We are “going down.” They are “going up,” you see.

After nibbling around the edges of our yak dish, we offer the whole thing to them. They are tired, hungry and young, but even they can't stomach the yak meat. They pass the dish around, and Meena and I laugh at their reactions.

Later, our lodge owner's brother, a teenager home from Kathmandu for the holiday, asks if he can put on some music. Eager to please his young western guests, the young man has a CD of western pop. Imagine our surprise when the sweet, mellow sounds of Rick Astley pour out from that beat up little CD player.

Rick Rolled at 14,000 feet! The room explodes in laughter!

After listening for a while, I ask the young man if he has any traditional Nepali music he could play. The poor fellow's face just drops. Apparently he thought we were cool.

The evening ends that way, listening to Nepali folk music, entertaining the Czech kids with our tales of Base Camp and feeling strong and accomplished. Sleep is easy that night, and there is no chill in the air.

Nothin' but Pringles: Meena bids farwell to little Chori Tenzing, but the little one is focused on her chips.

Our long road home continues next week as we pour on the speed to make our connection in Lukla and try to get all the way back to Namche! Along the way we stumble upon an ancient festival and run into some old friends.
Join us next week, Thursday, July 21 at 8 a.m. for Chapter 15 of The Nepal Chronicles. In the meantime, we'd love to hear from you - questions, advice, suggestions, you name it, we'll do our best to respond!

Until then, check out this week's full picture catalog at: 3 days up, 8 hours down.

The Nepal Chronicles - Chapter 13

2011-07-07T01:01:00.000-04:00

Woman and the Himal: Meena is a tiny dot against the backdrop of the Khumbu Glacier.

Pointing our boots toward home

Friday, Oct. 22, Afternoon

I throw myself headlong atop my sleeping bag, barely able to squirm out of my boots to say nothing of actually getting inside the bag. Meena is already asleep in the bunk across the way.

It's early afternoon. The sun still shines. The thrill of the day has not abated. But our original plan – to leave Gorek Shep and overnight at lower altitude in Loboche or Dughla - now seems laughable. What were we thinking?

We took our time climbing down off Kala Patthar, letting adrenaline and gravity do as much work as possible. But it was still work. We paused often, drinking in the spectacular views and enjoying the feeling that comes with being a trekker “heading down.” We had graduated. We had degrees in summiting Kala Patthar, of tagging Base Camp. We now had knowledge. The magic information of the trails ahead, the conditions, the lodging, were at our fingertips.

It felt so good..

But as we huffed down to the second, then first tier, as as we made our way across the long dry plateau between the mountain and the village, there was no question of us moving on today.

Heading down: One final look back at the Everest ridge, above. Below, Gorek Shep in sight!

We evaluated. No headaches. No dehydration. Slight nausea. Extreme exhaustion.

We made the decision to stay one more night in Gorek Shep; one more night at 17,000 feet and try to get some rest for the trek back rather than risk total meltdown halfway to Loboche.

That meant two things. First we hadn't booked anything for that night. But it was only about 2 p.m., that perfect time between those who had left and those who were yet to come, and we managed to snag a real room! The price was high - about $20 - but we did not care. We dragged our gear from the bunkhouse to the room, which seemed gloriously luxurious. We boldly resisted sleeping immediately, and dragged our sorry legs into the dining room and ordered a cup of soup and a grilled cheese sandwich and lemon tea, and we sat in a corner, anti-social, and huddled close together and barely managed to get that food down.

We had earned our solitude.

After only about 20 minutes though, we were done.

I made one more stop. Down a flight of stone stairs, the plywood shack that served as a internet cafe was open, so I didn't realize the teenage caretaker was asleep under a filthy blanket by the door.

“I'm so sorry, dhia!” I said, addressing him as an elder even though he was 25 years my junior as a way of being apologetic.

But he didn't seem to mind and soon the generator was humming and I wrote this as my update on Facebook:

On Fri. Oct. 22 at 9:49 am Nepal time, M and I summited 18,250 ft Kala Patthar! The climb was cold and hard, but skies perfectly clear and we were able to spend 30 minutes basking in the glow of Everest. Tears were shed. Thank u all for your well wishes. It's hard to describe how bone achingly tired and joyously happy we are at the same time! It's time to come home...

I had no energy to write more or try to upload photos, so I joined Meenakshi in our room. She was already snoring, just a lump inside her sleeping bag and under a quilts. She had gotten the best of me that day. After the first week or so, we had made a contest out of seeing who could get into our room first. The first one there had the honor of taking off their boots, and filling the room with the bathless smell for the second to enjoy. She clearly won this day! But even the nearly overpowering smell of yak dung and sweat did not deter me.

I was asleep in two minutes.

Scenes from Gorek Shep: After a nap we had the time to snap some pictures of Gorek Shep. Above, the entrance to our lodge, with Nuptse the pointy peak to the right and Everest's western buttress to the left. Below, notice the HOT SHOWER sign. Too pricey and too cold for us!

The rest did us good. Later that evening, as we waited for our dinner and the dining hall filled with a new set of trekkers, we shared a table with two young men from the states – one from Boston and the other from Denver. They had been trekking around Nepal and India for weeks on a shoestring budget, sleeping in the cheapest hovels and dives and “eating peanut butter with our fingers” one said.

They had just climbed up and over the Kongma La Pass, a col near Mehra Peak nearly as high as Kala Patthar itself. And now, after tagging Base Camp were planning on climbing Kala the next day and returning via the Cho La Pass. Ambitious. And crazy considering their worn boots and thread thin gear. Ah youth! They were scruffy and pleasantly naive, and they chatted amicably with us about their exploits and we found like-souls in their enthusiasm and in our mutual disdain for commercial trekking groups.

The boys were far more vocal about it. “What's the point of doing this if you don't do it on your terms,” one said.

We could have reminded them that a large percentage of the Nepali economy in this region depended upon commercial trekking groups and guide services, but we enjoyed their company and energy far too much to argue. Instead we decided to pay forward our good fortune.

Days earlier I had bought us two Snickers bars to eat at the summit of Kala Patthar. The bars came up with us, but we were too tired and cold to eat them then. So we presented them to the boys, and the four of us unwrapped the candy and passed it around – an offering of thanks for our success and hope for theirs.

Staying warm at 17,000 feet: Meena displays the latest in sleeping wear, a -20 bag, -15 liner, down jacket and topped off with a orange blanket. Ahhhhh, comfort!

That amazing day ended on an unforgettable note. Their was a general shuffle of people heading back outside into the frigid evening. The moon was rising. We followed a group, and made our way down to the center of the dry lake bed 50 yards from the dim lights of Gorek Shep.

We were sore, and tired, and shivered, but as we turned to the east, the magical sight of the moon cresting the tip of Mt. Everest brought a surreal and beautiful end to the day.

In 12 hours, Meenakshi and I were allowed to watch the sun, then the moon, rise over the highest mountain on Earth. Astonishing.

Looking tough: Left, Meena takes a break on the way down to pose one last time in front of Everest.

We're thrilled to be back and to conclude the final chapters of our trek. Join us next week, Thursday, July 14 at 8 a.m. as we set our weary bones on the long road back to Lukla. In the meantime, we'd love to hear from you - questions, advice, suggestions, you name it, we'll do our best to respond!

Until then, check out this week's full picture catalog at:

Heading Home

We'll be back soon!

2011-06-15T00:08:00.000-04:00

Chori Tenzing says "Stay tuned!"

Thanks for your patience dear friends! After a too long sabbatical, and some time to collect our thoughts and regroup, The Nepal Chronicles will return in early July! We hope that Chapter 13 will drop on July 7! Thanks for your support and don't hesitate to catch up on past chapters, or drop us a note to tell us what you think so far! Cheers, see you soon!

The Nepal Chronicles set to return!

2011-06-10T16:25:00.000-04:00

Soon, friends, soon! With our Bollywood Festival behind us and summer in full swing, The Nepal Chronicles is gearing up to return! Look for Chapter 13 sometime in the next couple weeks!
Until then, help us beef up our Facebook page. Click the link to your right, and LIKE us on FB. Much appreciated. Stay tuned!
D and M

Life getting in the way!

2011-03-24T11:58:00.000-04:00

Taking a break: Stopping for tea on the way down. Life is good!

We haven't forgotten, we promise! Life and it's variety of distractions has slowed our blog to a crawl the past couple weeks, but we're bailing as fast as we can and hope to continue with The Nepal Chronicles as soon as possible. Stay tuned for updates!
Until then, thank you all! Cheers!

Shameless self promotion Thursday

2011-03-16T22:37:00.002-04:00

Well, it's been a busy week in Manchester, our home town. Though we were ready to dive into the continuation of The Nepal Chronicles, another project got in the way. So, since we don't have a new Chapter to present, we thought we'd use this blog to shamelessly self-promote our newest time killer.
M and D are organizing what we believe to be the first ever Bollywood film festival in New Hampshire.
It's called the New England Classic Bollywood Film Festival and it will take place on Sat. April 30 at the Wilton Town Hall Theatre. The Wilton is a beautiful old art house theater in the southern part of the state that holds all sorts of crazy festivals, silent film showings and art films. Many thanks in advance to Dennis at the Wilton for being game to try this nutty idea.
We'll be showing Mother India (1957), a classic in world cinema and Caravan (1971) a true Bollywood song and dance adventure. There will also be some video tributes. And the India Palace Restaurant will provide us with a yummy buffet! The whole thing for only $9!
If you are a follower and you are local, please stop by! If you are not local, now's a great time to visit New England. Here's some links for more information!
Our web site for the festival: http://newenglandbollywood.blogspot.com/
Here's the link to Wilton Town Hall Theatre: http://wiltontownhalltheatre.com/
We have a Facebook page as well. Search Facebook for New England Classic Bollywood Film Festival.
See you there and thanks for indulging!

Special slideshow this week

2011-03-10T08:19:00.001-05:00

As promised, here's the link to a special slide show commemorating our successful summit of Kala Patthar. It's brought to you by the beauty of the mountains and enhanced, as most things are, by David Bowie!
Enjoy: Heros in Nepal
Next week, The Nepal Chronicles continues as we barely make it down from the mountain and turn our feet toward home! Join on on March 17!

Postcard #4: May Your Trails Be Crooked

2011-03-06T01:30:00.001-05:00

Here is the fourth Postcard in our series. The picture is taken at about 18,000 feet with the the giant bulk of Pumori rising up behind the summit of Kala Patthar. As always these images are available as digital images and will soon be actual postcards! Let us know if you'd like one!
Please join us this Thursday, March 10 as we celebrate our successful summit with a special slideshow of the climb. Thanks for your support and tell us what you think!

The Nepal Chronicles - Chapter 12

2011-03-03T07:41:00.003-05:00

Perfection: How can words do views like this justice?

Kala Patthar

Friday, Oct. 22, Morning

There is no sound. There is no snow. There is no wind. Gorek Shep is deathly still. It is like a cloak of cold has pressed down upon the Khumbu, muffling the senses.

We have been in cold so furious and angry that we had to stay constantly vigilant against the insatiable wind to keep it from sneaking under a glove or over a face mask to protect against near instant frostbite. We've fought our way up Mount Washington and Mount Jefferson is sideways rain that chilled the spine and slid upwards under the hood and threatened hypothermia. We've attempted to outrun lightning on slicked summits, with flashes at our backs and sheets of icy water in our faces.

But this cold... this is new. It was a cold night. It was a colder morning, preparing for Kala. But stepping outside the relative warmth of the lodge into THIS cold is shocking.

It is 5:45 a.m. The sun has to work extra hard to rise above these mountains, though a morning glow makes headlamps unnecessary. But our hands and feet are immediately, unrelentingly cold. It is like dipping your fingertips into a bucket of ice water. It's that sudden.

By the time we move the 50 yards across the dry lake plateau to the base of Kala, I am balling my fingers into fists under my gloves to keep them warm – my Hestra mountaineering, -20 gloves.

It is co cold, I don't even remember seeing my breath, or shivering.

We stand at the base of Kala Patthar next to a signed trailhead. The trail appears to shoot straight up the slope of our mountain. It is steep. We are small, and tired, and very, very cold. The walk from the lodge to the trailhead has left me breathless. On the plus side, the early bed and light food appear to have settled our stomachs somewhat. After being in Gorek Shep for nearly 24 hours, it seems we are acclimating. No headaches either. Good news.

So, at nearly 6 a.m. on Friday, Oct. 22, nearly one year since we began our journey to this mountain, we take our first steps and begin to climb.

“Here we go,” I say. And as my boot settles on the black, frozen earth that is Kala Patthar, I am once again reminded of how amazing it is to be here at all.

On our way: Above, about to hit the trail. Below, after two hours, the summit comes into view.

Kala Patthar means black rock. The mountain itself is not a technical climb. It is not even a rock scramble for the most part. It has no specific spiritual meaning or history. It needs no permits. At one time that dry lake bed actually held glacier run off. It's most recent claim to fame was a brief meeting by the Nepali Cabinet and its Prime Minister who held a symbolic and much maligned meeting at the base of Kala to draw attention to climate change. The politicians were helicoptered in, and many needed oxygen to function.

No, Kala does not have a grand history because the mountain's meaning is so personal to those who attempt to scale it. The mountain has meaning beyond history. Kala becomes part of a trekkers' character, part of the life of the thousands who attempt and fail and the thousands who attempt and succeed.

Everest is unattainable to most. Kala is attainable to all, but still requires enough discipline and sacrifice to change your life.

We start slow, working on a 25/10 pace – 25 steps, 10 breathes. This works for a while as we scale the mountain's first of three tiers. I manage to keep my heart from exploding, and the headaches away from creeping up my spine. The pace does little to warm our hands and feet though and we're constantly flexing our fingers and toes to maintain circulation.

We reach the first tier and take a long break. A small group of trekkers stumble around, trying to keep warm, but at the same time trying to drink in the views. Even here, at about 17,300 feet the views are wonderful. The sun is creeping up from the east and is directly behind Everest creating a golden halo behind the tip of the peak. The top of Pumori shines blinding white.

Kala Patthar is actually a long jagged ridge of Pumori. Try to imagine a two dimensional triangle. Now tip that triangle to a 45 degree angle. The left and right side of Kala are cliffs, while the summit point also falls off the end down to the ridge which eventually works its way up to Pumori.

We hike across the flat section of the first tier, circle around a slight bulge in the ridge and the remaining two tiers come into view. From here, we can see the prayer flags at the summit, tiny blue and red pinpricks against the white background of Pumori. It is a mile and 1,000 feet away.

“That's the summit?” Meenakshi asks. “All that way. I don't know if I can do this.”

Her hesitation is actually common here. Many trekkers make it no further than this first tier. The views of Everest are excellent, and depending on their situation, even guides will sometimes only lead trekkers this far.

That is not going to be us, though. Meenakshi has pushed me through walls of fatigue more times than I can count. Now it's my turn.

“We can do this,” I say between wheezes. “We made it this far, we can see it through.”

Color contrasts: Views from Kala Patthar are spectacular. Here's two nearly the same shots with different shades.

Two things then happen at once. First the sun finally makes it out from behind Everest, and it's a game changer. It is like walking from a restaurant freezer to a greenhouse – the change is that quick. I can literally feel my fingers warming and within a few minutes I am able to strip off my gloves and unzip my jacket. Both of us turn our faces to the sun and close our eyes.

Second, we run across a young French trekker off the side of the trail, clearly in trouble. We had seen him off and on for a couple days. Back in Tengboche he had stayed in our lodge. But we had never communicated.

He sits on a rock, turned toward the summit, head in his hands. At first I think he's crying.

“Are you ok?” I ask.

He knows nearly no English and I know nearly no French. But he can see that we're concerned and understands the question enough to do something that I'll never forget.

He shakes his head, and squats down as though on a toilet, sticks his tongue out and says, “Psssbbbbbt!” Maybe it's the altitude, but it suddenly seems like the funniest thing I'd ever seen and I laugh, and Meena laughs and soon even the diarrhea-plagued Frenchman is laughing. And there we are, the three of us in the shadow of Mt. Everest laughing with this poor man who has come so far, and is now suffering so badly. I have no clue whether it will help him or not, but I pop out two Pep-mo Bis-mo pills, and fold the tablets into his hand.

I gesture to my mouth. “Eat them, eat.”

He looks at the tablets then at me then at the tablets again.

I squat down and repeat his “pssssbbbbt!” then say “Fixes diarrhea, good for stomach.” I rub my stomach.

And he shrugs and eats the tablets. Just like that I have had a conversation with a Frenchman about diarrhea!

“You can do this,” I say and point up toward the summit. “We'll do this together.”

He shakes his head sadly, “No, no.”

So we leave him there holding his stomach, and continue our climb. Warmed by the sun, we move slightly to the left and begin the long turn toward the summit. It's clearer now, the flags up there snapping in the breeze. An hour has passed since we began and we're holding our own.

The day is flawlessly clear. Wispy clouds shimmer around the high peaks, and a stiff summit wind is creating spindrift off the world's highest mountain, creating a ribbon of snow at 29,000 feet. It is mesmerizing, and we spend too much time watching it.

“Hey look!” Meenakshi suddenly calls out.

It's the Frenchman, and he's on the move. His head is down and his hands still over his stomach but he's moving up. We wait for him to reach us and he throws himself down on a rock, gasping.

I press my hand into his shoulder. “Ok, we're going to do this,” I say. He looks up at me and I point at myself, then at Meenakshi, then at the distant summit. “Three of us. Together.”

I move my forefinger and middle finger in a walking motion, then point again at the summit. He nods, and the sun roars down heat and my legs feel like melting rubber, and Meenakshi is breathing in tiny gasps and the Frenchman clutches his stomach. But we are a little team now, brought together by the air and the rock. And we will reach that summit.

Meenakshi and I fall automatically into caretaker mode. I take the lead, the Frenchman falls in behind to mimic my pace, and Meenakshi picks up sweep.

We reach the second tier in fits and starts – by counting in tens. I take ten steps. They follow. We all take ten breaths. An hour passes this way, three dots praying our way up the mountain, each step becoming a small victory.

Up close: The highest point on Earth.

We stop before the third tier to hydrate and eat something. It is a place of such extreme, raw beauty that it's difficult to put it into the context of anything any of us had ever seen. We stand in a small col between the second and final tier, a mercifully flat area where we can rest. To our left is a nearly shear cliff that drops straight down to Pumori's southern valley. To our right, another cliff, this one shooting straight down to Pumori's northern valley. We're only 500 feet away now, maybe a quarter mile.

“This is it,” I say. “Dig deep, we're going to do this.”

We begin again, the three of us reaching for anything that's left. Suddenly each step seems more impossible than the last. I find myself taking two, perhaps three steps before bending over and sucking wind. There are boulders here, on the summit cone, more like what we have in the Whites only 10,000- feet higher. I start searching for paths around rocks, rather than having to step up and over them, which is much harder.

The final 30 minutes of climbing is the hardest I've ever done. By the time we are 50 feet from the summit, my legs are shaking and I can only move one step at a time before taking ten breaths.

“Are you ok,” I ask the Frenchman.

He gives me a thumbs up. I motion for him to move ahead of me. He resists for a moment, but is too tired to protest and moves on toward his summit. Meenakshi catches up to me and moves past, understanding.

No one conquers mountains. If you are found to be worthy, the mountains will let you stand on their summit for a few minutes. Over the years, that sort of humility in the face of the wilderness has helped me get back down, not take chances, be a good caretaker.

Now, I practice one final habit developed over the years. I led this team here, and I make one final offering to the mountain by letting my team mates summit first – a silent but important moment for me to ask for a final and safe passage for us all.

I close my eyes, for only a moment, and take a long deep breath. Then I take the final few steps to the top of our mountain. In ten more minutes, I am there, and it is done.

Made it: We stand together atop Kala Patthar, 18,350 feet!

The first person I see is the Frenchman. The strain he feels shows in his face, but he smiles broadly and throws his arms around me, and I shamelessly hug him back, each of us pounding each other on the back and high-fiving like we are childhood friends.

“Congratulations,” I say, but my voice is raw and weak under the wind.

Meenakshi is sitting nearby, resting against the aluminum pole that holds a string of prayer flags. She smiles as I approach and I'm overcome with pride and awe at this woman who, incredibly, is my wife.

“We did it,” I say.

“It's incredible.”

From Kala Patthar, the entire eight miles of the Khumbu Glacier rolls like a tongue down from Mt. Everest. The expanse is so great, that we see the glacier as a curve instead of the straight line it is. Everest, Nuptse, Lotse, Pumori, Ama Dablem and dozens of peaks in all directions shimmer against a royal blue sky. Far below, at the base of a glacier lake, we can see a dozen yellow and red tents in Pumori Base Camp. From here, the ice fall is a jagged band of white points, spread out along the mouth of the glacier.

It is enormous. It is a view that we worked nearly a year to attain and it is worth it beyond any reasonable explanation.

It is 9:49 a.m. We have no where to go, no where to be and no desire to leave. If I don't move around too much, I can breath without having to take giant gulps of air. Incredibly, the temperature hovers in the 20s, and even the wind is not a hindrance.

So we sit at 18,350 feet and soak it all in. The tears were shed yesterday. Today we bathe in the accomplishment, in the magnificent mountain that called us so long ago, in the strength we gained from the effort and in the bright wonderful future that awaits us back home.

From the top: Above, from the summit of Kala Patthar, the mountains triple ridge is easy to see. Below, the Khumbu Ice Flow coming down from Everest.

There are a lot of people coming and going, and we wait for a lull to scramble up to the steep and pointed actual summit. A giant mound of prayer flags sits in a jumble at the summit, which is only about four feet wide with steep drop offs on two of the three sides. I pull out my sister's prayer flag one last time, and tie it to the jumble of fabric, leaving it in the Khumbu, hoping its positive karma will reach out to all who suffer like she does and maybe, make them feel better for just a moment.

Meenakshi comes up to the summit with me and a kind man below takes our picture, the only one of us at the true summit as it turns out, laughing, gasping, gripping the rocks tightly.

We scramble back down, find a tight little corner away from trekkers and take pictures. We drink. We eat some cheese, and we talk aimlessly about the sun, and the silver peaks, and the wedding, and the way our breath feels so high up. And we put our arms around each other, and grin stupidly, and I laugh out loud at nothing and everything.

There are no words. We are wonderfully alive, and together. We are a team, and the universe spreads out before us.

We can do anything.

Hanging on: Our single picture on the summit rock! Thanks to all who have supported us!

We've reached our summit, but the adventure continues next week, for Chapter 13 of The Nepal Chronicles. Join us on Thursday, March 10 as we make our way off the mountain, and figure out a way to get out of the Khumbu before exhaustion sets in.

Also, look for a special slideshow this week on our journey in to Everest!

Until then, check out this week's full picture catalog at:

Kala Patthar

Reception pics drop today

2011-02-28T10:43:00.000-05:00

Having our cake and eating it too!

Part two of our great wedding picture drop happens today! This time around, the Two Part drop of our wonderful reception which took place at the amazing Shankar Hotel in Kathmandu. Stop by our digital photo site to check them out if you like:
Reception Part 1
Reception Part 2
We'll be back on Thursday for the exciting climax of The Nepal Chronicles as we make our summit bid of Kalal Patthar. Stay tuned!

Our wedding pics drop today

2011-02-24T08:39:00.000-05:00

Feeling good: At our wedding ceremony in Kathmandu.

As promised, we take a break from The Nepal Chronicles this week to finally present the first set of pictures from our Kathmandu wedding. It took a long time for us to get these uploaded, and there are so many, we decided to not be picky and just let them all fly!
The first set, in three parts, is of our morning ceremony. Later in the week, we'll drop the second set of the evening reception. This is like the Wiki Leaks of wedding photos - there's an enormous amount of pictures, and there are no captions, but it's quite a record of the event!
If you do have questions, or would like copies, just let us know and we're more than happy to share!
The Wedding Ceremony Part 1
The Wedding Ceremony Part 2
The Wedding Ceremony Part 3
Then, next week, The Nepal Chronicles reaches its exciting climax as we make our attempt on Kala Patthar! Join us for that on March 3.

The Nepal Chronicles - Chapter 11

2011-02-17T01:39:00.003-05:00

Our protector: We stayed in the shadow of glorious Nuptse the whole way to Base Camp.

Base Camp

Thursday, Oct. 21 – Afternoon

A long, aching groan fills the air, like something is coming up from the earth to swallow us. The groan is followed by a sharp crack – a thousand iron hammers hitting a thousand anvils.

The glacier moves like a living thing, a constantly writhing eight-mile snake made of ice and rocks. It makes thunder.

The Khumbu is alive, and we are alive, but tiny, walking on its narrow spine, a good half mile up slope from the ice. It's like walking on a sleeping monster. A minuscule shift in the ice someplace out of sight creates massive shifts above and that energy explodes with the force of an earthquake. And here on this ridge, we can feel the glacier move and hear it crack, and it makes us want to move faster, to avoid angering it. But we can't. In fact, we can barely move at all. We are at 17,000 feet and ascending and it's like walking in glue.

The three mile hike from Gorek Shep to Base Camp is not technical. It should not be difficult under normal circumstances. But this place is far from anything that we would ever call normal. We are so far beyond our comfort zone. We are specks floating on the top of the world. We are nothing here, we are all we have.

I am beyond words. Meenakshi and I share little because we can't afford the energy, but we can feel it, the power of this place.

The glacier: Above, the daunting Khumbu Glacier rolls on for eight miles. Below, one of the glaciers many huge ice lakes.

The glacier speaks again and we stop to listen. Someplace from high on Nuptse (or on the other side, or in Tibet for all we know) a miles-wide crevasse opens and an avalanche comes tumbling down and we can feel the rumble in our bones and under our feet. We scan the ridges for the plumes of white but can see none.

I am trying to understand my place here. In between the upset stomach, the shifting weather, the porters coming and going, I work hard to be in the moment, to attain some level of mindfulness as Buddhists would say. The trail and the rocks and the ice and the air are the physical that is here. My amazing wife and our past and future, and the history of all who have come and all who will come swirl in my mind.

Irvine. Mallory. Norgay. Tabei. Messner. Krakauer. Arnot. Viesturs. We are in their footsteps now. Tomorrow it will be our footsteps that those who come will follow. We follow history, we make history.

There is no yesterday, there is no today. There is now. And right now, we move silently through the swirling snowflakes, watching our time, watching our steps and trying to watch the giant mountains all around us.

A large commercial trekking group moves past us, fast, and several of their number are in distress. Meenakshi overhears a porter asking over and over to one young woman if she'd like to go back.

“No, no, no,” she says over and over. Being this close, it feels like it would be far more difficult to turn around than continuing even if continuing means pain and sickness.

We move on, dizzy, oxygen deprived, sweating and freezing in turns. It is hard work I must confess.

There are two Base Camps, the old and the new. The new is empty for the season, no bakery, no mess tents. Just rocks, 2k further along than the old. The old is where people are going. It seems unlikely that today we will attain the new, but we shall see.

Approaching Base Camp: Above, the trail is a long spine above the glacier. The original Base Camp is the darker area near the center of the picture, to the left of the ice. Below, the final climb up to Base Camp takes us over the glacier.

After a series of twists around long ridge lines we come to a long strait-away, and we can see it now, tiny ant-like forms scurrying about in a high flattish region near the ice fall. It seems impossibly far away. Distance is deceiving here. A mile of space, surrounded by the enormity of the Himal, appears to have no end, to be an illusion. After an unknowable amount of time, we see that the trail swoops down off the spine, into a glacier gully, then back up to edge of the Ice Fall where Base Camp waits, where a dozen or more trekkers appear to be congregating.

It's late in the afternoon by the time we begin our final approach, dropping off the ridge and down into the mouth of the Khumbu. We are in the headwaters now. The Khumbu forms an giant cirque, surrounded on three sides by Everest's Ice Fall to our right, Pumori at our backs and Khumbutse straight ahead, a smaller peak over which – someplace up high – is supposedly a pass to Tibet. It is too big to imagine.

Meenakshi climbs up out of the gully ahead of me, to take pictures of me coming up. Later she would tell me that was the point where it became very real, where she understood that we were no longer on earth, but on shifting ice, dozens of feet deep.

I am surrounded by people, but I am alone. I savor these final steps, my breathing hoarse and raw, like an animal. My poles dig roughly into the gravel and ice and I pause near the top to see Meenakshi looking down at me, waving slowly with one hand, making a video with the other. I wave back.

In a few minutes I join her and the two of us stride the final few feet together to our Base Camp. There is a refrigerator-sized boulder there, with the doodles and scribbles of generations of trekkers.

Base Camp. Base Camp. Base Camp...

Our Base Camp: Thank you all for your support! Below, a quiet moment by the Ice Fall.

It is bedlam. There are easily three dozen people here, and most of them are crying, or shouting, or both. Couples and men and women embrace and slap each other on the back. Someone has brought a flask of something, and he lifts it in the air toward the mountain and tips it to his mouth. Porters and trekkers unfurl flags of different countries and organizations in front of the rock. To my left, the young woman we saw earlier collapses and begins to weep, shaking and moaning. Her friends kneel down and put their arms around her, forming a huddle, and they all cry together.

It is a place of enormous and raw emotion. That rock is like a valve, letting out the pent up struggle of the people who have worked so hard to get here.

Meenakshi and I hug and for a few moments we are alone. We move inward to each other, a silent profound few seconds of personal joy. I hand her the good camera, and move to the rock, and bend over and kiss it, feeling its grainy, cold skin against my lips.

Next I unfurl my memory flag and hold it up for my sister. Then we switch, and Meena pulls out a Thank You sign she brought along for Melissa who trained my wife to be the powerful woman she has become.

Finally, I hand the camera to one of the boys from Australia Meena had followed earlier in the day, and her and I crouch down in front of the rock. He takes a couple pictures, but suddenly I feel Meena grab me around the shoulders and pull me to her.

“This is my honeymoon!” she cries. We laugh and I raise my fist in jubilation and we are caught on camera like that, a moment of unplanned posing.

After we untangle, Meena wanders over to a a small open area where some Himalayan Ravens are buzzing about. They hop around tamely, and she offers some trail mix which they shyly peck out of her gloved hands. It's amazing that there are living creatures here.

In almost a daze, I shuffle down off the Base Camp plateau toward the ice fall. Thousands of huge seracs, eight and ten and twelve feet high shoot straight up off the ground and shimmer like daggers in the mist and swirling snow. I notice that I've been fooled by another deception in distance. The ice fall is really 50 yards away, over a large cliff-like glacier crevasse that, from here anyway, I can't cross.

I suddenly feel so tired, and my legs just give out and I don't fight it. I sit down on the ice facing the seracs and I cry – not a weeping wailing cry. I am just so tired, and I am sitting at the Khumbu Ice Fall and my body does not have the energy to block them, so the tears just run down my cheeks and I let them. I sit there for a little while and for some reason no one wanders down so I have all of the Khumbu to myself. I try to clear my mind and allow my thoughts to wander but my mind keeps coming back to the job that still remains, the real reason we're here – that huge mound of rock called Kala Patthar.

I check my watch. We only have a couple hours of daylight, and it's snowing now. I stand up quick, turning at the same time, and nearly fall over, my body still resistant to the altitude. I lean on a rock for support, and remarkably Meenakshi takes a picture at that exact moment. Figures.

It's time to go. We take one last look around. The woman who had broken down earlier is in bad shape, her head lolls back and she holds her arms and shoulders. She is sick from altitude, suffering from Acute Mountain Sickness, a serious reaction to the altitude and potentially deadly if her brain swells or fluid drains into her lungs. Her porters and friends are dividing her gear, and her friends speaking to her loudly, trying to keep her conscious.

Two porters lift her between them, and move at nearly a run, with two more trailing behind. They will take turns walking/carrying her first to Gorek Shep, then further down to Loboche or even perhaps Pheriche as descending is the only way to help her and it's too late and the weather too bad for a helicopter rescue.

We watch them move down the trail and out of sight, the rest of her team trailing silently behind.

Leaving Base Camp: Above, the Khumbu is cold and mysterious. Middle, Nuptse's ridge glows in the setting sun. Below, Dan's rock star shot.

The trek back to Gorek Shep is the most difficult either of us has ever experienced. We gain the ridge again, and almost immediately we are both nauseous, to the point where we must stop every five or ten minutes to let our stomachs settle. It's disconcerting after all this to be so inhibited. In the nearly three hours it takes us to get back to Gorek Shep, the weather changes from swirling rain and mist, to snow, to perfectly clear skies.

I'm furious at my body for betraying me this way, and so suddenly. The final 300 yards across the wide level Gorek Shep plateau are brutal – we both have to stop ever three or four steps. Every few feet I walk feels like I have been punched in the stomach. Every few steps I have to breath deep, inhaling hard to calm my nerves and my body.

We limp back to our lodge like wounded soldiers. I can barely crest the slight rise in the doorway that leads into the common room.

We both fling ourselves down on our bunks, gasping. I sit at the edge of the bunk for a long time, holding my stomach. When I feel like I can move again, I break out a handful of Pepmo Bismo tablets and we gulp them down like candy.

It's a hard evening for us. We order momos and grilled cheese but can't finish our meals. The tomato soup is tasteless and we just curl up in a corner away from the other trekkers and wait for nighttime so we can properly go to bed. The memory of that evening is surprisingly hazy for both of us, lost in a numb fog of altitude sickness and exhaustion. We go to bed early. Since it's a bunk house, we set up the next day's gear carefully so we won't have to bother anyone the next morning.

Our plan is to leave for Kala Patthar at sunrise, so we crawl into our sleeping bags fully clothed for the next morning.

Neither of us say much that night before drifting off, but we're both thinking the same thing. Tomorrow, we will climb our mountain. Tomorrow, the past year of training and sacrifice would be put to the test. Kala Patthar rises up, just outside our window, impassive, waiting for us.

But even after we had come this far, even after the success of that day, we knew we didn't have much left in us.

I try to calm my breathing so I can sleep, try to unravel the knots that have formed, and now the doubt has crept in as well.

I fall asleep wondering how we can possibly climb Kala Patthar feeling like this?

Getting it done: Meenakshi rocks the ridge on the way to Base Camp.

This is it! Join us in TWO WEEKS, for a special Nepal Chronicles as we face down Kala Patthar. It's taken Dan and Meenakshi more than a year to get here, and only 1,500 feet of black ice stand in the way. The exciting climax of The Nepal Chronicles premiers on Thursday, March 3 at 8 a.m.

Next week, we'll offer a special post featuring highlights from the journey so far!

Until then, check out this week's full picture catalog at:
http://danandmeenakshi.phanfare.com/5009812

Postcard #3: In Order to Live

2011-02-14T23:43:00.001-05:00

Here is the third Postcard in our series, this one inspired by Richard Bach. The picture is taken at about 17,500 feet with the Khumbu Ice Fall in the background. As always these images are available as digital images and will soon be actual postcards! Let us know if you'd like one!
Please join us this Thursday, Feb. 17 for Chapter 11 of The Nepal Chronicles as we battle altitude and weather to make our attempt at Base Camp! Thanks for your support and tell us what you think!

The Nepal Chronicles - Chapter 10

2011-02-10T08:06:00.001-05:00

Pumori rising: The mist lifts to reveal spectacular Pumori Peak high above the ridge on the way to Gorek Shep and Base Camp.

Dead Ravens

Thursday, Oct. 21 – Morning

Many years ago, Meenakshi and I climbed Mt. Jefferson in New Hampshire. We had only know each other for a little while, had just started properly dating, and had only climbed one mountain before – Mt. Lafayette on a picture perfect blue-bird day.

Mt. Jefferson was different. It was summer but the weather was terrible – real hypothermia inducing raw weather. I had not led many climbs before this one, and I guess I was showing off a little, or trying to.

We reached tree-line and the wind and rain came at us like a freight train; sideways and relentless. But we had Gor-tex and we pushed on. It got cold, then colder, then more windy. We tagged the summit in howling rain and near zero visibility and decided to descend down a different trail, called The Link, because we were too afraid of backtracking down the steep and, in this weather, dangerous, Caps Ridge Trail.

It was hell – eroded roots, crumbling dirt, washed out rocks and near vertical drops. There were times when we had to swing from tree branch to tree branch to avoid pitching down the slope. And all through this, the rain and cold continued. To call it a character builder would be generous. By the end we were sniping at each other, soaking wet and just about as exhausted as we've ever been on a hike.

It was a hike and a route that, ten years later, I would not do, alone or with anyone. Today, if faced with those conditions, I would turn back.

But we did it, and later, after our muscles and egos healed we joked about it. It became a Story in our lives, a mutual experience that despite the difficulty did not push as apart, but drew us together.

It's a hike that serves as a way-marker in our adventures.

“Well,” we say, “at least it's not as hard as Mt. Jefferson.” And we laugh.

I think of this story on the morning of our attempt to reach Everest Base Camp because I need to draw on the memory for strength. I am alone, and I am uneasy.

We had made a mutual decision on the 9th day of our trek to split up, breaking the first rule of climbing. I had agonized over that call since the evening before as Meenakshi and I discussed our strategy for the next morning.

Lost in time: A lone Yak sleeps on his feet in front of two useless solar heaters. This is the weather we faced on the morning of our Base Camp attempt.

The facts were plain: if we did not get to Gorek Shep by 9-9:30am, we may very well have found ourselves, at best, sleeping on a cold floor, or, at worst, having to turn around and go all the way back to Loboche.

Our chances of successfully reaching the summit of Kala Patthar rested on us getting to Base Camp today, and having enough time to recover and prepare, in order to tackle Kala tomorrow.

We were both beat, but Meenakshi had more left in her gas tank than I. She carried less in her pack, and we both knew that she could get there faster than me, likely by 45 minutes or more.

So, before 6 a.m., we passed on breakfast, gobbled down piles of crackers and cheese and stepped outside into the snow and haze to begin the trek to our final town. Just outside of Loboche, as the valley trail headed into the Khumbu toward Everest, I went over last minute instructions. Don't be afraid to use the map or ask for directions. You're going to be moving faster than you're used to so drink more water than you normally would. Take breaks. Then I kissed her, and she moved off into the mist.

It's an interesting feeling, terror mixing with pride. She was so strong, and we'd been doing this sort of thing for so long. I knew in my heart that this was the right decision for the moment. But watching the mist swallow Meenakshi, and then setting out alone, was one of the most difficult moments of the trip.

The trail to Gorek Shep is straightforward enough – I hug the inner valley of the Khumbu Glacier for the first few miles, pass by the Italian Research Center we had reached the day before, climb up to the moraine level of the Khumbu, then it got tricky. Three glaciers, the Khumbu, and the Changri Shar and the Changri Nup, all converge in a giant three-way intersection right before the village and right at the base of Kala Patthar. The final mile is up and down over this three-way glacier headwall at 17,000 feet.

I am relieved to discover that the trail is well worn. It would be nearly impossible for me, short of a mental breakdown, to miss and take a wrong turn. Plus, after about 30 minutes I am virtually surrounded by trekkers, both going up and coming down. All through the morning trek I'm distracted by mental calculations of where she might be. I imagine what the terrain may have looked like 30 minutes, 45 minutes, one hour before I set foot here. Did she have a hard time finding the trail?

The morning is full of snow and mist. After the cut off to the research center, I move up and around a slight rise to a long wide rocky flat area a half mile long that seems to shoot straight up a crumbly hill that I assume is the beginning of the glacier intersection.

The mist lifts: Above, the moment of Pumori's rising is awesome. Below, looking back on the Khumbu Valley from the top of the three-way glacier intersection.

Then, something happens. I begin to see ridges through the mist, high at first then lower down. Slivers of blue begin to peek around corners and long bands of sun punch through the clouds like lasers highlighting strips on the ground here and there.

I stop to gulp down some water and catch my breath and as I stand there the remaining mist lifts like a miracle and Pumori reveals itself above the ridge, a towering, impossible apparition.

It is awesome and startling – 6,000 feet of Pumori's perfectly shaped triangular summit cone floats above the ridge, above the clouds. The trekkers around me stop and stare. We all stare. There is no sound. We are less than five miles from this 25,000 foot mountain and it is perfect. It is astounding.

Pumori, Everest's Daughter, rising up like that out of the mist will become my defining moment of this trip, the single second of overwhelming smallness and humility that surges up my spine. I have never seen anything like it. I can't imagine ever seeing anything like it again.

I shake off my terror and awe and start taking pictures, praying that Meenakshi is someplace where she can see this, where we can be apart yet share this experience later.

The final climb up to the glacier intersection takes an hour, and I move slowly, zig zagging up the rise like my legs are filled with lead. I'm bolstered by the magnet of Pumori, and every step pulls me closer to its gravity.

At the top of the rise, I see the Khumbu Glacier, and the giant Changris pouring down from either side of Changri Peak, pouring down from Tibet. I begin the rocky, and daunting final pull over the three moraines and it's hard going both because I can feel the altitude like invisible claws digging into my calves and pushing on my shoulders, but also because the trail here is hard. The moraines are rocks and rubble and the trail tries to hug the outside edge of the ridge closest to the Khumbu, but sometimes it darts down to a run-off before climbing back to the outside.

Beyond belief: As we approach Gorek Shep over the glacier moraines, the glacier comes into full view and the surroundings become difficult to comprehend.

I stop many times to take pictures and to suck wind. But I am surrounded by massive peaks, long flowing glaciers and sky so blue it seems over saturated. How can sky be this blue, I think? My brain tries to get around my surroundings, but it's some kind of visual overload. There is nothing in my memory to hold on to, to put what I'm seeing in context and I feel like a cup that is overflowing.

I have to shake my head. I stand at a turn in the trail overlooking the glacier and shout “Phew!” and “Wow!” Saying what I'm thinking seems to take the edge off and I settle my head and move on.

After a few more twists and turns and ups and downs, just when I think I can stand the uncertainty no more I see Gorek Shep and my heart soars. I want to run down to this unreal place, this last outpost that seems like it's at the end of the universe.

Gorek Shep, the original Base Camp. The place where Mallory and Hillary lived as they prepared for Everest. Gorek Shep is a collection of stone and tin huts, pointed this way and that at the foot of a dry glacier lake bed at nearly 17,000 feet.

The name means Dead Ravens, and I laugh out loud as I trot down a slight hill into town.

Meenakshi is waiting for me outside, near the edge of town, and I feel delirious relief and happiness in seeing her and in being here, near the end of our journey, finally.

We embrace and she's all grins. It's 10 a.m. She had beaten me to town by nearly an hour, in part by keeping pace with a group of Australian boys. Leave it to Meena's competitive nature to propel her. She managed to book the last open space in town, two side by side bunks in a dorm style bunk room. My pride in her accomplishment is nearly overshadowed by how tired I feel.

In the shadow of greatness: Above, Kala Patthar seems small under the enormous Pumori Peak. Below, our first views of Gorek Shep, which means Dead Ravens.

I dump my gear, break out my down pants and jacket and we scramble inside the lodge to grab lunch and prepare for an afternoon trek to Base Camp.

The sun is out, but it's cold here, and the lodge stove is not fired up yet, so we find a corner and squeeze together in the sun over grilled cheese sandwiches and tomato soup. We're tired and our stomachs are queasy, but our plan is solid. The weather is holding, and we have the whole afternoon.

Base Camp is three long miles away and 700 more feet above us, but this is our chance. If we manage to get there today, we get a shot at Kala Patthar tomorrow.

From where we sit, Kala looks much, much taller than it did hours earlier in the shadow of Pumori. It's a giant brown mound of rock and dirk, 1,500 feet straight up. I take my sunglasses off and look up at this mountain that we have struggled and sacrificed the past year to reach. It is a tower of menace, a high, frightening lump of ice, a giant ominous wedding cakes, complete with three climbing tiers and a triple summit that will challenge us tomorrow. I turn away. I need to focus now on Base Camp. One challenge at a time.

We lay out our bags and prepare our bunks for our return, not knowing exactly when that return will be. In our day-packs we carry water, headlamps, one extra layer and some first aid and emergency supplies. I carry Cindy's Memory Flag rolled up in my jacket. We check our batteries, shove some extras in my jacket pocket and we are on our way.

First we must walk over the dry glacier lake bed, a place with a insane sporting history. It is the site of the annual Everest Marathon, the highest marathon I the world – from Gorek Shep to Namche. No, seriously, there is an annual Everest Marathon. Here's the link: http://www.everestmarathon.org.uk/

Also, for a former lake bed, the area is surprisingly flat and devoid of any rocks or stones. That's because in 2009, it was also the site of the highest field sporting event in the world, a cricket match between two British 11-person teams. An advance team of locals painstakingly clear the area of rocks and debris so the playing area could be flat and the pitch set up.

We move through this surreal landscape, and gain a small rise that will send us up and over the flat lake bed and onto the spine of the Khumbu, a rocky ridge that will run for nearly three miles to Base Camp.

It is noon. We pause at a sign that announces Way to Mt. Everest Base Camp. We both pose for a picture and my head is swimming.

We're here. This is it. Here we go.

Go time: The intimidating trail head to Base Camp!

Join us next week on the trail to Base Camp, where we face down altitude sickness, snow and the oncoming night to reach our first goal! Next week, Feb. 17, we go for Base Camp!

Until then, check out this week's full picture catalog at:
http://danandmeenakshi.phanfare.com/4993754

Postcard #2: Greatness Lies

2011-02-08T14:50:00.001-05:00

Here is the second Postcard in our series, this one inspired by an old Norwegian proverb. The picture is taken at about 16,500 feet with the beautiful Pumori rising up from the mist. As always these images are available as digital images and will soon be actual postcards! Let us know if you'd like one!
Please join us this Thursday, Feb. 10 for Chapter 10 of The Nepal Chronicles as we begin the march toward Base Camp, and the success of the expedition rests on a fateful decision! Thanks for your support and tell us what you think!

Notes from the trail

2011-02-03T07:54:00.004-05:00

SPECIAL SIDEBAR
Q & A: We try to answer some of our readers' most popular questions

The lodge, not the mountain: Lodges like the Kala Patar in Phakding can be found all along the trail.

Since we returned, we've been deluged with questions about the trek. In the Chapter by Chapter narration, we've tried to answer some of those questions. We thought it might be interesting to take a break from our weekly Chronicles and collect all the most common questions and try to answer them in one long post.

So, this week, we've tried to do just that. We're certain we've left some out though. Please feel free to ask us anything at all that we might have missed. We're eager to hear what you'd like to know about!

Could you breathe? Did you need to bring oxygen?

Questions about how we were affected by the altitude have been by far, the most popular inquiry. And for good reason. Base Camp sits at about 17,900 feet. Kala Patthar tops out at about 18,250 feet. The highest Dan has ever climbed was 12,637 up Humphreys peak in Arizona. The highest Meenakshi ever climbed was 7,244 up Harney Peak in South Dakota.

We opted to not bring oxygen, though we saw many porters carrying oxygen tanks for their clients.

Here's a quick primer: Air in the Earth's atmosphere only contains about 20% oxygen. The rest is nitrogen and some other gases. As you get higher, the density of that air changes and becomes thin, meaning less air pressure, and less Oxygen.

Spring relief: At altitude, water evaporates faster. Here's a natural spring near Ghat

At base camp and the summit of Kala Patthar, the air pressure is cut in half, meaning our bodies were getting 50% of the O2 they normally got at sea level.

Lower air pressure means your body attempts to adjust by making more red blood cells to carry oxygen more efficiently. Most of the cell-building happens while you sleep; however, the process can take days and in the meantime, you may feel ill. Also at lower air pressure, water evaporates faster. This can lead to dehydration, which can all bring about altitude sickness.

Altitude sickness can kill you. But mostly it can make you sick: headaches, nausea, sore muscles, shortness of breath.

So, what to do? Hike slowly. Hike no more than a 1,000 feet or so a day. Take rest days to allow for acclimatization.

Our trip took two weeks. There were commercial groups on the trail that were attempting the same thing we were in 8 or 9 days. That's nuts. During our time there, we ran across many very unhappy and unhealthy looking trekkers pushing too hard. We also witnessed a half dozen sick trekkers on the backs of horses or being carried down by porters.

In all, we had two full rest days, one at about 12,000 feet and one at about 14,000 feet. We also had two half days of rest. During those days, we'd take day hikes up, then sleep back down. This allowed our bodies to... you guessed it, build up more red blood cells.

Were you ever sick?

Oh yes, by around 14,000 feet, our bodies became sluggish and normal activity became difficult. We learned to move slowly, to take our time. Any quick movements could bring dizziness, a coughing fit or a sharp pin-prick headache. We learned to breath away the effects of altitude. Resting with several deep breaths would often both settle our pulse and take away the headaches. After a time, we learned our pace and were able to hike and climb without ill effects.

Even with those precautions, the last 24 hours was very difficult with a permanent unsettled stomach and exhaustion.

What did you eat?

We carried small snacks with us like nuts, yak cheese, crackers and lots of water. But it's rare to go for more than a few hours on the trail without coming across a lodge or village store. Now, despite the large number of lodges and stores, north of Namche Bazaar, the food selection was very similar: potatoes, rice and dahl (lentils), flat bread, momos (dumplings), grilled cheese and Sherpa stew were our main staples. Western style food like pizza and spaghetti were often available, but they were universally bad. We drank tea and water mostly, and north of Namche we gave up meat as freshness became an issue. Dan kept trying, but coffee was awful everywhere.

At the village stores, the list of snack items was exactly the same: Coke, Fanta, Mars bars, Pringles, biscuits and Everest Whiskey. Altitude made soda lose carbonation and chocolate tended to be stale so we kept away from snack stores as a general rule.

Though when we could find it, we would buy and stash a chunk of yak cheese. We would often have to ask for it though, as it normally wasn't on sale to trekkers.

How cold was it?

In the course of our trek we experienced a full range of weather, from temps in the 70s in the valley, to raw, freezing rain, to bitter cold. As a general rule, when (if) the sun came out, temps could go up as high as 50 or 60 degrees. After sunset and before sunrise though, in the Khumbu, temps were bitterly cold. The morning of our attempt on Kala Patthar the temperature was easily -20.

As cold as it seems: Meenakshi tries to keep warm at 17,000 feet. Warm equals down jacket, -20 sleeping bag and quilt.

Did it snow, did you need technical gear like crampons or ice axes?

It did snow several times during our trek. Once overnight at Pheriche, which coated the mountains. Once on the way to Gorek Shep and once on the trail back from Base Camp. We were lucky to not have to face any major storm, and the snow we did encounter was just a dusting so we were never faced with having to use heavy gear.

Kala Patthar had some snow, but no technical ledges or ice.

Why did you carry your own gear? I thought Sherpas did that.

The western preconception of a Sherpa is of someone who carries your loads. Now-a-days, Sherpas are more likely guides or high alpine climbers, and porters (usually not local) are the load carriers.

We could have found a porter to help us, we were asked many times along the trip. We chose not to for two reasons. The first was expense and reliability. Trekkers who choose to take on a a porter must also pay for the porters room and board. Also, having no experience with this type of trek, we had no idea what to even look for to find a trust-worthy porter.

Mainly though, we chose to carry our own gear because we wanted to be able to say we did it ourselves!

How many miles did you actually hike?

In all, the round trip from Lukla to Kala and back was about 70 miles.

How awesome were the views from Mt. Everest?
Yeah, um, we didn't actually climb Mt. Everest. We climbed Kala Patthar, a 18,250 foot peak about 6 miles from Mt. Everest where we got great views of Mt. Everest and the Khumbu Glacier.

Did you see the glacier move?

Technically yes, as we would often hear the sharp cracks of the glacier moving and ice chipping and sliding. Of course, in geological terms we'd never be able to actually see the glacier move. Several veteran trekkers who have been to the Khumbu years earlier told us, though, that the glacier is actually receding. Like in many parts of the world climate change is warming some areas of the Khumbu, and glacier lakes that were covered just 10 years ago, are now uncovered. Pumori Base Camp now sits at the foot of a glacier lake that did not exist just five years ago.

How much did the trek cost?

The average cost of a room in the lower valley was 200-400 rupees. 100 rupees equals about $1.30, American. If done with a commercial trekking group, a hike of this nature could cost anywhere from $1,000 to $5,000 per person. We did it for $250 each, not including a “shopping spree” we went on in Namche on the way home where we each spent about $50 on cool looking fake gear.

Did you really not wash for two weeks?

It depends on what your definition of “washing” is. Cold water is available most everywhere, so we were able to brush our teeth and at least rinse our hands and face on a regular basis. Some lodges had crude showers that consisted of a bucket and a hole above your head, but neither of us were interested in standing in a freezing stall and getting boiling water poured on us. Plus, since we only carried two changes of clothes, even if we did manage a hot scrub down, we'd still have to put on our dirty smelly clothes. So we passed. Dan grew a scratchy beard and Meena's hair became dread-locked. At night, our bags and shoes smelled so bad that we would race to get to our room to see who would get to take off their boots first. After a while, it didn't matter. If everyone smells, no one smells!

Our favorite daughter: Tenzing enjoys some trailside snacks!

Next week, all of Dan and Meenakshi's training is put to the test. The Nepal Chronicles continues with our most important day yet as we attempt to reach Everest Base Camp!
Join us on Feb. 10 for the next exciting episode!

Postcard #1: The Mountain Exists

2011-02-01T13:43:00.001-05:00

Today, we unveil the first in a series of postcards commemorating our trip and Nepal, and using quotes from some of our favorite outdoor writers. Someday, perhaps, these will be for sale. But for now, if you like them, we'd be happy to send you a high res digital image. Just let us know!
And don't forget, this Thursday, Feb. 3, The Nepal Chronicles will take a break from the weekly chapter reports to bring you a special sidebar - we'll answer your questions! We've collected all the most popular questions we've been asked about the trip and compiled the answers here. So, stop by and find out what we really ate, how sick we got, and how we managed to go the whole trip without a shower!
As always, thanks, and let us know what you think about our postcards!

The Nepal Chronicles - Chapter 9

2011-01-27T01:19:00.005-05:00

Top of the tip: The view from the tip of the Khumbu Glacier is breathtaking, figuratively and literally!

The Glacier

Wednesday, Oct. 20

We barely get out of there with our lives!

Actually it's more funny than dangerous.

Last night, one of the very young Nepali lodge keepers nearly burned the place down trying to show off. A crew of porters had taken over the yak dung stove in the common room, and were happily buzzed on Chang when the young man was obviously trying to earn some machismo points with them.

Meenakshi and I watched over our dinner of rice and soup as the young man dumped a load of dung in, then squirted what seemed like a whole container of either lighter fluid of straight up gasoline into the stove, streaks of the stuff getting on the stove, on his hands and on the floor.

We hardly had time to exchange a horrified glance before the boy lit a piece of paper and tried to drop it into the stove.

Whooosh! A fireball exploded out of the stove like a mini-nuclear bomb sending the boy and half the porters scrambling for cover. Fortunately nothing caught on fire and only the boy's ego and maybe his eyebrows were singed as the porters all exploded themselves, but in laughter.

Even Meena and I laughed and the boy seemed to take the teasing well. I think everyone was just relieved the whole place didn't go up!

We are up and out early again, as there is no longer any guarantee of spaces in Loboche. Like the day before, our hope is to get there before noon, and spend the afternoon acclimating and exploring the town.

But the morning seems to happen in slow motion as we struggle up the Khumbu's moraine. It's hard work, and we have little breath left for the breathtaking views to take.

Our elevation today will be gained in the morning climb up the moraine, nearly 1,000 feet all at once, up to 16,100 feet. It's too daunting to think much about. So far, our stomachs have been fine, though we are being careful what we eat. Occasional sharp headaches like pin pricks at the base of my skull will flare, but slowing down and taking a few deep breaths mostly clears that up.

The trail winds its way up the moraine in moderate switchbacks and we manage to get about half way up before the regular trail traffic begins to appear.

Porters half our size with twice our loads and shorter than Meenakshi zoom by us like we are standing still and the regular yak trains give us excuses to stop and catch our breath. Last night, from atop the small plateau above Dughla it seemed impossible that views could get much better, but up here they do. We turn around often to take in the whole Pheriche Valley, long and deep, the direct sunlight turning the valley floor silver and gold.

After about two hours, a col in the top of the rise comes into view, and we follow a cairn gateway up onto the edge of the moraine, more than 16,000 feet above sea level. And though I'd read about it in the tour books, what we enter is stunning and humbling.

At the top of the Khumbu Glacier's terminal moraine exists a memorial garden to all the climbers taken by Everest. Dozens of chortens, stupas and rock piles of various heights and construction dot the immense plateau.

Rock garden in the sky: Top, a weather aged chorten stands as a memorial to a fallen climber. Middle, the memorial garden at the top of the Khumbu is a potent reminder of mortality. Above, Choltse rises above a ridge lined with memorials to fallen climbers.

Anyone hiking to Base Camp or climbing Mt. Everest from the south must pass through this garden, in essence the highest cemetery on the planet, a place of extreme emotional impact. Thousands of prayer flags, some new, some decades old flutter over and around the memorials. Some have plaques and inscriptions and are well up-kept, some are ancient piles of rocks, crumbling and returning to the Earth.

Meenakshi and I separate and wander without direction through the memorials. There is nothing to say. I run my hand over the rocks, warm in the sun, thinking about all the people who, like us, attained this ridge on their way to Everest and never came back down.

Lost in my thoughts I stumble upon the chorten dedicated to Scott Fischer. For the past week, as I moved through this beautiful country, even when surrounded by evidence of its more harsher potential, only now does the full impact of this trip, of where I am, of all those who came before me, become fully realized.

I draw a bare finger over the gold plaque fastened to the side of the rocks: “In Memory of Scott Eugene Fischer Who Died On Mt. Everest May 11, 1996 His Spirit Lives On.”

I do not idolize Fischer. His death on Everest nearly 15 years ago was not glamorous or romantic. Fischer died in the worst single day tragedy in climbing history on Mt. Everest.

As the owner of Mountain Madness, an adventure company that foolishly guaranteed successful summits to its clients, Fischer more than anyone had, over the years, become the poster child of the tragic consequences of commercialism in the Khumbu.

Fischer had once told a reporter that he had Everest figured out. He was wrong.

Somber memory: Dan in front of Scott Fischer's memorial.

Many books have been written about that day, the most famous being Jon Krakauer's Into Thin Air. It's a book I read while living in New Jersey, before taking one step into the White Mountains, before attempting Mt. Rainier, before hiking across England, before summited Guadalupe in Texas or Humphreys in Arizona or Harney in South Dakota. It is the book that made me wonder what all this was about, what could cause so many people to undergo so much suffering to simply stand atop a pile of rocks for five minutes.

Now I knew. And now I was here. My God, I'm here.

Meenakshi comes up behind me and we stand there quietly for a minute.

I hand her our good camera.

“This is Scott Fischer,” I say. “Can you take our picture?”

After a while we leave this place of memories, but only after Meenakshi points to a wide flat rock in the middle of all the ghosts. On this rock, someone has constructed an outline of a heart with pebbles and stones. Is it an expression of love amid all this death? Is it its own memorial constructed by someone who lost a loved one here? I think of it as a sign of hope, and maybe luck – a reminder that beauty and horror can co-exist here, and often do.

The plateau at the top of the moraine is a half mile long, and we move slowly around a slight curve, trying to absorb the knowledge that we are standing on the tip of the glacier, Everest's glacier.

All those thoughts drain out of my head, though, as we climb up a slight rise and a familiar shape appears far in the distance. Pumori. It's Pumori!

The mountain is a perfect triangle, a cone of white towering above the ridge at the far end of the glacier, a distinct waymarker of the border between Nepal and Tibet. But more importantly for us, our destination, Kala Patthar, sits at the foot of Pumori. It's the end. We can see it now.

Pumori rising: Above, Dan catches the first glimpse of Pumori. Below, we pause in the trail to take in the Khumbu Valley. Kala Patthar is the tiny ridge directly below Pumori.

Once again Meenakshi and I stop in the trail and gawk. We do a lot of that now, stopping and looking.

“Pumori,” I mumble. “Kala is there, that ridge.”

I point out the distinct ridge that leads to a bump under the shimmering Pumori. We're still ten miles away.

“That's Kala Patthar?” Meenakshi asks.

“Yeah.”

The day is warm and blue, and the trail smells sweetly of a particular type of clove that locals claim has “medicinal” benefits.

Two weeks ago I stood with this woman on an alter in Kathmandu, with colors all around us, surrounded by incense and fire with an out of control band playing happily and family and friends offering us their blessings. Now, I stand here at the edge of Nepal, the highest place on Earth where the trail still smells like incense, the colors are still so bright it seems unreal and the music of the wind, and water and yak bells play.

How can this be my life?

The rest of the hike to Loboche is uneventful, if anyone in their right mind could call this place uneventful. We drop down to the glacier run off and hug the eastern valley wall as we make our way toward Kala.

Shades of the Khumbu: The trail hugs the western wall of the Khumbu Valley.

About a half hour outside of Loboche, a familiar face passes me by.

“Oh hey! Remember me?”

“Lene!” And this time I do give him a quick hug. The hell with custom at this point.

Lene Oh is returning with his client. They summited Kala Patthar but decided not to go for Base Camp – too far, too little time, too difficult.

We chat a little bit and once again Lene reads my mind and asks if we have anything booked for Loboche. We don't of course.

“Eco Lodge,” he says. “Go right there, far end of town, they will have rooms. But hurry!”

Before Lene leaves I slip him 200 rupees. He resists at first, but then seems grateful. This odd little man with no connection to us, and nothing to gain, helped us twice now, and I was not going to let him go without helping back.

“Thank you Lene, you've really been great.”

“Oh no!” Lene Oh says. “I'm glad, I'm glad. Bye bye!”

He heads off, sure footed and determined, his client stumbling along behind him, and I find myself being very sad to see him go.

It's a straight shot into the village now, and we can hear the tink, tink, tink of stone mason's hammers before we see the buildings. Apparently there is a building boom in Loboche as well.

Sweet home Loboche: The lodges became crowed at Loboche.

It's been a long morning, and we are very high and very hungry. The Eco-Lodge is on the far side of town; a huge place, and fairly new, compared to the rest.

We beat the lunch crowd, and discover happily that we have the common area to ourselves as a lone lodge keeper washes the floors. The place is tremendously clean and expansive for a trekkers lodge and it turns our Lene Oh was right once again, but just barely. There is one room left, and it's expensive comparatively. But we gladly pay the 700 rupees and consider ourselves lucky to have found anything.

We have a quick lunch of noodles and split a very tasty grilled cheese sandwich before heading up to our room.

The Eco-Lodge is actually two buildings, and our room is at the very end of the second, connected by and outside flight of stairs that I suddenly find very hard to climb. It's still a new and disconcerting experience for us to be out of breath after ten stairs.

Our room is huge, and has wall to wall carpeting, and could fit a half dozen people compared to the last few places we've stayed. But we're glad to be here and I take some time to wash up, brush my teeth and scrub a little Vaseline into my beard and scalp. My skin is very dry and has begun to blister and chip in some places.

We rest for a while, then decide with the whole afternoon left, to take a short acclimatization hike up to an Italian Research Center along the trail to Gorak Shep, our destination for tomorrow.

Like usual, an afternoon haze has settled over the high peaks as we set out, but the day is still reasonably warm and our day packs make the going much easier. The center is about two miles up the trail, near Loboche Glacier, and we take our time, moving slowly over the ups and downs of the glacier valley.

To our left, the flanks of Loboche rise up in a series of ridges and hills. To our right, the run off of the Khumbu Glacier creates a mini-valley, giving trekkers enough space to walk. The main part of the glacier is on the other side of a rocky berm, three or four stories over our heads.

My stomach feels slightly unsettled as we walk, a feeling similar to a cramp, but generally we feel strong. So far, we have managed to avoid any negative affects of altitude. Perhaps the two-a-day Pepto Bismol tablets have helped.

We hike along happily, Mera Peak gleaming in and out of clouds to the east, until we reach a faint crossroads in the trail. The intersection to the center would be easy to miss if not for there being a couple tents set up along side the trail, perhaps by interns or researchers at the center.

We hang a left, and the trail thins into a deeply carved slot valley, then opens up into a wide muddy basin at the foot of Loboche Glacier.

And as we come around a final curve, we see the top of the center, a solar paneled pyramid, poking up from the rocks.

“It's like a spaceship has landed!” Meenakshi says.

Glacier pyramid: Above, the Italian Research Center at Loboche conducts high altitude experiments. Below, the center sits at the foot of the Loboche Glacier.

It's so strange to see this amazing, modern building here, a week's walk from any road and only a few hours from base camp. The pyramid shines like a blue-glass beacon, reflecting the surrounding rocks and mountains in the pyramid's bug-like multi-eyes.

The center is a research facility, doing weather broadcasting as well as high altitude experiments, and hosting scientists from all over the world in three-month programs.

But like most institutions in this country, it got it's start in a very different way. In the late 1980s an American team of climbers, after summitting K2, claimed that it, not Everest, was actually the highest peak in the world. As you can imagine, this did not sit well with the Brits, as they did not want Hillary's accomplishment to be overshadowed by Americans. So, with the help of the Italians, who were in the middle of some early experiments with Geographical Positioning Systems (GPS), they set about building a research center for the sole purpose of accurately measuring the two peaks.

In fact, to this day, the official name of the facility is EvK2CNR. Here's the center's website: www.evk2cnr.org.

And so it is – one of the most modern scientific research centers in the world was built at high cost and much labor, in the middle of nowhere, to prove that Americans were full of shit.

None of this matters to us of course, as we stretch out on a little rise near the center and enjoy a yak cheese snack, because this place is extraordinary. It's far enough off the trekking track that the hiker flow is minimal. The center is surrounded by peaks on three sides and a glacier on the fourth.

As we sit and relax, we hear the low, rumble of an avalanche someplace high in the mist on Loboche. I do not use this term often, or loosely, but this place is magical.

There are no scientists there now, but a pleasant Nepali caretaker asks if we'd like a tour, and we eagerly accept. He takes us into the main lab, a conference room, a computer center and a variety of other rooms with machines and beakers and flashing buttons.

It's all interesting, but what I really want to see is where they live. I pretend to need to go to the bathroom, and my ruse works as the man leads me down a below ground staircase into the living quarters and lets me go in alone.

I am drawn like a magnet to the toilet - completely western in style, and it flushes! They even have a shower and hot water. I take off my hat, fill my cupped hands with hot tap water and splash it on my face and head. I have no clue how a flush toilet and hot running water can exist up here. I imagine people much smarter about such things, like Meenakshi for example, could tell me, but I don't want to know. For now, it's a tiny Khumbu miracle and it feels wonderful.

Up to two dozen scientists and researchers can live here at any one time, and they have comfortable looking bunk beds, with a large kitchen area with a sink, and a comfortable recreation room with some books and board games. I don't see a television but I bet there's one someplace around here.

After about ten minutes, not wanting to make our guest suspicious, I take my leave, and Meenakshi and I head back to Loboche for the evening.

It's getting on in the afternoon now, and I'm thrilled when I see Jim's crew heading for Gorek Shep. They are one day ahead of us, but they look pretty ragged. One of their number has already dropped out and they are pushing hard now, with the intent of attempting Kala Patthar the next day. It looks like they will have to skip Base Camp.

I wish them good luck and breath a sigh of relief that we are able to keep our own schedule and come and go as we please.

Mountain girl: Meenakshi takes a moment to look cool near Mera Peak.

Back in Loboche, as the sun sets and a cold rain tracks up the valley, we find ourselves back in the Eco-Lodge fighting for space in the now very crowded common room. It turns out the Eco-Lodge is popular with the commercial hiking groups and solo-trekkers like ourselves are given little consideration when compared to the overwhelming amount of money a lodge keeper can make from a big organized tour. That night, we are pushed to a corner by the presence of Exodus, the commercial trekking equivalent to Wal-Mart.

Trek with Exodus and you get guaranteed rooms, meals and hot tea and cookies waiting for you when you arrive in town, solar panel heated water and a small army of porters and guides to cater to your every whim. You also get a hefty price tag – a trek like this could cost upwards of $5,000.

By comparison, Meenakshi and I will have spent about $250 each.

We grumble and slide over and make way for the loud, rude groups. We're just happy we have a room.

After another meal of soup and momos we head for bed. The time has come. Tomorrow, we would set out for Gorek Shep, the last village on the line, at the base of Kala Patthar. Tomorrow afternoon, we plan on pushing on to Base Camp.

We are exhausted and dirty, but our spirits are high and our stomachs are relatively strong. We had driven ourselves the last year, training hard. Meenakshi and I had sacrificed a lot of time and energy to get here, to make this final push, to be where we were right now. The next 48 hours would tell the tale.

Kala Patthar waited ahead.

Before bed, I step outside one final time check the weather, and am horrified to discover just how hard a blowing snow is coming down. Just outside the door, a giant yak, coated white and barely recognizable under the snow, shakes its bells like laughter.

Yaks on the move: A yak train makes its way over the glacier near Loboche.

Next week, a very special sidebar looks at altitude, hygiene, gear and lodging as The Nepal Chronicles takes a break from the trail to consider some of the day to day challenges of the Khumbu. Join us for Notes From the Trail on Feb. 3.
Then, mark your calenders for Feb. 10. Dan and Meenakshi set out for Base Camp, facing snow and a fateful decision that could jeopardize the entire expedition! Join us on The Nepal Chronicles for Chapter 10: Everest Base Camp.

Complete Chapter 9 photos can be found here: The Glacier.

Exclusive videos on Facebook

2011-01-21T13:05:00.002-05:00

To all our fans and readers, we invite you to join our Facebook page to receive exclusive videos from our trip! Just click the link on our logo to the right, sign in and stop by and "like" our Facebook page, The Nepal Chronicles. You'll get exclusive pictures and videos from our trip!

Enjoy! We hope you'll join us on Facebook for more!

D & M

The Nepal Chronicles - Chapter 8

2011-01-20T01:04:00.002-05:00

In the valley of mountains: Hiking through the spectacular Pheriche Valley in the shadow of Ama Dablam.

We are surrounded!

Tuesday, Oct. 19

It's a long way to Loboche, and a lot of feet in elevation to cover, so we leave early again after a small breakfast of bread and a fried egg.

We're eating lighter now to keep our stomachs calm. A couple days ago, around Tengboche, we saw a porter carrying raw pork flank in his dirty basket, unwrapped, exposed to the elements for a least a day, red and soft and streaky. We decided to give up meat for the remainder of the trip.

We reluctantly bid our lodge keepers goodbye, with the promise that we'll stop here on the way back as well.

The number for the day is daunting: 2,198. That's the difference in elevation between us and Loboche and it's all up. Trekking from 13,910 feet to 16,108 feet will be difficult.

Still, the morning is brilliant and clear. With only the hint of wispy mist swirling amid the high peaks, and a bright blue sky to greet us, we put on our shades, head through town and enter the valley that's been our home for two days.

Behind us and before us: Above, Dan heads out with our lodge in the shadow of Kangtanga and Thamserku. Below, Meenakshi on the trail through the valley under the towering Taboche.

We are well beyond trees now. Slight scrub pops up here and there, and moss and rock algae from the nearby Loboche River can be found. The valley is criss-crossed with deep ruts from the decades of yak trains and trekkers. We pick one trail and try to keep to it, but it doesn't matter much. All the trails go to the same place. Miles in front of us, the valley abruptly ends at the terminal moraine of the Khumbu Glacier.

For now, we walk slowly, taking our time to enjoy the high mountains, soaring like white knives piercing the mist and sky in every direction.

It's a raw, unrelenting and barren place, and it's the most beautiful hiking I've ever done. A dozen 20,000 foot peaks surround us, the river roars white, yak bells and the whistle of porters provide a background music, and teams of climber of all nationalities pass us by, greeting us with bonjour, and good day and dzien dobry and namasta and hola.

We pass through a series of drainages that come down off the valley walls and the trekking is tricky going through some mud, skipping around and over stones. The water is perfectly clear, nearly invisible. We pass by some stone cairns, marking various yak herd paths. Multi-colored flags jut up from the points and look like native American feather monuments as they flutter under the peaks.

It's peaceful walking.

Two views of Taboche in black: Above, a stark Taboche looks over the Pheriche Valley. Below, we head north with Taboche at our backs.

Mid-way through the valley as the Loboche begins to widen toward the glaciers, sits the summer village of Tsambur, a seasonal yak shepherds' town sometimes referred to as a goth. It's mostly empty now, the herders are out working for trekkers, their yaks earning their keeps. We wander quietly through the village, its stone huts right up against the path, painted and weathered doors bolted and windows boarded up. I see smoke coming up from one tiny stone hut far off the main path, but see no signs of life. Perhaps the owner has made his home available for passing porters during the trekking season.

The buildings are stone, the path is stone, the walls and gates are stone - stone from the earth and stone from the mountains. We walk through a valley of rock, at our feet and thousands of feet above us.

Through the morning we are accompanied by 21,463 foot Taboche and 21,129 foot Cholatse, sister peaks, connected by a sharp ridge, and both with curious histories.

In 1974, a French team led by Yannick Lord defied a ban on climbing Taboche and summited with a group that included jazz clarinetist Jean-Christian Michel. For his efforts Lord was barred from Nepal for some time.

Cholatse, which literally mean Lake Pass Peak has an even more colorful pedigree, having the distinction of being the last named peak climbed in the Himal. Mainly it's just hard. It's a stunning mountain with narrow snow and ice ridges and steep drops. Commercial trekking companies haul clients up Everest every year. None have climbed Cholatse.

The first team to do it was American, and consisted of two famous landscape photographers, leader Vern Clevenger and partner Galen Rowell. In 1982 they tackled the southwest ridge, and described the climb as having some 20 pitches of difficult ice climbing.

The two mountains shimmer and shine in the brilliant sunlight, and with every step a new cliff, or ice wall, or crag is revealed. We walk for hours in the shadow of those two glorious peaks and they look different every time I lift up my head.

Between the rocks: Dan, Taboche and Cholatse.

The Chola Glacier pours down off the east face of Cholatse, huge and thick, like chocolate and white syrup.

It takes us nearly three hours to get to the end of the valley and we stop for a snack and to catch our breath before the next phase of our journey. In front of us the valley disintegrates into a series of options. To the south, Taboche and Cholatse seem to form an impenetrable wall of ice and rock, though we can see distinct trail ruts that appear to head straight up the ice walls.

To the west, trails cut wildly across the river outlet and disappear behind a tremendous ridge. This is the Cho La Pass, a challenging mountain pass that leads to the Goyko Lakes and is sometimes used as a loop to head back to Namche. The next time I'm here, I think, that's where I'll go.

But today, we turn north and begin the steep series of terraced climbs that would take us first to the tiny town of Dughla for lunch, then up and over the moraine and the glacier.

It's hard going, not steep but constant. The trail swings us up a couple hundred feet, around the long north ridge of the Pheriche Valley and levels out somewhat on a deeply rutted plateau. Taboche's enormous flat north face is directly at our backs and the mountain, only a couple miles away, seems impossibly huge, a sun-blotting tower of shimmering ice and rock.

I step up a slight rise above the plateau, with much difficulty, to let Meenakshi take a bunch of pictures of me against the towering spires of Cholatse. I can barely breath, and she takes a quick video of me walking as fast as I can along that ridge. It is not fast by any stretch of the imagination and I have to slow down when I feel the sharp, familiar pin prick of an altitude headache creep up on me. I've discovered that a few deep, meditative breaths usually alleviates the headache and take a moment there so high in the sky to calm myself before continuing.

After a half hour on the plateau the trail turns sharply toward the sound of rushing water and there it is, the terminal moraine of Everest's Khumbu Glacier.

Dughla and the Khumbu Moraine: Above, we decide to spend the night at the truck stop of Dughla, at the base of Everest's enormous terminal moraine, below.

Also called an end moraine, it marks the maximum advance of the glacier. It is at this point that all the debris that has accumulated has been pushed to the front end of the ice and dumped into a giant mound of rock and ice and earth.

The Khumbu's terminal moraine is spectacular, a tremendous natural buttress the size of one of New Hampshire's mountains. At its eastern most end, the glacier water has crashed through a thousand little crevices and pours down the moraine eventually leading to the Loboche. The water I dipped my hand in last week came from here – the Loboche, empties into the Imja, empties into the Milk.

The outwash from the glacier at this time of year is only five or six feet wide, but roars like a freight train off the moraine and into the valley. The rocks around the outwash are scoured a blinding white

On the other side of the wash and up a small rise is Dughla, really more a truck stop than a village proper.

It's only noon, but we're tired already, and the high sun is relentless. We scramble down to the outwash, cross over on a sturdy-looking steel trestle bridge and then scramble back up a ledge to reach the village.

I wait behind a little until Meenakshi is right at the top of that rise and snap the picture that is now at the top of this blog.

We're happy to be in Dughla, which we've also heard referred to as Thukla, and order two cups of noodles and some milk tea and look around for a place to people watch and enjoy the sun in the courtyard of one of the two lodges in town. There is a wonderful stone wall that overlooks a beautiful view back down toward Pheriche, but we are dismayed to discover that a commercial trekking crew that arrived before us has dumped their gear on the stone seats and are themselves eating loudly at an adjacent table.

Meenakshi does not care for this and makes her displeasure known by hauling two enormous packs off the seats, tossing them to the dusty ground, and plopping herself down to enjoy the view. A few heads from the group turn, but no one appears willing to make a fuss, and it's a good thing.

We have our seats, our views, our lunch, our sun and our mountains. We decide at that moment that this is where we'll stay tonight, using the afternoon to acclimate further, and spend the day resting and soaking in the views.

I quickly do some schedule calculations in my head and determine that splitting this day into two halves would not affect our return flight. It did meant that the hike back would have to take four days instead of five, something I felt was doable.

So here we are, at 15,157 feet, at the very base of Mt. Everest's Khumbu Glacier. Meenakshi shakes off her heavy jacket and gloves, finds a plastic patio chair to lean back in, and turns her face to the sun.

“This is my beach day,” she announces. And so it is!

With the whole afternoon before me, I consider my next steps. First, I secure us a room.

“With the best views!” I tell the bemused lodge owner, a very young Nepali with a DKNY t-shirt, jeans and rock and roll hair.

“Best room in lodge, sir!” he says, handing me a key as his friends laugh. He may be teasing me, but he does give us a wonderful room at the end of a long corridor, its one window pointed straight at Ama Dablam.

I spread out our bags and gear, wash my face and brush my teeth in the freezing cold basin of water at the common sink down the hall and go outside to explore a little bit.

Besides the two lodges there is one snack store selling most of the typical Coke and Mars bar offerings. Here though, a woman is selling colorful hand made alpine hats. We'd been looking for a certain type of hat for Meena, with a row of mohawk-like threads down the middle.

I ask the store keeper if they sell those but she just shakes her head sadly and points. On a bench, watching over the boys who run the lodge is an old, plumb woman, obviously their grandmother. She is wearing the mohawk hat.

“One left,” says the woman behind the counter. “But it's hers.”

The old woman jokes loudly with the boys as they jostle and punch each other in the arm in the courtyard. She gives some instructions to another man, perhaps her own son, who runs off into the lodge. She is the mistress of this village, and I decide she should keep her hat.

So, with the moraine so close, and with time on my hands and still no sign of the daily afternoon showers, I decide to explore the glacier outwash.

First I climb up on a ridge above the lodge and take some pictures, and smile when I see Meenakshi down at the lodge taking pictures of me. I sit up on that rise for a while, watching the mist and clouds float around Ama, and Thamserku and Kangtanga.

Mountain majesty: From a small rise above the village, the mountains and the mist put on quite a show. Top, Ama Dablam roars above the clouds. Middle, Kangtenga peeks out of the mist. Above, Dan and Meenakshi take a well deserved break in one of the most beautiful places on Earth.

I scramble back down to the bridge and rock hop up the outwash, higher and higher up the moraine I go until my altimeter reads 15,500 feet. I'm alone up here, above the lodge and the trail. I'm alone, playing in Mt. Everest's runoff, the clear water running under my feet, my breath coming in fits and starts, but feeling strong. The run-off cascades down from a hundred points in the moraine, but all of it channels into one main huge groove cut out of the earth. Instead of going back the way I came I scout out an appropriate wall that I can scramble up, hoping to loop back down to the lodge from a different route.

The outwash walls on the lodge side are eight or ten feet high in some places, and I shimmy my way up the gravelly, eroded wall and get under the lip of the outwash rut.

It's a tricky climb, and as I maneuver up and out of the rut, a rock shifts under my foot, and for a fraction of a second I'm falling backward into the wash, sucked down by the current and I slip down past the lodge where my dinner is being made, under the bridge I crossed and down into the valley below where I am lost in minutes.

And perhaps little Chori Tenzing, the girl who entertained us the evening before, would see my red jacket passing by in the current and be the only witness to my demise and not even know it.

I swallow hard, and focus on my footing, and pull myself up and out of the outwash and onto hard land.

I'm in a place where there is no mercy, where the most beautiful things are also the most unforgiving.

It takes me a while to catch my breath, and I suddenly no longer wish to be by myself. I head back at a quick pace to where Meenakshi waits.

Standing tall: Meena measures up to Cholatse.

Next week, The Nepal Chronicles continues as we finally enter the Khumbu Glacier Valley and catch our first glimpse of Kala Patthar! Join us on Jan. 20 for Chapter 9: The Glacier

Complete Chapter 8 photos can be found here: We Are Surrounded!

The Nepal Chronicles - Chapter 7

2011-01-13T07:38:00.003-05:00

Mountain glory: Ama Dablam in all her evening sunlight brilliance.

The mountains reveal themselves
Monday, Oct. 18

Meenakshi is shouting.
It's 6 a.m. and I'm behind getting up this morning. After a pleasant evening spent with good conversation and a roaring fire, I slept hard and need to wrestle first with the toilet before showing my face in the common room.
But as I come down the hall, there is a general commotion of people heading out the door into the cold. Meena is one of them.
"Come on, come out!" she says when she sees me. She takes my hand and leads me out into the courtyard of the lodge. It is absolutely freezing out, and I'm dressed only in tech-wick long johns and boots. I have my Gor-tex shell and hat but no gloves. Her hands are cold.
I step out into the morning glare and the chill in the air is palpable, like walking into a cloud of invisible ice. It takes my stunned body a moment to compensate and I begin shivering almost immediately.
Several trekkers in various states of undress are standing around, all their heads raised to the sky. I step a couple more feet out, away from the lodge, and look up.
We are surrounded by mountains. It literally takes away my breath and I feel dizzy.
In every direction, the silver and white peaks shoot up, ragged spires of misty rock and glaring ice. The sun has not yet risen over the range to the west, but the tips of the peaks all glow a blinding white.
Ama Dablam. Awi. Pokalde. Thamserku. Kangtanga. Some of the names I've memorized and anticipated for days. Others are new, like strange, frightening neighbors. They are all over 6,000 meters.

Mountains all around: Above, Awi Peak marks the end of the Pheriche Valley. Below, the double point of Kangtanga in the morning mist.

Directly in front of the lodge the dome of Taboche explodes like a enormous white egg cracking right above a still-dark ridge. I don't know what to do, or say. I hear cameras clicking, and the whispered murmurs of other trekkers. Meena has gone back for a camera and I walk up a rise a little bit to get away from the lodge after I realize stupidly that my smallest camera, the Olympus, is in the pocket of my jacket.
I film a quick 360, babbling nearly incoherently as it turns out. This is it. We are surrounded by some of the tallest, most beautiful and dangerous mountains in the world. This will be the day of views, the day of walking under the royal blue sky, amid a magical background of mountains.
"Breakfast is ready," Meenakshi says. I'm suddenly hungry and my hands are shaking from the cold, my fingertips ridged and white. Yike. I jam my hands into my pockets and scurry into the lodge, eager to eat and set out up the ridge for an acclimatization day of rest and picture taking!
Of course that doesn't happen. One hour later, with full bellies and day packs on, we set out up the ridge toward Dingboche, under a layer of mist and clouds. The mountains have tricked us again, put us in our place, illustrated our tiny stature then went away, leaving us with a sober understanding of our place in the universe.
But that's fine as the day is still warm, there's no rain and the fine mist and fog gives us occasional views as we climb. On our second, and final acclimatization day, we are heading to Dingboche, a larger village just on the other side of the valley bluff.

Edge of the day: The sharp edges of Pokalde shimmer with new snowfall.

To reach it, we have to climb straight up a hillock to the north of Pheriche, then down into a series of drumlins on the other side before reaching Dingboche. It's only about a mile away, but we have to climb about 700 feet, then descend 300 feet, then climb back up to Dingboche at 14,468 feet.
There is no official trail to get over that hump, only some vague beat paths created by grazing yaks. We take our time, switch-backing up and back, and occasionally taking a few tentative steps straight up the rise if our lungs allow it.
It's a pleasant morning. We don't have to worry about trekkers or yak trains. Our day packs feel so light that we spend some time taking videos of red rescue helicopters roaring down the valley. One lands in Pheriche and we watch it come down in a clearing only a few hundreds yards from our lodge. We would discover later that the helicopter was there for a porter who broke his ankle coming down the Cho La Pass and had been taken to the Rescue Association for treatment.
After an hour we reach the ridge, out of breath but with no sign of the achy headache or nausea that often accompanies altitude sickness. From this point on, we would have to monitor our conditions carefully for any signs of concern.
I pull out my Memory Flag for my sister and pause there to take a picture. On this ridge that overlooks two villages, surrounded by some of the highest mountains on the planet, we are over 14,500 feet. We are higher than Mt. Whitney, the highest point in contiguous America. It's exhilarating!
We drop down into a mini-valley, then back up and find the official trail leading into Dingboche. It's crowded that morning. The town is the staging village for treks to Island Peak and there's porter and Sherpa activity all around us as we pass by some yak pastures, a huge lodge with BAKERY painted on the blue tin roof, and a variety of hole-in-the-wall momo shops.
At the far end of the town I spot a radio tower and figure that's as likely a place as any to have a Internet Cafe. I'm right, Dingboche actually has two of them, right next to each other. One is closed and no one seems to know where the proprietor is. In the other, the young Sherpa owner powers up the generator which roars like a leaf blower in the suburbs. The connection is terrible, though I manage to leave a status message that suggests it may be the last time I'm able to find a connection before our Base Camp attempt.
For lunch we find a clean lodge high on a rise above town, and sit facing the long row of windows, which warm every time the sun peaks out. The lodge's owner, an old, heavy set Sherpa woman, sleeps contently on an adjoining bench and a teenager ably takes our order. I'm in the mood for momos and milk tea, and Meenakshi gets a grilled cheese sandwich and we have the place to ourselves in the sun, and my stomach feels strong and I'm happy.

Feeling good: Above, sun, plus momos equals comfortable Dan. Below, Dingboche stretches up the valley toward Island Peak.

I peel off some of my heavy stinky gear and rest my head on my hand and turn my face to the sun and it's a good day. Meena takes a picture of me, and it's been my profile picture on Facebook for months.
The lunch is good and we're feeling lazy and it's tough to hit the trail again, but we want to explore Pheriche a bit before dark, so we head back down.
An enormous Canadian team of teens and twenty-somethings passes us by in the other direction, heading for an Island Peak summit. They are all dressed in black with matching logos. I just gawk. At that age, I had no conception of climbing a 20,000 foot peak, to say nothing of Nepal or even Asia.
We short cut up a different ridge, wanting to hike a little more west of our lodge in order to enter Pheriche from above. We cut through the back area of a lodge where we come across a curious sight, several villagers are working an aloo pit. A large hole in the still soft ground has been excavated, and women are carrying bushel-fulls of golfball-sized potatoes to the pit, which already is full of thousands of the things. Nepali refrigeration. The frozen earth will be as good a freezer as any for feeding hungry trekkers next season.
We find a beat trail and follow it up to a large Stupa that looks down over Dingboche and are happily surprised to run into Tim and Karen, who are in the middle of their own rest day. They had stayed in Dingboche and had hiked much higher than us that day, up to an old monastery above the village.
Their plan, like ours, is to head to Loboche tomorrow. Only where we would trek through the Pheriche Valley along the river before turning north toward the Khumbu Glacier, they would strike out above the valley and come in nearly level with the glacier.
It's windy up on the rise so we part with promises to look for each other the next day. I know we won't see them though, as they have proven much faster than us, and I'm certain they'll reach Loboche before us.
We manage to cut back down toward Pheriche right above the town, and have to search around a little to find an appropriate place to re-enter, as Meenakshi points out that cutting through somebody's yak pasture might not sit well with the owners.
We pass by an utterly filthy outhouse, perhaps the worst we've encountered on the trail so far (see Potty Talk sidebar) but manage to get to the Himalayan Rescue Association building by mid-afternoon, under a still misty, but not cold sky.

Pheriche below: Looking down at beautiful Pheriche. The Rescue Association building has the silver roof in the middle of the picture.

The HRA is a odd place, a British created and mostly British run non-profit hospital established in the early 1970s with the idea of reducing the amount of Everest casualties through high altitude education and training.
The post is a long one-story stone building, clean and well funded and is being operated by two British women volunteer doctors when we stop in. In 1973, an American national, Dr. John Skow, was tramping around Nepal on assignment with the Peace Corp. when he noticed the alarming rate of people dying from altitude sickness. Upon returning to Britain, he somehow managed to convince a handful of trekking organizations to put up the money to create the HRA.
And now, the place has its hands full. In 1973, less than 14,000 trekkers came to Nepal. Ten years later, that number had jumped to 50,000. Now, three times that many tramp around the mountains each year. This year has been particularly bad for the British doctors, with dozens of sick or injured trekkers coming in that season alone. When weather closes Lukla airport, guides and trekking groups tend to force march their clients, often times straight into the HRA suffering from altitude sickness. The irony is that people getting sick and needing rescue by the HRA most often come from the trekking groups that funded the place to begin with.
Now, aside from a daily lecture on altitude sickness held in the HRA's solarium, the place works mainly as an emergency room, mostly free of charge for locals, but not for trekkers. Oh, and they sell cool stuff as well! Patches, fleece scarves and sweaters and t-shirts are all on sale for fairly reasonable prices, at least by western standards. I buy a HRA sweater for 750 rupees and wear that sucker for the next five days straight.
In a courtyard outside the HRA is a two meter high sculpture called Broken Whole. Constructed to commemorate the 50th anniversary of Hillary/Tenzing's climb, the memorial sculpture was designed by British artist Oliver Barrett and carried to the site in 11 pieces by porters.
The sculpture is a polished stainless steel cone, split in two down the center. You can now walk through the two halves, which are inscribed with the names of all who have perished on the Nepalese slopes of Everest. When the sculpture was erected, 174 climbers had died. That number is now up to about 215, and about 65% of the names etched into the steel are Nepali.
It's completely out of place in this setting, and strange and moving at the same time. We both walk through the cones, and run our fingers over the names. I touch the names of George Mallory and Pasang Llamu Sherpa and Scott Fisher. We're going there tomorrow, to the place where they all died.

In memory: Broken Whole is a stainless steel sculpture dedicated to those who have died on Everest.

It's getting on toward dark now, and we need some supplies, in particular toilet paper and yak cheese. We noticed the first for sale at a tiny bodega on the way to the HRA. Stacks of colorful toilet paper were on display right out in front, and I buy a roll to tide us over for the next few days. The cost is 450 rupees, more than half the cost of my fleece.
Meena asks the owner if he has any yak cheese, and after a spirited discussion with someone in the back, an enormous cheese wheel of the stuff is produced. He cuts us a piece the size of a cake wedge, then cuts that piece up into bite sized morsels and bags it all up.
This is the real thing, fresh from the animal and not sold to trekkers unless they ask. Tangy, and stinky and filling, we live off that hunk of cheese for the next week.
Technically, since yaks are males and naks are females, the cheese is properly referred to as nak cheese, but hardly any westerner does.
With snacks at our side, we walk all the way out to the edge of town, facing our trail for the next day. The setting sun warms our backs and burns the mist off the ridges around us and we lay out on some rocks with the specific idea in our heads that we'll be the welcoming committee for trekkers coming to town. The Pheriche Valley is miles long and any trekker coming into town would be able to see Pheriche from very far away. What a relief it must be to finally arrive!
So, we lay out our cheese and crackers, make ourselves comfortable and wait. The afternoon is mild and we are feeling strong and happy and confident. We take pictures of the peaks. I pour over my maps to search for the proper names of these giants, and Meenakshi leans back and soaks in the sun.
The first woman to enter town is Australian, and alone, and tired. We had seen her coming from quite a distance.
“Hello,” we both say chipperly. “Welcome to town, you made it!”
The woman is so confused it's funny.
She cocks her head. “I'm sorry, do I know you?”
“We're the welcoming committee,” Meena says.
She stares at us.
“You don't know us,” I say. “We just wanted to say hello!”
“Oh! Well thank you.”
As it turns out the woman is staying in our lodge that night. And later, after dinner, the evening sky clears and a group of us pad outside to watch Awi Peak at the end of the valley light up bright white in the brilliant starlight. I loan my tiny tripod to Karlie and a friend, and they spend 20 minutes perfecting the exposure on their camera to try to take a picture, Karlie counting the Mississippi's while her friend holds the camera still.
It would be over a month before that picture is emailed to me, and I'm still in awe of its beauty, in part because the shot is so clear, but mostly because it remains a memory for us of that amazing evening of peace, and contentment.
Tomorrow we would reach the Khumbu Glacier. Or so we thought.

Evening wonder: The wonderful Pheriche Valley and Awi Peak by starlight. Thanks Karlie!

Next week, The Nepal Chronicles continue as we attempt to make it to the foot of Everest's Khumbu Glacier. Join us on Jan. 20 for Chapter 8: We are surrounded!

Complete Chapter 7 photos can be found here: The Mountains Come Forth

The Nepal Chronicles - Chapter 6

2011-01-06T00:16:00.001-05:00

Barren ridge: We reach the top of a rise after making a wrong turn. Now what?

Freezing in Pheriche
Sunday, Oct. 17

I wake to the sound of snoring Sherpas. To be fair, the group of tired Nepalis sprawled out along the common area benches are likely porters from outside the Khumbu.
It's 5:30 a.m. and we pack quietly in the cold and slink out of the lodge before our host knows we're gone. There's no contract - written or otherwise - that ties us to eating breakfast at the Trekkers Lounge, but we don't wish to be asked because we don't want to say no.
Tengboche is asleep, and clouds and mist hang low over the valley making it darker than it actually is.
My breathe swirls in my eyes as we move over the wet, frosty plateau. I'm very cold despite my Gor-tex shell. We walk quickly, hoping the weight on our backs will generate some much needed warmth.
The trail drops down off the Tengboche plateau and once again we find ourselves facing a long, steep descent to the river. We had left the Milk River yesterday as we had rounded the bend behind Namche, and now the plan was to follow the Imja Khola to the Pheriche Valley.
The word Khola denotes a tributary of the main branch, while Imja is a word we heard used to describe Island Peak – in other words a branch of the Island, but the terms are far from certain.
As dismal as Tengboche was, the plateau must be glorious in the springtime. The trail takes us through an enormous rhododendron forest - the bushes tower over our heads. In some sections we literally walk under the overhanging branches of the shrubs, and drooping moss.
It's like some fairy land, every inch is packed with the flowering tree.
With over 30 flowering species in Nepal, it's no wonder the Rhododendron is the country's official flower. Rhododendron Arboreum is the most renowned species, known for its bright red flowers.
Red is an auspicious color in Nepal, used for everything from blessing tikas to women's saris during weddings to use in major festivals. Red would play a role in our day as well.
Today was the high day of Deshain, the enormous and important Nepali festival that can last anywhere from four to 15 days depending on who you ask and what region you're in.
Earlier in the year, Meenakshi and I had to wait for the date of our Kathmandu wedding to be decided by when the first day of the festival was to take place. It was a frustrating couple weeks, as the timing of our trek, not to mention airfare, waited on a variety of consultations, primarily involving lunar calculations. Finally, it was decided that Deshain 2010 would begin on Oct. 8, so that was the day of our wedding. That made today Dashami, or the day of blessings, when young ones visit elders and receive tika blessings.
In her backpack, Meenakshi carried a small pouch of red tika, and somewhere along the trail today, my plan was to celebrate this high holiday by presenting her with a tika blessing. We just had to find the right place.
In the meantime, we pass through a series of villages about 500 feet above the river. In Deboche, villagers are setting up trinket booths to sell along the trailside. In Changme Teng a large trekking group is just waking, ruffled bed heads popping out of tents and sleepy white men in long-johns and boots stumbling to the tall blue tent that serves as a latrine. And in Milinggo, we are startled by a porter, running fast, desperate for something.
He has lost his yaks, he explains, five of them, including a white one. He asks if we have seen them? I'm too startled by the thought of someone losing their yaks to answer. Meenakshi says that no yaks have passed us, white or otherwise. He runs on, and we both burst out laughing.
The morning passes pleasantly. We enjoy two solid hours on the trail alone before we begin to see signs of trail life, locals first out for a morning stroll, then porters with trekker gear on their backs, then the yak trains, then the trekking groups.
By the time we reach the thick, steel trestle bridge that carries us to the west side of the river, we've lost nearly 1,000 feet, and from the center of the bridge we can look up the valley and see the trail begin to climb again, steeply, up to Pangboche. We would regain the lost feet and gain another 100 before lunch.
There's nothing to do but climb.


Valley of clouds: Above, looking back on the trail as it rises to Pangboche, passing by the ever-watchful stupas. Below, we enter the village of Pangboche at 12,800 feet.

We don't talk much, Meenakshi and I, each of us lost in our thoughts. Occasionally, in between my own heavy breathes, I hear her cough, or a boot splash in a mud hole. The trail becomes a meditation in itself. Waterfalls cascade thousands of feet all around us. The river rushes, white noise behind our footsteps. A white shaggy yak, it's head low, mud and water dripping over its eyes and fur, comes ringing by. I put my head down to the mist and watch its filthy hooves as it passes by, wondering if this is somehow the lost white yak.
The trails twists up the wall of the valley in tight switchbacks, and mani stones and mani walls rise up on either side of us. Huge, weather blistered stupas break out of the mist, their Buddha eyes watchwatch us go.
It's hypnotic, a morning of rain and valleys and mist, of prayer flags and mountain walls rising all around us. We climb. We climb. We climb.
Finally, after one more long series of steps we come to a Kani Archway jammed in a mountain pass. The slope levels out and we are at the height of land for now. We stop to catch our breath and for pictures. I'm exhausted, but we've made good time and I'm pleased to see Pangboche come into view just ten minutes later.
The path takes us up the side of the town. Lower Pangboche is all terraced yak pastures. Upper Pangboche is lodge after lodge. By now, the village is awake and children play in the dirt, watching us pass. At what appears to be the top of the final rise, we pick a long, colorful lodge right on the trail, and duck inside for our late breakfast.
We're waited on by a young man in red and orange robes. He's studying to become a monk at Tengboche Monastery but is working at his family's lodge for the holiday. He's polite, and quiet and smiles at us, and we sink into an order of Tibetan flat bread with fried eggs like it's the only food on the planet.
As we eat, we are overtaken by the main wave of trekkers coming from Tengboche. It's like a parade, but instead of getting discouraged by the fact that it took them all only four hours to catch up to us, we watch the familiar faces and bet on who will make it and who won't.
The Europeans pass us by, walking hard, talking loudly. The woman who was ill is on her feet and walking strongly. She'll make it. The one in the parka though, no way. Tim and Karen pass us by and we crank open a window and wave. They will certainly make it.
There is the group of hardbody Germans we saw in the airport, and we're surprised to see them being portered.
There's the middle aged woman, trekking solo and slowly who we saw the first day.
There's a team of singing Greeks, a dozen men, each of them with a magnificent mustache
There is a large Polish team, all dressed in red, planning an excursion to Island Peak.
We even see Lene Oh and his Japanese client pass by.
We marvel at the amount of faces we recognize. It's like we're all part of the same team now.
After our meal, near an old broken down water wheel at the outskirts of town, we stop for a water break and meet Mankumar Tamang. Or rather, he meets Meenakshi.

Mankumar Tamang

Not yet 20 and working as a porter for a local guide, Mankumar sees our packs and his eyes light up like dollar shaped Christmas tree lights.
He's already under contract with a guide, but both his guide and their mutual client are a day behind him.
Mankumar is sick with the flu, already carrying at least his body weight, and is wearing sneakers. But nothing stops him. He tells Meenakshi that he can certainly carry at least one of our packs to Pheriche.
It's rare to find a porter who is actually from the Khumbu, and Mankumar is native to the Lukla area.
He fully understands the economy of the Sherpa and he is doing everything he can to take advantage of it.
“It's not going to be easy for you further up,” he tells Meenakshi. “It is going to get very hard.”
I don't know any of this of course, because he does not speak English. So off we go, Meenakshi and Mankumar gabbing away about being a tour leader, and how he makes money and all the while I begin to feel resentful and restless, and start to wish Mankumar would just leave us alone.
The feelings are not logical, as the boy means us no harm and I'm actually interested in his job and his life. But as we climb up a steep rise toward the upper plateau and I feel my breath get shorter and the air get colder, things that Mankumar appears immune to the effects of, I begin feeling like... well, a westerner, like suddenly I don't belong.
“Is he just going to follow us all day?” I snap at Meenakshi.
To both their credit they see me unraveling and Mankumar jogs on ahead, leaving me to my sour mood.
“Sorry,” I mumble.
But at a bend in the trail the boy is waiting for us, and he falls in behind us again. This goes on for about an hour. The information is interesting, but the eager Sherpa begins to get on both our nerves, and Meenakshi finally makes a bargain with him.
If we take his picture and write his information down, should we ever need his services, he'll continue on without us. We agree, and I wait at the top of a rise in the trail while Meenakshi takes pictures and concludes the arrangement.
“Glad that's over,” I say as she catches up to me.
“He's ok,” she says. “He's just trying to make some money.”
I nod, and we continue, and my mood brightens considerably when in the middle of a long plateau, high above the river, the sun actually comes out.
We're nearly alone on the trail now, nearing our destination, tired and hungry and aching for views of the mountains which still won't show themselves, but at least there is sun.
“This is good,” Meenakshi says. “This is a good spot.”
We walk a little ways off trail and find a flat wide rock. We strip off our packs and toss on our fleece and Meenakshi pulls out her tiny packet of red tika.
There is no easy, or short, way to describe Deshain. So, let's just say that the festival commemorates a great victory of the gods over wicked demons and leave it at that.
There are blessings and pot fillings and seed growings and all manner of ritual observations. There is slaughter, oh man is there slaughter – goats, buffaloes, chickens and pretty much anything with four legs and fur (except cows) that Nepalis can get their hands on. And since there is so much slaughter, there is a whole lot of meat eating as well. There are parades, guns are fired, and ancient temples are open to the public.
But today was the tenth day, the day of the festival that felt the most like Thanksgiving to me – a day when family gathered at the elders homes to receive their blessing. The day when family came together to be with each other, to be, well, thankful.
So, on this day, at 13,000 feet, surrounded by mountains I cannot see, on a plateau deeply carved with paths from generations of wanderers from all over the planet, on a flat, warm rock, with yaks grazing in a field behind us, I place tika on the forehead of my wife, and I am as thankful as I have ever been in my life.

Tika heaven: Above, on a plateau high above the river, the sun came out long enough for us to celebrate Dashain and Dan put tika on Meenakshi. Below, the trail splits, but instead of taking a lower path, we cut left up the ridge on the way to Pheriche.

About a half hour later, by the time we reach the river split, the sun is gone and our world is cold and barren again. Near the herder village of Tsuro Og, the remainder of our day becomes painfully clear. The Imja jags right and disappears east through a valley toward Dingboche and beyond that to the river's namesake, Island Peak, and its four surrounding glaciers. We know that most of the trekking groups have gone that way as well, as most guide books recommend Dingboche over Pheriche as the day's destination.
That's why we're going in the other direction. Pheriche is smaller, but bound to be less crowded. If Lene Oh has failed to save us a room, our logic is that we'll have less trouble finding an alternate place to stay in the cold, windy Pheriche Valley.
But first we must climb again. Our path splits west, rises up above Tsuro Og and the Loboche River, then makes a sharp right hand turn up and over a barren rise. Presumably, Pheriche is on the other side of that rise.
Up ahead, high on the hill I can see the blurry shape of a porter, or perhaps a local woman, with an enormous load on her back. She moves steadily, head down against the wind.
We follow, and it's our first real mistake of the trip. In the wind and mist, and as the day closes in and my thoughts shift to warm lodges and hot tea, I fail to notice an alternate, flat path, that swings around the hill instead of over. That is our trail, but we don't know this at the time.
So up we go, again. It's been a long day, and our world is now just freezing mist. As we slowly make our way up that hill, the wind picks up and blows a chill through the Gor-tex.
It's only a couple hundred feet to the crest, but it takes a long time. It's the first time in our trek that I begin emergency calculations, a mind game I've occasionally had to play in the White Mountains.
What if we can't make it before dark? What if there are no rooms? What if the weather gets worse and we have to find shelter? What if we're lost?
I calculate and hike, and stategize and hike, until we reach a thin plateau topped with an enormous seven-foot tall chorten, its prayer flags ripped and shredded and hanging off the stones like melting frosting. In that rise, amid the swirling cold mist, we rest and it's a beautiful, frightening place. Higher up, to our left, a ridge appears to continue, along which is a string of smaller chortens. We can see nothing to our right, or ahead, where Pheriche is supposed to be.
I'm heartened to discover a porter rest bench and we take shelter from the wind there to have a snack and try to regain our bearings. Pheriche should be right there, but it isn't, and the trail ahead dips drastically down again into... what?
But just as I'm contemplating backtracking down the hill, a group of porters crests the rise and heads right for us. We hustle our gear off the bench just as they spread out to take a rest, a dirty, but happy group of men, smoking and laughing and paying us no mind what-so-ever.
Meenakshi asks one where Pheriche is and he just points ahead and laughs.
So that's where we go. We can only see about 10-15 feet ahead of us in the mist, but the Loboche roars below us to the right and I know that the river is our path to the Khumbu Glacier so a least that's right.
We climb down a bit and hear voices to our right. The mist parts long enough to reveal another bridge, also to our right. Our path continues forward, then cuts sharply back to the bridge. Since we know Pheriche is on the north side of the river, we decide to take the bridge. At least we'll be on the proper side!
Once over the bridge, the trail rises up again and crests a short mound. And there it is. Clouds and wind spray hits my face, but I've never been so glad to see the stone walls and broken yak paths of a Khumbu village. Pheriche.

River's edge: At 13,900 feet, we reach our home for the next two days, Pheriche.

The village is squat and seems to hug a small flat section of earth next to the river which rages loudly. There is one main path, with perhaps a dozen stone and mud buildings on either side.
As we walk past the first lodge, still on the outskirts of the village, I hear a familiar voice.
"Oh! You made it! Remember me?"
"Lene!" I yell.
We had nearly walked past the Nagarkot Guest House without realizing it. Lene Oh is sitting out in the courtyard, drinking something that does not seem to be tea, out of a mug.
"Yeah yeah!" he says. "Right here! Here's your place."
He came through for us, this crazy little grinning man actually did it. I'm so relieved I want to hug him, but he'd be horrified if I did.
He leads us into the Guest House, which is long and flat with a blue corrugated tin roof - a Frank Lloyd Wright prairie style lodge. It's fairly late in the day and the stove in the common room is already lit, and the place smells like cabbage, and it's warm, and porters' cloths hiss with steam by the fire, and a tiny girl with bright red cheeks and a yellow sweater sits in the corner playing with a doll, and it is wonderful.
Lene says a few words to the lodge keeper, a young woman with a bright blue down jacket rolled up to her elbows. She just nods and hands me a key.
"Thank you Lene," I say honestly grateful for the time and effort he has saved us.
"Oh sure!" he says cheerfully. "I know them! Kind of far from main town, but quiet right, quiet!"
Our room is clean and dry, a virtual royal palace compared to the Trekkers Lodge, so we dump our gear, and pull out our own down jackets and pants, and order our dinner in advance. While it's still light, we walk the 100 yards or so into the main part of town, but it's freezing. A freight train of wind and mist blows right down the center of the main street, and seeps into my jacket and hood.
Another reason for my interest in Pheriche is that it's the location of the Himalayan Rescue Association, a international non-profit hospital and rescue center set up in the 70s to try to reduce the amount of casualties in the Everest area. But it's too cold to really explore today.
I make a quick stop in the Internet Cafe, a ramshackle building near the association. But it takes a long time to find the manager and it's expensive, 600 rupees for ten minutes. I post a quick status update, then we get out of there.
We have more than an hour to kill before dinner, but it's too cold to do anything except retreat to the lodge and be patient.
For once, circumstance forces us to live by the rules of the Khumbu - patience, conversation, camaraderie. We spend the evening surrounded by a small group of solo trekkers, and it turns into one of the best of the trip.
There is Paul, a hunter and outdoorsman from Wyoming, who set about trying to bring his family together by planning a trek for them all to Base Camp. They bagged out, so Paul decided, "The hell with it, I'm going anyway."
There's Karlie, from Ireland, who would be celebrating her 24th birthday in a couple days, and who hired her own porter and decided she'd single-handedly do not just Base Camp, but the hard trek over the Cho-La Pass, on her own.
There was Lene Oh, and his Japanese client, who sat quietly by the fire, and went to bed hours before any of us or his porters. Later, Lene Oh would casually tell us that he liked talking to us because we talked back.
"He's a good guy, works hard," Lene Oh said of his client. "But he don't say much."
And we were all entertained and charmed by Chori Tenzing. Chori means daughter and the little one preferred that title. The lodge keeper's 3-year old was small and stout and would puff out her red cheeks when she wanted attention. She took a particular shine to Meenakshi and the two of them spent the evening chatting about henna and Meena's marriage. The girl was fascinated that Meenakshi knew Nepali, and at one point told Meenakshi that she did not approve of my growing beard.

Making friends: Meenakshi and Tenzing get acquainted. Note what the little girl is wearing compared to Meena, so accustomed is she to the weather.

I also overhear one of the trekkers wonder out loud how anyone could raise a little girl in such a “uncivilized place,” the implication being that Tenzing could not possibly be happy.
But she was, as were all the children we passed on the trail. There was no begging and no despair. Many days later we would run across a British trekker who put it best.
"These children have nothing, nothing material I mean. But look at them. They may have two marbles between them but they love those marbles - always smiling, always happy. Makes you wonder."
Indeed. I feel a flush of anger at the woman's remark. Is it protectiveness toward these people I now was married and inexorably tied to? Shame at a thoughtless western attitude? Fatigue and altitude?
Perhaps Kevin Flynn put it best when he remarked that maybe she was just messing with my Zen thing, man!
The danger of any long trip to Nepal for a westerner is not pollution, or food poisoning or even Maoists. The danger is romanticism. As I sit by the fire with the porters who have now begun to drink Chang, a cheap form of Nepali moonshine, to celebrate the holiday, and I see Meenakshi buried in her shiny down, playing hand games with a giggling Sherpa child, and the lodge keeper heaps another filthy bucket of yak dung into the roaring stove, and icy wind rattles the flimsy windows and I sip tea so sweet my teeth ache, I find myself feeling so happy and complete and content that I scare myself.
What's going on here? This is not perfection, there is no enlightenment here among the harsh reality of this place, this lonely outpost near the top of the world where locals scrape by on the backs of ignorant trekkers who judge a child's happiness based on western standards.
And yet, despite the fact that any one of these people would jump at the chance of a western education and a McMansion in the burbs, they are not unhappy. There is no misery that night, not from the stinking, hard drinking porters. Not from our hosts, who are gracious and funny and hard working. Not from Chori Tenzing who cheerfully draws pictures of yaks on the windows of the lodge, frosted with condensation.
We gather together that night in the hope of a glimpse of something bigger than ourselves. Mt. Everest, sure. But more than that, something deeper and more transcendental.
And we are close, up here where there are no more trees and the ice is impossibly blue and you can feel your lungs and your heart with every breath, like separate animals inside your chest.
Romantic? Sure. But it's been a long trip and our biggest challenges still await. So this night, it is romantic, and that's enough.

Dirty yaks: We move over for mud covered yaks, or any yaks for that matter!

Next week, The Nepal Chronicles continues as we prepare for the long climb up the Khumbu Glacier, and the mountains make their presence felt. Join us on Jan. 13 for Chapter 7: The mountains come forth!

Complete Chapter 6 photos can be found here: Freezing in Pheriche.

The Moose on New Year's Day

2011-01-01T23:55:00.000-05:00

Team effort: The New Year's Eve team move down the slope of Mt. Moosilauke.

Dan and Meenakshi took a break from The Nepal Chronicles this week to tackle 4,802 foot Mt. Moosilauke in our annual New Year's Day hike! What a great day it was. Temps in the 40s, mild conditions even at the summit. And in typical D and M wedding style, the clouds and mist cleared up as the team arrived up top and we had great views.
Our team of six included Peter, Marianne, Leah, Kevin and of course Ruby the wonder dog.
It was a far cry from last year's Mt. Major expedition where bitter cold temps and wind chill in the -30 range forced the team off the summit quick!
It was so warm today, the Carriage Road Trail on the ridge was actually slushy, conditions you might find in springtime.
Anyway, we'll be back with Chapter 6 on Thursday, Jan. 6.
Until then, here's some New Year's Day pictures to enjoy! For more, go to our Phanfare site at: The Moose.

Summit mist: Meena chills at the summit.

Into the mist: Peter and Dan on the way up.

From the summit: Overcast but beautiful skies over South Peak.

Chapter 6 will drop on Jan. 6

2010-12-28T11:05:00.000-05:00

Follow the eyes: A weather-worn stupa marks the trail on the way to Pheriche. Chapter 6 will drop on Jan. 6

Just a quick update to all our Nepal Chronicles fans. Chapter 6: Freezing in Pheriche, will drop on Thursday Jan. 6, continuing our adventure into the Khumbu as we climb to over 14,600 in search of Everest.
We hope you all had a nice holiday and have a safe New Year's eve.
Meena and Dan are planning a New Year Day hike of Mt. Moosilauke which we'll report on, then it's back to the Chronicles.
And like always, we'd love to hear from you. Tell us what you think, what you like and what you'd like more of!
Cheers!

The busiest ghost town

2010-12-23T07:33:00.001-05:00

SPECIAL SIDEBAR
Tengboche Monastery packs 'em in and spits 'em out

There should not be any people here who aren't monks. But there are, lots of them.
We try to make the best of our situation at the Trekkers Lodge, but it's not easy. Outside, rainy mist blows, then settles, then blows again over the plateau that is Tengboche.
We do discover that the group of Europeans are also in the Trekkers Lodge with us, but the place is a wreck. The common room stove is spitting out a dusty mix of soot and smoke, smearing the windows and giving the whole place a slightly seedy look. It's also cold and the stove itself isn't retaining much heat.
Though we manage to talk the owner into giving us a room near the common space (and deal with the porters joking that there are spiders in Europe as well) the space isn't dry or warm, and will be noisy.
So, faced with the prospect of being cold and miserable inside the Trekkers Lodge, or being cold and miserable out on the plateau, we choose outside.
There are still a couple hours of daylight left and we're hungry and we're cold. So, the first order of business is to find something to eat inside someplace that's warm.


Monastery in the mist: Tengboche Monastery sits at the top lip of a plateau. Above, looking up at the main prayer hall. Below, the view of the plateau from inside the courtyard.

Tengboche plateau is, perhaps, the size of a football field, with steep drops all around (cliffs in some areas) and allegedly surrounded by some of the most beautiful mountains in the world. We don't see any mountains, but I can feel them, oppressive and bitter and icy. Sometimes the wind blows hard enough to see a ridge or white cornice and it looks hard and angry.
In the middle of the plateau is the monastery, its steep steps rise up out of the cold wet grass, decorated on all sides by colorful reliefs and long ornamental drapes.
At 12,664 feet, Tengboche is only about 1,400 feet higher than Namche, but it has become the rest stop of choice on the Everest Base Camp trek. The steep climb up to the plateau coupled with the presence of the monastery has created an artificial village, full of merchants and lodges and museums, and of trekkers using those accommodations. But, aside from the monks, who number anywhere between 30 and 100 depending on the season, no one actually lives in Tengboche. So, it looks a little like one of those fake colonial villages, all facade. Without the monastery, there would be no village. But because of the monastery, the village is cold and distant, an eroding shell of what a real village might look like, of what the wonderful village we just left does look like.
It is not the Tengboche Baron John Hunt saw in 1953 on his famous expedition when he wrote that Tengboche, "provides a grandstand beyond comparison for the finest mountain scenery that I have ever seen, whether in the Himalaya or elsewhere."
Actually, it’s all unpleasant.
We skip the monastery for now, though we can hear the siren-like chants of the monks inside the main temple and smell sweet incense.
We move counter clockwise around the plateau instead, saving the monastery for last. There are half a dozen lodges, a few trinket stores, a bakery and an internet cafe. The monastery sits slightly up on a hill, enclosed by the monks' own lodges and a large, beautifully carved archway.
The tourist lodges are crowded and dank. The trinket stores are junk. The internet cafe is closed.
We stop at the bakery, a tiny island of warmth and sanitation among the madness, and take a few minutes to warm up, guzzle a whole container of lemon tea and share an apple strudel that is undercooked and barely warm, but still sweet and refreshing enough to lift our spirits somewhat.
After, we head off in different directions to see if we can find some information about Pheriche, tomorrow's destination, and our first real test of height and endurance.
We've been lucky so far finding lodges as we go, but now as the villages become smaller and the tour groups begin crowding out solo trekkers we need to be more suave about our lodging.
Outside of the bakery, waiting for his lone client to catch up, I meet Lene Oh.
"Oh, hey, hey over there," he calls out to me, singling me out from 50 feet away. "Oh! How can I help you?"
I assume at first he's one of the lodge owners. A slight man, his deeply creased face shows years of sun and ice. But he grins and his teeth zig zag like crazy stalactites and he extends his hand. It's an unusual gesture for a Nepali and it puts me at ease.
"Is this your lodge?" I ask.
He laughs, "Ohhhhhhh no, no, no, no!" He laughs again as though I've just made the most wonderful joke. Perhaps I have and don't know it. "I'm waiting for my client. But I can help you. Come in, come on. Oh! I'll buy you coffee."
Not tea? This guy's good. I follow him into a tiny lodge at the edge of the plateau. It's just as horrible as our lodge, a dirty gaggle of porters mostly and single trekkers sit along long rows of plywood tables, propped up by wooden saw horses. Everybody stares at me when I walk in, it's like a spaghetti western.
"Sit, sit," Lene says, then fishes out a torn slip of paper from his pocket and writes down his name, then amazingly, his email address. I just stare at it.
"Kathmandu!" he says, by way of explanation. "I have an apartment there. Nothing much. A computer though!"
He pauses, then adds, "Oh! When there's power!"
His English is very good and I tell him that, and he beams and nods. Then, under his email address he writes Nagarkot Guest House.
"What that?" I ask.
"Where you will stay in Pheriche!"
So, he's a mind reader too. He has sized me up as solo trekker, figures I'm not dirty or miserable enough to be heading back yet, and knows I'm going to need a place to stay. All true. All excellent.
His client finally catches up to us, a single Japanese man, stout, breathing heavy, with a wide brimmed tan hat that looks like something Gilligan would wear. Lene Oh introduces us, but I forget his client's name and he does not know English and I do not know Japanese so we just nod.
The exhausted Japanese man turns abruptly and throws himself down in the corner of the lodge, done apparently with both of us for the day.
Lene Oh turns his attention back to me. "We go up there tomorrow. I'll tell them you're coming, yes?"
I have no idea how much it's going to cost me, but Pheriche is a long ways off, and I'm tired and if this little 50-year-old man with a road map face can have a room ready for us when we get there, I'm game to try.
"Yes!" I say, "for two. Me and my wife."
"Oh!" Lene Oh says and actually looks over my shoulder, as though Meenakshi might have been standing there all along. "Oh!"
I decline the coffee and Lene Oh walks out with me, happily buzzing along with stories of his travels and his family, which is someplace in Pokhara. He's here for the trekking season, moving back and forth with a client here or a client there. He never asks me if I need a porter, something I feel slightly proud of, as though he knows I don't.
We meet Meenakshi outside, and I introduce them. Lene Oh casts down his eyes and becomes suddenly withdrawn, a reaction Meena gets from quite a few Nepali porters and locals on the trail, all men of course.
"Ok, Lene," I say. "How much, what do you need to save us a room?"
"Oh! Oh!" He laughs again. "Oh, no! I know the people, they happy to have you. No worries ok?"
"Ok."
And he's off, practically skipping back into the lodge. I turn to Meenakshi and shrug. Either I've secured a room the next town over, or Lene is the leader of a band of trail bandits who now knows our exact schedule and location. Either way, it ought to make tomorrow more interesting.

Cold arch: Meenakshi is less than happy to be out in the cold. The monastery arch is beautiful though!

It's getting on toward evening and the mist that has settled over the plateau is a swirling gray and dark green. We make a quick stop inside the monastery gift shop and museum. Think about that for a moment. More than a week's walk from the nearest road at nearly 13,000 feet, in the middle of the Khumbu Valley, in a village with no residents, is a gift shop.
It is called the Sacred Land Visitors Eco-Center and it is surreal. There is a museum about Sherpa culture and a film on Himalayan healing techniques and one on the monastery. The films cost extra.
Primarily, the center sells things - incense, patches, t-shirts, postcards, that type of thing. They have a web site. Yes, really. It's www.sacredland.net. The pictures on the site are stunning and, for the record, look nothing like the miserable place we see.
We chat a while with the shop keeper and are disappointed to hear that the head llama who usually blesses trekkers on their way to Everest Base Camp is not here today. We hope it's not a bad omen.
But, the monks are in the middle of their daily prayers and that is something we can observe.
The monastery is a large white and burnt red structure, surrounded by smaller living and daily life buildings for the monks. Tengboche's history is not as ancient as the mythology swirling behind the monastery would lead one to believe.
Every trekker to the region has come here, as a wayfarer station or to be blessed. Every one of them. Because of that, Tengboche has become the central spiritual hub of the Khumbu. Families from all over the region often send their sons here, and once a year a very famous festival draws hundreds to the monastery walls.
But, the building we now stand in front of is only 17 years old.
The first monastery was built on the site in 1916, but destroyed by an earthquake. The second was destroyed by a fire in 1989 that also destroyed most of the monastery's texts and artifacts.
With help from a variety of sources, including trekking companies, foreign aid organizations, and yes, Hillary, the stone masonry monastery was painstakingly rebuilt and reopened in 1993.
A massive archway, filled with ornate carvings, greets visitors as they walk up the steps to the courtyard, the site of festivals and many outdoors ceremonies.
As we walk up to the main doorway, leading to the dokhang, or prayer hall, we can hear the hum of many monks chanting prayers. At the foot of the doorway, we're greeted with a stone with the foot-shaped imprint of Sange Dorje, the flying llama. Sange is credited with bringing Buddhism to the Khumbu with his supernatural flights through the valley!

Meena and a carved temple pillar.

Much to our chagrin, we have to remove our boots before entering the prayer hall. But we need not worry about our own odors, as the area around the chanting monks is packed with trekkers, and the smell, a mix of sweat, incense and feet is very nearly overwhelming. It is so strong, it seems as though you can feel the air around you.
We slide quietly into a far corner to watch the proceedings. Despite the awful smell, the prayer hall is exquisite. A two-story high golden statue of Shakyamuni Buddha, or the Buddha of the Present, takes up most of the front of the hall. Rows of monks in brightly colored red and orange robes sit along the other three sides. Some of them read from long scroll prayer books. Some have the prayers memorized and chant with their eyes closed, swaying slightly. A few young monks, not used to the attention of tourists, roll their eyes and snicker to each other. The prayer hall is absolutely packed with trekkers, but the monks are deep in prayer, and their words are like a low, steady hum, the human equivalent of the sound of a Tibetan prayer bowl. Their chants are hypnotic, and aside from a few camera clicks and the ever present trekker cough, the hall is mostly quiet.
I try to focus on the chant, to sit a little straighter and meditate along with the drone of the words. But I can't. I'm unable to remove myself from the smell. But mostly, I'm horrified by the amount of trekkers in that room, all of them most likely heading to the same place we are tomorrow.
After about 10 minutes, I share a knowing glance with Meenakshi and we get out of there - from the oppressive heat and smell of the prayer room back out to the frigid mist of the Plateau.
It's dark now and we snap on our headlamps and slowly pick our way back to the Trekkers Lodge.
And while the lodge is terrible, and our dinner stale and unfilling, and we can't get warm and smell like yak dung, we do spend the evening chatting with Tim and Karen, the two solo trekkers we had met on our first day. Amicable and upbeat, it's nice to be able to end our day with two similar souls, both of them attempting the same trek in the same manner with the same fears and crazy enthusiasm.
There is a pleasant older French couple there as well. They are on their way down, so hold a fair amount of interest and credibility to the others in the room. I ask them some questions about weather and lodging, but alas they know very little English. It's the first time in my life I wish I knew French.
Elsewhere the group of half a dozen young Europeans appear to be having a grand time. One woman from Ireland speaks too loudly and can't stop talking about her other trips and how surprised she was by how dirty things are here. Another is wrapped in a down parka and goes on and on about how he has to share a room with the one from Ireland, and hopes the locals aren't scandalized by this apparent digression of decorum. I overhear another woman off-handedly remark that she has brought 14 pairs of underwear with her, one for each day. Her porter, presumably the one carrying the two weeks of underwear, just smiles.
I wonder where the ill woman is. In bed I hope.
It all wears me down, and I wish we could sleep but our room is so close to the common area that the noise would prevent that. So we just tuck in with our tea and chat and swap stories with Tim and Karen until the Europeans have nothing more to talk about and begin to float off to bed. The porters either slink off to their tents or head out to the spider room we abandoned, and that's our signal to do the same.
It's been a long day, but we resolve to skip breakfast tomorrow morning in order to get a jump on these people and make a run for Pheriche ahead of the rest.
Before I turn in, I snap on my headlamp, and walk around to the back of the building to use the outhouse. It's nearly snowing now, and as I stand on the edge of the cliff, looking back on the Namche Valley, the silver and white rain flakes mix with the twinkle of stove lights thousands of feet down in the valley and the whole Khumbu seems to melt into a smear of mist and uncertainty.
Tomorrow, we'll be five days into our journey and we've yet to see Everest or any sign of the upper Khumbu mountains. I whisper a silent prayer up there on that plateau, asking the mountains to reveal themselves, but feel foolish doing so.
I apologize to the air for being anxious, and resolve to be more patient. The mountains are here. We have time.

Our chilly route: The view from Tengboche into the valley and toward Everest is cold and unforgiving.

Join us next week, Dec. 30, as we make our way into the inner Khumbu in Chapter Six: Freezing in Pheriche.

Complete photos of Tengboche Monastery can be found here: The Chill of the Khumbu.

EKP / Nepal Chronicles featured blog of the week

2010-12-20T22:34:00.001-05:00

Just a quick thank you to our friends at the Outdoor Blogger Network who named us one of their Featured Blogs of the Week! Rebecca and Joe are great lovers of the outdoors and supporters of outdoor writing and we could not be more thrilled to be named to their list on their site.
No matter what your outdoor pleasure, you ought to be able to find something to fit you taste on the Outdoor Blogger Network. Check them out here: www.outdoorbloggernetwork.com Or just click the badge in the right column.
Either way, thanks for making us a favorite!

The Nepal Chronicles - Chapter 5

2010-12-16T08:25:00.003-05:00

Norgay memorial: Dan pauses at the stupa for Tenzing Norgay, the most famous Sherpa in Nepal.

The chill of the Khumbu
Saturday, Oct. 16

The morning is blustery and cold, and it turns out to be the best part of the day.
My pack feels heavier than usual this morning, as we set off up the long, steep stone stairs that take us to the top-most tier of Namche's paths. A fine mist has settled over the village, over the valley, over the Khumbu and every so often a slight breeze kicks up shards of cold rain and stings our hands and face.
I'm wearing the same set of clothes I've had on since Lukla (I only carry two sets, and a third change of underwear). It's made of fast drying material, and I've tucked my shirt and pants deep into my sleeping bag each night, so it's dry. But I'm beginning to notice the smell.
The set of semi-independent Europeans pass us only about 20 minutes into the day. We'd criss-cross paths with some or all of them for most of the journey, but for today, they pass us once and we don't see them again until Tengboche.
Yesterday, we attacked the ridge directly, gaining altitude quickly to force acclimatization. Today, our plan is to move around the long ridge, a thousand feet above the river, at a mellow rate of ascent. The first couple miles are gentle and the trail is an engineering wonder, more graded than anything we've encountered in the White Mountains.

Misty mountain majesty: The mountain views are replaced by the mystery of the mist.

In some areas, where there would normally be a cliff, trail engineers have designed retaining walls to prop up the path, complete with culverts to move water underneath and prevent erosion. It is a thing of beauty, a great wall of Namche, a super-highway 12,000 feet in the air where yak and man and horse and chicken can move, sometimes two or three abreast.
We are able to pay somewhat abnormal attention to the details of the trail because we can see nearly nothing else. The guides describe this section of the trek as being some of the most stunning, with searing mountain walls in every direction, and the majesty of the roaring river below.
We see none of that.
Every once in a while, the mist rolls hard enough to clear a distant peak or we catch a glimpse of a ridge shooting straight up from the fog, but most times it doesn't even last long enough to move my camera to my eye.
And yet, it is all beautiful and mysterious. Hikers and porters pass with few words, the normal chatty trail talk seems to be subdued in this strange gossamer world, a cathedral of claustrophobia amid unseen wide open spaces.
Far in the distance around several turns and bends in the trail, we see the vague outline of a large stupa. It seems to protrude out into the ether world, its crown like a beacon in the mist.
It is the Tenzing Norgay chorten, dedicated to the most famous Sherpa in the world. Built in 2003 to commemorate the 50th anniversary of Norgay and Hillary's momentous summit of Everest, it stands on a corner of the path, enormous against the clouds, as large a stupa as Norgay's reputation in Nepal.
In the mist and clouds, at this place of near divine worship toward a man of little means who became a symbol to the world of Sherpa moral and physical fiber, we rest.
There are other trekkers here, and a porter stop, and just as we reach the stupa a yak train comes clanging by, but the spot feels as though it maintains a higher karmic value in the universe - a place of reflection amid the traffic, and a moment to consider exactly what all of this is about to begin with.

Tengzing's weather -worn stupa

There's a lot of actual history lost in the myth of Norgay and Hillary's famous summit. To his very great credit, Hillary spent the remainder of his life giving back to the Khumbu, building schools, educating the Sherpa people, creating greenhouse and farming co-ops. But even a general glance at the actual story of that first summit of Everest makes it clear who the stronger, and perhaps more humble, climber really was.
In fact, Hillary was nearly an afterthought in the famous summit, compared to Norgay.
First though, the Baron. One of the names lost in the shine of the summit accomplishment is the guy who got Hillary and Norgay there to begin with, Baron Henry Cecil John Hunt. Hillary was not the leader of the 1953 expedition, Hunt was. A life long military man, Hunt was selected to lead the team by SHAEF, the Supreme Headquarters Allied Expeditionary Force. Ah, the British and their titles!
He was already 43 by the time the team set up Base Camp, and in typical stiff upper lip fashion, he never even considered himself for a shot at the summit. Back then, an expedition was considered a success if even a single member of the team set foot on a summit – a far cry from today's competitive obsession with getting as many clients up there as possible.
And Hunt ran the expedition like he was directing an invading Army. There were more than 400 people on the “team” and over 350 of them were porters who carried the 10,000 pounds of baggage from Kathmandu (there was no Lukla airport back then). They arrived in March, but didn't even get close to the South Col until late May.
And again, history diverges from myth. Hunt selected his two strongest climbers to make the first push to the summit – Tom Bourdillon and Charles Evans. And they came so close! Evans' oxygen system failed him only 300 vertical feet from the summit of Everest, and the pair turned back.
I've often thought about those two, 300 feet from lifelong fame and fortune, making the decision to turn around and share the information and path they broke out with the next team. Later, many members of the team said they were unaware that what they were attempting would lead to such glory, that they were simply team mates working on a single goal.
But they knew.
So, enter Hillary and Norgay. New Zealand born Edmund Hillary was a baby, strong and full of ability, but with limited expedition experience. Norgay? It was his seventh attempt at the summit of Everest. One year earlier, as a member of a Swiss expedition, Norgay made it to 28,215 feet, the record at the time. He was already the most famous Sherpa in the world in 1953, and it was Hunt who choose Norgay to pair with Hillary. Not that Hillary minded as just a few weeks earlier, he had slipped and fallen into a crevasse, and it was Norgay who secured the rope and saved Hillary's life.
The two men did not make the attempt alone, they had a support crew of three other men who went up to the South Col with them, and set up high camp, keeping them fed and warm and ready for the eventual push to the top. It took two days before all five men climbed up to 27,900 feet and helped Hillary and Norgay set up their final camp.
The next day the two set off wearing 30 pound packs. Remember, there were no fixed ropes then, and when they reached the 40 foot rock face right below the summit, Hillary free climbed that sucker and it's now known as the Hillary step.
They reached the summit, together Hillary claimed, at 11:30 a.m. on May 29, 1953. The final historic irony of that day was that the only picture in existence of that momentous occasion is of Norgay on the summit, his ice ax flying the flags of Nepal and Britain. Norgay did not know how to use a camera, and Hillary later said that he felt the summit of Everest was not the place to teach him.
The two men achieved instant world-wide fame, though the British government politely declined to Knight Norgay. Later, in his autobiography, Norgay gave Hillary credit for setting foot first on the summit. Hillary denied this and went to his grave insisting the two men summited together.
“It has been a long road,” Norgay wrote. “From a mountain coolie, a bearer of loads, to a wearer of coats with rows of medals who is carried about in planes and worries about income tax.”
I sit for a few minutes at Norgay's stupa wondering about this man, who in pictures from the 70s wears plaid suit coats and feathered fedoras, and is always smiling. The wind and haze lift up off the valley floor, and porters and trekkers amble by. Some are oblivious to the memory they are passing. Others, like myself, stand quietly for a moment in front of the plaque, reading about the “Tigers of the Snow” and stew in their own thoughts about why they are here.

Tag or wisdom: Norgay's stupa bears this message.

Someone, in large red letters, has tagged the stupa with the symbol of Lovism, a circular spiral, extending up and a message that reads, “Peace is possible only by true Love.”
That seems about right for here and for now. We snack on yak cheese, gulp down some water, still warm from having been boiled that morning, and as the mist seems to get even thicker and our packs seem to get even heavier, we leave Norgay behind and turn our feet toward Tengboche.
A few trail spurs later, and we're on the north side of the Namche plateau. If the skies were to clear the whole valley would be open before us, with views, presumably all the way to Tengboche and beyond to Everest. But we see nothing. In Kenjoma I stop for a quick cup of terrible coffee, before we drop through a patch of rhododendrons to a deep cleft in the side of the hill. The trail swings us back around and suddenly we are dropping down into the valley. We pass through Sanasa where an important trail junction directs some trekkers west toward Gokyo and the Cho La Pass. Next time, I think, next time, I will move in that direction.
For now, we continue a relentless descent, down, down and down we roll, past Lawichasa and Tashinga, tiny mountain hamlets with smokey momo huts and decaying lodges where the children stand in the doorways and the women of the lodges hustle to keep fires burning in the damp air.
We lose 1,000 feet and suddenly there's the Milk River again, roaring like a locomotive. At river's edge is the village of Phunki Thenga, or as we call it, Funky Tango. Little more than a rest stop, Funky Tango consists of two tiny crowded lodges. We reach the lodge just as the weather goes bad for good, and the rain begins to come down with authority.
It is cold, and the place feels tired, and moisture begins to seep into the folds of my clothes. My sweat becomes cold, and my legs feel wooden.
We have to make up that lost altitude to reach Tengboche, but right now I just want to sit and give my knees a break. Jim's MS crew is already in the Cozy Garden Lodge which at that moment is anything but cozy or garden like, but we don't care. My pack crashes to the floor and a few people slide over to make room for us at a bench near the door. It's packed in there, trekkers are elbow to elbow, each of them looking anxiously out the window as the rain continues and the temperature drops.
No one is staying there that night, but no one wants to hike up that hill either.

A much needed rest: We take a moment to record our break before climbing up to Tengboche.

We order noodle soup and tea, figuring the wait for such simple food would be short. We're right, as a large pot seems to be ready and waiting. The iron stove is roaring in the small kitchen and flames lick out the sides as the lodge owner and either his daughter or wife struggle to keep the food coming.
I warm my cold hands on the side of the bowl and breath in the deep stocky aroma of onions, cabbage and carrots.
The soup bowl is dirty and chipped and the onions and carrots crunch as I bite them, but it doesn't matter. I'm chilled and dreading that climb and the soup is warm and the onions are sharp. I don't even bother checking the silverware anymore, and three heaping spoonfuls into my lunch I can feel my energy and morale returning. I find myself devouring the soup, slurping it down in an veggie orgy of tingly goodness. I tip the bowl up to my lips once the noodles are gone and drink the remaining broth as an offering to that wet, muddy hill that sits waiting for us outside the window. I discover Meena has downed her soup even faster than I and we share a wordless laugh as our energy and enthusiasm return in that beat up truck stop with its dirty dishes, and cracked windows at the bottom of a massive ravine.

Soup is good food: Simple, warm and fresh.

By this time, most of the other trekkers have left and we're able to take our time gearing up for what's ahead. I strip off my now dirty and wet shirt and replace it with a warmer techwick. I tuck my pants into my wool socks in an effort to keep out the water, and decide to begin the climb wearing a light LL Bean wind breaker, figuring the effort of the climb would warm me enough to keep my body temperature up, while my wide brimmed rain hat would negate somewhat the dampness from above.
We're ready.
We descend down to a thick, well built steel and wood bridge, only a few feet from the river, cross and begin our climb up.

A low as you can go: A Yak train crosses the river and begins the 1,000 foot climb back up.

There are no villages here, no rest stops and very little cover. After about twenty minutes of a somewhat tree covered ascent, the trail attacks the slope in short, steep switchbacks and the rain comes down in sheets. I tip my head into the wind, but it doesn't matter.
Before long the hard pack become slick and a light brown fluid mixture of mud and yak dung create a river of ooze as we navigate the ever steepening climb.
On an open section, I squeeze under some branches of an overhanging tree, and pull out my heavy Gortex. It's something I wanted to wait on, but I'm just too cold and I know what hypothermia feels like. I have no intention of ending this journey because I'm too stubborn to take the time to get warm.
With both of us layered up, we continue on, and after another 30 minutes the slope moderates and we swing around one final switchback and there it is. A house sized kani gate marks the entrance to Tengboche.
We're tired and wet and cold, and as we drag ourselves through the gate. At 12,700, it's the highest either of us has ever been, but we feel no joy. Instead, the cold sting of the village's plateau wind hits us and it is just a miserable place.
Sheets of clouds swirl down into Tengboche and we stand there for a moment trying to orient ourselves.
Earlier, our lodge owner in Namche had called ahead to a place owned by his sister called the Trekkers Lodge and made arrangements for us to stay there. Now, as the wind and rain continue and it begins to get dark, we just want to find a warm stove and maybe some momos.
Without even paying attention to the giant monastery in the center of town, we turn left, and head through a small grove of trees and brush and make our way to the edge of the plateau.
The Trekkers Lodge is a ramshackle collection of tin and plywood rooms stuck together like broken Lego's. A horse stands in the middle of the path, its head down, wet and angry looking.
My heart sinks. After the luxury of The Yak in Namche, and the grueling three hour mud climb, The Trekkers Lodge is not what we had hoped. The inside is not any better. Smoke pours from the badly ventilated stove in the middle of the room, coating the eating area in a thin layer of haze. The walls are paper thin and the kitchen nearly medieval in design and function. One of the Europeans we met yesterday and who passed us earlier in the day is bent over a broken stone wall near the door, retching, her companion patting her on the back trying to ease her suffering.
Even worse, in our eagerness to just get a room and get warm, we make a terrible mistake - Meenakshi asks for the room in Nepali.
The owner, thinking her to be either a presumptuous porter or, even worse, a local, hands her a key and walks off without a word, and refuses to give her blankets.
Our "room" is a horror. Hanging precipitously on the edge of the plateau cliff like a tin shed, the tiny room barely fits two. Reached only from the outside we have to hug the edge of the building, stepping over rain buckets and rocks. The room is musty and dank, the mattresses are wet and the walls are crawling with spiders.
We are prepared for discomfort, but this is just dangerous.
We dump our gear, and walk back across the plateau. There are a half dozen lodges in Tengboche, and they are all booked.
We're out of options. But as we left The Trekkers Lodge I noticed that several of the rooms abutting the dining area were unoccupied. While not much warmer, at least the occupants would not have to worry about falling off a cliff while taking a pee break in the middle of the night.
So, I act like a westerner, and without Meenakshi at my side, I explain in a loud voice to the lodge owner that our room is overrun with spiders, we have no blankets even though I saw an unused pile near the stairs and as a paying American I would like an upgrade right this minute, pretty please.
Without a word, he gives me everything I ask, and I suddenly feel both victorious and like a jerk at the same time.
No matter, at least tonight there will be no spiders.

Far and few between: The valley is strange and mysterious and beautiful in the clouds.

Join us next week, Dec. 23 as we explore the Tengboche Monastery in a special sidebar, The Busiest Ghost Town.

Complete Chapter Five photos can be found here: The Chill of the Khumbu.

The Nepal Chronicles available in text copy

2010-12-13T11:40:00.001-05:00

Greetings laptop adventurers, just a quick announcement.
If scroll reading annoys you - it does us - then we have good news. The Nepal Chronicles is now available in text format. if you have enjoyed reading along with the adventure but would rather do it on paper, just drop us an email with your email and each week we'll send you a text version. (No pics though, if you want those you still gotta role down the screen, or go to our Phanfare digital site.)
No hassle, no cost, no problem, just let us know. And pass the word, we're starting to gain some momentum and hope to keep things going!
Cheers!
D and M

The Nepal Chronicles - Chapter 4

2010-12-09T07:57:00.002-05:00

Day and night in Namche: Two views of Namche, both spectacular, show the terraced lanes and high mountain surroundings. We spend two days here, getting used to the altitude.

Namche days
Friday, Oct. 15

It had been an unusually warm summer in the Khumbu.

Melt from the glaciers had swollen the glacial lakes, many of which were topped out - the cold, deep blue waters cresting, or nearly so, the lips of the lakes.

One such lake, the Dig Cho, 50 miles west of Namche Bazaar, drains from the Langmoche Glacier and eventually makes its way past Namche by way of the Bhote Koshi.

On Aug. 4, 1985, an enormous chunk of rock and ice broke off the glacier and splashed down in Dig Cho Lake.

The result of that environmental catastrophe was my being able to eat the most delicious plate of momos I'd ever tasted by the light of the electric lamps of the Yak Hotel and Restaurant in Namche.

I knew nothing of that fateful summer 25 years ago, but I was comfortable, surrounded by friends and porters and enjoying the wonderful attentions of the host and hostess of the Yak.

First, the momos.

There was a time not so many years ago that I had no idea what a momo was. Now, that seems like saying there was a time before computers, or corrupt politicians. I can no longer imagine my life without momos.

For those unfortunate enough to be without, a momo is the Nepalese version of the dumpling, the pierogi or the ravioli - you get the idea. It can be filled with chicken, veggies or many other combinations, and most western versions come with a side of spicy and flavorful sauce for dipping.

Being Tibetan, these had no sauce, and they did not need it. The Yak Hotel chicken momos were sweet and moist and steamed to perfection. The chicken was tenderized with spices and the wrapper was steamed to a pleasant golden glow. I washed it all down with milk tea. The cost of 10 momos and a tea? Four hundred rupees. The cost of our room for the evening? Three hundred rupees.

The Yak of luxury: The dining room of The Yak Hotel and Restaurant is simple, clean and warm.

I knew that the days ahead would be hard, and neither of us really knew if we'd be able to make it. But we did know that we found our happy place at the Yak, a lodge of incredible luxury compared to what we'd face in the days ahead. Space heaters instead of yak dung stoves. Western style toilets that flushed. A sink with a mirror and running water to wash in. And, most amazing of all, electricity.

In 1985, when that massive chunk of ice from the Langmoche tumbled into the Dig Cho, it created what geologists call a Glacial Lake Outburst Flood. A gigantic tidal wave tore open the side of the lake and burst millions of gallons of glacier water into a tributary that led directly into the Bhote Koshi.

The flood raged into the valley, destroyed 14 bridges and ravaged 80 kilometers of cultivated land.

Five years earlier, the Austrian government had broken ground on a hydro electric plant just down river from the Dig Cho. The plant was a wonder of human ingenuity, and designed to tame the Bhote and withstand a river flow of 100 meters per second.

The mountains were having none of it. The Langmoche flood generated a flow volume of an unheard of 2,000 meters per second.

The hydro station was completely annihilated.

Three years later, when Austria and Nepal tried again, they set the plant higher up the river bank and higher up the valley, in Thame. Namche, only a couple miles distant, would be the main benefactor, and this time, engineers had a better understanding of just what the Khumbu was capable of.

Namche got lucky again, in part, because the new project became a comedy of errors. Materials were to be transported through Calcutta, but a trade-treaty crisis with India inflated the cost of shipping. Monsoons damaged the penstocks. There were turbine design faults and sub-standard electrical installations. Over and over, heavy icing during the winter resulted in downed lines and outages.

After spending more than $83 million, the Austrians had enough, and that's where Namche came in. Though the plant is owned, on paper, by the state, the locals control it. And control it well.

Namche is a kind of Free-Stater region - distrustful of government, self-sufficient and willing to do its own work.

Only because it's so cut off from Kathmandu, it does actually work in Namche.

In order for the plant to make money, village businesses pay a set rate for power as opposed to rates being based on usage. This means that the price stays the same in the winter, and during peak tourist season.

And clean, reliable power meant that my momos were prepared using modern facilities and faster than in most other villages. It meant that the power stayed on, and that the lodge was clean and fresh, even by obscene western standards. It also meant that I could use a private, warm bathroom. It also meant that I would be back.

Electricity made Namche the center of the Khumbu universe.

The next morning, flush from a hearty breakfast of eggs and beans, and feeling better with a good night's sleep, we fasten on our daypacks and head up the slope, toward the Namche ridge. Our plan is to climb up about 1,200 feet and spend several hours at a higher altitude before hiking back down to Namche, the classic strategy for becoming used to altitude.

The morning is warm and blue, and across the valley, 20,299 foot Kongde Ri is floating mysteriously in and out of clouds.

At only four miles away, the mountain's west ridge looks massive in Namche, a chunky, flat wall of extended ice. And even though the mountain is classified as a trekking peak, it's considered a difficult climb. So much so that the government charges $350 for a permit, and the first all-Nepalese team didn't reach the summit until 1975.

King Kongde: The long summit of 20,299-foot Kongde Ri is an ever present sight to the west of Namche.

We hike slowly up Namche's southern border trail, past a tiny library and large army barracks that takes up a sizable portion of Namche's western flank. After 20 minutes we come to the suburb of Chhorkung, where there is a Sherpa museum and another huge, triangle-shaped mani stone that marks the head of the trail that climbs straight up the ridge above Namche.

The going is slow, but the views are spectacular. Below us, the amphitheater of Namche is revealed, the colored tin roofs spreading out along the ridge like colored dots. At our backs, the valley drops down and zig-zags along the broken ridges back toward Lukla. Ahead of us and all around rise the tips, and flanks, of ice amid swirling clouds.

The ridge is saturated with prayer flags, seemingly at every cairn and corner of the trail. If there is a rock, it seems it's tied with prayer flags. They are strung from side to side, up and down the trail, over huge swaths of the ridge. At times, as we seek views along the climb, we have to crawl under or go around strings of prayer flags.

In the pocket of my jacket I carry one prayer flag, a royal blue memory flag dedicated to a friend I call my sister who is fighting cancer. It has her name on it, and I plan on carrying it all the way to Kala Patthar.

Tibetan prayer flags do not carry prayers to the gods, however, a standard misconception among westerners. Rather, the flags are used to promote peace, compassion and wisdom. It is believed that the prayers and mantras on the flags will be blown by the wind to spread that peace and compassion to all pervading space. This explains the staggering amount of prayer flags in the region.

Say a prayer: Dan pauses amid the prayer flags to take in the views.

As the flag fades from exposure to the elements, the prayers become a permanent fixture in the universe and Tibetans renew their hopes for peace by mounting new flags next to the old - a symbol of welcoming life's changes.

Once again, I'm amazed at how readily, and in fact, eagerly, people here accept the circle of life. There is no struggle here, only ancient tradition renewed over and over.

Life moves, life moves on. Deal with it.

And so we move on also, slowly, and a group of Japanese tourists holding umbrellas passes us.

We're moving up to 12,500 feet today, but the struggle of yesterday's hill climb is not there. We still move slowly and deliberately, but our breath comes easier in the misty mountain air.

Suddenly, with a tremendous roar, a Twin Otter breeches the cliff over our heads and goes tearing down the valley. We're near the airport!

The tiny Syanboche Airport at the top of the thick ridge makes Lukla Airport appear modern. Its dirt runway blows up dust and debris. At this height it is one of the highest commercial airports in the world, but except in an emergency (or if the money is right) it does not cater to tourists.

Mostly, it moves supplies. Its biggest client is the Everest View Hotel on the other side of the mountain and our destination for the day.

Before then, however, Meenakshi and I clamber up a large rock near the end of the runway to watch the planes take off into the valley. In the west this would never be allowed, to be this close. Here it's something to do to pass the day.

We don't wait long before a plane, a Tara Air Otter like the one that brought us to the valley, comes bombing down the runway, its engine at full throttle, and lifts off over the hands of screaming children and sightseers who have packed the end of the runway. We watch the plane turn hard right into a cloud and make a bee line toward the passes.

Wild blue yonder: A twin otter roars off the dirt runway and into the valley from the Syanboche Airport.

After a little while of kicking around the airport, it begins to get cold and a fine mist has dropped onto the ridge. We bundle up and begin the climb up to the Everest View, or so we think.

The hotel seems down on its luck, with paint needed here or there and not much of a view - the clouds make sure of that. We walk around the yard for a while and notice a sign highlighting the views, but there are none.

Down the ridge a little ways is a pleasant enough plot of grass, and we sit at the edge of the path, the river roaring down below, and relax, taking in the scenes and wondering if the clouds will move.

After about ten minutes of this, we're told by a passing hiker that the Everest View Hotel is "that way" he says, pointing further along the patch.

"What's that then," I ask pointing to the rundown hotel we passed.

He shrugs and moves on. So, once again, so do we.

We follow the narrow path around the inside edge of a steep ridge and up a little rise until we see a low, dark structure in the distance.

The hotel is clean and huge, completely out of place and time for this valley.

The Japanese owned Everest View Hotel is by far the largest consumer of electricity in the Khumbu, with a 30 kW connection. Guest rooms are warmed by electric space heaters, hot water in the bathrooms, and hairdryers! There is a TV in the lodge, though a television signal has not yet made it there so they watch videos. Oxygen is available in all the suites.

The set up is sweet. Trans Himalayan Tours owns the Everest View and is a representative of Overseas Courier Services, kind of a UPS for the world. As such, they pretty much have a monopoly on the goods that come in through the airport, which they call theirs.

The hotel itself reminds me of a low, wide Frank Lloyd Wright prairie house, with long think bricks and a thin entrance way that gives way to a large hall. It's still warm enough to eat on the patio, so we order grilled yak cheese sandwiches and tomato soup as the food at the Everest View is supposed to be some of the best western available.

The (no) Everest view: The patio of the Everest View Hotel normally provides views of Mt. Everest. Not the day we were there.

We have no views, of course. The clouds have socked in the entire valley and soon would be upon us.

The food is not bad. Not quite what mother makes, but close enough to thoroughly enjoy. We wash it all down with a slice of chocolate cake, and sit back a while until the clouds sink down and an afternoon fog has settled in the valley.

The hike back is simple, though it begins to mist and that eventually would turn to cold, icy rain. We meet Jim and his crew half way to the Everest View and encouraged them to continue their hike.

Back in Namche, we entered the town from a different, more secluded point, and are able to have a pleasant walk through the locals' gardens and huts. But as we reached the side of a split in the path, two wild horse come roaring by, unchained and unfettered.

Later that evening, the horses would create a minor crisis after knocking down a western tourist. Lodge and shop owners are always upset to see a potential source of income get hurt!

I drop into the cybercafe next to the Yak and make a few posts then take a short walk around the streets while Meenakshi stops at a bakery for snacks for tomorrow and orders our dinner.

That evening we have rice and dahl for dinner and a side of boiled potatoes. We meet a Polish couple, moving slowly with their guide and porter. We meet a large, loud group of eastern Europeans of whom only half would make it to base camp.

After dinner, we hang out in the common room for a bit but it's dark now and sleep comes like clockwork. I take a quick walk outside before bed, strolling down the now empty streets. I slip in between two houses to a terraced path somewhat up from the main drag and stop to take a couple pictures of the now sleepy town.

Tomorrow we would leave the comforts of this mad, beautiful town and head to Tengboche and its famous monastery. But we'd be back.

Until then, I breath in the cold, misty air and listen for a few minutes to the light tap of rain against the tin roofs, and the wind ruffling the prayer flags on the ridge above, and I think that this is where I want to be.

Many mani stones: Meena pauses near a huge mani stone at the start of the ridge trail.

Next week, The Nepal Chronicles continues as we leave the comforts of Namche behind and begin the trek into the inner Khumbu. Join us on Dec. 16, for Chapter Five: The Chill of the Khumbu!

Complete Chapter Four photos can be found here: Namche Days

The Nepal Chronicles - Chapter 3

2010-12-02T06:41:00.003-05:00

Gateway to Everest: Khumbi Yul Lha, the sacred guardian of the Khumbu, towers over the Namche Bazaar plateau. The Nepali government won't issue climbing permits for the mountain.

Into thin-ish air
Thursday, Oct. 14

I wake up, but think I'm dreaming.
There's gentle music playing, and in those few moments of early rising, it sounds like someone is singing Om Mani Padme Hum. It's a pleasant dream, I think, though a bit typically western considering the day I had yesterday.
It takes me a few minutes to realize that I am actually awake, and someone is actually singing this to me. Certainly not Meenakshi, as her head is still buried deep in her sleeping bag.
Woozily, I get up - it's 6 a.m. and the sun has just begun to fire up the ridge tops.
Outside, somewhere, someone is playing a record and the sound is echoing through Ghat, bouncing off the valley walls.
"Om Mani Padme Hum." Over and over, the chant churns. It's a tremendous way to wake up, as soft and mellow as a lazy summer afternoon.
I put down the cynical thoughts that immediately crop up, that some village elder with an eye - and an ear - toward making the western tourists happy, is looking to loosen our valuable dollars in his town. That may be the case, but it is still one of the best wake up calls I would experience on the trip.
It's going to be a longer day today than we had originally planned, so we settle on a quick breakfast - Tibetan bread with melted yak cheese and milk tea.
While we wait for our hostess to prepare our meal I scurry off to use the washroom. (See previous post, Potty Talk).
Breakfast is delicious and as the day brightens, we move up a slight slope and pass through a series of mani stones and prayer wheel chapels. On one three-foot prayer wheel in the center of a small square is a note from Llama Dorgee that reads "Please, turn round this (mane) thrice. You get rid of sin. You can obtain religion and the period of life. Please take part and use up." I spin the wheel thrice, taking part and hopefully obtain the aforementioned period of life.
The path climbs a steep rise and tops out with a wonderful view down toward the Milk River, and we can see the trail hook around the valley wall and disappear out of sight some miles away. At the top of this rise, painted onto a flat, knee-high stone is the message that we are two hours away from the monastery. Perhaps that refers to the 100-year-old Tibetan Buddhist Monastery in Tengboche, located well beyond Namche Bazaar. Clearly, the sign is for Sherpa locals and porters, as it would be impossible for us to reach it in two hours. From this point, it will take us nearly six more hours just to reach Namche, our destination for the day.
We drop down toward the river again, and, thinking ahead to our hike back, Meenakshi jokes that the trail to Everest is up hill both ways. Indeed, over the course of the next week, the trail would dip wildly up and down the valleys and we'd spend many days losing the elevation we gained the day before, only to have to climb back up again.


That way: A rock sign directs us on the way to Namche.

We swing around a ridge near the floor of the valley, and climb up to the village of Phakding. This was to be our original destination the night before and it's obviously a popular place. Just outside the village is an enormous lodge, very new, with all the amenities. It looks more like a resort. In town there is a Jamaican Reggae Bar, pool halls and trekking gear shops.
It's loud. There are tight groups of western trekkers in every corner, pulling gear together or waiting for porters to begin their day. We don't stay long, and are happy we picked our little village lodge for our first night's rest.
We cross another suspension bridge and walk through the grounds of the Sunrise Lodge on the west side of the river. It's not quite fall yet in the Khumbu and the Sunrise is awash in vibrant orange and red flowers, hundreds of marigolds flooding the courtyard and garden. We stop for a quick cup of lemon tea and enjoy the color and the sun.
We don't know it then, but it would be the last we'd see of sun and blue skies for the next three days.
We wind along the west side of the river, past the amusingly named village of Toc Toc and next to a beautiful triple-layered waterfall, at the base of which locals are washing clothes.
The valley narrows into a wash of rhododendron bushes and pine and begins to resemble a Swiss landscape, with short but steep steps up and down over little bumps, with the top of each steep pull offering a better view then the last.
Then, finally, after passing through the village of Benkar, we stumble upon a mountain. The very top of it is lost is a fog that would eventually swallow us for the next several days. It's icy flanks seems to shoot straight up above a perfect V in the valley walls.
This is southern ridge of Thamserku, a 21,729 foot mountain that rises to the east of Namche. Even though it's shrouded in mist, and even though the ridge we can see is not the summit, I stop to catch my breath and stand at the edge of the path and just stare at the glistening ice which looks like white aluminum foil rising up to a razor ridge.
I've never seen a 20,000 foot mountain before. At that moment, I had no idea what mountain I was looking at, only that we were going there. I swallow hard, put my head down and move on.

Rising above: Our first 20,000 foot mountain, Thamserku, soars above the valley walls.

The trail moves across the river once more and jags into a small inlet where we lose sight of the valley. It's here that I finally become aware of our altitude. A long sharp incline of 150 feet or so swings us up and around the valley ridge, and I am suddenly out of breath half way up. My altimeter reads less than 10,000 feet. I slow my pace and before long my lungs are back to normal, but it's a shadow of what's to come.
Near Monjo, we stumble upon a resting trekking group and I'm thrilled to discover our friend Jim is one of the team.
We exchange hugs and high fives. Gregarious and upbeat, our Canadian friend is part of a team raising money and awareness for MS - Jim's wife suffers from the disease and he has dedicated his recreation time to trekking to raise money for a cure.

Meet up: Jim and Dan on the trail.

Though friends through Facebook and his website, we had met Jim for the first time only a few days earlier at his hotel in Kathmandu. He explains that like us, his team's plane had been grounded, but his guide had managed to find them helicopter transport to Lukla. Still, they were a couple days behind and moving fast and hard to reach their goals.
The four day back-up in Lukla has created a vicious domino effect in the Khumbu and we see and feel the effects of that back-up through the whole trek - porters pushing their western teams particularly hard to make up time. The result is often sick and discouraged trekkers leaving their breakfasts on the side of the trail or having to be horse-carried back down from altitude sickness.
It was hard to not like Jim, and I felt a kinship given that I had followed his training and struggles on-line as he, too, had prepared for this journey. That said, I was concerned about the schedule that his group was now forced to follow.
"Have you seen Namche?" he asks with a smile.
"What do you mean?"
Jim points up valley. And there it is.
The Namche Bazaar plateau rises up before us, a brown mound 11,300 feet above sea level. Directly above it soars the perfect gray and white triangle of the guardian mountain of the Khumbu, Khumbi Yul Lha.
The 20,000 foot mountain is sacred to the Sherpa people, a "personality" mountain according to tradition. It rises up at the split in the valley. At the mountain's foot the Milk River continues to the east, toward Everest, while the Bhote Koshi (Bhote is a Nepali term that roughly means Tibet or refers to Tibetan people) splits off and heads west.
So holy is the mountain that the Nepalese government does not allow it to be climbed and does not issue permits.
Khumbi Yul Lha is a warrior divinity - the white ice and snow embody the warrior's benevolence while the gray represents strength. The mountain is worshipped in Namche every morning with prayer and juniper incense.
We bid farewell to Jim and his crew and hurry off toward the Sagarmatha National Park entrance where we check in. After much hassle, we had bought our trekking passe in Kathmandu thinking it would save us time and energy. We were wrong. The agents at the National Park are far more efficient and courteous than anyone we encountered in the city. Another tip of the trek: The Khumbu is more functional than Kathmandu.

Gateway to the park: The Sagarmatha National Park HQ and entrance sits in a notch above the valley.

Built in a small col at a split in the valley above the river, the park headquarters is a new, beautiful, modern building with a museum and topo maps. A company of the Nepal Army are there as well, ostensibly to protect the park, but the question of what they actually do is a real one.
In fact, despite having been formed in 1976, the viability of the park itself is a topic of great conversation among locals in the Khumbu.
The main reason for the park's existence is environmental protection. The onset of trekkers in the last few decades led to massive lumber stripping of the region's forests to accommodate the lodges and restaurants that popped up to cater to tourists. Now, no wood is allowed to be cut in the park.
But that's a lot of forest now off limits to the locals - more than 1,100 kilometers, 30 percent of which is grazing land or forest. The result has been immediate - locals now have to use yak dung or dead wood to stoke their fires, and the establishment of the park has created something of an us against them attitude among the Khumbu leaders.
At a cost of 500 rupees for a park permit, that's a lot of money that should be going into the Khumbu. But it doesn't.
The trails are maintained by locals, who occasionally even reach out to trekkers for help with path maintenance. In large towns like Namche and Loboche, research centers and hydro parks are built by outside governments.
In recent years, the Army stationed in the park has done little besides checking tourist permits. During our entire trek, we never saw a single officer on the trail or in any of the villages.
Even rescue missions are paid for by the trekker needing the rescue. Stories abound in the Khumbu of sick trekkers having to pull out a credit card on the spot and pay the several thousand dollars before the helicopter pilot would even let them on the bird.
So, where does the money go? No one knows, though many have theories mostly revolving around government corruption.
"They do nothing," said one lodge owner who said he'd been to Kathmandu to try to petition the state to better fund the national park. "They sit in their office with their feet up and read the newspaper."
So pretty much that's one thing the United States has in common with Nepal.
We walk through the colorfully adorned kani gate, an entryway designed to ward off any evil spirits that might consider attaching to an unwary traveller, and drop sharply into the valley losing hundreds of hard gained feet from earlier that day.
On all sides of us, massive valley walls shoot straight up from the river and thousand foot waterfalls cascade down the rock. The stone path leads to yet another suspension bridge and we trot into the final village before Namche.
It's past mid-day now and we stop for a plate of momos and fried rice at the first clean lodge we see, and once again are reminded that meals are not fast in this part of the world. The food sets us back a half hour longer than we'd like, but soon we are again crossing a suspension bridge and find ourselves at water's edge.
From here it's a half mile of beautiful river walking to the split in the valley that will lead us to Namche.
There are seven rivers that form this river system in eastern Nepal, all of them draining down from Everest's massif. It's a harsh and fast moving system, burning white foam crashing over round boulders at unimaginable speeds, particularly in the spring.
The Milk River itself was not kayaked until 1976. A British expedition, led by white water rafter Mike Jones, estimated that the water in some sections of the river fell at a rate of more than 250 feet per mile, about 50 mile per hour. Jones wrote a book, titled Canoeing Down Everest, and made a movie of the expedition, now a classic in extreme sports films. Two years later, Jones died on the Braldu River in Pakistan while trying to save a team-mate. His death earned him England's Queen's Gallantry Medal, and infamy.
It's a magical place, this stretch of the trail. The roar of the river is the white noise behind the constant jangle of yak bells, and amid the feeling of truly entering the mountains. From the river bed, the valley walls rise unrelentingly and a fine fog hangs thousands of feet above our heads, beckoning us to climb into it like a London night.

In the Milk River Valley: Above, Dan shoots some video of the high suspension bridge at the crossroads of the rivers. Directly in front is the Namche Bazaar plateau. Below, after crossing the bridge, Dan pauses at an outlook that looks back into the valley. Bottom, Meenakshi takes a break with the bridge high above.

At around 2 p.m., at an elevation of about 9,300 feet, Namche's plateau finely comes into view, and it's like walking into a medieval realm. We stop on a small bluff and stare down at the enormous plain that soaks up the rushing water from two of the Khumbu's rivers.
At the head of the plain, rising more than two thousand feet into the clouds is a triangle shaped block of rock and forest. Our trail makes a sharp right turn here and ascends several hundred feet up the eastern valley wall, then cuts left to a very high suspension bridge that appears to disappear into a shear wall of green on the other side. It's high, and the wind blows the shredded prayer flags on the bridge madly, and we know our work is cut out for us.
It's a traffic jam up there, with yaks and porters, and teams of hikers moving up and down the steep, narrow slopes that lead up to and then beyond the bridge on the other side. We single file it up to the bridge, then wait for a yak team to pass, then I move across as fast as I can while Meenakshi stays behind to take some pictures.
I cinch up the tie of my hat to keep it from blowing into the river and try to move across without looking down. I fail, and for a moment I'm in the middle of the bridge, hundreds of feet above Everest's wash, wind blown and scared and small.
The moment is actually captured on video by Meena. I stop, look to my right, then down the valley, my foot suspended in air, wavering, my left hand clutching the cable rail. It's only a split second, then I move on, a sleepwalker, a dream, a millisecond of air and mountain and steel and flesh all together as one.
The climb up the triangle to Namche begins immediately and for the next two hours is relentless. Endless switchbacks lead to more switchbacks lead to long straightaways lead to stone steps. It's all up. Around every turn is a view across or down the valley where we came. The roar of the dueling rivers lift up from the valley like songs.
We cross paths over and over with a group of three Australian women and their bemused Nepali guide as they struggle against gravity and the endless slope. I keep pace with the older of the three women, as she moves painfully slowly, but then discover I don't have to worry. The women have already climbed Kilimanjaro.
Up ahead, Meenakshi chats amicably with the ladies' porter. He tells her that just a few years ago, she would not have been able to find a room in one of the western lodges at all. So catered to westerners has the Nepali tourism industry been, that only recently have "locals" begun to explore their own country.
The trail continues and the weather worsens as we climb into the fog. My altimeter passes 10,000 feet, then 10,500, then 11,000. I move slowly, still feeling not quite right from my flu bug, but also not wanting to burn out on day two.
The altitude and weight on my back makes my knees sluggish, and it begins to feel as though an anchor is tied around my waist.
The trail swings us around the base of the southern foot of the horseshoe that is Namche and finally, after two solid hours of hauling, as the temperatures drop and our lungs begin to wonder where the O2 has gone, we see signs of life - the outskirts of Namche.
We walk by an old Sherpa home and several children see Meenakshi's hands and circle around her asking questions and teasing. One asks her "Is he your husband?"
A few minutes later, we come upon another Army checkpoint and have to show our trekking permit and park pass. Outside the police hut is a map showing Namche as directly above us, though from here we can't see anything except mist.
We choose to go around the edge of the ridge and approach the town from the front. The trail is carved directly into the side of a very steep slope and drops literally all the way down to the river to our left. We come to a turn in the trail, Meena in the lead, and incredibly, a baby cow appears to be waiting for us in the middle of the path. The calf sidles up to Meena, who extends her hand, and the cow gives her a quick lick. Behind them the mist and fog pour down from the mountain tops, and below them, the sound of the river can still be heard faintly.
A week ago on the streets of Kathmandu, a passing baby cow also licked my hand, and now Meenakshi as well.

Good luck calf: Meenakshi gets some good will from a baby cow on the approach to Namche.

This is an incredible stroke of luck as being licked by a cow is a harbinger of prosperity and fortune, by Nepali tradition. And like the Goddess Laxmi, leading us to a golden fortune, we round the turn and there it is, Namche Bazaar, the Sherpa capital.
It's stunning. For a very long time, Meenakshi and I stand at the entryway looking up at this amazing place, high on the U-shaped flank of a sacred mountain, a week's walk from the nearest car.
The town is terraced and built on a half circle valley, like an amphitheatre, rising up to a distant ridge. The feet of either end of the half circle drop straight down into the mist. Namche Bazaar is the center of Sherpa culture, a commercial tourist resort and a marketplace where traders as far away as Tibet come weekly to sell, share and barter. Nearly all goods in the Everest region come from or go through Namche.
The tinkling of stone masons' hammers is as permanent a sound as yak bells, as the town hurries to keep up with trekker demands for more lodges and restaurants.
The two and three and four story buildings rise up on the circle, with colored tin roofs and painted windowsills. A huge stupa greets visitors near the gateway where we stand and a little further up the main path into town, the rush of a thin stream, engineered down the hill, is being used for washing clothes and dishes and for drink.
It's jarring to see this activity and feel the energy of this mad town hanging on the side of a massive cliff.
And as we stand and gawk, the weather seems to change under us and the sweat I've accumulated from the climb begins to dry and it gets cold. We have to move.

Namche state of mind: Beat but happy, we reach Namche in mid-afternoon as the weather gets cold. We'd stay there for two days to acclimatize.

We have no clue where we'll stay that night, but the options seem endless and it's only 4 p.m. We head up the hill into town, walking to the left of the stupa and spinning the prayer wheels clockwise as we go.
I'm suddenly tired, and as we climb up into the narrow cobbled streets and the mass of tourists and locals closes in I begin to feel claustrophobic - an ironic turn after all the space of the valley.
Finding a lodge turns out to not be that easy. We walk randomly, but the first couple we try are booked. So we split up and Meenakshi tries one side of the street, while I ply the other.
"Over there," a Sherpa woman in a gear store shouts over to me as I approach. She's pointing across the street to the Yak Hotel. "Rooms over there."
As if on cue, Meena steps out from the Yak Hotel and calls to me, "They have space here!" I look up at the yak skull above the doorway, wrapped in a Tibetan ceremonial khata, a scarf that symbolize goodwill and compassion.
I chuckle to myself. Looks like we found our home for the next two days.

Home sweet yak: The Yak Hotel and Restaurant, left, would become our base Camp for two days as we adjusted to the elevation of Namche Bazaar.

Next week, The Nepal Chronicles continues as we explore our new home and seek out our first views of Mt. Everest. Join us on Dec. 9 for Chapter Four: Namche Days!

Complete Chapter Three photos can be found here:
Into Thin-ish Air.

For information on Jim's MS efforts, check out his website at: http://www.jimmarsh.org/

Potty talk

2010-11-23T10:10:00.002-05:00

SPECIAL SIDEBAR
A serious consideration of all things unmentionable

In the hierarchy of crucial items to have in your backpack on the trek to Everest Base Camp, one stands out from the rest. More on that in a moment.
About mid-way through our trek, it occurred to me that there is an important element missing from the writings of some of the great travelogues. Paul Theroux trained through China in the 80s and Peter Matthiessen went searching for the Snow Leopard in Nepal in the 70s, and I know for a fact that there is one thing I shared with them. The difference is, they never wrote about it.
Let's just put it out there and be done with it - there are many obstacles to overcome in the Khumbu, including altitude, weather, cold and food. You can prepare for those. Nothing, however, can prepare a westerner for a squat toilet.
And let me preface this whole discussion with this: I have "gone" in the woods, on the ice and in the snow in a variety of places, in a variety of conditions. At 9,000 feet on Mt. Rainier in crampons to keep from sliding down the slope. In a mosquito infested bog in the White Mountains. In a cactus-studded desert plain in Arizona. I've done so without hesitation, or issue. It's just part of the price of going places others don't and being comfortable with discomfort.
But this is different.
For those that are unfamiliar, a squat toilet (which by the way, most of the rest of the world appears to use) is basically a hole in the wood/concrete floor. Sometimes you get ceramic treads to prevent slipping. Sometimes, nothing. Enjoy!

Roadside attraction: At left, some rest stops come with tin roofs and nice views. Below, don't try using this one in the middle of the night! Curiously, both of these outdoor toilets can be found in the same town, Pheriche, about 100 yards apart.

It's one of those paradoxes of certain parts of the eastern world where you can be surrounded by luxury and modernity, Hong Kong for example, but still have to use a squat toilet. It's a primal reality check, a way of saying that no matter how much you spend, no matter how lavish your taste, you still gotta do what you gotta do, and you gotta do it the same way generations of your human ancestors have done it before you!
And don't be fooled! There's skill involved to using a squat toilet, and strength! Just the shear muscle power needed from your thighs and calves is surprising. And let's not even talk about the question of aim, which is a skill many, many people in the Khumbu do not possess. (I'm assuming westerners because the locals just use rocks.)
Complicating the situation further is the freezing conditions of most squat toilets in the Khumbu. Mostly simple plywood or tin shacks, few have heat or light. At 3 a.m. in zero degrees, with frost covering a floor suspiciously coated with the frozen remains of fellow trekkers who have used the toilet before you, your body just shuts down and says no thank you.
At the same time, information is precious and toilet knowledge becomes a real source of power on the trail. Some lodges along the way have western toilets. Knowing the location of those toilets becomes a point of legitimacy and gives a trekker credibility and standing. Likewise, knowing that a western toilet may be waiting for you two or three hours down the trail gives you incentive to "wait" and perhaps hurry on just a little faster to reach your destination.
A waiting western toilet gives you more energy and often provides a needed morale boost!
Conversely, accidentally coming upon a western toilet and not needing to use it, is often a depressing situation. Not knowing when you'll find another, one would often find themselves "trying to go" in a desperate attempt to take advantage of this sudden unexpected bounty of comfort. You never know when you might come across one again, if ever.
This brings us back to the crucial items of your backpack. Toilet paper is more valuable than rupees. In many ways toilet paper is the currency of the Khumbu. It's everywhere, and no where. Lodging for the night might cost you 200 rupees. Dinner might set you back 300 rupees. But toilet paper! Some lodges at the higher altitudes sell it for 4-500 rupees.
You might have your own tent. You might have brought your own freeze dried food. But brother, you need toilet paper.

Front of the counter: The most important item for a fellow's backpack, toilet paper, is sold at a high cost at most lodges.

It would be easy to use this example as yet another reason why westerners should be thankful for the luxuries we enjoy, but it's not that simple. In the Khumbu everything is used, and that includes unmentionables.
Yak dung is everywhere, literally. Villagers take the patties and dry them for use in the winter in stoves. It seems that nearly every farm has a tremendous mound of dried yak dung, or hundreds of patties pleasantly drying on stone walls. Yak dung is the cord wood of the Himal.
Likewise, the holes in many squat toilets simply empty down to compost piles or nearby farmland, to be used again to help the veggies grow. The toilet paper is never thrown down the holes or into the toilets. Instead, it is placed in a canister or bucket, usually located inside the shed someplace, and then burned for fuel and heating. Full circle stuff, cycle of life. No waste.
It's not a terribly hygienic system, but perhaps western standards are set too high to begin with. In two weeks of trekking, we never got sick. Either way, get used to it. Heading for a trek to Nepal? Try this. At night, in January, stumble down your house stairs in the dark and go outside in your pajamas. Find the nearest slab of concrete, though a sewer grate or rooty patch near a tree will do in a pinch. Let 'er rip! Now you're ready.

Next week: The Nepal Chronicles continues as we get our first taste of altitude and we trek to Namche Bazaar, the Sherpa capital! Join us Thursday morning, Dec. 2.