The question arises on the way to the airport. They find themselves changing trains, alighting at platform 1, with minutes to spare to reach platform 24 and their onward connection. The two of them have packed carefully for their 30 day trek to the world’s highest mountain. They have done their research and are prepared for all eventualities. Except one.
L – Stop. I can’t. I’m breaking.
D – You’re not breaking. You’re fine.
L – We need a trolley.
D – There are no trolleys. We’ve got to carry it.
Each slung about with rucksacks and duffel bags and day packs, shoulders straining and knees buckling, they make their way uncomfortably along the underpass, breathing hard. They stop and look up.
L – I’ll never make it. You’ll have to go without me.
D – It’s a flight of steps. You’ll make it. And anyway, I can’t just leave you here for a month, you’ll get in everyone’s way. Come on – we’ve got 2 minutes.
Red faced, panting and sweating, they stagger upwards, twenty-two steps and two more big ones onto the train. They set down their loads and regard the pile with dismay.
L – How is one porter going to carry all this up and down mountains for a month when the two of us can’t heave it up a flight of stairs between us?
D: Not all of it’s going up the mountain. We’ll leave a bag at the hotel. With the snorkels.
L: Yes. The snorkels.
D: And maybe some other stuff.
L – But how am I going to climb Mount Everest when apparently I can’t climb the stairs?
D – We’re only going to the bottom. Not the top.
L – Still. I thought I was fit. I’ve been for four runs!
D – In three years.
L – Oh.
*****
Doha Airport. 2am. Waiting for flight connection to Kathmandu.
L – It must be a deliberate tactic to stop people falling asleep. So as not to miss their planes. Or make the place look untidy.
D – What must be?
L – All the bright lighting and uncomfortable benches and super-annoying armrests so you can’t spread out.
D – I’m trying to sleep.
L falls quiet. D shuts his eyes.
L – Don’t you think that economy long haul flying must be just like childbirth?
D – WHAT? How would watching films while having meals brought to you possibly resemble childbirth?
L – You know what I mean.
D – I truly don’t.
L – It’s appallingly uncomfortable but no-one really talks about it, and when you’re experiencing it you swear never to go through it again, and then you forget, and a year or two later there you are again. Just like childbirth.
D – Right. No. No, I think it’s probably nothing like childbirth.
L – I’m going to ask some people.
D – You do that. I’m asleep.
*****
Kathmandu airport at 10am is calm. There’s no fuss. Getting their visas is quick and easy. Retrieving their luggage takes longer. The baggage carousel is busy with Nepalis collecting imported TVs and suitcase-sized bundles wrapped in intricate webs of knotted rope.
Outside, throngs of people stand in groups – women in brightly coloured saris or tunics and scarves and loose trousers, beautiful splashes of crimson and marigold and fuchsia, and men wearing close fitting topi hats of orange patterned fabric.
L: Why has everyone got a red smudge on their foreheads? A tilaka is it? Isn’t that Hindu? I thought the Himalayas were mostly Buddhist.
D: They are – in Sherpa and Tibetan areas. But we’re not in the Himalayas. There’s a lot more of Nepal than the mountains.
L: I know, but…
D: The country’s something like 80% Hindu and only 10% Buddhist.
L: But Buddha was born in Nepal.
D: Yes, and then Buddhism spread outwards from here, including over the mountains and into Tibet, but since then, Hinduism has taken over in most of Nepal. Lots of the monasteries in the Himalayas seem to have been founded by Tibetans fleeing across the border into Nepal and bringing Buddhism back with them.
Their hotel has provided an airport transfer. They are greeted by a man who takes charge of their towering trolley and sets off with it across the car park. They follow. In the hazy March sunshine, the temperature is a pleasant 27°C. He passes ranks of gleaming SUVs and minibuses, and stops next to a small, battered hatchback. He smiles and waits.
L: (whispering) Oh. I think maybe we should tip him.
A second man steps forward and loads their luggage into the boot and back seat of the car. He smiles and waits.
L: (whispering) I think we should…..
A third man turns up and gets into the driver’s seat. They set off. On arrival at the hotel the driver gets out, smiles and waits.
L: (whispering) I think we….
Two porters swoop down the hotel entrance steps, heave the luggage out of the car, and disappear into the building. D&L check in and are shown to their room. The porters arrive and set down the bags. They smile and wait.
L: (whispering) I think….
D: I know.
They wander the maze of narrow mostly-pedestrian lanes of Kathmandu’s Thamel district. Many are unpaved, dusty, with rubble-filled potholes. Crumbling buildings reach 4 stories overhead, festooned with electric cables which meet in clumps of aerial spaghetti at every junction. Dust hangs heavy in the air, mingling with the aroma of spices and incense. They pop into The North Face and inspect a deliciously warm looking down jacket. They peer at the price tag.
Not all are there for the tourists though. Two women squat in the sun washing roof tiles whilst a group of men rest idly by. A monkey ambles past chewing a piece of fruit. A tiny boy dances amidst a rising cloud of pigeons. A youth dozes in a temple doorway and an elderly gentleman pauses to read his newspaper, the roof above his head providing welcome shade and supported by beams carved with graphic sexual contortions. In one peaceful courtyard, the blank windows hide the Royal Kumari – a little girl worshipped by Hindus as the Living Goddess of Nepal. It is believed the goddess within her leaves at puberty, at which time she will be sent home and replaced with another.
L: The runway is ludicrously short, with a massive cliff to fall off at one end and an enormous mountain to bump into at the other. And no runway lights. And high winds. And thick cloud.
Their tiny room has plywood walls and ceiling, two narrow single beds – each with a foam mattress, bedcover, duvet and pillow – and a padlock on the door. There is a bare light bulb and curtains on the windows. There is a plug socket in the room, and astonishingly, wifi, though neither of these actually work. This is the template for pretty much all their accommodation throughout the month-long trek.
Angtu sets a steady, sustainable pace, leading the way, and L is relieved that she can keep up. Phurba walks with them, and the two Nepalis chat and laugh their way up the hill. They cross, and recross, and briefly follow the road. The road is not actually a road, but a road-sized sandy ribbon, winding its way ever deeper into these hills, promising long-awaited access for remote villages to schools and doctors, markets and jobs. For now though, the only people on it are builders and engineers and surveyors. Those on foot keep away – there is too much dust and not enough shade – and no-one has a vehicle anyway.
L&D have filled their pack with coloured pencils and crayons to give to village schools. They walk across the dusty yard, where a number of tiny children in lilac shirts and dark trousers are emerging from the building. They have crocs on their feet and a few are wearing ties. L&D greet the three female teachers. They rummage in their pack and hand out pencils and crayons as the kids crowd around them. The teachers explain that the school has 25 pupils aged between 6 and 15, though today there are only 20. They seem younger, none of them much older than 9.
Bhandar is idyllic – a widely spaced scattering of attractive stone buildings on a gentle slope of green meadow. It was badly damaged in the earthquake of 2015 and lots of rebuilding is going on. The lodges around the central square are full of road-building engineers, so they continue to the very bottom of the village. At their whitewashed, blue balconied lodge, sunshine streams through the windows. The mattresses are very thin. Downstairs there is one indoor squat loo, but no water has been provided.
They drop towards the river, peeling off layers of clothing as they go. The day is warming up under a strong sun. A track winds around the hillside, where deep red rhododendrons and pink-blossomed fruit trees are in flower. They descend through wet, irrigated gullies of cardamom plants. As they dash to dodge the sprinklers Angtu explains.
Kinja sits where a confluence of rivers force a widening of the valley floor. There are enormous boulders strewn about, possibly ancient remnants of glacial moraine, as they do not appear to have tumbled from the mountainsides above. The village was badly shaken by the earthquake and there is plenty of construction taking place. A couple of boys clatter past, to and fro along the neatly paved alleys, with wheelbarrows full of building stone. The end wall has fallen off a house nearby, and another is crumbling and abandoned, used only to tether a goat from a doorpost. Laundry is spread out on a woodpile to dry, and a solar kettle reflects the sunlight from its enormous mirrored dish to a blackened pot suspended at its centre. Flowering nasturtiums crawl over a low wall and a cactus tree provides an incongruous foreground for the distant snows beyond.
And Then They Went 