Trekking and Other Feats in Nepal!

My Mother the Monk

I don't think I was prepared to see my mother coming out of customs in Bangkok with her head shaved. "Well," she said with classic Anne-Clayness, "I figured there ain't gonna be much way to use shampoo when we're trekking in Nepal!" So I took a good look at her and decided she looked kinda cool. Kinda weird, too, but kinda cool.

We're finally doing it: Nepal, my mother's dream and two years of planning and coordinating. One of my goals for this journey together is to suppress my irritation at the little things which drive me mad whenever we're together. And there are a lot of little things. For this trip, for example, I've had pages of guidebook information recited to me for the length, remember, of two years. Granted, it's good to be informed, yet having information thrown at me, as if it's something I won't be able to live without, and worse, as if my mother is the only one who can provide it...These are some of my "issues"--they've been there forever, long before this, this trip, this adventure together. And I have this tendency to be extremely impatient with her, especially when we're travelling together.

Somehow I rather prefer her when she's on her home turf. She seems so together and focused and easy-going when she's in her element. When we're away from home base though, I get annoyed with her confusion, disorientation, slow movement...perhaps it's partly because I often travel alone and don't have to contend with the wants/needs/capacities of another person. But more truthfully, I think it's just me, me and my mom...So I'm trying to forgive her for being a little slower around the edges. This trip is a dream come true for her, and another great adventure for me. I want it to be good for both of us, in the different ways we expect it to be.

I asked her what she wants to get out of Nepal and she said she's just going there to "be" there. She's not looking for anything. I, on the other hand, am searching, waiting, hoping...unanswered questions, anxieties about my life, uncertainties and indecision. Somehow I guess I want some reassurance, or even better, I'm hoping for a "message" or a "messenger"...Maybe it's too much to ask of my 25 days in Nepal, but I'm open to the answers.

Most of all, I want to maintain peace with my mother, and to share a lot of Nepal moments that we'll both remember, maybe so well that we won't have to diminish them with words.

Our first view of the Himalayas...Mt. Everest jutting up out of the range, completely visitble white jagged peaks brushing against pale blue sky. The mountains tower even teh cloud cover beneath us as our plane prepares to land in Kathmandu. I look over at my mother the monk. The journey begins...

Kathmandos-and-don'ts

Carl, the guy we contacted who has arraged our trek, picked us up at the airport and got us to the Tibet Peace Guest House where we're staying a few days. He's an ex-pat from Colorado, traded the Rockies for the Himalayas; been here since 1974.

A friend of mine who came here last spring got his name from a Lonely Planet writer. Carl has designed us a 12-day trek up to about 12,680 feet--close and high enough to view Everest in all its glory.

Did a quick roam through the streets of Kathmandu this afternoon. Narrow, dusty streets lined with shops, bustline with tempos (motorized trishaw), motorbikes, taxis and trishaws, gorgeous rugs and colourful tapestry shops, Nepalese woodcarvings, bright-colored Buddha image prints, Hindu women with red ochre dabbed in the parts of their hair on the foreheads of both men and women. Women in colorful long skirts and sashes, saris, yet nobody looks disinctly "Nepalese" as there are thin, brown-skinned, Indian-looking men, then really dark-skinned people with fuller faces, almost pale-skinned people, and many in urban street clothes. (There are some 40--I think--different ethnic groups in Nepal, with over 70 different languages and even more dialects, so of course Kathmandu, as the country's capital, is a melting-pot.)

It's noisy and hectic and you have to watch yourself or you'll get barrelled into by a bicycle (as Mom did), or miss a step and twist your ankle on the uneven, and often unpaved, streets. Yet it's wild and exotic and exciting--a total feast for the eyes and ears--you wish you could just stand there in awestruck wonder without getting run over.

Back at our place, well, there's no way to be delicate about it. We've both got the Bangkok bowel-syndrome (or something) and Mom's just been introduced to the ol' splash-dip-and-wipe left hand method, common in these parts. Now waiting for a bottle of water to be treated with iodine tablets so we can brush our teeth. All water in Nepal is completely contaminated--filthy. A dirty, brownish-orange stream flows into our bathroom sink and toilet. Even bottled water has been tested and proven unsafe, and looking at the murky water in the water bottle, it's hard to take the first swallow...

Stupa-fied?

28 November...Yesterday we found our way to Durbar Square (the old palace) and wandered the streets, including Freak Street, so named for its status as a hippie mecca in the 60s. Walked and walked until we found Swayanbunath Stupa, a massive Buddhist monument which you approach by climbing hundreds of stone steps, lined with vendors and excited monkeys frolicking in your path. The climb gets harder and harder but the view of Kathmandu gets better and better as you go up.

Just as you're about to choke and die from the climb, there's a ticket box asking for 50 rupees--well worth it as you climb the last few steps and find a whole temple complex at the top. The colorful gold stupa sits in the middle atop a large white mound, the watchful eyes of Buddha staring out of the stupa on all four sides--the cardinal directions--and prayer wheels ring the entire monument. You walk clockwise around it, spinning the prayer wheels with your right shoulder always to the Buddha.

The famous Buddha eyes have found their way onto t-shirts and posters all over the West, but only here can you experience a certain "presence" in their mysterious peering at you. The upside-down question mark-looking nose marker is actually the Nepali symbol for "one", indicating one-ness and unity with Buddha...

Monkeys swing, jump and climb all over the various shrines surrounding the stupa, and a priest, or perhaps a kind of shaman, was seated on the ground, chanting before a shrine, perparing and accepting offerings of flowers, rice, burning incense...which were scattered on the ground before him.

Filthy, impoverished children (we later learned were among the many refugees from Rajikstan, the border between India and Pakistan where there has been constant violence...) tug on your arms asking for money, offering to pose for photographs. My stomach turned watching them pose for giggling tourists.

After circling the stupa you find a large temple to the left housing a large gold Buddha behind glass, and several smaller incarnations of Buddha (bodhisattvas), situated on all sides. Again walking clockwise in a circle around the Buddha, you proceed around in a circle, loud drums and clanging cymbals, chanting getting louder towards the back of the passageway. I peeked through the wooden slatted back wall and in between the thin curtains I could make out monks in orange robes, seated on teh floor, chanting and using the instruments. A young boy monk in a burgundy robe was sweeping the floor.

Got a lot of our trekking stuff ready to go this morning, then set off exploring again. Went back to Durbar Square to go into the palace and museum---beautiful wood carvings on the window frames and pagoda structures. Got lots of good photos but can never seem to sneak a good one of the sadhu sitting in the square. They're the ones with the long, long dreadlocks, white paint streaking their dark faces, wearing long orange robes and beads around their necks. Supposed to be spiritual seekers, often smoking ganja to attain some higher level of being--but in Durbar Square they know you want their photos so they're all offering to pose for a price.

The kids on the streets, and there are a lot of them, they start speaking English to you, ever so politely ("Hello Madame, where are you from? How long you stay in Nepal?"), then impress you with their knowledge of capital cities of the world, asking you all kinds of questions, being really courteous, then eventually they ask for money...And you're not really supposed to give them money, or anything else for that matter. Some kids don't ask for money, just rice or milk or some bread or a pen. You're supposed to give pens to the schools, but never to the kids directly. But what about the kids not even going to school? It's a tough call.

Then Mom realized today there's some scheme they have going where the kid asks you to buy rice or milk at some shop, but the shop asks 300 (like $4) rupees for the item, the kid just holds onto the item, gives it back to the shop to resell when you're out of sight, and the kid gets some small amount of money for the "sale".

Yet there's absolute squalor and obvious, pitiable hunger among children. It's totally hopeless. Nothing we can do at all really, and sadly, I think I've become kind of immune to it, jaded from my experience of it in other underdeveloped countries.

Here, there are also people with horrible deformities, diseases which have long since been wiped out in our own contries. Mom was approached by a leper whose fingers were eaten away...amputees dragging themselves along, using the stump of a leg as a kind of crutch; deformed people sitting begging on the streets amidst the clouds of dust and exhaust fumes; you have to try hard not to stare.

We rented sleeping bags and bought a big duffel for all our clothes to be packed in, and yesterday, Carl introduced us to Moti, who'll be our guide, and has worked for Carl for ten years. We fly to Lukla early tomorrow morning and Moti will hire a porter there to carry our gear. The rest of it stays in storage at our guest house here in Kat.

Mostly I'm looking forward to getting to know Moti, and other Nepali people. A place never feels quite right until I've been able to establish connection and have a few laughs with the people. I hate the feeling of being on the ?outside?, and we're so very green at this point, still trying to understand how it all works, what's going on, and how to find our way to and from our place (!).

Leaving Lukla

29 November...Carl and Moti picked us up at 5:30 a.m. to take us to the airport--"Hurry up and wait," they say, in reference to plane departures in Nepal. Scheduled for 7, we finally left around 8:15 a.m., got good seats on the left side of the plane, a puddle-jumper, actually, smaller than a puddle jumper, holding about 15 people. Got an awesome scenic flight, including another glimpse of Everest, to Lukla. There Moti hired a porter named Arki, we had tea and breakfast, and then headed off on the first part of our trek. Destination: Phakding (pronounced "Pock-ding").

We're each carrying our day packs while Arki is carrying a giant bundle, including our weighty duffel bag--roped and rigged up to a strap he wears across his forehead--so we trailed along after him (the bundle is larger than he is, and much heavier, I'm sure). He often moves faster and ends up resting further ahead of us, while Moti remains with us most of the time and always looks back to check on us.

We left the village of Lukla via rocky trails along the mountain's edge, while down below to the left we passed farms and spiraling, intersecting, criss-crossing fences made of stone. towering above the mountains were even greater mountains, snow-capped Himalayan peaks. On the trail, we passed porters like Arki, carrying monstrous baskets, filled with everything from fuel to food to camping supplies, for trekkers and shops and villagers. (The higher up in elevation you get, the more expensive the luxury items: beer, sodas, candy bars, as they've all been brought by foot over miles and days of trail.) Many of the porters are young boys, teenagers and early-20s, barely straining (sometimes) under the weight of their loads.

"Namaste" is the standard greeting in Nepal, for any time of day, so we've said it countless times today, until we learned we shouldn't say it to the poor porters as they need to save their breath, but feel obligated to answer "Namaste" back if we greet them. Lots of hacking and hocking, from Kathmandu to here...Everyone eats a lot of dust and there are no qualms about rolling up big loud loogies and spitting them out right in front of you. The "poor man's hankie" is another common sight: holding the bridge of the nose and blowing it all out onto the street. Mmmm-mmm.

Every once in awhile we'd hear the hollow clang of the yak bells, signalling that some were approaching, either oncoming or from the rear. Soon enough a small herd, laden down with supplies, would round the bend, guided along by the switch of the herder, and we would have to hug the hillside to make way for them as they're sometimes ornery, supposedly. (Actually, what we saw in the lower elevations were cross-breeds between yaks and cows; yaks can only survive and thrive at the higher elevations. There are different terms for all the different types of yaks and crossbreeds, and for your further trivial information, female yaks, which you don't see on the trails, but are milked to make cheese and butter, are called "naks".)

Now and then we'd pass mani stones, sometimes massive rocks, sometimes just piles of carved stones with sanskrit prayer inscriptions: "Om mani padme hung", the well-known Buddhist mantra which translates as "A compassion-jewel in wisdom-lotus, amen." You're always supposed to pass the stones on the left (your right shoulder, again to the "Buddha"), so Moti would lead us off on a little trail to the left which looped back up to the main trail. Lots of blue, red, yellow, white, green prayer flags, waving on poles all along the hillsides, and strung as banners over rooftops. We took lots of short breaks, and a longer one for lunch. Amazingly, Mom's ankles held out, despite walking for hours on loose rocks, but around 2:30 p.m. she was running low. Instead of pushing it to Phakding, Motis has us stopped for the evening in Ghat, a village just before Phakding. (Mom had originally mispronounced the "ph" in Phakding as "f", so our standard joke now, if talking about something going wrong, we just say, "Oh no, we're totally Phakding!")

We're staying in a wooden lodge (called "tea houses" in Nepal) in the middle of a tiny village, surrounded by mountains. Sat around the little black woodstove in the early evening, eating dinner of dahl bat--rice with vegetables and lentil soup you pour over the rice--which funnily enough, looked just like the curry vegetable dish the Australians ordered. They joked that the menus always say what the tea houses would like to serve you, but it's not usually what they have to, or can, prepare. The porters ate "mash", which looks like a large pile of yak turds piled on the plate, some kind of dark millet bread they dip in vegetable soup.

A couple of cold trips to the charpi (outhouse) in the middle of the night, a squat toilet with porcelain basin--surprisingly good compared to some (wooden ones where you can see the evidence of all who came before you through the hole between your feet, the wooden boards stained and wet with urine and everything else--eek.) Early to bed, trying to get deep down into our sleeping bags, though at this altitude, it's not all that cold yet. Middle of the night, the soft, tinkling sound of bells, mysterious in the still of the night.

Early to rise...Mom's been stirring since the wee hours, as always, so I find myself awake and grumpy, listening to her rustlings and thumpings. She claims old age for her attacks of confusion during the day and lack of sleep at night, says it's happening to all her friends...Somehow I find it hard to accept, that 55 years old is when you can no longer keep it up, keep it together, roll and hang with whatever situation. I resent it, I think, because it means at some point, my becoming the caretaker. I'm not ready for it yet. (I haven't even been ready for children yet!)

On the Rocks

30 November...So far we haven't found villagers we pass by to be particularly friendly, although everyone says "namaste" if we do. But often we're pretty much ignored, since I guess they're so used to people passing through. Most of the time when I ask to take a photo of someone, they say no and go back to what they were doing.

Today was good going early in the morning. Mom moved quickly and well for several hours over lots of uneven, rocky terrain; a few sandy paths gave us breaks. Two suspension bridges, once over the river, once back over later on. got held up a few times by major yak trains, their herders hissing at them and encouraging them on.

Moti has been wonderful, many times taking Mom's hand and helping her up and down difficult climbs and descents. I sometimes find myself too anxious about her footing and forget to watch my own. I don't mind going slowly with her, but when she starts to wear down, energy-wise, I get a little impatient. Not because I want to keep going, but rather because we don't have much choice sometimes; there's no decent tea house in sight and we just have to push on a little further.

Sometimes in her frustrated moments, she sounds like she's about to give up. I don't want her to push to the point of fear, or getting hurt, but sometimes I just wish she'd push with a little more "bite-the-bullet" attitude. (Is that something I picked up in Japan? An intolerance of complaint and self-pity, when everyone around you has to tolerate the same discomfort?) Still, I'm trying to let her determine how quickly we go, and where to stop along the way.

Last night and early this morning, I walked past the giant prayer wheels at Ghat. On the right side of the trail, a wooden building housed three large prayer wheels--heavy, cylindrical wheels, the sanskrit prayer painted in various colors on the wheels. As you spin the wheel your prayer gets sent heavenward more speedily. Some peope close to me need the prayers a lot right now...

We finally dragged into Monju, a little village before Jorsale, and before the dreaded Namche hill. Mom had a rest and I ventured off up the hill to the local school where kids from Jorsale, 1-1/2 hours' walk away, and other neighboring villages, attend classes. The school goes up to about the 6th grade, and it seems they pretty much stop going beyond that age, at least in this particular area as there is no high school nearby.

I met two of the teachers and they allowed me to meet the kids and take photos. I had brought along a handful of ballpoint pens--as advised--but somehow it seemed so inadequate upon entering their tiny, dusty classrooms and seeing how little of anything they had, and how many kids they needed to provide for.

The five and six year-olds were spouting off their numbers; a group of three stood in front of their classmates, armed with a small switch and a large plastic water bottle. They chanted and led their classmates in repetition of the numbers, and if anyone in the two rows of benches facing them looked bored, or was goofing off, a representative marched down and swatted their desk with the switch, or bopped them on the head with the water bottle. Though unsupervised at times, a teacher finally came in and saw that one little girl, one of the "teachers", had gotten a little too dictatorial with the water bottle, and snatched it from her.

The first and second graders were studying English, a whole list of "This is a..." written on the blackboard. I introduced myself, and then they all wanted to give their own names and shake hands. I found it odd, but refreshing, that they were so eager for their photos to be taken, so open and friendly and talkative to me, whereas on the trail, kids have been generally shy, refusing to be photographed, or at other times, somewhat aggressive and menacing in their begging.

The dirt and the poverty is unreal. But somehow, the same filth and scarcity of "things" seems safer here, less sinister and sad than in Kathmandu. Here the kids' faces are covered with dirt and dust, their hair is matted, their clothes dirty and ragged...yet it seems they're fed and cared for, and at least they don't have to hustle on the streets of Kathmandu. Occasionally they ask for pens or chocolate, which of course you shouldn't give as it only encourages begging.

It's almost dark again. The fog rolls into the mountains and the sun dips behind them, and suddenly it's really cold and dim. I was able to get a hot shower before dusk, however, and looking forward to dinner and the warmth of the woodstove.

"Shim-shinme Pani" (song Moti taught me)

Shim-shime pani ma
jan lebeman garso-ki
jindo ganima

Maya timlai betnu nai ai ko
timi raicho arko ma lage ko
saro-saro leu dori bade ro
derbo maya jau dara karte ro
("Shim-shinme Pani" is a popular folk song, something about two lovers in the rain; there are many more versess and I've only learned the chorus...)

Ama Yak!

2 December...Yesterday morning we hiked on to Jorsale in about an hour, arriving around 10 a.m., and trying to decide what to do. The next leg of the trek beyond Jorsale would involve climbing the infamous Namche hill, inescapable as it takes you up to the large, bustling village of Namche Bazaar (over 11,000 feet). Nothing in between so there'd be no turning back once we got going, but after a short break Mom decided we should go for it, do it, get it over with. Good.

We passed the Sagarmatha National Park (Sagarmatha is another name for Everest) checkpoint, showed our trekking permits (arranged by Carl) and paid about $10 to enter. Inside the checkpoint building there was a list of the various symptoms and degrees of altitude sickness, rated 1-5. Mom had been concerned about her sleeplessness and slight nausea, which turn out to be regular symptoms of normal acclimatization to altitude, but I pointed out that the level 5 symptoms of confusion and disorientation were pre-existent conditions, so she must be doing all right.

We trod along the river over large loose rocks, and then climbed up to a slightly higher elevation where we crossed back over the river on a wooden suspension bridge which was, thankfully, having all its wooden planks replaced just as we arrived. Once you cross the bridge the ascent begins, sometimes gradual, sometimes fairly steep, but totally uphill, all the way.

Around 12 we stopped and took a snack break, but I could see Mom was kind of wearing thin. After a certain point she just reaches this oblivious state of exhaustion--but on the Namche hill she knew she had to keep going, and many times Moti took her by the hand and half-led, half-dragged her up. She asked me to keep helping her have a positive attitude because she does have a tendency to give up, and I could see her just wanting to stay behind and skip everything she'd come for and wanted to see.

So at a snail's pace with her puffing, looking extremely miserable, me behind chanting a made-to-order mantra: "ganbatte" ("Hang in there" in Japanese), and Moti, the "angel" ("sagaunu" in Nepali), taking her hand, we crept along up those rocky, sandy trails for hours. For some four hours, to be more exact.

Moti's names for us in Nepali are "Ama" for Mom (meaning "mother", or an older lady), and "Didi", or "older sister", for me. Moti's 29, and Arki, 22, both younger than I, so I call them "bai", for "younger brother".

Around 2:30 p.m. Arki doubled back to find us, having already gone ahead to Namche and left our stuff at a tea house there. Mom was in bad shape, but still needed to be pushed. (We're joking now that she's like one of the yaks, sometimes she just won't move and needs to be prodded along, hissed at, and swatted with a stick. Had a major crack-up, howling session with Moti, the three of us convulsing as we imagined throwing a yak bell around her neck, saddling her up and giving her some grass to eat when she starts getting cranky and hungry. From now on we're calling her "Ama Yak".)

Arki's appearance and announcement that Namche lay only 30 minutes ahead (that would be at least an hour for us) was enough inspiration to make Ama Yak get moving again, so on we went. We finally rounded a bend where there appeared a new set of massive snowy peaks, and the village of Namche Bazaar, nestled on the opposite hillside. It still took some time to get to the village, and once there, the negotiate the stony paths leading up to the lodges and tea houses, but by 4:30 p.m. we were in our room, unpacked and resting--gratefully.

It had been an amazing feat, this day of trekking with Mom. She claimed she wouldn't have done it if she had known, but I know that feeling, same as I felt climbing that damn glacier in New Zealand, but now I can say I'm glad I did it and I'm glad I didn't know how hard it would be, or else I wouldn't have taken the challenge. I hope that's what Mom'll get from this--taking the challenge. It's hard, really hard for her, with her ankles, and her stamina, but I'm glad to see her doing it. I've seen her avoid many physical challenges, and it's often annoyed me--mostly because I've felt she's able to do it, she just chooses not to go through any discomfort. A kind of laziness, but more of a giving up before getting started attitude, which I can't relate to, and not to mention, irks me. But to see her do this, because she really wants to do it, she's pushing. If you want something bad enough, of course you get it, you do it.

So somehow we've made it to 11,823 feet and have a whole day of rest/acclimatization here in Namche. It's a bustling place, a major passing through point for everyone on their way to/from Everest Base Camp, Kala Pathar, etc. Fortunately, it's past the busy trekking season so there are fewer people on the trails, and plenty of rooms in the tea houses.

As we got closer to Namche yesterday, we ran into more Tibetans, distinguishable from the Nepalis by their long, matted hair, often braided and pulled from the side across their heads to form a kind of band. Tibetans greet with "Tashidele" and don't speak Engilsh, just smile, use the word "Hello?" for "Excuse me...", and try sell us Tibetan goods--jewelry, blankets, etc.--they were carrying from all the way across the Himalaya mountain border, into Nepal and down the trails, all the way to Lukla--where they'd be sold at market there.

The Sherpa people who populate this region of Nepal--north and east of Kathmandu--originally came from Tibet only 400 years ago, and it was with their arrival that the prayers began to appear on the stones (mani stones). Sherpa women (called Sherpini) wear striped cloth aprons and other clothing which are in fact Tibetan style, but their culture and language are distinctly different (except for a few common words, such as "Tuje", the word for thank you in both Sherpa and Tibetan). Of course the common language in Nepal, is Nepali.

Enjoyed the warmth of a small coal stove (an upright, metal box with a raised edge; coals from the kitchen fire dumped inside and emanate warmth through hole-designs cut into the metal), had our usual noodles and rice and vegetables for dinner with a pot of tea before crawling in bed around 8 p.m.

Looks like we won't be taking so many hot showers as the last one cost us 100 rupees each (about $1.50 each) and literature advises against using showers unless they're solar-heated. The use of wood in kitchen fires to heat hot water for trekkers' showers only adds to the current problem of massive deforestation, a major concern all over Nepal.

Walking around Namche, lots of Tibetans selling their wares down in the centre of the village, far below the lodges but next to a big white Buddha stupa, a large camp of Tibetans is situated. They're nomads, hanging out in woven tents, surrounded by mounds of clothing and articles they've brought to sell in Nepal. Very dark faces, dark with dirt and dust and Himalayan sun, dressed in tattered sheepskin jackets and pants, ragged layers of old shirts and sweaters, silver and turquoise and orange beads in their hair, red ribbons and scarves woven into the long braids draped over the crowns of their heads, earrings made of different colored beads and stones, strings of beads around their necks. I've wanted so badly to take photos but feared rejection, so Moti (the angel) took my camera around the campsite taking photos as I pretended to look disinterested.

Continued...

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