Relative Something

One of the great things about acclimatizing is that you don’t really have to DO anything, you just be, …at altitude. I can do that. I slept great that first night in Namche Bazaar and then on a morning when we could sleep in, woke at 6:00 a.m. It was now Thursday, 09 April, and because I was up early with no place to go, I did some writing that I titled, “Random Thoughts.”

First paragraph was all about food. I’ve already mentioned some of what we were being served. Here is what I wrote that morning: food has been simple and mostly familiar… a meat, potato/rice, vegetable, fruit, dessert. Chicken/Spam/franks/tuna, cauliflower/carrots/baby corn/green beans/leafy greens, potatoes stir-fried or french fried ‘chips’, peeled apples, an orange (with green peel), a fruit-bread muffin for dessert last night. Soups as appetizer –clear broth w/ vegies or noodles. Meals served in waves of courses and always include offers of more. Seems way easy to over-eat here! It has all been delicious and only limitation is shrinking appetites. It turned out that one of my favorites, which hadn’t been served yet at the time I wrote that, was their pizza. They made it on two different occasions and the first time I really had a hard time forcing myself to eat because I had no appetite for anything. It was quite a dilemma for me.

Also from my journal… No roads anywhere, just hiking trails. Remote. Hard to think that the only way out is the hard walk you just did to get here. Trail has been constantly full with traffic, except one spell yesterday where our guide (who lives near here) took us up a side trail for a bit. We were moving very slow and getting passed in areas that were difficult and steep & crowded as a result. Many, many groups of tourists –most larger than our 7. Americans the minority. Most from Europe. Most common accent heard is English. Groups from Germany and Japan also. Individuals from France, Canada, Australia. Then so many porters in support of each group, plus the local commerce of goods and construction materials. The porters carry ridiculous loads, hunched over. Some older, but most look like teenagers. They wear a wide variety of clothes –fashion jeans to dress slacks, shirts and warmups that look like shopping mall fare. Girls dressed more traditional looking fabrics and patterns. Footwear is mostly a plastic/rubber sandal that their feet barely stay on the sole. Not uncommon to have one of them playing music for the group on a cell phone. Pass some with ear buds in and mp3 players.

Like all rest days, time seemed to disappear quickly. After breakfast, we pulled chairs out of the dining tent and sat in the sun to enjoy the view and experience the sounds. There was construction going on in the village below and you could hear the musical tinkering of bells clinking in and out of phase. The workers were pounding metal chisels to cut stones. I pulled out a harmonica and others worked on their journals. Carol went to investigate rumors of a shower available at the lodge next to us. Gary seemed to feel a little better, but I have developed a nagging cough. In hindsight, I’m thinking a harmonica wasn’t the best toy to bring. My lungs had enough to deal with as it was. I paid 200 Rupees (about $2.60) to charge one of my camera batteries at the lodge. We are getting ourselves psyched for the hike down below to the marketplace and the requisite climb back up and decide to wait until after lunch.

Gary and Jim choose to pass on our foray into the Bazaar and with Santa Man (more Sonta Mon than “Santa Man” if you know what I’m saying) as our guide, the rest of us set off on our day’s shopping adventure. It appears simple enough, the market place is in plain sight right below us, but the varieties of alleys, paths, and trails available and the limited perspective once you are right down in between the walls, provide plenty of opportunity to end up playing quite a maze game if you don’t know where you are going. At first it seemed a bit unnecessary to me to have one of the Sherpa guides going shopping with us, but after a time I developed a sense of how much value they put on us as their client/guest. They watch over us every moment and at any cost of their idled time in so doing. I find it becomes one of the most precious aspects of the overall experience for me when we ultimately part in Lukla at the end.

We do a fair amount of shopping and spend time staying dry in a coffee shop as clouds open up and share a combination of rain drops and ice pellets. There is a cyber-cafe that is suffering sporadic connection to the world wide web as the precipitation starts piling up in the dish antenna and David and the others linger long across the way as the hot chocolate and fancy coffee they ordered stand cooling under my watchful eye. By the time we start our climb back up to camp, patches of blue sky start to appear and the trail is a mess of slush and running water.

We take a brief pause in our tents before dinner and then after our meal get one heck of a surprise when in walk the cook, Gyalzen and his son, and all the Sherpas with a cake, a wrapped present and bottles of wine to celebrate Jim’s birthday! A lotta love is shared. These guys and Jim have a relationship that goes back many years and it is truly an honor to be witness to their shared appreciation. Each Sherpa greets Jim and presents a ceremonial scarf around his neck. They even have a candle on the cake for Jim to blow out. To make the night seem even more magic, as we step out of the dining tent we find it is now snowing real flakes and in a pretty dramatic intensity.

A day of acclimatizing. A very special day.