Relative Something

The only way I have been able to identify what day it is, is by looking at what I wrote the day before. It must now be Saturday, 18 April. The morning appears clear and sunny at 6 a.m., but what we need is for that to be the case in 3 hours. But it’s a good start. Our wake-up call is scheduled for 7 a.m. and Gary is sleeping all of it, while I am up, dressed, packed, and ready to go. I think I am really wanting this to happen.

Last night I was coughing so hard that I gave myself an intense headache. This morning it is a little less persistent. I wonder if it can possibly be gone before I get home. I dread coughing the whole way on the long flight. My lungs still have a bit of rattle when I exhale.

At 6:45, tea is offered at our door! The sound of an airplane suddenly fills the air. It dominates and makes the area seem really small, as if it is right outside our room. We head down to breakfast where Lhakpa (#1) honors each one of us with a ceremonial end-of-trek scarf. Then we are ushered out and walked around the runway to the departures building. Jim has agreed to be a guide for a child (of a friend of our cook, Gyalzen) who is on our flight, which adds a little excitement/confusion to the process. No line for men through security, but a long line for the women. The security check was entirely superficial. Then, two twin turboprop flights later, we are allowed outside and our Agni Air plane is waiting. They throw in the bags, we hop in, the door is shut and we are off! It is a rush like an amusement park ride to move off the flat at the top and drop down that runway. Passengers toward the back put their hands up in the air in fun, but are really hoping and hoping that it will be airborne before we reach the cliff that drops off at the end of that runway.

The flight was in the air 15 minutes earlier than we were told it would be and only lasted about 30 minutes. It is mind boggling and in shockingly fast fashion we are torn from where we were just having breakfast to now be in Kathmandu again. My mind can hardly keep up. It feels strange to have left the remoteness of the Khumbu Valley, yet still be in the relative limbo of a place where it is suggested we don’t drink the tap water and streets are often nothing more that rutted dirt trails. Five hours after I was greeted for morning tea at the door of our room in the lodge, I am showered and lounging on a bed in the Yak & Yeti Hotel. I find myself compelled to immediately find the iPod I had stashed in the bag I left at the hotel while we trekked, and cue up the tunes that were most prominently stuck in my head the previous two weeks. One way to clear ’em is to hear ’em.

In the afternoon, Gary and I do some cruising and shopping with Bonnie and Pam. We stop for dinner and end up walking back in darkness. I seem to have developed the most confidence in taking the risks of crossing traffic. It is a system that seems to work best when you just do it. Make your decision and go. Don’t hesitate or stutter-step, as that creates indecision in the drivers and leads to trouble. But you do need to be willing to endure incredibly close proximity of moving vehicles.

By about 8 p.m. we are crashed in our rooms. I find some Premier League Soccer on ESPN. It doesn’t keep me awake long.

In this retelling of the days of the trek, I am now up to Friday, 17 April, but the journal entry for this day starts back at the night before. Just about the time we turned off the flashlights in the tent, it started to rain. It then got harder and harder and harder until it sounded like quite a downpour. Except for a moment of mild initial concern, when I turn my light back on to check for any obvious leaks, it was a great sound to fall asleep to. By morning, the sky was clear blue, and we survived the night pretty much leak-free. We are back to the old routine and are offered tea and washing water at our tent.

Breakfast on this morning deserves honorable mention for its non-breakfast-like offerings: after the oatmeal porridge came a pancake with tuna and onions, and cooked carrots on the plate. What little appetite that had returned to me a day or two ago, suddenly vanished again. After breakfast, we wandered over to where the Sherpas and porters were gathered to present them with cash as a tip for their services. Jim had an envelope for each person and would read a name and as they came to him to receive it, we whooped, hollered, and applauded. After he had handed out his last envelope, one porter stepped forward to report he didn’t get called. Jim assured him we would take care of it. I let Jim know that I had enough to give him right away, but he said he wanted to do it later after he figured out what the correct amount should be. There was a sliding scale and he had taken care of it all himself, but he needed to check his records. Later, Jim told us that he decided to just give him what he thought was the amount he gave the others, but then subsequently found the missing envelope and discovered he gave him too much. I offered that it served as compensation for his embarrassment over having to step forward and say he didn’t receive anything. Maybe in the future they will all be hoping they get missed the first time in hopes of getting a bigger tip.

Then we are off and it is a mostly uneventful trudge to Lukla. It is a long shift of hiking until lunch, which ends up being served around 1:30. We encounter just enough rain sprinkles to cause most of us to put on a jacket and some to cover their packs, and then it stops raining. The lunch stop is in a small, dark tea house where there was a rather large group of Japanese trekkers crashed out in various levels of rest. They slowly move out as we find seats at our place settings and food begins to arrive.

My cough is still bad. The afternoon kind of drags, but the views never end. It is all way beyond my ability to satisfactorily capture on camera. At one point, Jim turns and calls to the older Lhakpa, the Sirdar (Sherpa leader), and asks him to come forward, to walk the last stretch of the trail to Lukla, side by side. It is a poignant moment and reveals, I think, Jim is feeling added sentiment for the possibility this type of adventure may not happen for him again.

When we reach Lukla, the walk through town seems longer than any of us remember. We are done tenting and are given rooms at the lodge where we had tea that first day we arrived. The rooms are awesome and include a bathroom with a toilet. After our tea and snack, we collect the things we intend to donate to our service providers. Like several of the others in our group, I leave them my hiking boots, and then also fleece jacket, a dri fit t-shirt, some socks, solar calculator, some soaps, a pair of sunglasses, a nice ink pen, and left-over candy. It just gets turned over with nothing in the way of ceremony.

As I turned out the lights to sleep, I hear voices and activity outside and I peek out the window to find Lhakpa and the Sherpas sorting through the donated items. I have no way of telling whether our tips and donations were perceived by the staff as having our intended value. There were hints of evidence that the younger guys had a fresh spring in their step and smiles on their faces. I heard from others in our group that some of the guys had already done some shopping in town as soon as they arrived.