Published previously May 18, 2023
Day two Lance and I dined with the Sherpa porters, cooks and guides by a campfire outside the guesthouse. There is no electricity in this valley other than our flashlights and my Sony World Band radio. I turn it on, finding a scratchy Nepali station playing local pop sounding much like Indian music. The Sherpa are happy and break out their cigarettes. Damn, they love smoking tobacco. I think about joining them, but my lungs are torched by today's trek.
There was culture clash of endurance. We were hungry after the hard steep climb. The Sherpas seemed fine. It had been a hard trudge on the trail. They were carrying forty kilos each. Our load were small backpacks. They hadn't even broken a sweat.
"The first thing a westerner learns in Sherpa is 'Lo ngi' or "Carry this." The next is 'seng t'a nyi' or "Carry me."
Dorge says tomorrow the trail will become steeper and we will cross a landslide. I wonder if the Sherpas have as many words for steep as the Eskimos have for snow.
Lance and I drank two glasses of whiskey. Dorge said none for the porters or anyone else in our crew.
After dinner Lance and I went to our separate rooms. Our legs are noodled and neither of us are acclimated to breathing at this altitude.
The trekking crew remained outside by a fire. They smoked heavily and play cards. Laughter and cursing. I can't decipher the swears, but I can discern that they are all in good humor.
Working in nightclubs had taught me the menacing tone of calling someone something bad.
I turn on my Sony Word-Band radio
Nothing, but static in this deep valley.
No one here knew anything of the troubles in Kathmandu.
Several nights ago Lance and I had stood on the roof of our Thamel hotel. The protestors ran down the narrow street. The police were behind them. The soldiers trapped them and started shooting. They spotted people watching from the roofs and aimed up, aimed, and pulled their triggers. The officers had told them that this was a communist uprising and they were going to kill the king.
Kathmandu didn't exist here.
There was the trail and the villages and the river and the Himalayas covered with snow.
After this I was flying to Paris with stop-overs in New Delhi in Frankfurt.
No one was waiting for me at either terminal.
I had friends in Paris.
I would call them once back in Kathmandu.
There are no phones here.
Only word of mouth.
All I am is a trekker in a lodge by a cataract raging through the valley. I open the window. A billion stars are overhead. Something strange about the ground. Millions of fireflies carpeted the grass. Blinking like the stars. This place is magic. I breathe in the thin air scented by pines and fire. Only the earth, the river, and the smoke of a smoldering fire.
We're heading higher tomorrow.
No one on the way but us and Sherpas. Yaks too.
The poverty here is crushing.
Porters are paid $2 a day.
We're paying ours $5.
They're carrying forty kilos. My pack weighs five.
Just so I can see a glacier at the end of the trail. The room next door is quiet. Lance is asleep.
Outside the Sherpa have fallen asleep.
It's only 9.
I lay my head on the pillows.
Dreaming of the Cafe le Flore in Paris.
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