May 14, 1990 - Langtang Glacier - Nepal - Journal Entry

Published on: May 22, 2024

As promised by the guide the trek across the landslide was tricky. Loose shale and rocks under foot. Dorge said two houses had been swept away by the avalanche.

"No one was killed. One man still missing."

He said this with resignation to the danger of living in the Himalayas.

Another trekker Miriam picked her way across the wasteland. Her bare feet were bleeding and her partner, an older German, didn't look in much better shape. Going barefoot like penitents. I can't imagine their sins. I slid a couple of times as did Lance, a New York architect. We both aee better suited to that city's sidewalks.. The porters handled the damaged trail as sure-foored aslike mountain goats.

Reaching the bottom of the valley we crossed the river on a derelict hanging bridge. The current was ever fierce. Falling into the water meant drowning and I was glad to have safely negotiated the span.

At the next village an older woman greeted our passage by sticking out her tongue. Another trekker Dice aka Todd commented that maybe it was part of mating ritual. Our guide Dorge corrected him, "Here the devils have no tongue, so villagers stick out their tongue to show that they are not demons."

"There are demons here." Dice laughed at such an idea.

"Everywhere on my travels across Asia, everyone had warned about the devils or witches in the next valley or island. Upon arriving onward the people of the island or valleys warned their neighbors were evil. Magic was everywhere. A forgotten technology by the West. The worst demons are the royal troopsin Kathmandu repressing the democratic uprising of the people, but those men are seized by a king andhuman.

"All the wooden masks in the villages are of demons." Dorge stuck out his tongue.

I've never seen any demons other than in human forms, but I have seen ghosts."

"You have???" Dorge was alarmed by this admission.

"I have and I'll tell you a ghost story this evening." Ghost stories work better around a fire in the dark. A glass of whiskey helped too.

A crowd of villagers waited by the school and motioned for my approach.

"They ave heard that you have medicine. None of them have seen a doctor in this life."

"I'm not a doctor."

Dorge shrugged with little concern for my being charged with malpractice.

"You have medicine. Only medicine here. Tiger balm and pain and death."

I agreed to the deception and treated infected eyes and hands and feet with antiseptics. I lanced small wounds swollen with pus. They bore the pain without a whimper. I gave a bottle of antiseptic ointment to the teacher, who expressed his gratitude with a solemn bow.

"How much medicine did you bring?" asked Dice. He had attended Cornell for Hotel Management. I had attended Boston College. My major had been Economics and I had graduated sin laude Latin for without praise. My Yankee grandfather had been a Maine doctor. My Irish namesake had been a trolley man in Boston. My only medical training had been at Boy Scout camp in New Hampshire over twenty years ago. Thankfully no one in the villages had any broken bones or suffered from a serious ailment.

"Enough to handle a hypochondriac's ills." I had enough to last me till the return to Kathmandu.

LATER

Resting by a prayer wall at another villager. I was a doctor again. Dorge explained that we are stopping too often, so I cut my clinic short by only tending to the children. Babies with coughs got a droplet of sweet syrup. They smiled, as I washed their grimy faces. One old gent complained about a tooth ache. He opened his mouth to reveal rotten stumps. I gave him cloves for the pain and advised that he suck on them. He made a face tasting them, but upon my departure smiled with relief. They waved good-bye.

Ganchemao is the monster peak rising above the valley. Snow clumped in glaciers on the peak. The sun is torching my lips. Dice lends me lip balm.

"I have to take care of the doctor."

"Then you can be my nurse."

Later

I walked ahead of everyone. Even the porters. I want to be alone. The wind, the scent of pines and flowers, the world of sky peaks. I sneak peeks, because I am trekking on a narrow trail and pay attention to where I put my feet rather than trip and fall into a deadly valley. Lots of rocks. Twisting an ankle would be a disaster this far from the road. I stop and rest, regaining my breath. Our porters pass smoking cigarettes. I wait for a lagging trekker. Dieter is suffering from dysentery. He appears after fifteen minutes, looking like shit. I advise him to hire a porter. We are dismissing one at the next village. His pack is empty.

"You shits are only get worse."

"I'm fine."

"You don't look it, but up to you."

Miriam appears that she has abandoned the Sherpa way and is wearing her boots. A wise decision, but I can tell by her gait that she really savaged her feet. I offer to clean them and binding them with tape. She shakes her head not willing to admit she was wrong. Lance looks at me and we both shrug with no comment.

Best to let people do what they think is best.

LATER

We stopped for an afternoon tea. Each step up this valley transports us further back into medieval times. This could be 1452 AD. Yaks, the Sherpas' beast of burden, lumbered up and down the trail under heavy loads of up to a hundred-fifty pounds. Three times more than the Sherpa porters. I'm carrying about ten pounds and every step is a struggle. Dice is much younger than me and is handling the ascent to Langtang glacier with ease. Lance and I are in the same shape.

Crap.

I had to switch pens. I had given away two to young boys.

This is as faraway from civilization as I have been in my life. Far from Boston. Far from New York. As soon as I put my boots on the trail I was transported to the 15th Century. No telephones, no radio signal. No electricity other than our flashlights. No subways. No bagels. No diamonds on 47th Street.

Dice, who retired from Wall Street at 30, squatted with me on a boulder, and asked, "What do you think these people think of us. Trekking through their villages without stopping for more than a cup of tea and sleep."

"They think of us a cash cow. Without us life would be even harder. They have been thinking the same as all travelers since before time. In good times lots of people. In bad times fewer and most of them bad."

"And these are good times?"

"Be more trekkers, if Kathmandu was quiet."

"My guide, Porterhouse, says nothing that happens in Kathmandu affects up here. Do you think these are good times?"

"Nothing is burning and we don't see any dead people. I saw the soldiers shoot into a crowd in Kathmandu. They weren't aiming over their heads. It's peaceful up here. Normal times. Nothing special."

We were surrounded by Rhododendrons. The huge flowers flourish in the high altitudes. I had won a small bush in high school from a church raffle. The only thing I had ever won.

I squinted up to the mountains, the high glare off the snow peaks. These villages weren't flush with money. They never had any. Bad things happened. Bad things happened a lot. A sick child. A sick parent. A sick cow. The King had opened Nepal to foreigners in 1951. The 1950s hadn't hit Langtang Valley yet. This trek wasn't too popular, since it dead-ends at the glacier. There is no open crossing into the neighboring Helambu Valley.

"Maybe in ten years this valley might improved, but the only transport are your feet, on the sherpa's back, or a yak. These people are shackled to poverty, they are slaves to the lower altitude people, but they proudly live their lives as had their fathers and mothers. And do they want our lives?"

"I don't, which is why I quit Wall Street."

"Not after making a fortune."

"I was lucky and left the casino before I gambled it all away."

"All the porters play cards. For their pay."

"To be blessed by luck."

"As are we all."

May 12, 1990 - Langtang Trek, Nepal - 1990 - Journal Entry

Published May 30, 2023

The passing clouds obscure the 6000-meter snow-tipped peaks towering over the Langtang Valley, but the 5000-meter ragged summits cut through the mist with each parting of the clouds.

The tea house serves a good cup of yak butter tea. I'm not liking the salty brew, but it does provide warmth and nourishment. Dorzee our guide is inside the teahouse speaking with a female Sherpa guide and an Austrian woman fluent in Tuchin in Tibetan. I can only speak English, French, and German. I learned a little Bahasa Indonesian in Biak, Bali, and Sumatra. No Thai, Sherpa or Nepali.

Dorzee has been kind enough to translate for us.

He emerges from the tea house and bids good-bye, "Chag-po nang."

We proceed up the steep trail passing head-high prayer walls.

Garz-bo is steep in Tibetan.

I'm sure like the Eskimos the Sherpas have other words for steep.

I have three.

Steep, very steep, and very fucking steep.

English is my only usable language in this valley other than hand signals, which I use whenever I treat people for cuts, festering wounds, and encrusted eyes. My thermometer amazing them, since I have to put in in their mouth. I usually stick out my tongue to show that I am not a demon. The last of my patients at this rest stop are watching me wash my sox. All these young boys and girls are all barefoot eith busted toenails.

They waved good-bye, as we like every foreigner passing their village head higher to Kyangjin at the head of the valley.

We pass head-high prayer walls erected by faithful Buddhists. The porters mutter prayers and Dorzee says, "They not say these prayers. No one read Tibetan. Not read English. Only lamas read walls. No one here read. No one go school. Not have schools. Before we have many walls. Now not many. Everything not same. No grass, no yaks, no money, no carving."

Something was not right in the mountains. The monsoons came at a different time and the snows were always late. For some reason every year was warmer.

A platoon of Nepali soldiers pass us on the trail heading up to the glacier. The sergeant talks with Dorzee, while the patrol hikes forward. After the sergeant's departure, he says, "Still have trouble in Kathmandu. Most time never see soldiers up here. Government want to tell Sherpas they are in charge. They come and they go. They never stay."

The villagers are Sherpa, Tibetan or Gurkha. They live on the other side of time. Far from the world below. Once the monsoons come the trekking season will be over and the porters will return the shoes and warm clothing to the Kathmandu agencies, then return to up mountain. The villages will retreat into the security of a past lost to the now.

The poverty increases every step forward. Life goes on as it has for millenia. Everyone is uneducated, illiterate, unwashed, malnourished, sick, wear rags, but they always have a smile for us. especially when I give a pen and paper or a postcard of Bali or Thailand to the children. So little will make them happy. I also have sweets. Several Lonely Planet backpackers have ventured reproached me for distributing these candies to the locals. They give no one nothing. Lance tells me to ignore them.

After the next tea stop the porters light cigarettes, swing the packs onto their backs. The loads are getting less and their pace is twice ours. All for $5/day.

Thankfully they are getting all that money, unless they lose it in cards.

The sun is setting over the high rim of Himalayas. It is a little colder than before and Lance and I have decide to sleep in the tea house. Still cold, but it's out of the wind. We have run out of whiskey. Dice and I have switched to the milky millet beer. Tongba, which we drink around a blazing fire. Three cups and I'm feeling okay, glad to not humping on the trail and breathing easier at this altitude.

The porters are playing 'Jhyap', a take and discard card game whose which you play from the three best hands. Money is being waged by everyone. I have no interest n losing money and retire to my room. I am out cold at 8pm.

LATER

Dorge won seventy RPs. Labarai won even more from the porters and villagers. Two-hundred Rupees. About three days of trekking wages and the losers have been losers all the way up the trail. None of them have the sneakers I bought them, but they still have cigarettes

I've worked hard, but not like the porters.

Working at the diamond exchange I never break a sweat. The heaviest thing I lift is a pencil or paper. I don't want to work. I want to travel all the time, but I need money.

I wish I could sell my noVel NORTH NORTH HOLLYWOOD. Maybe I'll be lucky in Paris, London, and New York. Maybe I'll be able to sherry it to Monty. It really doesn't matter. I'm four days away from civilization.

Rhododendrons Of Nepal

In the spring of 1968 I won a rhododendron from my sisters' high school south of Boston.

I didn't think much of the prize.

My father planted the bush by the garage.

A month later light purple flowers burst from the branches. The neighborhood girls admired the rhododendron's scintillating beauty and I proudly declared to having won its beauty in a raffle.

I was a boy with a flower in the Age of the Flower Child.

The bush survived the the End of the Hippies, the Silent Majority, punks, Reaganites, harsh winters, and sweltering summers, but after my parents' sold the split-level ranch-house, they left behind my rhododendron.

Several years ago I had my sister drive by the old house on Harborview Road. The new owners had renovated the old place, but the rhododendron was larger than ever.

Maybe a good ten feet tall.

They can grow even higher.

Nepal's Solu valley fifty kilometers south of Mt Everest is much more meteorologically forgiving than the surrounding Himalaya peaks and the Sherpas' terraced slopes provide an ideal botanical refuge for the giant rhododendrons of Asia.

Some are reputed to be over 90 feet tall.

And the best time to view them is now.

If only I could be so unlucky to get on a plane and fly to Kathmandu, but no one is flying the empty skies to anywhere in the Spring of 2020.

Rhododendrons Of Nepal

In the late winter of 1968 I won a rhododendron bush from my sisters' high school south of Boston.

I didn't think much of the prize.

My father planted the bush by the driveway.

A month later light purple flowers burst from the branches. The neighborhood girls admired the rhodedendron's scintillating beauty and I proudly declared having won it in a raffle.

I was a boy with a flower in the age of the Flower Child.

The bush survived the hippies, silent majority, punks, Reaganites, harsh winters, and sweltering summers, but after my parents' sold the split-level ranch-house and left behind my rhododendron.

Several years ago I had my sister drive by the old house on Harborview Road. The new owners had renovated the old place, but the rhododendron was larger than ever.

Maybe a good ten feet tall.

But they can grow even higher.

Nepal's Solu region fifty kilometers south of Mt Everest is more meteorogically peaceful than the surrounding Himalaya valleys and the Sherpas' terraced slopes provide an ideal botanical refuge for the giant rhododendrons of Asia.

Some are reputed to be over 90 feet tall.

And the best time to view them is now.

If only I could be so unlucky.