I fly from New Zealand to Nepal, where I guide an Ascent for Alzheimer’s team up 5350-metre Gokyo-Ri, in the valley adjacent to Mount Everest.
My feet move and my heart searches.
The Twin Otter feels like a crowded delivery truck. As the pilot throttles the plane to life, I could reach out and touch his crisp white sleeve. There are 13 passengers, eight of whom are my clients, who will climb Gokyo-Ri to raise money to fight Alzheimer’s disease.
It is fitting that I struggle to preserve my memories of my life with Jim as I support the Alzheimer Society’s struggle to find a cure for memory loss. Dad once told me of a lovely old woman who developed Alzheimer’s and eventually went into a care facility because her husband could not manage. Almost immediately, the wife fell in love with another Alzheimer’s patient in the facility. Her husband visited daily but was devastated. The one who is left behind suffers. I do not want to be left behind.
The engine revs and vibrates our seats. I clutch the armrest. The pilot lurches with the plane as it fights gravity. Bump, bump, bump, smooth. Airborne. He loosens his grip on the steering wheel, so I let out my breath and ease back into my seat. Kathmandu shrinks behind us. The mountains peekaboo out of the cloud.
I press my knapsack into my lap and whisper to the team doctor, “This is going to be great.” He nods, smiles and turns to look out the tiny convex window. Yes, it is. I already feel Jim. I want my high.
The co-pilot twists in his seat.
“We should have a great view of Mount Everest.”
The crowd murmurs.
“Do you have your camera?”
“I hope I don’t get sick.”
We climb up the Khumbu Valley toward the Himalayan giants. The wings teeter-totter, and I sit forward to see if the pilot is scared too. But he lazily flicks switches and lets his body roll with the movement of the plane, which is like a boat bobbing on the ocean. We shout to be heard above the drone of the engine and the wind thumping against the plane.
“Is that it?” one of my clients gestures and asks.
“No. Not high enough,” I shout back.
Twenty minutes into the flight, the pilot points, “There it is. That’s Everest.” We strain against our seat belts. It is a faraway hulk. We fly at about 4000 metres, and Everest towers at 8848 metres. A cloud moves across it like a curtain. We look at one another open-mouthed as we weave up the valley between the world’s most spectacular peaks. The plane banks hard left, and I turn my attention to the cockpit.
The pilot talks into his mouthpiece and nods at his co-pilot. They sit up, scan the instruments and peer over the nose of the plane, pointing down at layers of cloud. They navigate by sight, which worries me, given how much cloud there is. The pilot works the throttle, and the plane whines and shudders. Flaps clunk down. The plane dives at the side of a mountain. I hook my fingertips on the rim of the window and press my cheek to the glass. Through clouds a patchwork quilt becomes terraced hillsides. Large grey boulders turn into buildings. A postage stamp stretches into a small landing strip headed into the mountainside. I finger my bottom lip and look around to see if anyone else has noticed. How will we land on that? How will we stop before crashing into the side of the mountain?
The pilot grips a stirrup hanging from the ceiling, and I wonder if it triggers his parachute. But he seems attentive and calm, even as the ground gets closer. The postage stamp gets a bit bigger, but not much, and stops abruptly where the terraced earth rears up. The landing strip is 20 metres wide and 450 metres long. It is situated at a staggering 12 per cent incline to help the plane slow down. Moderately.
I sit on my hands and squeeze the edge of the seat. My internal dialogue attempts to soothe my fears. These pilots land here several times a day. And anyway, the situation is out of my control. Either we make it or we don’t.
At the same time, I scan the interior for emergency exits and parachutes. I don’t want to die. This is good. It wasn’t so long ago that I was neutral about the whole idea.
Just before the wheels hit, the pilot throws the propellers into hard reverse, and I close my eyes. He works the flaps against the wind to stop the plane. I open my eyes as we careen past blurred figures of people, yaks and luggage.
Our surroundings come into focus, the plane jolts to a stop and we clap furiously like old windshield wipers. We have made it to the mountain village of Lukla at 2800 metres, the jumping-off point to Mount Everest Base Camp and our objective, Gokyo-Ri: 2500 metres to climb.
As we collect our duffle bags and backpacks, hopeful sherpas move down the hillside. Yaks tear at the short grass. Our sirdar, the head of our Nepalese support team, directs us to a nearby lodge for tea while Sherpas and porters load our gear onto yaks. I give the massive, curved-horned, long-haired beasts a wide berth. A steady stream of trekkers going to Everest Base Camp shares our route for the first few days. Buildings become scarce as we roller-coaster our way up the valley. After a brief stretch of pine forest, the trail dives to the river Thado Khola, where a humungous suspension bridge stretches to the other side. We wobble across it single file, flattening like pancakes to let yaks pass.
In the bustling town of Namche, construction is everywhere and baked goods abound. Several businesses offer Internet here at 3500 metres. Most people experience some sort of altitude sickness above 3000 metres: headaches, nausea, loss of appetite, shortness of breath. I wait for the feeling of malaise, like an experienced warrior. We spend two days here to acclimate and climb a few hundred metres up out of town to view the big mountains: Everest, Ama Dablam, Lhotse. The clients move slowly but enthusiastically, some with headaches and lethargy. A few of them are not sleeping well.
The Nepalese greet us by putting their hands together in front of their hearts, closing their eyes, bowing and saying “Namaste.” My Lonely Planet guide offers several definitions of the salutation, and I cobble together my own meaning. The light inside me sees the light inside you and I honour the spirit in you that is also in me. There is a divine spark within each of us that is located in the heart chakra so you bring the hands together at the heart to increase the flow of divine love. Bowing the head and closing the eyes helps the mind surrender to the divine in the heart.
The next day, we climb up the other side of the village to a Tibetan monastery. I hear the tinkle of prayer wheels as we get closer. A serene-looking monk dressed in brown robes motions for us to enter the two-room sacred building. Yak butter burns in front of Tibetan statues. I pull at my long skirt and long-sleeved shirt and crouch to go through the wooden doorway. The scriptures are more than a thousand years old. I try not to breathe on them. The monk stills and looks like he is in a trance. I wonder if he is praying.
Tibetan Buddhists believe that saying the mantra om mani padme hum out loud or silently to oneself invokes the powerful benevolent attention and blessings of Chenrezig, the embodiment of compassion. The prayer can be translated as “Hail the jewel in the lotus.” Om symbolizes one’s impure body, speech and mind and also the pure noble body, speech and mind of the Buddha. The good and the bad. Mani, the jewel, symbolizes compassion and love and the altruistic intention to become enlightened. Padme means lotus and symbolizes the wisdom that keeps you out of contradiction. Hum means inseparability and can be achieved through compassion and wisdom.
The mantra is everywhere: in tin wheels that you spin by the side of the pathway, carved into rock walls, on flags poised high in the mountains. I would like to know the jewel in the lotus.
We leave Namche and hike steeply to a ridge where a stone chorten sits in the middle of the path, like an adobe oven with a big hat. Tibetan tradition is to pass by these sacred monuments in a clockwise manner, so we pass on the left. We climb until lunch and, heartbreakingly, must lose all of the elevation we have earned to descend the other side to the river of the Gokyo-Ri Valley.
I follow the last client, a grey-haired gentleman in his sixties, to come into our riverside camp at Phortse Tenga. He is well behind the rest of the group, struggling with the altitude.
“You did it.” I hug him.
He slumps onto the first rock and leans his forehead on his hand. His body shakes, and I kneel before him, my hand on his shoulder.
“That’s okay. You did great.” I struggle to keep my voice from cracking. I hate to see him hurting.
He looks up with a tear-stained face, “It’s just that so many people are counting on me to get to the top.” I hold him while he cries.
On day seven of our journey we reach 3500 metres. After morning chai, I sit in the sun watching my breath swirl into the air. The team members move slowly around camp.
Like the yaks, we set off one behind the other up the steep dirt trail that winds out of the valley through rhododendron forests. We pass by rock wall enclosures, kharkas, that look like ancient ruins but serve as summer grazing grounds for Sherpas’ herds of yaks. As we climb, the sweet smell of rhododendron gives way to the nutty smell of juniper trees. Every so often I look over my shoulder at the massive snowy peaks of Khumbila (5761 metres) and Tawache (6540 metres). My mind slows to meet my pace as we traverse a hillside, up the side of the Gokyo-Ri Valley, above the largest glacier in the Himalaya, Ngozumpa, below. I think of the clients. I feel strong, with a purpose. Lead them to the top. Step by step.
As the air gets thinner, so does my armour. The layers peel away and I feel naked. Mountains are great equalizers. I cannot fight Mother Earth any more than I can fight my own heart. My heart pumps out its real purpose. Find Jim. I want my old life back. I want what is familiar. I want my old compass bearing.
The uncertainty of life is unbearable to me. I falter on the steep mountainside above the rumbling glacier and lean more heavily on my hiking poles. Suck breaths through my aching throat. Shit. Don’t fall apart now. I grit my teeth. I head to the top of the pass where the prayer flags snap in the wind. The Nepalese place the flags as high as possible so they float farther on the wind and reach more people.
A flutter catches my gaze and I look up. There, at 4500 metres, an eagle soars in front of me, so close that its individual feathers shimmer in the sun. He stares ahead but keeps me in his peripheral vision. I stop and watch him glide all the way down the valley.
“Namaste,” I whisper, eyes closed, head bowed and hands at my heart. The light inside me sees the light inside you.
The client behind me follows my gaze and rests his hand on my arm.
“That is amazing.”
“Yes.” I gulp and swipe at my tears with the back of my hand. My mouth gapes in an awkward smile that is a cross between laughing and crying. I interpret the eagle’s presence as a sign from Jim, that he is with me in spirit. I pick up the pace.
Three days later, at 5 a.m., we leave the small hamlet of Gokyo – at 4750 metres one of the highest settlements in the world – for the final push to the summit of Gokyo-Ri. For two hours we ascend in clouds and there are no views. Less than 500 metres from the top a Japanese team descends, lamenting that they saw nothing from the summit because the clouds were so thick. Several of my team members look at me. I grab the hiking poles of the most tired person and begin to tow her behind me.
“Let’s go. It’s going to be great. We’re almost there.” I am determined to get to the peak, because he will be there. An hour later, as we crest the final ridge just steps from the summit, the clouds slide down the valley to reveal a wall of towering legendary peaks: Cho Oyu, Gyachung Kang, Lhotse, Makalu, Cholatse, and Mount Everest, the highest of them all.
We made it. People reach for the sky, hug, yahoo, slump to the rocks. While I hug each person, I make a mental note of how coherent they are. We shouldn’t spend too much time at the top. I take a group photo and feel my heart thumping. I walk a few steps away, sit down alone on a small ledge and contemplate the highest mountain in the world. I yank off my glove, caress the cold stone beside me and touch the warm flesh of my face. He’s here. I feel him.
I push myself up and gather everyone for the descent and our return to Canada.