Yaks

Another time – as we were saying – a year and a week after the avalanche of fourteen thousand tons of ice and snow, Nepal is the epicentre of an earthquake that measures 7.8 on the Richter scale. That day, 8,700 people die. More than nine million Nepali people, a third of the population, require assistance. Half the country is left without a place to live, without potable water, medical infrastructure, electricity, any means of communication…

That day, as the crisis erupts, Nima Chhiring, the Sherpa with the crying ear, is on the mountain. Almost against his will. After the avalanche and the strike, he had vowed never to cross the threshold of Everest again. Yet he immediately betrayed that decision. He has a wife and two school-aged children. With no home of his own, or any other vocation to offer to the restrictive Nepali job market, the earthquake finds him once more with crampons on his boots, ice axe in hand and harness strapped to his waist. He’s trying to work. But it’s a tough season: few tourists dare to venture into the Himalayas after the avalanche. And now, to top it all off, the earthquake… But Nima is still there. Almost always at Base Camp, waiting. Or in Darjeeling, with his family. Watching the news about how they’re trying to reconstruct Nepal. Or, at times, how they’ve resigned themselves to catastrophe. Accepting ruin as hypodermis, rubble as second skin. The months take their time moving on: April, June, September. Until climbing season ends. There is nothing to do in the mountains. Then, yes, at last, Nima goes home, to the home he rents, and he announces to his family that he will never work as a mountain guide again. That it’s over. That he’s bidding farewell to the giantess.

Nima retires with his family to the countryside. Now he’s a shepherd. He has five yaks. He’s trying his luck in the dairy business.

The truth is he’s not doing very well.