Nepal, October 2009
The Twin Otter turned off the runway and taxied on to the apron of Lukla airport. It is a busy spot. Lukla is the gateway to Nepal’s Khumbu region. About a week’s walk up-country rise some of the world’s most impressive mountains — Mount Everest among them. Every day throughout the spring and autumn seasons dozens of flights ferry trekkers and climbers between Kathmandu and this improbable mountainside airstrip. My work running commercial climbing expeditions had brought me to Lukla most seasons for the last 15 years. Once again it felt like a homecoming.
The plane stopped outside the small terminal building and I watched the pilots complete a series of checks before killing the engines. There was a moment of silence before ground staff rushed forward to open the door. As I stepped on to the tarmac, kit bags were already being emptied from the hold while a trolley full of out-going gear was being pulled towards it. Departing passengers were being hurried from the terminal to board as we were ushered in the opposite direction. It is the same scene every trip. It looks chaotic but works surprisingly well.
I made my way towards the rudimentary baggage reclaim, all the while looking into the crowd of would-be-porters, local guides and spectators milling on the far side of the perimeter fence. I was hoping to spot a familiar face. A policeman near the gate was waving and blowing a whistle in a vain attempt to keep the crowd at bay. Bolder individuals walked straight past him and into the airport.
Then there was a tap on my shoulder.
‘Hello Simon.’ Nima’s face was radiating a smile that said more than any greeting. I thrust out my hand and he clasped it with both of his.
‘I couldn’t see you,’ I said apologetically.
Nima is such a small and unassuming man I had failed to pick him out in the sea of faces. It was hard to reconcile his slight appearance with the strength and stamina I knew he possessed; as a young man he had climbed Kangchenjunga, working as a high-altitude porter. We had first met many years earlier in his home village of Pangboche when I was working for Henry Todd’s company, Himalayan Guides. For more than 10 years Nima had worked with me in Nepal and India as my sirdar — that is a foreman/organiser. When called upon he also acted as guide, cook, porter and yak man. Off the mountains Nima owns three tourist lodges in Pangboche and nearby Dingboche, as well as farmland and livestock. He is a talented and industrious man, but like many Sherpas is calm, reserved and modest. Over the years I have come to admire and respect him enormously.
I introduced Nima to the group and moments later he was about his business, calling to a gang of porters beyond the fence to come and collect our kitbags. At the final count four bags were missing. A plastic barrel containing our hill-food had also failed to show. It was not an unfamiliar situation. The planes are small and sometimes it is impossible to load all the baggage on the same flight as the passengers. I knew it would arrive piecemeal on later flights. A large part of running expeditions is dealing with problems, trying to smooth the way.
We re-grouped over cups of tea at the Paradise Lodge on the far side of the runway, next to Lukla’s main street. Nima’s son, Sonam, came inside and shyly said ‘hello’. When I had last seen him, Sonam was still a schoolboy. Now he was a 21-year old man and would be working alongside me as a high-altitude porter. It was satisfying to be able to give him a job.
‘I’m going to stay and wait for the missing bags,’ I told the group. ‘I’ll catch you up in Namche tomorrow.’
It made sense for me to remain behind. The other staff and yaks would be waiting up the trail in Namche Bazaar where we would pick up the bulk of our food and supplies. Nima would organise things while I waited for the bags. Then I could roll the two days of gentle walking into one and re-join the group in the town the guidebooks call ‘the Sherpa capital’.
After everyone had left I checked at the airport and was informed the missing gear would arrive next morning. Off duty, I walked around Lukla and marvelled at how the village had changed over the years, buildings extending haphazardly away from the airport. Recently, the pace had accelerated with new lodges, bars and restaurants springing up. A clutch of internet cafes had opened since my last visit two years earlier. It was strange to see the locals walking around with mobile phones pressed to their ears. I remembered how not long since I had stood knee-deep in water in a corrugated iron shack, calling home on one of the town’s few landlines. I had wanted to tell Jane that I was safe; there had been days of torrential rain, it would be falling as snow higher up and people would be dying on the mountains. Now under similar circumstances I could simply send a text.
The bags arrived sporadically next morning and I sent them up the trail. The barrel of food did not, but I could wait no longer. I made arrangements for it to be portered directly to base camp and set off for Namche on a trail busy with tourists and porters. It was noticeable how the volume of traffic — all pedestrian of course — had steadily increased year-on-year. There were other changes too. Most of the trekking groups had Nepalese leaders whereas previously they had been led by westerners. Recently Indians had joined the slow procession of Europeans, North Americans and Australasians making the pilgrimage to the base of the world’s highest mountain.
After a slow start I settled into a comfortable walking rhythm. I soon started passing groups labouring with the unaccustomed exertion and rarefied air. It began to rain and I stepped up my pace. This was how I liked to move; I relished walking at a speed just below breathlessness, knowing that the coming days would have to be taken slowly to allow my group to acclimatise. The trail of people, livestock and landmarks passed in a hypnotic blur and I reached Namche in a mere five hours.
Despite the weather, the group were in good spirits and content to have a rest day, as is customary at Namche, allowing the body to adjust to the thin air at 3500 metres. Meanwhile Nima and I shopped for food and other supplies and then packed loads to be taken directly to our base camp high in the Gokyo valley. For the group, I planned a more leisurely and scenic route via the village of Thame, with its cliff-side monastery, and over the 5400-metre Renjo La pass.
‘Where will you stay in Thame?’ asked my friend Pasang who ran the Kalapatar Lodge, our billet in Namche.
‘We’ll find somewhere when we arrive,’ I replied casually.
‘You need to book, I think,’ Pasang said, pulling a mobile phone from his jacket pocket. ‘I talk with my friend. He has lodge in Thame.’
Calling ahead? Booking? This was all new to me.
‘You don’t have phone?’ Pasang asked after finishing on the mobile.
‘Not here.’
‘Next time you bring. You buy local SIM card, only five-hundred rupees.’
‘Okay,’ I replied laughing, recalling a time when Namche did not even have mains electricity.
The next three weeks passed quickly, trekking over the Renjo La and attempting a peak called Hungchi, a 7036-metre summit at the head of the Gokyo valley on the border with Tibet. It was not difficult to get away from the crowds. We simply went up a side valley off the main Everest trail. Above the last settlement of Gokyo we were on our own.
Large amounts of fresh snow deposited by the year’s heavy monsoon made for slow going on Hungchi. We were unable to summit, but the group seemed happy, sensing, perhaps, that we were lucky to be able to spend time in such a place.
At the end of the trip I walked down to Gokyo a day ahead of the group to join Jane and the children who were trekking up to meet me. I had previously sent three porters down to Lukla to carry their bags, plus Maisy and Lewis. If all had run to plan they would be waiting in Gokyo. I reached the trekker settlement in a state of excited expectation, only to find they were not in the lodge where Jane and I had arranged we would meet. Having established they were not in any of the other lodges either, I settled down to wait, anxiously studying people coming up the trail with my binoculars. By mid-afternoon the last group of trekkers had arrived and still there was no sign. I asked around the recent arrivals but no one had seen them. Mobile phone coverage had not yet reached Gokyo, however, I was able to use a landline to call a lodge in Machermo, the next settlement down the valley. Nobody had seen them there either. I began to get worried and hoped the children had not been stricken by illness or altitude sickness.
Later, as I was having dinner in the lodge, a local stumbled through the tables of guests and stood in front of me.
‘Mr Simon?’ he slurred, very drunkenly.
‘Yes,’ I replied, somewhat bemused. He produced a folded piece of paper from his pocket and nearly fell over as he handed it to me. It was a letter from Jane who was waiting in Machermo. All was fine; they had walked in more slowly than expected and had decided not to come any higher. I chuckled to myself as I digested the information, thinking about all our meticulous planning, the satellite phone calls home, the interrogation of trekkers and the call down the valley. In the end, the communication had come by letter, delivered by a drunken porter. This was more like the Nepal of old.
I rushed down to Machermo next morning. By chance Jane and the children were outside their lodge as I crested the last hill above the tiny settlement.
‘What are you doing Daddy?’ Lewis asked, as I ran down the rock-strewn trail to join them. It was a good question, and one that I often ask myself.
‘Coming to see you.’
Back in Kathmandu I arranged a farewell meal for the group. Later we moved on to a bar and I sat talking with the wife of one of the clients. While we were on Hungchi, she had been trekking with friends.
‘John and a friend had to be rescued recently,’ she confided to me. John was her 60-year old husband and he’d been climbing for 40 years. I could tell from her hushed tone she didn’t want to make a big deal out of it, or for John to overhear.
‘Where was that?’
‘In the Alps; they got caught out in a bad storm. Once they had been overdue for a couple of days I called out the rescue. They did not have a phone.’
‘Were they alright?’
‘Exhausted, cold and a bit shaken-up; but nobody could understand the phone thing.’
‘I can,’ I replied sympathetically.
John had been going to mountains since long before it was possible to carry a phone. He enjoyed the challenge of climbing and of being self-reliant. Perhaps he was worried that the phone might take some of that feeling away, or had simply not thought to take one. To me the reasons for the decision were unimportant. It was his choice, in the same way as deciding what clothing, gear and food to take.
On the way home we stopped in Delhi for a few days. I had not been to India for more than 10 years. The city’s astounding development was immediately obvious: a new airport terminal was being constructed along with a metro system, new roads and all manner of fancy buildings. New vehicles choked the highways; the smoke spewing tuk-tuks had been replaced with models that ran cleanly on LPG. For us, coming from a Britain mired in recession and self-doubt, such energy was refreshing to see. It was all as charmingly mad and chaotic as ever, yet you could sense that the hectic effort was leading somewhere. India was having its turn in the limelight and some of her citizens were enjoying a slice of the prosperity that we in the West often take for granted. There was a downside to this rapid development: Delhi sat in a cloud of dust and smog that the sun barely penetrated. It was easy to understand why increasing numbers of Indians were seeking sanctuary in the mountains of Nepal. At least now they had the money to do so.
I returned to Nepal the following spring, after a few months at home, and this time I brought my mobile phone. I even fitted a local SIM card as Pasang had suggested. I had become used to calling with my satellite phone, but because calls were expensive and drained battery power quickly I used it sparingly. However, this was something different and I was able to ping-pong texts with Jane and speak to the children almost daily. I lost the signal above the last village — Thame — but was pretty sure that by the next time I came back more masts would have extended coverage deeper into the mountains.
One night, in a high and remote valley I sat in our base camp kitchen with the Sherpas drinking cups of tea. Nima, as he often does, asked about our children. He nodded approvingly on hearing they were both in school, then he disclosed that over the years he had used the money made from working with me to send the youngest two of his five children to university in Kathmandu. I thought of my own charmed life and how it had led to this point, of my opportunities, experiences and achievements. Then I thought of my contributions: a little entertainment and inspiration through talks and writing, some new climbs for others to enjoy, perhaps a sense of wonder and scraps of knowledge passed to clients over the years… And I knew that these were minor and fleeting. I could see clearly that my only real legacy lay with our own children and those two students in Kathmandu. It was a contribution that spanned generations, time and place. The fact that Nima had never mentioned it before, and that I had been an unknowing benefactor made the feeling all the more special.
Later, I walked to my tent under a starlit Himalayan sky, grateful for just being there and spending time with such wonderful people. I was keenly aware that I had been one of the last generation to experience these mountains as something of a wilderness. The phone masts spreading up the valleys were merely the latest in a series of incursions. Perhaps that realisation had already occurred in my subconscious, and explained my own more recent explorations.
All mountaineers develop differently. Some go higher, some try ever-steeper faces and others specialise in a particular range or region. I am increasingly drawn to places where few others have trodden. However, communication by the touch of a button or the click of a mouse is now truly global and can penetrate even the remotest ranges. All progress comes at a price — and for me that has been the loss of my notion of real mountain wilderness. You might be physically isolated, but you no longer feel it. Even so, the mountains still retain a magical, almost sacred charm for me, acting as havens of sanity and calm in a life that otherwise can seem just a succession of consumer choices. Perhaps, more than ever, the mountains are what you make of them, or want them to be.
Now, the wild is within.