by Ed Jackson
The village of Ghandruk nestled amongst the steep green peaks of the lower mountain range and it felt as though it had been there for thousands of years. The cobblestone walkways and drystone walls provided a picturesque scene. And that’s before you even considered the views over the expanse of mountains that are some of the most famous in the world.
It wasn’t until I hobbled onto the rooftop seating area at the teahouse where we were staying that I really took the time to look at where this hike had brought us. The size of the Himalayan peaks was overwhelming. They didn’t look real – how could anything be that big? Wherever you looked, there were vast snowy peaks stretching up to the sky to meet the clouds, reminding you just how small you are in relation to the rest of the world; and, therefore, how insignificant your problems really were. It was a form of mindfulness just to look at those sights and remind yourself that you were only a small dot in a timeline you will occupy for a brief moment. The mountains were here before you and will still be there when you are gone.
As I sipped my beer and took in the view, I thought about what we had witnessed over the last week. A simple visit to a hospital had changed me and I wondered whether Lois had been affected in the same way. Neither of us spoke for a while until I gently nudged her.
‘I can’t stop thinking about the hospital,’ Lois said. ‘If we’d been born somewhere else, it could have been me who had to give up my children to care for you.’
‘I know,’ I responded. ‘It’s hard not to compare the two.’
I turned to her, the sun beginning to set to the west. ‘There’s got to be more we can do than just raise awareness. It doesn’t seem like enough. It isn’t enough.’
Lois is normally the cautious one when it comes to our future plans. She recognises that we both need to earn enough to eat and keep a roof over our heads. I think of those things last and consequently need her as a balance. I therefore braced myself for her sympathetic but practical advice.
‘I agree with you,’ she said. ‘It isn’t enough. We should be doing more. So, let’s do it.’
My eyes widened as she clinked her bottle of beer against mine.
Sometimes we need people to tell us when we’re on the wrong path, as my parents did with me and my brother when we became obsessed with computer games. And sometimes we need our loved ones to take the right path with us, so we can have the confidence to realise our dreams.
Chapter 19
One Year Later
A year passes quickly when you are doing what you love.
Lois and I, together with our friend Olly, had taken the leap and set up a non-profit organisation, Millimetres 2 Mountains. The name had come from my own recovery experience, and our founding principles were: ‘Purpose, Perseverance and Progress’. At this point, we were still waiting to get charity status, which would take about a year. In the meantime, we had wanted to start on raising funds for the spinal unit in Chitwan; all three of us were determined to see it built within the next few years. None of us was taking a wage from the company and we were running it and raising money in our spare time. Lois would work on our projects in the evenings after she finished her full-time job. Olly and I had more time to give and worked on it solidly for a year. I was still getting regular work speaking at functions and presenting for Channel 4, which helped pay my bills. Everything was starting to come together.
We started off small – a few fundraising evenings that worked really well – but my dream was to get people up mountains so they too could understand the transformative effects these experiences can have.
That’s how, exactly a year later, I found myself back in Nepal. This trip would be very different to my last one as I’d brought thirteen people with me. We were all there to climb Mera Peak and raise money for the Neverest Foundation to build the new spinal unit in Chitwan.
At 6,500 metres, Mera Peak is the highest trekking mountain in Nepal. It’s three times the height of Mont Buet and over six times higher than Snowdon. There is only a 50 per cent success rate for summitting and I knew the odds on me completing it, especially with my injuries, weren’t great. We would be walking for fifteen days and it was by far my longest and toughest challenge.
Fortunately for me, two star physios who were now close friends – Wyn from Bath hospital and Kim from Salisbury – had agreed to come and climb with me to raise money. I was hoping that if I completely seized up then at least one of them would be able to get me moving again.
We had advertised the trip and passed on the cost price to those involved on the understanding that they would fundraise for their climbs as well. I already knew some of our band of fourteen, but there were a few new faces also. At the last minute I’d managed to persuade Rich, who was best man at my wedding, to come with us. He’d been having a rough few months and I eventually wore him down by constantly reciting the benefits of mountain climbs. He’d put his faith in me and I was determined that he would be converted.
It was the biggest of our events and I was more than a little nervous. I’m not known for my organisational skills but somehow I’d managed to get all fourteen of us over to Nepal and I’d spent hours poring over our itinerary. I hadn’t wanted us to breeze through Nepal, climb a mountain and quickly exit. You could be anywhere to do that. Instead, I’d decided that we would spend a few days in Kathmandu, then take an extended route up Mera Peak. If we simply scrabbled up and down the mountain, it would take eight to ten days; instead, I’d plotted out a thirteen-day trek that would take us through the less travelled pathways and villages so we could experience a bit of Nepal. I’d heard stories that Base Camp at Everest was a bit like a motorway for tourists and I didn’t want our trip to be like that.
Stepping outside the arrivals lounge, I was enthusiastically greeted by Bigraj. I’d asked that he be our head guide, and he’d helped plot every day out to the tiniest detail. After several namastes and handshakes I introduced him to our group. I hadn’t seen him since I was last in Nepal, but we’d kept in regular contact over the months we had spent organising the next fortnight.
After a few minutes, he ushered us to the minibus and we all piled in. We were off.
Thamel is the climbing district of the city, a bustling maze of mountaineering shops, bars and guest houses. To the casual observer, the sheer volume of people might seem like chaos, but it has its own rhythm that we, as tourists, had to adopt. Nothing highlights this more than the traffic situation. Right of way is judged by who beeps first, lanes are deemed optional and pedestrians are merely obstacles to be driven around. Throw in a few motorbikes carrying entire families and their livestock and you’ve got one hell of an obstacle course.
Standing on the edge of the pavement and trying to judge when was best to cross gave me heart palpitations the first few times. The traffic never slows and there are no zebra or pelican crossings – the Nepali people are in continuous motion. The only thing was to step out and cross.
After a false start where I quickly turned and scuttled back to the safety of the pavement, I realised that the key to it was confidence. Put your best foot forwards (in my case, my right) and march across that road at a steady pace like you belong. All of the motorbikes, mopeds and Tuk-tuks would weave their way around me. If you stop or panic, that’s when you throw the timings off and could cause a pileup of gargantuan proportions.
The next day, full of confidence because of my new road-crossing abilities, we headed off to Swayambhunath, which is also known as the Monkey Temple. It’s perched high up on a hill overlooking Kathmandu and is a must-see for any visitors. As I took in the gold-leafed dome and colourful prayer flags that swept above our heads, I noticed that one of our group, Arron, a friend from Bath, was holding back. Whenever a monkey came within ten feet of him, he would twitch and hide behind Rich and me.
In the end, I had to ask what was wrong.
‘I might have forgotten to get my rabies jab,’ he replied, rubbing the back of his neck and eyeing up a macaque who was staring down at him from it
s stone perch above.
Rich and I looked at each other and raised our eyebrows.
The next two hours were spent with Arron on high alert trying to dodge the monkeys while Rich and I ushered them his way.
After some dinner in a local cafe, Bigraj stood up and gave his first rundown of what lay ahead.
‘Last year, I did a little three-day walk with Mr Ed. Very easy. This year, big challenge.’
I gulped down the last of my beer. I wouldn’t have described our trek last year as either ‘little’ or ‘very easy’ and I didn’t think Bigraj was the sort to exaggerate either. I smiled and kept quiet as he described the temperatures we could expect on the mountain and effectively rubbished most of the kit we had brought with us.
Bigraj’s final words on the matter stuck with me. ‘Mera Peak very bad for frostbite. More people lose fingers and toes on Mera than any other mountain. People think it easy, don’t bring right kit. Lose toe.’
We all looked at each other – it was time to go shopping. Bigraj led us through the jostling crowds, past several decent-looking mountaineering shops, and took us straight to Shona’s, the best place to buy equipment in town. I was fortunate that Berghaus had given me most of my kit, so I only had to hire a -30°C sleeping bag and mittens but Shona could have sold me the whole shop.
As our group rifled through her offerings, I stood at the side as she laughed at people’s water bottles – ‘Ha! Are they for toilet?’ – or inspected their mittens – ‘You not like your fingers?’
We knew there was a sales pitch with every sentence, but her equipment knowledge was second to none. We all stumbled out of the shop having hopefully increased the odds that we would return with all twenty digits.
On our last day in Kathmandu, I took the group to the spinal injury unit outside the city, which had been completely funded by donations a few years before. This unit is the only functioning specialist rehab hospital in the country and an example of what could be achieved if we raised the funds for a replica in Chitwan. I thought it was really important that the group could see what they were climbing for. I could talk to them about it for hours but nothing would compare to seeing it with their own eyes.
The outside of the hospital wouldn’t look out of place in a travel brochure. The columned entranceway gave a suitably impressive welcome and an attractive clay-tiled, covered walkway wrapped its way around the building, providing shelter from the sun and rain. It was a far cry from the dilapidated building I’d visited in Chitwan last year.
We were firstly shown around the physio rooms where I got the chance to inspect the equipment – all newly purchased and plentiful. The employment training rooms followed on from there, where desks were laid out with laptops and patients were learning new computer skills.
Next were the wards.
I’ve always found walking onto a spinal ward emotionally difficult. Not because it took me back to being on a ward myself but because I was witnessing some of the most difficult times of people’s lives. As we walked past the rows of beds, parents looked up from caring for their children and offered up empty smiles that were difficult to receive. It’s common for children in Nepal to be employed to scale fruit trees and pick the produce. There are no harnesses and few safety measures. As a consequence, the main cause of spinal injuries is falls from trees and children disproportionately suffer from them.
Walking around, I understood the patients’ pain but I don’t think I will ever understand that of a mother or father, wife or husband. I’d witnessed that their emotional wounds were often deeper.
To finish up, I was asked to address the older patients. After I’d spoken to them, they told me how lucky they felt and how they wanted to help others when they were discharged. Their levels of positivity were amazing.
As we left to go back to our hotel for the night, I said to Rich, ‘I told you that it’s not just me who wants to help others after being injured.’
He’d been unusually quiet for the walk around the wards and I could tell that he was having to process what he had seen.
Lukla Airport has one of the most famous runways in the world, mostly because it’s hanging off the edge of a mountain. As our plane circled the gateway of the Everest region, I couldn’t pull my gaze from the sun rising over the Himalayas. The golden light spread across the clear horizon with only a solitary cloud keeping sentry over a particularly prominent peak – Everest.
After our plane safely landed on the most dangerous runway in the world, we headed off for breakfast. The surrounding mountains provided an impressive backdrop to the multicoloured, bustling streets of Lukla town. Trekkers, climbers and Sherpas were either picking up supplies before heading north or celebrating their return to civilisation. It was a transient place, and, soon after we filled our bellies, we passed through it as well.
The first day of trekking was six hours of stone staircases. I still found them a battle as I faced the same difficulties with my movement. However, every time I lifted my head, the rewards were more than worth it. Vast bamboo forests spread out in every direction and their soft rustle accompanied our every step. We hadn’t seen many Westerners since we’d left Lukla and this is how I wanted it to be. It would take us a week to reach the bottom of Mera Peak and then the real challenge would begin. The dense forests we were walking alongside were a welcome distraction, but all too soon I had to put my head down again and climb another hundred steps.
Mid-afternoon we arrived at our teahouse, pleasantly shattered. Our accommodation was typical of what we would expect over the coming days: several corrugated iron sheds that each slept two people. The beds were simple wooden platforms that we laid our sleeping bags on.
Sleep is obviously key when you are producing an energy output that is the equivalent of running two marathons a day, but it wasn’t coming very easily. As I lay there on my first night, tucked up in my sleeping bag, I was finding it difficult to nod off. I was essentially lying on a plank of wood, so I was constantly shuffling around as various parts of me went numb from the pressure. Fortunately Rich didn’t snore, but the walls were just a piece of plywood so it felt like we were all in a bed together. Every noise reverberated through the millimetre-thin walls.
When I woke up the next morning, I stepped outside and took a deep breath of cool mountain air – there is no better way to start the morning. Add a cup of masala tea and a chapati egg sandwich with chilli sauce and you’ve got the perfect start. The food was delicious and thankfully abundant as I was burning through more calories each day than I could replace. This was a real concern for me, as the last time I returned from Nepal I looked as if Lois had been gobbling up my rations. In preparation for this trip, I’d spent several weeks happily padding myself out by having doubles of everything. I now had some reserve fat to fuel me, which would hopefully stop my body from attacking my muscles if times got too tough.
Our morning trek took us straight into the jungle as the treeline on the mountains in Nepal doesn’t end until you reach 4,000m. It was a very pleasant start to our day to weave our way around giant rhododendron bushes and across a few mountain streams. Inevitably, it wasn’t long before we veered off the main path and up the side of a mountain, or hill, depending on who you’re asking. Nepalis don’t consider anything under 6,000m a mountain, and that’s not the only thing they view differently. As I struggled up another uneven trail, Bigraj dropped back to walk beside me as one of the other guides took the lead.
‘What’s the rest of the route looking like?’ I asked, frowning as I began to lose sight of the people up ahead.
‘A little bit up. A little bit down. But mostly flat,’ was his response.
Anyone who has been to the Himalayas will understand the concept of ‘Nepali flat’. And let me tell you, it’s never bloody flat.
After about an hour of battling my way up a stone staircase, I turned to Bigraj. ‘Are you sure we’re not lost? I don’t remember this being on the daily itinerary …’
He laughed. ‘A l
ittle bit up.’
Cheers, mate.
We spent the rest of the day circling the edge of a mountain/bloody big hill, yo-yoing back into valleys before climbing up to the next ridge. I’m not sure at what point we hit the Nepali flat but I must have missed it while I was taking a swig from my water bottle.
After seven hours on the trails, we arrived at the village of Panggom at 2,894m. Bigraj had told me that the views from this village were stunning, but, when we stumbled onto the grass at the edge of the village, we were met with a thick mist that hindered any possibility of mountain gazing.
After another restless night in a plywood shed, we left Panggom and found ourselves climbing a concrete staircase up to a monastery perched above the village. The mountains had now revealed themselves and, reaching the top of the steps, it was clear why this spot had been chosen as a holy site. The stone building was adorned with wooden prayer wheels and the intricately painted entranceway pulled you inside. As I entered, and my eyes adjusted, I was met with a wall of colour. Three stately, golden Buddhas took up the centre piece but what caused me to linger was that every inch of the stone walls had been painted in brightly coloured patterns. It was clearly a spiritual place, but also one of joy. To think that if I’d believed my recovery would end with just the use of my arms, I would never have got to see this place.
Reluctantly leaving the monastery, we started on a path that eventually brought us to the valley that we would be following for the next ten days up to Mera Peak. After about twenty minutes we rounded a corner and there she was; rising high above the clouds, the three tightly nestled snowy peaks of Mera stood aloft in what appeared to be another world. I stopped for a moment and stared up at her. I had been dreaming of this moment for a year and to finally see her was both daunting and inspiring. I now had something tangible to aim for.
After a good night’s sleep, I stepped outside and was met by an orange glow over the mountains. I was filled with energy, but little did I know how much I was going to need it that day.
