I sat on the roof, looking over a busy crossroads, watching the world go by, eating a plate of chips and ketchup while sipping on a perfectly chilled pint.
I had arrived.
Scenes from the Khumbu Valley
I woke early on the morning of 30 March, comfortable and warm in my Hyatt hotel room in Kathmandu. This was to be the last time I would enjoy the luxury of a real bed in a long time, but I didn’t have too much time to appreciate just how much I was going to miss it...
It was 6am and still dark outside when I walked down to the hotel lobby to join the team.
Our expedition group had been split into two, one group leaving at 7.30am and the other at 9.30am. I was in the latter, thank goodness. I hate early mornings.
Bleary-eyed, but excited, we chatted among ourselves. We had had to manhandle our two large kit bags to the designated area outside the hotel, where they’d been weighed to check they were not over the helicopter’s weight limit.
Once we’d all arrived, we piled into the shuttle bus to the domestic airport, the vehicle fully laden with our huge expedition bags.
It was a bizarre airport; essentially just a huge aircraft hanger – a large, red-brick building, about 15 metres high, with a corrugated tin roof. There were no windows, but light flooded in through the open gap between the brickwork and the roof – it looked like someone had jacked the roof up three metres all around.
Massive fans, like something from a 1920s American movie, swept laboriously through the stale air below the roof, making a weak effort to ventilate the building. It was very, very hot, and there was a horribly stuffy, sweaty, spicy smell.
We made our way through what passed for Customs, flashing our passports, and a small paper tag that served as a ticket, at uninterested staff – they nodded briefly at each passer-by. We put our bags through a makeshift metal detector.
We were in for a long wait; we’d been warned of that before arriving. There didn’t seem to be any obvious system in place at all.
I rested my back against one of my expedition bags, with my feet out in front of me on the rough concrete floor, gazing out on the hustle and bustle of the manic place. I was quite content, watching staff and passengers mill about, trying to locate their flights. It was an entirely different experience to anything in the UK.
Most people were trekkers or climbers, heading out for the trekking and climbing season from March to June. Most, like myself, were now slumped against their expedition bags on the airport floor.
The building was very dirty and old. There was a cacophony of sounds; live animals in cages, people shouting, planes landing – it was chaos.
By 11am, two hours after we had arrived, there was still no update on the ETA of our helicopter flight to Lukla; nothing. We just sat, chatted among ourselves and waited.
There was no departures board, so we had no idea how long we were going to have to wait. Official-looking people scurried about, trying to organise what was going on. I didn’t care. I was there for two months, so there was no rush, and I was enjoying chatting to my new expedition team mates, and finding out what drove them to want to climb Everest.
There must have been 500 people, all crammed into this small space, all waiting with no information. I could make out individual expedition groups, although we had started to merge into each other in an attempt to find somewhere to sit down. Some expeditions had their names printed on their bags – Adventure Consultants, IMG, etc.
There was a bloke in a blue uniform standing next to a set of doors on the far side of the hall. Seemingly at random, he was letting groups through to the next room. There had to be some sort of a system in place, but I couldn’t figure it out.
Eventually, we were told we could move through to the other hall, and we passed through an ID checkpoint into what was supposedly the ‘departure lounge’.
The ‘departure lounge’ had a lower roof, fewer people and some black plastic chairs in rows facing each other. I found a seat with John and Paul. The two scary-looking Polish climbers – Donat and Iwan – sat opposite.
Trying to engage them in conversation, I ended up making a stupid joke that I was sure had offended them. They sat, stony-faced, staring at me, before speaking quietly together in Polish. I worried that I had already ruined Anglo-Polish relations for the duration of the trip. (My fears turned out to unfounded, and we later became firm friends.)
After my faux pas, though, the helicopter couldn’t arrive soon enough. I distracted myself by watching four men crawling like ants over a huge transporter helicopter, trying to fix its propellor.
“This is us,” one of the guides said at last.
We headed out and jumped into a couple of trucks that took us around the perimeter of the airport to the helicopter area.
Two helicopters had arrived to transport our group to Lukla, from where we would start our trek up the Khumbu Valley. I grabbed my bags and climbed aboard the nearest helicopter. I was joined by Lincoln, Paul and John.
As soon as we had wedged ourselves into the back of the helicopter, it took off, lifting into the sky with no effort at all. The pilot dipped the nose and we left Kathmandu behind us, heading northwest to our destination.
The flight took little more than half an hour, covering about 140km.
The views were stunning. Rough terrain sprawled away beneath us. Dirt tracks crossed the landscape, seemingly at random – I followed a tiny dirt track that wound up a hillside, with a sheer cliff face on one side. It hugged the mountainside as it twisted up the valley. Where on earth could this track lead? What destination could possibly be worth that perilous journey?
The track came to an end at the top of a mountain, outside a building. Bloody hell, I thought – that’s a house. That track is the only way to get to that house.
A Nepalese woman was outside the building, tending crops on a small patch of cultivated land. She paid no attention to the helicopter as we whipped overhead.
They were no roads anywhere – only dirt tracks for humans and yaks… Wow. It seemed incredible that only a few miles outside Kathmandu, there were no roads...
It was truly extraordinary, looking down from the sky on this rural life. Families would have lived there for generations, tending their crops and living closely together. They would have made the long, arduous journey down the hill on foot or with a yak, and only if they really needed to get supplies or medical help.
The simplicity of that life appealed very much to me. Everything was in their own hands; there was no one saying what they could or could not do. It was like a very long ago lost age in Britain.
I stared down at the mostly empty landscape, occasionally spotting a remote house, a twisting track or a lonely yak.
The noise of the helicopter blades was deafening. I took out my headphones and plugged them into my iPhone – I borrowed a spare set of copilot headphones to cover my ears. I relaxed with AC/DC thudding in my ears, feeling as if I was in some Vietnam movie.
Before long, we arrived at Lukla.
Lukla is a tiny village resting on a mountain plateau at the top of a steep cliff, which rises some 45 metres. There are cultivated fields immediately next to the airport runway, which is the only paved surface.
The runway jutted out towards us, sloping upwards at the end before dropping off the cliff face dramatically. Taking off from Tenzing-Hillary Airport must be a white-knuckle moment, as the plane invariably drops over the cliff edge before gaining enough airspeed and momentum to actually fly. I was glad we hadn’t taken the plane.
We came in to land on a bit of rough gravel next to the runway, with a stone hut in front of us. This was the airport. This was it! We disembarked quickly, grabbing whatever bags we could and running to the rough stone wall in front of us, half-crouching all the way.
The ‘airport’ was named after Sir Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay – Tenzing-Hillary Air
port – the two men who first summited Everest in 1953. I was to discover that it wasn’t the only thing in the valley named after this pair.
Once our team had gathered, we were told we had to make a five-hour trek north to Monjo. The plan was to follow the Khumbu Valley for the next ten days, arriving at Base Camp around 10 April. We were taking the Thyanboche route, which passed through the Namche Bazaar, but detouring to stop at Khumjong before heading towards Pheriche and onwards to Everest.
The trek wasn’t particularly difficult – the challenge was the acclimatisation – so we had to take it at a steady pace to allow our bodies to adjust to the altitude. No matter how fit you are, you cannot rush up the Khumbu Valley. It was a great opportunity to check out the landscape and to bond with some of the people on the team.
After passing through the small village of Phakding, which is positioned next to a tight turn in the flowing Dudhkosi river, we continued across an enormous suspension bridge. The valley was littered with bridges like this one, in differing states of repair. Some were old, rickety structures, while others had been recently renovated or replaced. I wondered where the money had come from to replace them, and later learned that the new suspension bridges were a gift from the Swiss.
This new bridge looked sturdy, being constructed with strong steel wires, but it was only wide enough for us to walk in single file. It spanned a gorge approximately 50 metres deep, and was 200 metres in length, spanning the gap between Nunthala and Bupsa. It seemed to stretch for miles.
Colourful rags of material – Buddhist prayer flags – had been strung all along the sides of the bridge, giving it a festive, vibrant air, making it stand out from the rich green trees carpeting the valley below. This lower part of the Khumbu Valley was not dissimilar to the Alps, with its rocky, pine-strewn mountainsides. It smelt of pine and was very beautiful. The trek was relaxing, and I felt happy, taking all this in with my new comrades.
The bridge bounced with our weight as we crossed it, enjoying the magnificent views of the Dudhkosi valley. I thought about how much the landscape must have changed, even since Hillary’s days. There would have been no suspension bridges crossing the gorges then.
His expedition would have made its way down the steep incline at Nunthala, and crossed the wide river base, before scaling the other side up to Bupsa. This endeavour would have added several days on to their trek, not to mention the effects of the changes in altitude. I was very thankful this bridge had been installed, even as it swayed in a strong gust of wind.
We’d been told that the human body is able to adjust by approximately 600 vertical metres per day without suffering from adverse side effects, so it was not just for the scenery that we were proceeding up the valley at a gentle pace.
We reached Monjo at around four in the afternoon.
Monjo was a beautiful little village, situated in deep valley. It had a quaint, simple charm, with pathways of rough cobblestones. The small, single-storey stone houses were set into the mountainside, with any exposed timber painted bright blues, reds and greens.
Close to the buildings were small terraced fields, squashed into any reasonably flat area of land. These had been made by building stone walls along the hillside, then, over hundreds of years, gradually filling up the space behind the walls with earth carried from other areas until a level surface was formed. Over generations, without any proper tools, the Nepalese had managed to make many of these terraced fields on the mountainsides, and this was how they fed themselves – on a diet consisting mainly of bok choy, onions, potatoes and any other vegetable sturdy enough to survive the altitude and changeable conditions. They carried soil in wicker baskets and cultivated these tiny terraces to produce the food they needed to survive. I found this quite amazing, seeing how these people have created their lives.
We were staying in the Monjo Guest House, which was one of the many lodges situated in the Khumbu Valley to service the needs of climbers.
It had a sign outside which read: ‘eco-friendly lodge, fine home cooking with organic vegetables, attached bathroom, solar hot showers.’
It sounded great. There I was, 2,835m above sea level, and they offered all the comforts of home!
It didn’t turn out quite as I was expecting…but it suited me fine on my adventure.
The guest house was like a long, stone cattle shed, with plywood partitions between each ‘room’. There were two plywood bed bases topped by slender foam mattresses in each, with just enough space to get between them.
I shared a room with John: a happy choice of room-mate because he was very organised and hygienic – just the sort of person you need in such a situation, as people can quickly get very smelly with the limited washing facilities available.
The facilities were pointed out, including the solar hot shower, which consisted of very little more than a hosepipe running through a wall.
We were told not to put any paper down the toilets because the raw human sewage was dumped directly onto the vegetable patches, to fertilise the soil.
This gave a whole new meaning to the ‘fine home cooking’ sign. Essentially, we were likely to be served bok choy grown with last year’s expedition’s poo. Somehow, I found I was suddenly slightly less hungry.
That evening, I was chatting with another climber over a beer in the guest house. The conversation turned to the loos – a hot topic – and he regaled me with a story.
“This is my second attempt at Everest,” he said. “Had to turn back on the first one.”
“Why’s that?”
“I was at Base Camp, settled in for a week or so, when I got a bout of the shits. One night, I woke up and my stomach was in knots. I knew I had to get to the toilet sharpish. Trouble is, up at Base Camp, you can’t just unzip your tent and dash to the loo – you’ve got to pull on your trousers, get your hiking boots on, downing jacket and pants… It was a whole routine, only it had to be carried out in double-speed.”
He grinned at me.
“Anyway, I made it out of the tent somehow, dashing like mad across the rock and ice and snow. I could see the toilet tent in the distance. I was nearly there…but then, suddenly, I couldn’t control myself any longer; I filled my trousers.”
A not so lovely image formed in my mind.
“I cleaned myself up, sorted everything out – these things happen more often than you’d think up there. The final straw, the point where I decided to pack it all in and head home, was the following night. I kid you not, I shat my sleeping bag. It was everywhere.”
Excellent…very reassuring.
“I had to call it a day,” he continued. “I couldn’t keep going. No matter how much I tried, I couldn’t get the smell of shit out of my tent. I couldn’t cope with that; it was driving me mad. I was there around four weeks, at Base Camp, staring up at Everest, waiting for my turn, but I didn’t even get to set foot on her.”
His face had lost some of its devillish humour.
“I knew I’d be back – I knew there would always be something missing in my life if I didn’t make another attempt…so here I am!”
His face lit up in a grin again. He finished the dregs of his beer, stood and patted me on the back.
“I shouldn’t worry about it too much. Everyone gets a bout. You’ve just got to hope it’s not too bad; there’s not a lot you can do.”
He smiled again and left.
A member of staff dumped a large serving of homemade human poo-fertilised bok choy and potatoes onto the central table! What’s a man to do? I wasn’t going to climb Everest on an empty stomach, so I went and helped myself.
I tucked in…yum.
Later, after a couple more beers, I made my way back to my room to get some sleep. The mess room was the only room with electricity, so I used my head torch to navigate the gloomy stillness.
I got out my expedition sleeping bag, which was perfectly suited for cold environ
ments, said goodnight to John, and tried to get some sleep.
In the cold, I could see my breath rising up to the ceiling. My mind was racing, filled with the excitement of the days to come. Each day was a step closer to Base Camp, a step closer to the summit of Everest.
* * * * *
The next part of our trek was to the Namche Bazaar. It was an exciting day, as we were due to catch our first glimpse of Everest in the flesh. I bolted down some breakfast – toast and boiled eggs with black tea – and headed back to my room to pack my kit into my expedition bag. I also got some water and sweets for my rucksack.
We each had a rucksack and two expedition bags. One expedition bag was being transported with us by yak. This one held our basic kit, sleeping bag, clothes, washing equipment etc. The other expedition bag, with all our climbing equipment, had gone straight up to Base Camp on the back of a yak. During the trek, we would pass hundreds of these large beasts, burdened by huge numbers of expedition bags, being egged on by Sherpas.
The yaks could be quite dangerous if you met them on a narrow path overlooking a steep drop. It was vital to ensure you were between them and the mountain. Otherwise, they were likely to push you over the edge. They went in a straight line; that was all they knew. They certainly wouldn’t wait to let you pass. And it was inadvisable to get downwind of them, because they pee and fart anywhere and everywhere.
At about 11am, I came to a clearing and looked up…and there she was.
Focusing on the task in hand and avoiding the yaks, I’d nearly forgotten about her.
Everest stood, proud and remote, head and shoulders above the rest of the skyline, even at this distance. The sun glistened off her snow-capped peak and wind blew off a snowy mist, like smoke. It looked so serene, so peaceful, and yet so icy cold up there… I thought how deadly she could be.
A constant jet stream runs over the top of the mountain, so the winds can reach up to 300 kilometres per hour. From here, it all looked still, except for the plume of snowy smoke, but I knew that was likely to be an illusion. Predicting the weather is one of the main challenges involved in climbing Everest, because it is only possible to summit on a day when the jet stream will not blow you off the mountaintop. So we were very dependent on our expedition leader’s ability to predict this accurately up to a week in advance. If he got it wrong, the summit push would be over.
Aftershock: One Man's Quest and the Quake on Everest Page 4
