‘That was the first stage,’ Kami said. ‘All the muscles in my legs had atrophied. I needed to regain some strength; get used to supporting my own weight again.’
‘The physio has been brutal,’ Alex said, sipping his tea. ‘Five hours a day, almost every day since the operation. It’s truly down to Kami’s determination that he’s made so much progress.’
The images changed. Now we saw Kami helped on to a treadmill. Alex Brennan was there, looking on proudly.
Slowly, with an expression of utmost concentration, Kami took a tentative step on the treadmill. The spectators broke into a spontaneous round of applause. Shreeya embraced him with tears in her eyes.
‘That was the first step since the accident,’ Kami said.
‘From there, things moved really quickly,’ Shreeya told us. ‘He could walk almost normally by six months, and we were married a few weeks later. After one year, well, you see how he is.’
‘I want to go to Base Camp,’ Kami said. ‘Get close to Everest again.’
And that reminded me. About the shrine bell.
I rushed to my tent and found it. Returning to the canteen, I placed the shrine bell in Kami’s hands.
‘This,’ Kami said, turning the bell in his hands, ‘is a moment I have been waiting for, for a very long time.’
Tashi told the story of our Everest North Face adventure, how the shrine bell had been with us on our clandestine climb, how we had rescued her wounded brother Kharma from above 8,000 metres.
‘I want to see the route,’ Kami insisted.
We found a book containing a photo of the North Face, talking Kami and Alex through our climb with a blow-by-blow account.
‘So that’s twice the shrine bell has been high on Everest,’ Kami said. ‘Surely the third time it will reach the top?’
‘The Dalai Lama was fascinated by it,’ Tashi said. ‘He revealed its true origins.’
We told the story of the great man’s visit. His revelation about the age and sanctity of the shrine bell.
Kami searched inside the metal bell, showed the inscription proudly to Shreeya, whose family had been the original owners before she had gifted it to him.
‘Your family never told you about this?’ he asked.
Shreeya shook her head.
‘I knew it had been handed down from father to son for many generations,’ she said. ‘But no one ever told me it was so ancient.’
She looked proud enough to burst.
‘In that case, we must honour it even more,’ Kami said.
Later that day, one of the workers at the camp took us all to a nearby valley to see his brother’s farm. We walked down a dirt track for a mile, following the dry ruin of an irrigation ditch.
The farm was carved out of rocky terrain. The fields were barren. The earth cracked and split, desiccated by drought. A few straggly shoots poked from the mud but they were already withered.
The farmer and his young wife welcomed us with dignity, but, following the traditional greetings, the farmer’s first words revealed his state of mind.
‘Have you any news of the monsoon?’ he asked urgently. ‘Will it fail for a third time?’
Somehow our hosts had got the wrong idea, thinking we were meteorological experts. In fact we had no news to offer. The workings of the great Asian weather system were as much a mystery to us as they were to the people of Nepal.
He showed us a dried-up ditch.
‘This is the canal our farm depends on,’ he said. ‘It’s been totally dry for two years.’
‘How about groundwater?’ Alex asked.
The farmer’s wife took us to the family well, drawing a bucket of brackish, muddy water.
‘Things would be better if we had a water pump,’ the farmer said. ‘But equipment like that is beyond our reach …’
All of us knew that water pumps cost a fortune in Nepal. Then there was the drilling operation, the borehole that would tap fresh water deep beneath the earth.
Finally would be the cost of the fuel to power the pump.
Most of the local farmers were already up to their necks in debt. More credit was the last thing they needed to take on, especially with loan sharks roaming the countryside, lending money at punitive interest rates and seizing land ruthlessly when monthly payments were late.
The farmer showed us his food store. It contained just half a sack of mouldy rice.
‘We’ve never known the monsoon fail before,’ he said. ‘The summer rains are our very lifeblood.’
‘It always arrived in the first or second week of June,’ his wife lamented. ‘Every year of our lives. What is happening to the weather? Is it true that the whole world is heating up? Is that why the monsoon has failed?’
We had no answers, but it seemed climate change was to blame.
The farmer invited us into his house. We were served tea and offered biscuits which we knew must have been purchased especially for our visit – probably with money the family could ill afford to spend.
Generosity of spirit was such a genuine part of the Nepali character.
His two children were thin as rakes, with the telltale distended bellies of malnutrition. They stared at the biscuits with wide, hungry eyes.
‘We’ve had no crop to sell for two years,’ the farmer told us. ‘The children have had to leave school because we don’t have money. If the monsoon fails again, I don’t know what we will do. Maybe I will have to abandon the farm and take the family to Kathmandu.’
We gave the children our biscuits and Tashi took them out to play.
Alex had been quiet up until this point. Now he spoke up.
‘I will pay for your children to go to school,’ he said. ‘And buy you the water pump you need.’
The farmer nodded, too overwhelmed to reply. His wife suggested we pray at the family shrine and Kami got his first opportunity to ring the shrine bell.
We returned to the refugee camp, saddened by what we had seen.
‘We’ve helped one family,’ Alex said. ‘But look at this land, at the thousands of families facing the same situation.’
He gestured at the withered terraces, at the dust blowing from the degraded soil. The water pumps, silent because no farmer could afford the fuel. The children gathered listlessly by the roadsides, too tired to play.
Back at the refugee camp Tashi and I went to work in the kitchens. It felt downright wrong to be peeling mounds of potatoes after visiting the farm – to be in the presence of so much food. In some ways the Tibetan refugees we cared for were actually better off than the Nepali family we had just met.
They had three meals a day. Food flown in on aeroplanes from the USA. Medical care. A school for the children.
But the Tibetans we cared for had a different set of problems. They were in exile from their homeland. Often, they were apart from their closest family members, dreaming only of the day they could return to a free Tibet.
‘You know, the truth is sad,’ Tashi said. ‘No one here is living the life they want. No one.’
Kami had been quiet since our visit to the farm. The farmer’s plight had really affected him. After supper I suggested we take a stroll to the top of the hill that overlooked the camp, the place where Everest could be seen in the distance.
I thought it might cheer him up.
We trekked up the trail, side by side, Kami a little slow but doing well. It was the first time we had walked anywhere together – the Kami I had known before had been confined to his bed.
The air was filled with the fragrant aroma of burning juniper. Many of the camp’s residents burned it to make special devotions. A nightingale was singing somewhere in the forest below the camp, an ever-varied song of great beauty which gave the evening a special charm.
A pack of rhesus macaque monkeys followed us up the trail, chattering and squabbling. They were the scavengers of the camp, hoping to be thrown a scrap of food. The failure of the monsoon had been bad for them as well.
At the top of the rise was
a small meadow. From there we could see Everest, far on the horizon. The air was hazy with grey-blue smoke, so the mountain appeared veiled behind the mist.
‘More mysterious than ever,’ Kami said. ‘It still works a type of magic on me.’
‘Me too,’ I told him. ‘I can’t escape it.’
Kami brought out the shrine bell, turning it over and over in his hands.
‘There is a final chapter to be told,’ he said. ‘The Dalai Lama has predicted it.’
‘A third time on Everest for the shrine bell?’ I smiled. ‘It’s not impossible.’
Kami’s face suddenly lit up. He caught my arm.
‘How about we take it to Base Camp?’ Kami said suddenly. ‘We can build a cairn – hold a puja ceremony. Pray for the monsoon to come back this year. Pray for the people to have food.’
I had to smile at Kami’s incredible level of faith. He truly believed that his idea could change things, that a single prayer at Base Camp could unlock a type of magic that would change the fate of millions.
It summed up his personality so well. His purity of spirit. His inner fire.
‘Do you reckon you could do the trek?’ I asked. ‘Is your body up to it?’
‘There’s only one way to find out,’ he said. ‘I think I can do it, and my body will just have to keep up with my mind!’
‘You’re stubborn enough!’ I laughed.
‘I’m going to talk to Alex about it,’ he said.
Back in the tent, Kami’s proposal created much excitement.
‘It’s a wonderful idea,’ Shreeya said. ‘The perfect way to celebrate your new lease of life!’
‘The gods will be on your side,’ Tashi beamed. ‘They will look down and protect you every inch of the way.’
Alex sipped on his tea for a few moments then sighed theatrically.
‘I had a feeling something like this might happen,’ he said.
He turned to Tashi and me.
‘Want to come?’
Of course we said yes. The chance to get close to Everest again was too good to miss.
For Tashi, it was a chance to explore Nepal in more depth. So far she had seen little more than the refugee camp and the valleys immediately around it. Her parents were a bit nervous about the lawlessness that had spread through the country but they supported her decision to go.
Nevertheless, it felt a bit wrong to be bailing out on the refugee camp when things were so busy. Tibetans were still crossing into Nepal on a daily basis, on the run from Chinese oppression.
‘We have worked solidly without a break for a whole year,’ Tashi reminded me. ‘Three weeks off is fair enough, don’t you think?’
The camp’s director was sympathetic. And there were other volunteers who could take our place. We opened up the storage trunk in the tent and pulled out our trekking gear and wet-weather clothes with all the excitement of children unwrapping presents on Christmas Day.
‘I was thinking about something,’ Tashi told me. ‘About the sequence of events that led to all this happening.’
‘How do you mean?’
‘The lightning strike was where it all began. And if it hadn’t been for that, the Dalai Lama would never have visited you in the tent and seen the shrine bell. Then the photograph was taken and Shreeya happened to see it. They would never have found you if it weren’t for that series of events.’
‘A chain reaction,’ I said. ‘You’re right.’
It was an extraordinary thought. The lightning strike had set things in motion.
We agreed to leave the next morning. Kami and the others were put up at the camp for the night.
Back in my tent, I packed my rucksack and climbed into bed.
It felt strange to be without the shrine bell. The tent seemed empty without it. The bell had been so close to me, my most treasured belonging. I had come to think of it almost as a part of myself.
But it had never really been mine. Kami and Shreeya had given it to me to see if I could get it to the summit of Mount Everest.
And I had not completed that quest.
Kami had always been the true owner.
Now it was about to take its third journey to the mountain.
– CHAPTER 3 –
Our journey by jeep to Kathmandu revealed just how bad things were getting in the countryside. It was nine months since the second rice harvest had failed and hunger was beginning to bite. Nepali families were walking along the highways carrying huge bags of possessions.
‘Where are they going?’ Shreeya asked.
‘Anywhere they can find food,’ Kami replied.
Kathmandu was heaving with refugees, the streets humming with people on the move. Makeshift shelters had been erected on every available scrap of ground. The military parade ground in the centre of town was packed with tents and tarpaulins. People were even living in the middle of roundabouts.
I saw some Red Cross food stations giving out cooked rice. The queues at those were every bit as long as the ones for petrol.
‘People come here to try and find jobs,’ Kami said. ‘But the city is already full. There are no jobs left.’
Kathmandu airport was tense. There were more troops around than normal and even a tank stationed at the entrance.
‘Things are getting stressful,’ Alex observed. ‘Nepal is heading to a dark place.’
The soldiers stopped us. Our tickets were examined carefully and our passports checked out.
When we finally got into the terminal we discovered our flight to the mountain airstrip of Lukla was delayed.
‘A fuel delivery is on the way,’ the operations manager told us.
Bad-tempered mountaineers were pacing the airport terminal, waiting for their Everest dream to start.
Some had planned their climb for years.
Seven hours went by in the mosquito-infested departures lounge. Not a single flight went out. A one-legged man with a tea trolley and an urn did good business on his hourly tour, pouring sweet black tea by the gallon.
Alex was recognised by a couple of American tourists; his high-profile days as a senator still remembered by some.
Just when we were thinking of abandoning our hopes of flying into the mountains, activity began. A fuel tanker was spotted out on the tarmac. I saw the plane pulled out of a hangar, a twenty-seat, propeller-driven veteran, which looked like it was one flight away from the great aircraft graveyard in the sky.
It was Shreeya’s first flight. She clutched Kami’s hand tight as we walked to the aircraft.
‘One of the tyres is flat,’ Kami said with a twinkle in his eye.
Shreeya was praying as the plane taxied out to the runway and she shrieked as we rose into the sky.
‘I’m getting a strange sense of déjà vu,’ Alex said as we gained height and swung towards the mountains. He had been withdrawn in the airport departures lounge, and I sensed he had mixed feelings about the trip.
It was hardly surprising. Alex’s previous Everest expedition with Kami had changed both of their lives in so many ways.
‘I really thought I would never go back,’ he said.
Our destination was Lukla, the fabled gateway to the Himalaya. Landing on the tiny runway has been a rite of passage for Everest travellers ever since Sir Edmund Hillary carved it out of the hillside in the 1960s.
We bumped down forty minutes later, climbing out into the super-chilled air of the mountain town.
Even here the signs of stress were all too evident. We were told a riot had kicked off only the day before, with hundreds of youths fighting against police.
There were scores of military men around and the mood was still tense.
As we collected our baggage from the back of the plane, a huge helicopter came in to land. A great plume of dust kicked up, making us cough and filling our eyes with grit. I saw half a dozen climbers jump out of the aircraft, followed by a young girl dressed in trekking gear. She smiled as she looked out across the mountains; her blonde bunches highlighted by the sun.<
br />
‘I know that girl,’ Alex said. ‘I met her father during my days in politics. She’s Anatoly Kuzkin’s daughter.’
‘Kuzkin?’ Tashi said. ‘The oil guy?’
I was also familiar with Kuzkin’s name. The oligarch was rumoured to be the one of the wealthiest men in the world, certainly the richest in Russia. Oil exploration had made him his first fortune and mining for undersea metals was making him another.
‘She’s a lovely kid,’ Alex said. ‘Despite her father being a monster.’
A large crowd of porters was pushing at the airport gate, causing us to be momentarily trapped inside the arrivals hall. The helicopter passengers were alongside us and Tashi took the opportunity to say hi to the young Russian.
‘Are you trekking up to Everest?’ she asked.
‘I wish,’ the young girl said with a friendly grin. ‘Actually we’re here to look for a man called Dawa. He’s somewhere in this town, we think.’
She gestured to her companion, a sweet-looking Asian woman, who was chatting with some of the airport officials. ‘That’s Anisa. Dawa is her boyfriend,’ she whispered.
Tashi held out her hand.
‘I’m Tashi. This is Ryan.’
‘My name is Zhanna,’ she said. She shook hands with us, her poise quite remarkable for such a young person.
‘How old are you?’ asked Tashi.
‘Twelve,’ she replied.
A policeman approached.
‘You can leave now,’ he said. The porters had been pushed back.
‘Maybe see you around town,’ Zhanna said.
‘Sure.’
She gave us a dazzling smile and left the airport building with a massive gang of porters following on.
‘What do you make of her?’ Tashi asked.
I laughed. ‘A total princess.’
We headed for the centre of Lukla and the accommodation that Alex had arranged. The manager of the lodge met us in the street, rubbing his hands happily, visibly delighted to have a group booked in. He showed us to our rooms, apologising in advance that there was no gas to provide hot showers.
Killer Storm Page 3
