Killer Storm

by Matt Dickinson

  ‘Supplies have been disrupted,’ he said. ‘The riots have messed up everything.’

  Tashi and I went for a walk before lunch. We quickly got the measure of the place, the slightly squalid Main Street – a glorified alley, in fact – that ran the length of the town.

  The atmosphere was a bit strange with so many soldiers around, but shopkeepers still tried to entice us into their stores:

  ‘Map of Base Camp, sir?’

  ‘You need sun hat, madam? I have very cheap sun hat!’

  We found a shop selling fake mountain gear, direct copies of famous brands at a fraction of the normal price.

  A handful of Polish mountaineers were browsing the racks.

  ‘Without Everest climbers we would be finished,’ the storeowner said. ‘They come after avalanche. They come after earthquake, during the civil war. Even now in the middle of the famine.’

  Everest was ever enduring, it seemed, and powerful enough to attract climbers even in times of turbulence.

  ‘No point giving you the menu,’ the lodge manager told us when we gathered for lunch. ‘Three quarters of the items are not available.’

  ‘No pizza? No burger? No milkshake?’ Kami laughed. ‘How are we supposed to trek to Base Camp without them?’

  ‘There’s curry and potatoes,’ he said. ‘And that’s it.’

  It was actually delicious.

  That night we googled Zhanna’s father on the iPad.

  Most of the links were predictable, profiles in business magazines and brief mentions in the gossip pages of British newspapers.

  One of the links caught my eye:

  ‘Russian oligarch denies Indian Ocean damage.’

  ‘Anatoly Kuzkin’s mining operation in the Indian Ocean is causing an environmental disaster of an unimaginable scale. Ripping millions of tons of metal from the sea floor may be changing the chemistry of the entire Indian Ocean.’

  ‘That must be illegal?’ Kami asked.

  ‘International waters,’ Alex said. ‘He can do what he wants.’

  I read on: ‘The indiscriminate plundering of the seabed is bad enough, but the effects of Mr Kuzkin’s operation do not stop there. Nickel released into the water is causing a vast plume of Methanosarcina microbes to flourish right across the northern Indian Ocean. This organism, a prolific producer of the greenhouse gas methane, is widely believed to have caused the Permian-Triassic extinction event 250 million years ago when ninety-six per cent of all marine species and up to seventy per cent of all land species were wiped out.’

  ‘Profit,’ Tashi commented bitterly. ‘All he cares about is making money.’

  A map accompanied the piece, showing the extent of Kuzkin’s mining exploits in the Indian Ocean. The scale of it was truly staggering, stretching from Kenya right across to India. The Russian had a massive fleet of specialised dredgers out there, working round the clock to rake metal nodules off the sea floor.

  The article finished with a plea to sign a petition urging the authorities to put a stop to Kuzkin’s enterprise.

  Stray dogs were snarling and fighting outside our window that night. Sleep eluded me, partly because of the effects of the altitude, partly from raw excitement for the trek.

  ‘You know what?’ Tashi stretched out on the bed and yawned deeply.

  ‘Tell me,’ I said, cuddling up to her.

  ‘The higher the altitude, the happier I become,’ she said.

  She was asleep in seconds.

  I stayed awake for a while, thinking about Kuzkin. It seemed incredible that one man could cause so much damage.

  I wondered if his daughter knew the truth.

  The trek began just after dawn. Our little team gathered at the end of the town, expecting to complete the passport checks and paperwork that would allow us into the Everest national park.

  ‘The office is closed,’ a passing yak herder told us. ‘The workers haven’t been paid for six months so they’ve gone home to their villages.’

  It was the same story everywhere. The gradual collapse of government systems.

  ‘Let’s go anyway,’ Alex said.

  We walked through the concrete arch that marked the start of the Everest national park. The air was crisp, a hint of frost sensed with every breath.

  I felt a real spring to my step; it was great to be following in the footsteps of the famous 1953 expedition that had put Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay on the summit. My previous climb with Tashi had been on the other side of the mountain, the Tibetan approach from the north.

  So all of this was new.

  The trekking was exhilarating but hard. The first part of the trail to Base Camp goes against the lay of the land, crossing valley after valley by way of steep cols. Hours of lung-busting effort are required to climb up the dusty tracks to the high points, followed by high-speed, knee-crunching descents back to the valley floor.

  Shreeya was not enjoying that first trek. Tashi and I saw her run for the bushes to be sick.

  ‘You OK?’ Tashi asked.

  ‘Just adapting,’ she said, her face horribly pale.

  I was also adapting. To the lightning scars on my shoulder. The rucksack straps bit hard into the tender new tissue, causing me to grit my teeth.

  ‘Put on more padding,’ Tashi urged, inspecting the damage. We strapped on more bandages, cushioning the pressure.

  The suspension bridges were every bit as thrilling as I had heard they would be, swinging high above twisting canyons, creaking alarmingly with every step.

  ‘Don’t go on the bridges when there’s a mule train crossing,’ Kami warned us. ‘You can get butted over the edge if they freak out.’

  Here in the highlands, with access to mountain rivers and streams, the famine was less intense. The meltwater from glaciers was sustaining the people even though it had barely rained for two years. The terraces were alive with barley and spinach and potato crops.

  ‘This is like Shangri-La compared to the zone around the camp,’ Tashi said. ‘The people here are blessed.’

  Later, we stopped to share some tea from our flask, sitting in the forest and enjoying the flash of colour as bee-eaters flitted amongst the trees. The air was dense with the sweet smell of nectar.

  ‘So different to Tibet,’ Tashi laughed.

  I thought of the stark beauty of Tashi’s homeland. The vast grasslands and glittering lakes; the hundred-mile views and ever-busy wind.

  If the monsoon continued to fail, would Nepal go the same way? Become a desert land like Tibet?

  Later that afternoon we found three Australian trekkers, sitting by the track.

  One of the women was sobbing.

  ‘Just to warn you,’ her friend said, ‘we were robbed last night. A gang of bandits burst into our lodge and ransacked our rooms.’

  ‘Seriously?’ I asked. I had never heard of such a thing happening in Nepal.

  Kami and Shreeya looked at each other, absolutely horrified.

  ‘Anyone hurt?’ Alex asked.

  ‘No. But if we’d resisted, things could have got nasty.’

  ‘We just want to go home,’ the woman said. ‘Get out of this place.’

  ‘How can this happen?’ her friend asked. ‘I always thought Nepal was a peaceful, welcoming country.’

  ‘It is,’ Kami said, his voice thick with emotion. ‘The people are kind. But underneath are problems and stresses like anywhere else.’

  Tashi flashed me a look. We knew all about those.

  ‘There’s no one in charge any more,’ Alex told them. ‘So it’s going to take a while before things calm down.’

  ‘One of the bandits said something strange,’ one of the women told us. ‘He said, “Killer storm is coming”. What do you think he meant?’

  Alex frowned. ‘I don’t think he was talking about the weather.’

  There was a silence while we pondered his words. Then Kami spoke: ‘Contact my friend in Lukla,’ he told the ladies. ‘They will make sure you are safe.’

  He gave t
hem the name of a good friend, and instructions on how to find them in the town.

  ‘Can we help you with anything else?’ Alex asked. ‘What do you need?’

  The Australian women used our mobile phones to call home and borrowed a thousand dollars from Alex.

  ‘We’ll wait in Lukla until we hear things have calmed down in Kathmandu,’ they said. ‘Thank you so much for your help.’

  We watched them walk away. Three disillusioned, scared trekkers whose Base Camp dream was over.

  ‘I don’t want to be ashamed of my country,’ Shreeya said. ‘Those bandits should be punished.’

  ‘The local people won’t let them get away with it,’ Kami said. ‘If the trekkers stop coming they will starve, just like the people in the lowlands.’

  That night we stayed in an ancient lodge in Monjo. The earthquake had warped the beams of the building so that the whole place felt twisted out of shape. The wooden window surrounds were also bent, enough that the wind whistled through the gaps.

  Shreeya didn’t join us for supper.

  ‘She keeps being sick,’ Kami said. ‘It must be the altitude.’ He took her some potato soup but she couldn’t eat it.

  Tashi and I had a room right next to the alley – the main drag through the hamlet.

  Local boys raced horses late into the night, hooves clattering on the cobbles as they shot down the hill.

  When the boys finished their reckless races, a couple of local tomcats took up the challenge of keeping us awake, howling indignantly at each other then screaming with rage as they fought.

  ‘It’s quieter in Kathmandu,’ Tashi complained, pulling a blanket over her head.

  The trek continued at a more urgent pace, the mountain scenery becoming increasingly spectacular with every twist and turn of the valleys.

  I found myself childishly excited at every new peak we saw.

  Pumori. Lhotse. Nuptse.

  I spent hours poring over the map, wanting to know and name every summit.

  ‘There’s a view of Everest later this morning,’ Alex told us.

  We gathered in a forest glade, happy to have a break from the one-step-after-another routine of the trek.

  ‘It’s just the tip you can see,’ Kami said. ‘But spectacular anyway.’

  It was a stunningly clear day. Perfect visibility allowed us to see the top section of Everest’s South-West Face.

  ‘How many miles away are we, as the crow flies?’ I asked Alex.

  ‘Maybe thirty,’ he guessed.

  It was an amazing thought. Even at thirty miles’ distance we could easily notice features on the ridge. I could make out the famous Hillary Step – the twenty-metre-high notch bitten out of the ridgeline – which was a last test on the way to the top.

  We took dozens of photographs. Just as we were about to head off, the Russian girl Zhanna arrived with a Nepali man we hadn’t previously met.

  ‘I thought you weren’t going to trek?’ Tashi exclaimed.

  ‘I know,’ Zhanna sighed. ‘My father is going to go crazy. But now I’m here I can’t resist going to Base Camp. This is Dawa by the way. We found him! Anisa had to stay back in Lukla – she wasn’t well.’

  We nodded a hello.

  Zhanna turned, her gaze fixed on Everest. I saw a tear slip down her cheek.

  ‘It’s beautiful,’ she said. ‘Almost too beautiful to climb.’

  She stood there for ages, transfixed by the vision of Everest. In the end, her friend had to pull her away.

  Namche Bazaar was a great landmark to reach, the most famous of the market towns on the way to Everest. We arrived mid-afternoon, footsore and tired after a three-hour climb up the valley wall. Now, standing at a high vantage point, we had the whole of the town laid out before us, the colourful buildings contouring up the sides of the hill.

  ‘Namche wouldn’t exist if it weren’t for Everest,’ Alex said. ‘The whole thing has grown up to service trekkers and climbers.’

  It was true that the town was a kind of mountaineers’ paradise, designed to give weary climbers everything they wanted, from pizza houses to health spas. Hot chocolate with whipped cream was on offer in many cafes. Travel agencies advertised treks to far-flung parts of Nepal.

  We found a general store and stocked up with trekking food. Salted peanuts and dried pineapple strips were the favourite choices.

  ‘My earnings are down seventy per cent this year,’ the store boss told us. ‘If things carry on like this, I’m going back to India.’

  Tashi was delighted to find Tibetan traders camping in the lower part of the town, men and women who had trekked over the high passes of the Himalaya, carrying huge loads of lapis and jade jewellery, clothing and cheap Chinese hooch.

  ‘I can catch up with the news,’ she said. We sat with the traders in their ramshackle yak-hide tent and shared butter tea. The Tibetans were cautious to begin with, perhaps suspecting Tashi was a Chinese spy, but once they got the measure of her they were happy to talk.

  ‘The Chinese are controlling the high passes like never before,’ one of the Tibetan women said. ‘We have to cross the mountains in the night; take more risks.’

  I thought of the terrible incident that had occurred some years before; a group of Tibetan pilgrims shot at by a Chinese patrol as they crossed a high pass.

  ‘They are even spying here in Nepal,’ another told us. ‘Government officials posing as traders. They collect information on the numbers of Nepali troops, the locations of army camps.’

  Tashi told the traders her story, how her family had been targeted by Chinese officials, their ancestral grazing lands cordoned off for mining, their herds condemned on the flimsiest of excuses.

  ‘We had to escape into Nepal,’ she concluded. ‘Make our lives here – at least for the time being. But we’ll be back living in Tibet as soon as we can.’

  The traders nodded. They knew the mindset of refugees. They never regarded their exile as permanent. The longing to return to their heritage, to the crisp air and rolling hills of their Tibetan homeland, would never diminish.

  ‘You will go back,’ a lady trader with a gorgeous smile told Tashi. ‘We all will. When our land is our own once more.’

  In the minds of these courageous people there was no doubt that Tibet would, one day, be free again.

  That first night in Namche was the night we learned just how serious things had become down in Kathmandu. Like many lodges on the Everest trail, our accommodation had a widescreen TV mounted on the wall of the dining room.

  Normally, Nepali TV showed Bollywood movies, or repeats of classic football matches. That night was different, with images of buildings in flames, mobs running in the streets.

  ‘Where’s that?’ Tashi asked. ‘Syria? Iraq?’

  ‘It’s Kathmandu,’ Kami said grimly. ‘They’re destroying the government buildings.’

  We watched, astonished and dismayed, as the rioting gang took control of the streets.

  Flames filled the screen. The biggest of the temples in Barkhor Square was on fire. The elegant wooden structure that had stood for a thousand years was now burning down on prime-time television. Yards away, a tear-gas grenade spewed out white smoke.

  A police jeep drove at crazy speed into a barricade of burning tyres.

  ‘There’s so much anger,’ Kami said sadly. ‘The people can’t take any more.’

  The television footage continued for a further ten minutes or so then cut abruptly. A mob of men appeared briefly in front of the camera then it flickered to a distorted fuzz of lines.

  ‘They’ve invaded the television studio,’ Alex said. ‘We won’t be seeing any more from Kathmandu for a while.’

  We talked late into the night, wondering what magical intervention could save Nepal.

  ‘How about the Dalai Lama?’ Tashi said. ‘The country needs someone to lead it out of this misery.’

  It was a wonderful thought. Beautifully simple. And totally impossible to imagine. Nepal’s northern neighbour, China, wou
ld fight tooth and nail against such a move. The spiritual leader of the Tibetan people was public enemy number one for the autocratic leaders of Beijing.

  ‘We are a rudderless ship,’ Kami said. ‘Heading for the rocks.’

  Kami and Alex took us on a special trek the next day, to see a monument to a friend who had been with them on their previous Everest trip.

  A huge yak train laden with expedition barrels was lumbering ahead of us, their bells clunking rhythmically as they climbed.

  Alex checked his altimeter.

  ‘We just reached 4,000 metres,’ he said.

  He didn’t need to remind us. Our bodies were feeling it. Each of us had the constant headaches that come with altitude adjustment.

  The landscape changed dramatically as we trekked up the side of a hill, tropical forests giving way to alpine meadows and high grasslands carpeted with tiny flowers.

  Later, on a high pass next to a glacier, we found the beautiful stone memorial, one of the many dozens of shrines that line the route to Base Camp.

  I saw the expression on Kami’s face change, a look of intense sadness passing across it.

  Alex bit his lip. I could see he was trying to hold it together.

  It was a monument to Sasha, the journalist who had accompanied Alex and Kami on their first Everest expedition. She had been killed in an avalanche while saving Kami’s life.

  Sasha had uncovered the truth about Alex’s cynical attempt to lie about reaching Everest’s summit, and although Kami and Alex had since become reconciled, the emotional wounds were still raw.

  Kami gently brushed snow off the metal plaque that bore Sasha’s name and date of birth.

  ‘This is the first time I’ve seen it,’ Alex said.

  He stood next to Kami. Both of them had tears in their eyes.

  ‘She was special,’ Kami said. ‘I think of her every day.’

  ‘You wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t for her,’ Alex added.