by Dom Joly
Robin warned me about altitude sickness. It is a problem above 6,500 feet and could affect anybody, especially those who don’t acclimatize and climb too quickly. You could be an incredibly fit marathon runner and it still could affect you whereas ‘someone like you’ – Robin looked at me slightly disparagingly – ‘might totally get away with it; you just don’t know.’ He recommended that I take a pill called Diamox twice a day. Although not actually designed to help with altitude sickness (it’s for glaucoma and epilepsy) this thins your blood and climbers have been using it for ages. Robin said it would help but warned me once again that you never knew how altitude was going to affect you. If he was trying to freak me out then it was working.
I said my goodbyes to Robin and, as he walked away, wondered whether I should have mentioned my intense loathing of walking uphill. It was too late, however: he’d disappeared into the Kathmandu night.
I certainly wasn’t going to find a Yeti sitting around the hotel. They did have a rather pathetic footprint in a rock in the garden, which a sign claimed ‘had been found when the hotel was being built . . .’ Yeah, whatever . . .
I sat down in the lobby to read a bit of the only book I could find on the Himalayas: the one written by Michael Palin to accompany his TV series. The book was, like Palin, very charming and enthusiastic. I’d met Palin once at a show we were both doing in memory of Peter Cook. He was utterly charming, like a rather lovely uncle whom you could be fairly certain wouldn’t abuse you.
I was pleased to see that he’d also stayed in the Yak and Yeti. I started to read about his director being kidnapped by Maoist rebels while they were trekking but couldn’t really concentrate as there was a pianist playing ‘Baa-Baa Black Sheep’ in the centre of the lobby. He then moved on to murdering a ropey version of ‘Let It Be’. Why are there always pianists in bloody bars? Nobody wants them there. It’s like music in lifts. Who decided that lift muzak could be either pleasant or necessary? Were ‘they’ scared that, left alone with our thoughts between the first and third floors, we might find it all too much and blow our heads off with concealed handguns?
Maybe lift muzak accounted for the biggest news story to hit Nepal since Everest was conquered? (George Mallory, the English climber who disappeared on Everest in the 1920s, hated the term ‘conquered’.) In 2001 the crown prince shot dead the king and queen and seven other members of the Nepalese royal family before killing himself. Perhaps he had been in a lift with no muzak? More likely he’d had to sit in the lobby bar of the Yak and Yeti listening to this God-awful pianist. Whoever was to blame for that tumultuous event, it had led to the deposing of the monarchy and the establishment of a democratic system that was currently still finding its feet. The poor Maoists who kidnapped Michael Palin’s director had lost their mass appeal as they found themselves to be just another potentially corrupt political party. Being a guerrilla was so much more fun.
I got to a section in Palin’s book in which he describes asking his Sherpa about the Yeti. The man told him that Yetis liked to drink so locals attempted to catch them by leaving out dead dogs full of alcohol. Unbelievable: Bigfoot loves menstruating women and the Yeti is an alcoholic.
The pianist was now playing ‘Delilah’. It was definitely time for supper and bed. My adventure started the following day and I wanted to be in good spirits. I had an early start and reading about Palin’s altitude sickness was making me nervous again.
I joined the seemingly endless hordes of Buddhist monks pigging out at the hotel buffet. It appeared that, like their Benedictine counterparts, Buddhist monks don’t do the ascetic thing. They like the good life. I opted for à la carte as I can’t trust myself with buffets. Humans, in my experience, when faced with unlimited food, will just keep eating until they can’t walk. It’s the inner hunter-gatherer instinct within us all. This is a basic truth as relevant to Buddhist monks as much as to porky comedians from the Cotswolds.
I slept well and left the hotel at five in the morning, having left my main suitcase with the concierge for the duration of my trek. I had managed to get what I needed into a smallish rucksack. A very tiny man, flirting with the frontiers of dwarfdom, picked me up and drove me through the deserted streets of Kathmandu. Occasionally the headlights would pick out groups of Nepalese police deployed in strategic corners and covered in protective riot gear. My tiny driver was perched on two big cushions that just about enabled him to peer over the dash at the pockmarked road ahead.
The domestic terminal was a place full of exotic-sounding airlines like Buddha Air and Yeti Airlines. Yeti Airlines were sadly in the process of changing their name to the less interesting Tara Air, which was a shame. I was pretty sure that this had something to do with the terrible crash they’d had at Lukla’s Tenzing-Hillary Airport, the very airstrip we were now headed for. It happened on 8 October 2008: there was very heavy fog but, for some reason, the pilot still tried to land on the tiny (1,500 feet long and 65 feet wide) runway. He missed and smashed into the cliffs below, killing all eighteen passengers. The pilot was the only survivor. I was flying on Tara Air and hoped that they’d done more than just change their name. As my Sherpa guide, Mingmar, joined the scrum for tickets I realized that I was feeling rather out of control. I worried about how I would fare with the altitude – Robin had said that 99 per cent of people suffered from it and around 20 per cent were totally incapacitated. I opened my bag and necked my first Diamox. I felt a bit wimpy. Even at our maximum height, at Khumjung Monastery, we would be at roughly 13,800 feet -only half the height of Everest. I have a neighbour in my village back home with the unlikely name of Kenton Cool. He has apparently climbed Everest loads of times. I should have popped in to see him before I went, except I would have probably felt even more of a wimp.
The plane was a Twin Otter – a name that I presumed represented the total power of the two tiny engines. There were twenty of us crammed into the thing: five trekkers (obviously one of them being a Kiwi: international law forbids any interesting journey taking place without a Kiwi) and the rest red-cheeked locals. The plane took off very steeply and, as we flew higher, we bounced around as though we were in a fairground ride. The cockpit door was wide open and I could see no sky through the windscreen, just monstrous snowy peaks that seemed to loom above us even though we were miles up in the air. I thought of Chang, Tintin’s friend whose plane crashed high in these mountains. Despite Hergé having never travelled, his depiction of Kathmandu was remarkably accurate. I hoped that this would not extend to this plane trip.
We landed on the sloping runway at Tenzing-Hillary It was eight in the morning and cold. We were at 9,350 feet and I almost immediately felt a little dizzy and disorientated. I wasn’t sure if it was altitude, hypochondria or nerves. It was not unlike the feeling I’d had when I wandered into the I’m a Celebrity . . . camp. Then, as now, I’d found myself in a desperate private battle to retain control. There was another bunfight for the luggage as the departing passengers were bundled on to our plane and it rocketed off down the runway to be flung into the abyss by the ramp at the end. They didn’t muck around up here. The total turnaround time from landing to take-off was about seven minutes. I presumed they didn’t want to risk a build-up of ice on the wings.
We walked out of the one-room airport and climbed a path that ran above the runway and then down into the village of Lukla itself. Mingmar signalled that I should follow him into a guesthouse, where he was warmly welcomed. I had some cheesy scrambled eggs and hot coffee and read a rather alarming leaflet on ‘Acute Mountain Sickness’. I was still definitely feeling a little light-headed but I hoped that it wouldn’t get worse as the symptoms listed were ‘extreme nausea, vomiting, unconsciousness and death’.
Cheery stuff. We had a four-hour walk ahead of us to where we would be spending our first night in a village called Monjo.
The secret to trekking at this altitude, said Mingmar, was to go very slowly. This was absolutely fine by me and I assured him that he would get no speed out of me whatsoeve
r. The beginning was rather nice as it was downhill to the valley floor below us. The only problem was that I was acutely aware that everything I descended I had to climb back up again.
The first half-hour was pretty easy-going and I just took in the scenery. Locals had to carve steps out of the steep landscape to enable them to grow anything. These descended like a curious set of giant stairs to the raging river far below.
The sun came out and it got rather hot so I immediately started shedding the layers and layers of protective clothing I had donned that morning in Kathmandu. I asked Mingmar if Yetis were ever seen this low. He replied that there were occasional sightings but that most occurred above 13,000 feet. He told me about a girl from Khumjung who had been attacked by a Yeti and survived. She had said that it smelt really bad. It had ripped out a huge clump of her long hair and thrown her into a nearby river. She had played dead and the Yeti left her alone and killed three of her yaks as she watched out of her half-closed eyes. Mingmar said that she would probably talk to me but that she would want money. I supposed that it was a way to earn a living telling tales of being attacked by the missing link. One of the unifying themes in the creatures that I’d gone after was that they smelt bad. Was being hygienically challenged a must for any self-respecting monster? It crossed my mind that the smell might not actually come from the monster but actually emanate from the witness, their body switching into automatic fear-response pong mode.
Mingmar told me that there were two different types of Yeti: a yak attacker and a man attacker. I asked him which type this one had been as it seemed to have done both. He said that it was a yak attacker – otherwise she would not have survived.
We walked on and on down the path, slowly descending towards the azure-blue river roaring beneath us. Every so often we’d come to a stupa that tradition dictated we had to pass on the left. Most had prayer wheels that you spun as you passed: ‘for clean soul’, said one sign. There were also enormous rocks decorated with multifarious symbols; most were money rocks and were supposed to bring good luck.
Keeping a steady pace behind us was another trekking couple – a crusty-looking Australian and his German companion, who seemed to be constantly weeping. We stopped for a breather and they did the same, with the German girl ripping off her Converse shoes and attempting to puncture several nasty-looking blisters. They were headed for Everest base camp, a full seven days’ trek away. I was highly doubtful that they were going to make it.
In one village we passed a group of four British-Asian trekkers. They did a double take as I went past and then, when I was a hundred yards away, one of them bellowed at the top of his voice, ‘Hello! No, I’m in Kathmandu and it’s rubbish . . . !’
Technically this was stupid as we were nowhere near Kathmandu, but that’s British geography skills for you. I ignored them and walked on as they all creased up in peals of laughter. Mingmar was very confused and I tried to explain that it was from a TV show I’d done but I don’t think it got us anywhere.
Going downhill was OK except you really had to watch your footing. It was the occasional uphill parts that really took it out of me, and this was the easy day. I’d been getting fairly fit in the previous months, having bought a running machine, but the foot I broke in Argentina was still giving me big problems. The thin air left me breathless and my foot was starting to ache; this was not a good sign but I cracked on and we reached Phadking in two hours, which was fairly good going. We stopped for lunch and I decided not to have a beer but went for a Coke (sugar energy) and the rather wonderful option of yak and chips. It was pretty good – a little stringy if I was being picky, but tasty.
We sat around for an hour chatting. I asked Mingmar what he thought my chances were of seeing a Yeti. He smiled and said that everything was possible. I was already starting to smell like one and hoped that this might attract one to me. We set off again and soon crossed a long and rather wobbly suspension bridge to the other side of the ‘Seven Rivers Join’ river (it possibly lost a bit in translation). I noticed that every Sherpa who passed by had a long red line on the top of their cheeks as though wearing rouge. I worked out that, because they had such angular faces, the strong Himalayan sun hit their cheekbones hard. This wasn’t going to be a problem for me.
We started walking along the left bank of the river and I really began to understand the sadistic logic of the topography. If the path went down for a bit, it inevitably started going up soon after. After four hours of walking my legs were starting to feel like dead weights and my broken left foot was screaming in agony. I had to stop and indicated so to Mingmar, who pointed to some flat stones overlooking the river. We sat and I quizzed Mingmar more about the Yeti.
I asked him whether he had ever seen one. He laughed and said no. I asked him why he was laughing. Did he not believe in the Yeti?
‘No, no, Eti he exist – just I no see him.’ He said he’d heard the Yeti howling and made an echo-ey, throaty sound that reverberated across the valley to demonstrate. ‘When we hear this we burn juniper branches – Eti no like.’
I’d seen villagers burning pine all along our path through the valley but this juniper Yeti-preventer tip was good.
‘Also Yeti kill my father’s yak.’
This was excellent stuff. I enquired further. They’d had three yaks in the family and one went missing. He and his father went into the mountains to look for it and they found it dead.
‘It was rip apart, in two pieces. Eti kill yak.’
I nodded and asked him if he by chance had any photos of this.
‘No, it was before mobile phone with camera. Now everyone have camera. My cousin he take photo with mobile phone of Yeti footprint in snow at 13,000 feet.’ He drew a huge footprint in the sand.
I asked him if it could have been a bear or a yak footprint.
He said, ‘No: this very big.’ This was promising. He said I could talk to his cousin in Khumjung. I was stupidly excited.
We moved on and every step was torture now. I kept having to take more and more frequent breaks. Mingmar was really sweet and pretended that he was exhausted, but he was a rubbish actor. Finally, after five and a half hours’ walking, he pointed to a village high up on the hill above us.
‘Is Monjo – we sleep there.’
I could hardly breathe, both with the excitement of the news and because I was near death. We came round a bend and the path snaked steeply down back to the river where a little bridge crossed it. On the other side I could see the path wind suicidally up an enormous hill towards Monjo. It was the final push but I had hit the wall and it took me a good twenty minutes and several breaks before we got up the hill and finally walked into town. Mingmar pushed open a little gate to a sweet guesthouse. We’d made it.
I felt unbelievably relieved. The crusty Aussie and his weeping girlfriend (who was no longer weeping) were already there as they hadn’t stopped for lunch and had pushed on through in a supreme effort that made me reassess their abilities to reach Everest base camp in Converse trainers.
We greeted each other like warriors back from a battle and agreed to meet for a beer a little later. I found my room, a sweet little prison cell with MDF walls and a rickety bed. I flopped down and immediately started to worry about the next day. The path up to Namche Bazaar was straight up the mountain for a good three hours. I reckoned I’d make it in about eight if I didn’t start getting ill from altitude sickness. My left foot had swollen up and I could barely get my boot off. This was not looking good. I had to get up to a serious altitude to find this Yeti scalp. I wasn’t going to have another disappointment like the one in the Congo. I limped over to the main building and ordered a beer. It was a real Ice Cold in Alex moment as I downed the cool, lovely liquid in one go. The Aussie came in and, despite sounding like a New South Wales sheep farmer, turned out to be British and had only been working in Australia for two years. This was a man clearly desperate to change countries, as there was zero sign of his English upbringing. They were travelling on a shoestrin
g and I felt very spoilt. His German girlfriend, Carina, soon joined us. She seemed in much better spirits and appeared to have forgotten her earlier unhappiness. I had some Eccles cake (my secret drug of choice for the trek – I’d got it from an outdoors shop in Cirencester. It’s basically pure sugar and gives you a real kick) and I gave them one for the trip. I also gave them a couple of Diamox as I had way more than I needed. They clearly had very little money and they reminded me of what Stacey would have been like when she trekked here in the early nineties. They’d already been for a wander round the village and said that I shouldn’t bother. There was nothing to do or see.
‘Just a place renting a horse to anyone who doesn’t want to walk. Can you bloody imagine?’ The Aussie/Brit looked disgusted.
He asked me something else but I wasn’t listening any more. A horse? That was the answer. I’d rent a horse. I wasn’t here to bloody trek; I was a monster-hunter and I needed to get to where I was going as fast as possible. Also I knew that the less exertion you went through the less chance you had of getting altitude sickness. Also my foot was really hurting and . . . I knew I was just making excuses but all I wanted to do was to go and rent the bloody horse. I was too embarrassed to broach the subject with the Aussie/Brit and German so we had supper together in the communal room. A wood stove was giving out great heat and a couple of cute little cats wandered about stealing our food.
I had a second culinary first in the same day: water-buffalo curry. It was good, but the yak and chips just edged it. After supper I slipped out of the room and wandered down to where they’d said the horse lived. I found the lady owner and we did a bit of bartering. I managed to get a horse to take me up to Namche Bazaar for forty pounds. It was the best money I would ever spend. I returned to my (by now freezing) room and got into the first of my two sleeping bags and fell asleep almost immediately.
