EBC Narrative Chapter 1

To Sum it!

A visual narrative of Everest Base Camp trek Rajinder Arora

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To Sum it! © 2016 Text and photos Rajinder Arora

‘Sometime the peak is not the summit.’

ISBN: 978-93-82613-01-5 Rs. 2,000

Digital and print copy published in India by ISHTIHAAR 511 Surya Kiran, 19 KG Marg, New Delhi 110001, India.

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Contents

Everest is a dream 6 Aazadi 10 Thamel - the hip locale in Kathmandu

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Reaching Lukla. Day 1

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Starting from the outpost known as Lukla. Day 2 Lukla–Phakding

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First night on the trail. Day 3 Phakding–Namche

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Namche: Lego block ensemble. Day 4

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From one monastery to another. Day 5 Namche–Tengboche

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Tengboche Monastery. Day 5

65

Playing Tunga at Digboche. Day 6 Tengboche–Digboche

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Imza Valley. Day 7 Digboche–Imza Valley

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The highest memorial ground. Day 8 Digboche–Thukla–Lobuche

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At the doorstep. Day 9 Lobuche–Gorak Shae

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E-Day. Day 10 Gorak Shae–Everest Base Camp

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Snowed out on May Day. Day 11 Gorak Shae–Kala Pathar–Pheriche

160

Wishing the clouds away. Day 12 Pheriche–Namche Bazaar

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Amid Lego blocks. Day 13 Namche–Phakding

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‘Why go back at all?’ Day 14 Phakding–Lukla

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Sunrise over Nupla. Day 15 Lukla–Kathmandu

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Swayambhunath. Pashupatinath. Garden of Dreams. Kathmandu. Day 16

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Bhaktapur - the old city. Day 17

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About this and that Prepare yourself. Backpack. Smile.

216

Children

218

Teahouses 220 Cameras. Mobile & internet connectivity. Yak or Dzo

224

Food. The Weather. Don’t get sick.

226

Porters and guides

228

Suspension bridges

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Everest Base Camp - Kala Pathar - Khumbu Glacier 21 April – 8 May 2016

One of those times when you want to be footloose and fancy free all over again.

Govind Pant Raju

Rajinder Arora

Arun Singhal

Ngawang (Nawang) Sherpa

Tashi Phunstog

Dipesh Kumar

Surya Kulung

Everest is a dream Ten years of brooding! Who else could be in a bigger inertia but me - a destination, a country, a place, a mountain, a trail was calling me all through - year after year, plans were made but something or the other kept me chained to the heat and dust of the city. Planning, just planning, was all I did. Reading more and more, seeking more info on the trek and the mountain that had become an ache, a dream unfulfilled. Years were passing, body was ageing, limbs were getting slow, lungs were being poisoned each day in polluted surroundings but there was a tiny flame flickering somewhere inside and I carried the hope.

I couldn’t have died without doing it.

I was obsessed with anything Everest trail... one day, some day, even I wanted to be there... a panoramic poster of the mystical view of mighty peaks from Kala Pathar has adorned my basement study for over a decade now. Mystique is a part of high mountains, amazing and beautiful seem so small and short of the real indescribable meaning.

I will not be the first one to trek to Everest Base Camp, thousands of trekkers, climbers, mountain & adventure lovers have done it before, for many, many years. Sherpas, porters, cooks, traders, yaks, mules and many others do it a few times every season to earn their bread.

Everest is a dream, many like me live, sometime carry it with them and pass on to the other life. For me it was ‘the one thing’ that I wanted to do.

For me it was new and I also wanted to live it... for myself, see it, feel it, smell it and take it to my innards, go through the rigours... not just read about it or see it in films nor just hear 6

it from great climbers, I wanted to be there with the big one... touching its rocks, walking over its moraines and glaciers, peeping into the crevices, swallowing the dry cold air, feel its rarefied air tearing my lungs.

Having met or heard in public talks the greats like Edmund Hillary, Reinhold Messner, Capt MS Kohli, HPS Alhuwalia, Santosh Yadav (first Indian woman to summit twice), Bachendri Pal, Rita Gombu, Col N Kumar, Phu Dorjee, Chandra Prabha Aitwal and Love Raj Singh Dharmshaktu (the two with whom we climbed Nanda Kot) Junko Tabei, Wanda Ruzwig and Magan Bissa is nothing short of awe inspiring. None of them ever said it was fun...

There are adventure companies and Sherpas who tell you if you are in good health, have followed some sort of exercise regime, have the will to do it and have the required amount of money... they will take you to the top of Everest... ‘yes you can also climb’, or they will make you climb, not for fun but for passion. For the same one hundred and fifty thousand rupees one could have if not a lavish but a decent holiday anywhere in Southeast Asia. Crazy for someone to be spending it on getting exhausted each day and making your body slog day in and day out for 15 days, sleeping in wretched cold nylon sleeping bags, not having a bath for two weeks, cleaning your bums with cold wet tissues when every bodily orifice contracts, perpetual Khumbu cough not leaving your chest till a week after your arrival back home.

What do adventure enthusiasts get in enduring extreme hardship of the climbing up and down, crossing high altitude passes where the knees buckle

and the ankles wobble, extreme cold, dry winds and deadly UV in sunlight that burns the skin in hours and days, the oxygen deficient atmosphere where lungs are ready to burst with every step, where, by the evening your backpack seems like the a monster riding your back.

What is it? Is it really adventure? Is it fun? No, it is the love for mountains, it is that passion for those beautiful snow capped or rocky peaks, the pristine beauty, the silence, the smell in the air – it is like being in the arms of a beloved, spending every moment in pure bliss.

I wanted to enjoy that bliss, I wanted to walk the same trail that hundreds of great climbers have done over the years, visit every village through the Solukhmbu valley, see every peak around change colours from morning to evening, see the stars pop over my head on clear nights, hear the wind howl, rub my freezing knuckles after I have washed hands in glacial melt flowing down from the great wall extending from Lobuche to Ama Dablam.

The roar of Koshi (in India) stilll rumbling my ear drums, the azure blue sky that I had forgotten since my last trek is all around me, gorges and caves, pine forests with their peculiar scent when the cones and their spikes rot in rain or dew soaked soil, rhododendrons of all hues and colours in full bloom, blossoms, the birch (bhoj) trees with their barks peeling and falling like feathers, the wilderness, higher valleys swaying like drunken men to the intoxicating scent of bushes, undulating bugiyals (pastures on upper reaches) extending for miles, spires jetting out of mist covered tops, clouds playing with

LUKLA

2,883m

PHAKDING

2,663m

NAMCHE

3,440m

TENGBOCHE

3,998m

PENGBOCHE

3,860m

DIBOCHE

4,417m

PHERICHE

4,240m

THUKLA

4,620m

LOBUCHE

4,930m

GORAK SHAE

5,160m

EVEREST BC

5,380m

KALA PATHAR

5,552m 7

peaks games unknown to me, ever changing shapes from Aladin to dragons competing with Himalayan crows (with yellow, red and white beaks) and black Himalayan kites floating high above unflapping ... It is impossible to hold your sight in one direction or on one thing, it is risky very risky to be admiring a peak and walking without looking at the track under your feet... mesmerised you can walk off the trail, the ridge or the escarpment.

Every bend, every turn, every valley is a ‘View Point’, like hundreds of art galleries on view at one time. Camera is a necessity but a pain, one just can’t resist capturing every scene that one passes by - shooting every detail

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that you come across. Eyes squeak in bright sunlight but you want to behold everything. The nearness of the mountains so tempting that you feel like running up and touching them, each ridge, each col. Crevassed glaciers, with pinnacled seracs protruding like tiny inverted cones and ice overhangs shock you with their very size and closeness.

Silence is something that stays with you through the days and nights... one doesn’t want to talk or to listen to anything other than nature, unless it is your guide pointing you to another new peak, hiding behind the one in front. Wish one could write about each step one had taken, each boulder and rock that one came across, each

bridge that one crossed. The joy of following the trail that is somewhere in your dreams still.

Eight weeks of hard training, walk, jog, push up and juicing up all limbs was worth it. The first steep descent immediately after Lukla tested the knees and the first steep ascent before reaching Namche tested every other part of living me. I am happy I passed with flying colours (literally), the calf muscles were so hard that I didn’t even know where my legs were taking me and the lungs felt so light as if they were capable of a double marathon.

Crossing the 5,000m barrier made me realise it was all worth it and that my body is still capable of doing it and possibly taking a bit more.

If you haven’t trained it will be very difficult to walk both up and down hill, with possibility of pain and blisters appearing on first or second day itself. Mind you, age is no factor here – it doesn’t matter if you are

young or in your fifties – even young people need to train for this trek. For some youngster a trail becomes a race track, sorry it is not, just take it easy, keep your pace as you breathe, pant and feel your lungs bursting.

had started. I was stunned because he was doing uphill, a local man, still he would stop every ten steps, catch his breath and proceed with a smile. For me the lesson had come calling in less than an hour. I knew how I was going to do it. No matter what, I am not rushing and killing myself.

Recounting a trek is never easy, in fact it becomes very difficult with each passing day as one settles down to city and home life - but that joy what I call anand stays with you for years.

Anand that can’t be quantified like temperature, height or distance, wish there was a universal measure.

In a tangible sense, it is difficult to comprehend what I got from this trek and what will stay with me for times to come.

What I am attempting to do here onward is to relive those days, possibly each step, each moment. So here I go.

Take your time, it doesn’t matter if you stop every twenty or thirty steps, let your body get used to it slowly, there is no rush to reach the next camp site, no one is waiting for you there and you aren’t going to miss lunch or dinner nor are you going to miss out on a first prize. Everest Base Camp trek, or any trek for that matter, is not a race. Anyone trying to go fast is missing out on what it’s all about.

Look at the photograph below, I saw this paralytic man walking uphill with crutches on the very first day as were going downhill from Lukla to Phakding, barely an hour after we

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The first page of my trek diary reads the following: ‘“Aazadi” ...Kanhaiya’s call to action on my mind as we leave Delhi. It was going to be Aazadi and the call to action all the way.’

This trek is dedicated to one of our dear friend Rajendra Nath Rastogi, who is not among us any more.

Have stepped out for a trek after nine years. This is the first time I will be taking a plane to reach the trail. In all earlier cases it has always been a bus or a train followed by a van or a car. Old bones would need to relearn a few tricks and absorb the rigours to come. With me on this extra-ordinary journey are two old trail friends - Govind Pant Raju from Lucknow and Arun Singhal from Vidisha, close to Bhopal in Madhya Pradesh. The three of us having done many an expeditions and treks together, besides a few with Govind only and a trek of the lifetime to Kailash and Manasarovar with Arun some thirty years back. Govind joined me two days before in Delhi, while Arun joined us at Delhi airport on 21st April.

Each carrying a duffel bag and a backpack. There was an undercurrent of nervousness. We were like 14 year olds running away from home without telling the parents.

Anxious to board and get away as soon as possible.

Day 1 Delhi–Kathmandu. 21 April 2016

10.20 am. Waiting at the airport is very boring. A cup of coffee and the urge for post-caffeine smoke pushed me to the smoking lounge, where, standing next to me was a French couple, the man (Alexis, picture on left) wearing a weird kind of pendant in his neck. I go closer for a clearer look and guess what, it was the musical instrument called Morchang which I had seen being played by manganiyar musicians from Rajasthan and, which our son Shashank also plays.

Couldn’t resist asking him to play it for me. A video recording of the same is embedded in digital version. So, this was the musical beginning to our trek.