Hello Adventurers,
ADVENTURE JOURNAL II
Annapurna Trek
October 6-20, 2003
It is hard to predict the weather though everyone tries. When asked what
clothes to take to Nepal, I always lean on the warmer side -- being warm, that
is. I'd rather be hot than cold, personally. But while trekking in the
Annapurna region of the Himalayas a few months ago in October, it was downright
really HOT! I wasn't going to let anyone know I was sweating so much -- my pants
were sticking to my legs. I wanted nothing more than the short shorts and
revealing tank tops the culturally insensitive trekkers wore.
Because there are no department stores on the trail, the locals must go a
long way to shop for fashionable sportswear. Instead someone in the family,
maybe a grandmother or an aunt, is usually skilled in sewing. Thus family
clothing and local traditions are born. Another option is to wait until the man with
the traveling store comes by. Often he carries clothes, jeans and shirts
made in China. These men usually have "lungies" as well, two meters of cloth
worn around the waist like a skirt. At my sweatiest moment, I wanted to find a
lungie.
Pemba, our local guide and my business partner, spotted a traveling shop
owner with a closet-load on his back. Yes, he had lungies. I bought one without
trying it on. How could I go wrong? At the lodge that night, I tried it on.
Yuck! I looked like a cow with two meters of stiff material crinkled like
colorful wrapping paper around my waist. How can this exact same fabric look so
beautiful on the local women? I should face it. I'm an American and ethnic
dress doesn't really go. I ended up wearing the lungie on my head like a
turban with part of it hanging down over my shoulders. It made a nice barrier
against the intense sun while on the trail.
During this trek to Jomsom and Muktinath, I was with Linda, George and
Baerbel. Baerbel is originally from Germany and now holds the record as my oldest
trekker at 66. There was a group of Israelis who stopped her on the trail to
ask if they could take her picture. "We are so proud of you," they said. "We
cannot believe you are doing this." They were in awe of her age, and were
impressed she was smiling and so beautiful at 12,000 feet. Some tourists take
pictures of the mountains, the villages, the villagers, the donkey trains, the
water buffalo and the bridges. Others want a picture of Baerbel. We were
proud to be trekking with her. She was famous!
The next person to sign up for this trip was Linda. She and Baerbel shared a
meditation class, and Linda was eager for adventure. Growing up, Linda had
traveled a lot, but now as an adult with a fast-pace career, a certain freedom
was calling. This trip would be the first of many to come, she vowed.
Linda kept us and our porters and Pemba entertained with her Yoga classes
almost every morning. The porters and she were out there, in the grass, in the
garden, on the cliff, along the trail, in the goat shed, stretching and
balancing like the wind, the rain and the mountain pose too. I captured a few
classes on video tape. Beautiful. Pemba was especially flexible, holding one toe
high in the air behind him while the other arm soared like Superman over the
valley! Linda was fun and a very good and patient teacher. She and I shared a
room at every lodge and became great friends.
George, Baerbel's husband, was the last to sign up for this trip. He had
been in a car accident almost a year ago, and his rib cage was almost crushed.
Baerbel was close to canceling her trip. Instead, George signed up for the
tour too! And he ran the trail twice and three times, back and forth, holding
their new digital camera, snapping unbelievable pictures at every turn, in every
village, of every face. He talked to the locals, truly engaged in the magic
of the mountains and the spirit of Nepal.
At one rest stop, I looked up to see George carrying a HUGE and heavy load
while the porter it belonged to took a break. This porter was not one of ours,
as we do not load our porters down like the local businesses and some big
trekking companies do. George asked if he could try the load and the porter
smiled. Carrying large objects long distances over Himalayan Mountains should be
an Olympic sport! The Nepalese would blow the world away.
I want to carry large objects long distances around Ann Arbor just to show
Americans what the Nepalese do everyday! George was curious. We were all
curious and in disbelief at the loads we saw on the trail. A line of 20 men
carried five 2 inch diameter thick metal cables that were 50 feet long. The weight
was incredible. The cables were for a bridge that would be built to span one
of many raging rivers. These men are the truck drivers of Nepal. Instead of
18 wheels, try 20 pairs of legs and lots of muscle and sweat!
As this train of man-power passed on the trail, one man switched his portion
of the load from his right shoulder to his left. It seemed a huge effort to
keep in step and to shift the weight at the same time. But he then looked up
at me and smiled, totally unbothered by the cumbersome, tedious, worm-like
cables. These men were more than impressive. Everyone was in step with code
words for stopping and starting, marching along, transporting that cable to the
river's edge. Someday I hope to watch them construct such a bridge, using hands
alone, no wheels, no backhoes, no tall cranes! That's art.
George was also seen carrying a 200 liter water tank for about three steps
before he had to set it down. He was determined to understand the life of the
Nepalese. This HUGE and HEAVY plastic tank, though empty, was the kind of load
that must get caught in tree branches along the trail. How do they do it?
However they do, they smile, especially when tourists pay attention, admiring
them for their courage, their humility and their strength.
Then George was missing. Where did he go? We looked back to find him
chasing a man who carried a load of chicken cages. Each cage had one live chicken
inside, maybe 12 in total! George had to have a picture of that. Hopefully
some will be on my website soon.
We made a good team, trekking, hiking, up and down, up and down, then up
3,000! stone steps. Yes, the next day we were sooooo sore! I've never been sore
like that before, serious soredom, like unbearable pain especially when
climbing DOWN stairs. For the next few days, we were moaning in the mornings before
breakfast, before hitting the trail. In the evenings too, we were aching and
groaning. Turning in the sleeping bag was painful too! Did the pain stop
anyone? NO way!
After breakfast we groaned over to the trail and were off like super jocks,
hammering those muscles, up and down incredible terrain. After the first few
steps, we were warmed up and fine again, and the rest of the day's hike felt
OK. Being mesmerized by our surroundings at every second helped too. Something
kept us going, something deep.
The views abounded. It was a spectacular green and hearty jungle the first
few days. The insects were screaming, shrieking in a constant high pitch. We
could hardly hear each other speak. And at any space in the tree branches, if
you looked closely, a giant spider web would soon come into view and then the
giant spider!
We were constantly enchanted by the local people and getting to know their
rich culture. We trekked through time, back in time, to a simpler world, where
young children carried grass on their backs, walking like bushes themselves.
Baerbel spotted these three girls sitting on a rock and asked them if she
could take a picture. They were young, maybe 3, 5, and 8 years old. The littlest
had a little load. The oldest had the biggest. It was plain long grass
collected probably for the family water buffalo. These girls were adorable, the
three of them in different sizes, scurrying down the trail. What a picture
that would be!
Our aches and pains were trivial and nonexistent once on the road. So much
to see. We covered ground where several native groups lived. Nepal boasts 62
official ethnicities. These mountains are tremendous. Transportation and
communication are slow and in some places non existent. These ethnic groups have
their own history. Each has survived secluded and alone, until the modern
day and fancy bridges. Each developed differently with 62 different languages
at least, different ethnic dress, religions, customs, food and architecture.
Imagine the challenge the Nepalese government has.
I was intrigued by the architecture along the trail. When the houses changed
their style, it meant a new local group. Houses in one village had ornately
carved wooden windows, another had corn drying in the rafters. Some villages
had houses made of stone, others of mud, so many flowers in one village, and
stacks of firewood on flat rooftops in another. As we trekked deeper, higher
and further north along the trail toward Tibet, we were soon in Mustang, the
region of Nepal that is part of the Tibetan Plateau. It seemed we were crossing
not only mountains, time and space but cultures and nations too.
The New York City Marathon is a trip around the world, through several global
neighborhoods, Little Mexico, Italy, the Hasidic Jewish quarter, Harlem.
This trail in the mountains was nothing like New York, but it was a similar
cultural journey. Each step was a short flight, from one set of ethnic norms to
another, from one universe to the next.
The natives smiled. They enjoyed the tourists, us, the foreigners, who came
from so far away to see their backyards, the views from which don't fit in
photographs. Glorious mountains in the distance everywhere, above the hanging
laundry, above the cabbage patch, beyond the neighbors chimney, over the next
cliff, and at the end of the raging river valley.
We trekked through the forested hill sides, up to the very toes of the WHITE
Himalayan peaks, towering in the sky like incarnate gods. Pemba said,
"There's the Dhaulagiri Ice Fall." Dhaulagiri is the seventh tallest mountain in the
world. It seemed up close and personal once he pointed it out. A pair of
binoculars would put you in and among those ice blocks. In slow geological
motion, its glacier was falling down that rock face. Pemba said, "Before this
trek, I had a job working on a Dhaulagiri expedition." Then he said, "Two weeks
ago, one man died right up there."
Dhaulagiri was a sight, massive, rounded on top, with an incredible and wide
ice fall pouring off its shoulder. Coming up the cobble stone trail, we
approached the village of Kalopani, and it was just like Oz! I almost saw a face
in the snow and ice covering the mountain, looming over this little innocent
village. The green rain forest was now gray and black and white, rocks, snow,
glaciers. Not far away, people were testing themselves up there in a dangerous
place, pushing themselves to their limits and to the highest summits.
"Someone died," Pemba said. And we couldn't forget that.
Pemba said another man on the expedition was sick, probably altitude and
hypothermia combined. He had lost consciousness, and it was Pemba's job to get
him down A-S-A-P. Pemba was one of four Sherpas handling this Japanese man. It
must have been easy to imagine he was a dead man, a heavy load in the shape
of a body, still and lifeless inside the hypothermic wrap. I learned about
these things in my Wilderness First Responder (WFR, 'Woofer') course. I always
carry the manual, just in case. Maybe the man was in a coma. The Sherpas had
to maneuver the body from camp III down to a helicopter FAST. This took the
entire day. The man was still breathing.
Pemba said they came to a crevasse, a split in the ice on the ice fall. The
crack was deep, the kind that has no bottom. Pemba said he slipped and fell
-- just at the wrong moment. It was a miracle. He landed on a ledge about 12
feet down. Though I have never seen Pemba afraid nor can I imagine him
panicking, he said he was scared to death -- however not so much from falling. When
he called for help, one of the others refused to come. It was too dangerous,
better one death than three, four or five!
Instead of leaving Pemba in the ice fall forever, another Sherpa stepped to
the edge. He anchored himself with ropes, hoping the ice would not fail. He
lowered a rope and pulled dear Pemba to safety.
Such situations are all in a day's work for Sherpa climbing guides. Pemba
and friends managed to get the Japanese man to a helicopter and a hospital in
time. Unlike his teammate, this man would live to see his family again. He
survived because Pemba and others put their lives at risk. That man is lucky.
And I am lucky to have Pemba for a friend. If I haven't said it already, Pemba
is amazing.
Heather O'Neal
Of Global Interest LLC Adventure Travel
Ann Arbor, Michigan
(734) 369-3107
www.ofglobalinterest.com
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