Day 4: Tengboche

14 April 2007
Tengboche, 3750metres, 1800hours

Arrived in Tengboche at 1430, after 5 and a half hours on the trail. The first part from Namche to Panki Tenga is a series of stone steps, uphills and downhills. Panki Tenga is actually at a lower altitude then Namche Bazaar. Although I found the stone steps daunting, especially on descent, I think I'm much better.

After 3 hours, I descended to the river at Panki Tenga for lunch. After that, it was a mixture of switchbacks and long uphils up to Tengboche, which took 2 and a half hours. By the end of it I was very tired as Tengboche is on a ridge up a steep hill. But for most of the uphill I found I could do long stretches without stopping, often able to overtake slower porters with large loads.

I also felt I was not really pushing myself, that I was a bit lazy.

The lodge at the edge where Muha and I stayed the last time was full so I went to one further down. The lodge-owner said that as I was his first guest from the Maldives he would charge me only 50 Rupees (about a fourth) of the room rent. At first I was the only guest, but soon a group of boisterous Indians arrived and completely took over the dining room.

I spent the remaining daylight hours looking over the ridge at the speactacular views. I could see the trail from Namche, as well as the villages on the way. Tengoche is one of the most dramatic locations on the trail and I would love to spend some time here.

Day 3: Namche Bazaar

13 April 2007
Namche Bazaar, 3440 metres, 1630 hours.

Although it's my rest/acclimatisation day, I didn't stay in the lodge. Instead I had quite an adventure. I thought I'd go to the Everest View hotel (3,900metres), the world's highest 4-star hotel, just over the mountain from Namche. But someone directed me to a really steep route up. By the time I was a hundred metres up the narrow ridge, I was too scared to climb down so I just carried on. I wasn't tired in the least but too afraid to move fast. In the end I did make it to the hotel, where I had a pot of tea in the verendah overlooking Everest, Lhotse and Ama Dablam.

Mount Everest seems to have had more snow this year and no longer looks the black pyramid jutting over the Lhotse-Nuptse wall. The clouds, as I sat sipping my tea, streamed past barely 50 metres above my head and I couldn't help thinking how dramatic the scene would have looked on video.

On the way down I decided to detour to Shyangboche, which has an airstrip. It's a longer route but less steep. Unfortunately, the last part of the descent to Namche was over rocks and stone steps. Still, I was back in the lodge before 1400hours, enjoying a hearty meal.

Despite my initial scare, I had a great day and I asked myself if I'd like to live and work here for an year. The answer was a resounding yes.

Days 2: Namche Bazaar

12 April 2007
Namche Bazaar, 3440metres, 1845hours.

I did the first part of the trek a bit slowly because of the innumerable steps up and downhill, but I am pleased to have done the final slog up the steep hill in just over 3 hours. This means I took a modest 5 hours 45 minutes to get from Phakding to Namche Bazaar, more than 3 hours down from last time.

Phakding-Jorsale: 2 hours 30 minutes
Jorsale-Namche: 3 hours 15 minutes

Jorsale, the last houses before Namche, is just beyond the entrance to Sagarmatha National Park, the Everest region, where you have to show/buy your permit. As a citizen of SAARC I only had to pay 100 Nepalese Rupees, whereas other foreigners are charged 1,000 Rupees.

The last 30 minutes were exhausting. I tripped at some point, but nothing too serious. When I got to Namche I was so tired that I could barely walk up the easy steps to Buddha Lodge, where I’d stayed on the previous trek.

Still got stiff legs but am otherwise fine. As is becoming the norm on this trek I had a short nap before going out to look over the edge at the mist. The day started great with brilliant sunshine, blue skies and mountain views, but after noon clouds gathered. You could still see snow peaks through breaks in the clouds and, in Namche, breaks in the mist.

Namche Bazaar has only two thirds of the oxygen at sea level and it is here that most people feel the effects of altitude first. To acclimatise to the elevation gain, you have to spend two nights here.

I have to confess swtichbacking up to Namche I did wonder if I’d do this again. Unlike the previous year, I had no answer.

Homesick for Himalaya

For several weeks now, I’ve been dreaming mountains and wanting to return to the Himalaya. Every evening before going to bed, I find myself re-reading the Nepal guidebooks and notes I wrote during my spring trek to Kala Pattar, Everest Base Camp, and Gokyo, in the Everest region.

Although I kept a blog-journal during the trek (see the April-May entries), the posts were only a sentence or two long, and failed to capture the totality of experience. I often read other people’s journals of this trek, and it’s likely that there are people out there who might be interested to re-trace their trek to the foot of Mount Everest through my accounts.

I am therefore publishing, for the first time, the full notes from my trek.

Every day, I’ll upload entries for a single day on the trek. I hope trekkers and adventurers enjoy reading my journey.

11 April 2007
Rangding, 2,600 metres, 1415 hrs.
I’m in Rangding [see photo], just across the bridge from Phakding, chilling out in an idyllic campsite-cum-lodge. Very luxurious, rooms even have ensuite facilities!

It took me 2 and a half hours to arrive at Phakding from Lukla, the airstrip, and about 20 minutes more to descend and cross the river. If I remember correctly, it took Muha and me more than 5 hours to get to Phakding from Lukla in December 2005, but we did stop somewhere for a cup of tea back then.

So I’m happy with how I’ve done on the first day of the trek. I even found myself singing on the way here, I was so pleased to be back in the Himalaya. But I have to say I still found some of the steep steps downhill quite taxing; they really slowed me down. Also, after 2 hours I did begin to get tired, but never enough to want to stop. When I got here, my legs were a bit stiff. I think the first day on an uneven mountain trail is bound to cause discomfort.

It’s cloudy and somewhat cold, especially inside my room, but the view from the window is fantastic.

It was nice to get off the aircraft in Lukla this morning, and lovely to see Nawang and his mum again (they were in Himalayan Dreams), and to give them a DVD of our film.

The flight didn’t yield mountain views, but just before we landed, I did have a glimpse of the jagged snow peaks through a break in the clouds.

1730hours.

Had a nap and then went for a walk over to Phakding, where I had Tibetan bread with jam and ginger tea. I shared the bread with a shaggy dog. Legs seemed better but I detected a slight pain when I bent my right knee over larger rocks and steps. Nevertheless I did much better in the stroll over the steep bits than I did on the way here.

In 2005, I sat on a stone slab at the end of the bridge, looked up at clouds rolling down the steep hillside and thought about something which at that time had caused me a great deal of unhappiness. But as darkness enveloped the hills, I was able to see a new perspective on the matter.

So this time around, I sat on the same spot again, thankful to the Himalaya for helping me learn to deal so well with what was bothering me.

I haven’t been unhappy about anything for a long time.

Friends

A friend once remarked that I went to the Himalaya because my basic need for intimacy and connection is met not through relationships with other human beings but barren mountain terrain. At the time I was, for some reason, researching the subject of clinical depression, having stumbled on an interesting book called The Depression Learning Path from clinical-depression.co.uk.

Created by people who are not medically trained, the book challenges conventional thinking about clinical depression, anti-depressants, and psychotherapy. But what struck me most was their basic needs checklist, which included taking care of the mind and body; the need for meaning, purpose and goals; and the need for stimulation and challenge. According to the book, a human being needs to have seven of these needs met in order to function ‘properly’.

I didn’t score too badly except in the need for intimacy and connection. But my friend pointed out that intimacy did not necessarily have to be with another person. True, for most this need involves another person or persons, but for some it can be fulfilled by a pet. Mountains, my friend concluded, were my intimate partners.

In the last year or so, however, I’ve deliberately cultivated intimacy and connection with human beings. In the process, I've discovered a frantic world of fleeting friendships, where two-way communication of intimate details with people you’ve just met is commonplace. I’ve also made some surprisingly good friends, people who know more about me than my oldest and closest ‘conventional’ friends. The anticipation of meeting someone new, the thrill of connection, even the pang of parting have been rewarding beyond imagination.

Unfortunately all relationships have an expiry date, a point brilliantly articulated in Hong Kong auteur Wong Kar-Wai’s 1995 film Chungking Express. When that milestone has been reached, moving on is the only option. A mistake made my many people, including myself, is trying to cling on to an expired friendship against instinct, always the best judge in such situations. There's no logical reason not to let go, because someone else is just round the corner. What’s more, feeling nostalgic for the special people in our lives long after they’ve gone is, in itself, an exquisite experience. Extreme caution, however, is recommended where the risk of relapse exists.

I still feel for people who’ve moved out of my life. I also feel for the mountains that I know I will always go back to.

Seattle reviewer rates Maldives documentary among the top two

This is a review of Himalayan Dreams by Jaspreet Bakshi, a software engineer from Seattle, who attended the 4th South Asian Independent Film Festival.

Himalayan Dreams (Rated 5/5)

This was a fantastic short documentary. One of my top two movies from the festival. It was a documentary about contrasts. A man living in Male, Maldives, a tropical, warm and densly populated place dreams of going to to Himalayas where there are wide open spaces, altitude and freezing cold tempreatures. He does go and this is a chronical of his travel.

What made this movie so good was the personality of the main character, Muha. He was the most likable and down to earth guy you will come accross. Yet he has this incredible bigness about him. The film totally captured this and his extraordinary journey as he went from sea level to one of the highest points in the world.

In the movie, he touches on the practical aspects such as the preparation and training he underwent, the bouts of altitude sikness and the logistics of his travel. He also talks about his feelings as he encountered people and landscapes on the way and how the journey affected him.

It’s a great film and I highly recommend it.

Click here to read the whole article.

Mountain photos

Muha is publishing, for the first time, a selection of his Himalayan photos on Flickr. This is to celebrate the planned screening of our film "Himalayan Dreams" in Seattle, USA, on 7 October at the 4th Independent South Asian Film Festival. Muha will post a photo from our Nepal trek every day until Sunday, when "Himalayan Dreams" has its American premiere.