MAY-A-4
EARLY MORNING TAKEOFF FROM KATHMANDU,
CHECKING THE ACTION PACKER AT THE MANSALU HOTEL
FOR OUR LATER RETURN;
FLY THROUGH CLOUDS ALONG THE ROOF OF THE WORLD
TO LAND ON THE NEWLY PAVED STEEP LUKLA LANDING STRIP,
CHECKING INTO THE HIMALAYA TEA HOUSE,
AND A TOUR OF THE EXPANDED, BUT NOW DESERTED AND MILITARIZED VILLAGE
OF LUKLA
TO SET UP OUR CLINIC IN THE MARKET PLACE
AND MEET NGUEYIN AND VISIT HIS REFURBISHED PHC,
WHILE AT A RESTING PACE AT OUR NEW TWO MILE ALTITUDE
START-UP FOR TWO WEEKS ON EVEREST APPROACH
May 5, 2002
I can hardly believe the changes in Lukla. They have paved the steep airstrip I used to run on each morning! There are many new Guest Houses and Tea Houses, and the one I am staying in actually has an electric outlet that turned the laptop charger light green when I plugged it in! (They have a small—6-Watt—hydroelectric power generator up the mountain.) They have a bathroom with a flush toilet and a shower fixture with a hot water tap!
OK, before you get too excited and want to send down for room service and dry cleaning while plugging into your high speed Internet Line in your room, calling me a candy ass for drilling the troops on what kind of delectable hardships this trek would entail, let me set a few things straight in the catalog of these new amenities in the “new Lukla.” First, the hot water tap is just a tap; turning it as far as you would like produces no water, neither hot nor cold. The new buildings are all handmade from stonecutter masons’ finest efforts, but they are empty because they were prepared for the rush of tourists to this most attractive asset in Nepal—the Everest Trek Route-- just before the twin events of 2001 that dried up the tourist flow to a trifling trickle. And the marvels of electricity, end outside the Guest Hose at the time and place I am in just now, since the Clinic had a solar panel, from which the solar battery was stolen last year, and there is NO telecommunications in either Lukla nor Namche Bazar, since the political decision to cut off all communication here lest it be used to facilitate Maoist terrorists’ attempt to control the outback of the countryside in the mountainous regions in which they have the upper hand. The Nepalese army has its own communications and this would give them a “leg up” over their quarry, who seem to be surging forward in the ascendancy, given the autodecaptitation of the royal family—a portrait of all five of the members that hangs before me in the lodge, all of whom were lined up in June on adjoining funeral pyres for cremation after the one of those five killed them all with a spray of automatic gun fire.
Now about the army and the rumors of the paved airstrip at Lukla. Those rumors are true. The airstrip is now paved, but still as steep, capable of receiving and sending off nothing but the De Havilland Twin Otter STOL’s which brought me in and which are the principle means of delivering tourists here for the country’s economic life blood—at a fast turnover rate of forty five flights per day. And the double hit—and tourism plummeted, stranding the builders of the Guest Houses, and limiting the facilities advertised to just charades of what might have been. So, it looks modernized, and in many ways it is.
What is modernized is militarized. There are 156 military police in Lukla, and they are patrolling the village, which had only 146 houses three years ago, mostly Sherpani, and now has exploded to four times that number, mainly tourist accommodations, with most of the people being non-Sherpa. The army patrols these houses, so that every Guest House has to have a complete listing of the names and nationalities and histories and occupations of each person staying there and if there is some doubt, they come back in the middle of the night to waken and re-check the identity of everyone here. Two months ago, the “control tower” which I had entered and met the traffic controller last visit as he had “controlled” the dirt airstrip as I ran down and up several times each morning, then came into his tower control room to see him moving wooden blocks as a simulator for incoming planes, for the few flights before the rising clouds and lowering visibility closed down operations.
That much has not changed; the clouds and weather determine how many flights could come in if there were passengers enough. The big Russian turbo helicopters that would come and go from Giri, the last road base, no longer do, since they are not delivering freight (which was then and is now) expensive to do. It costs only 70 rupees per kg (less than a dollar at 77R per $1.00 US) for a porter to carry the heavy commodities up from Giri, climbing the mountain to Lukla in 10 days with 80 kg (almost 200 pounds) on a tumpline around his forehead, arriving with cases of wine bottles, bottled water, kerosene, and all foodstuffs, which is far cheaper to have this painful portering than the helicopter carrying it. Besides military helicopters have taken over that part of the traffic. Two weeks ago the control tower was attacked by the Maoist terrorists (who knows from where or why they come—can’t they see what has happened to Tibet under Chinese communism, and they are trying to get land reform in Nepal to be like the worker’s paradise next door?) But with the advent of a captain and 156 soldiers in uniform patrolling with rifles, there is a curfew at seven PM by which time I would be inside anyway with no artificial light that is useful to see or read by.
Nothing can be done that might being interpreted as interfering with state security, especially since the current monarch is of dubious lineage and with little public loyalty. When asked what she thinks of the new king, Nimi says, if they ask me, they will kill me, so I do not say anything at all.”
THE LAUNCH OF OUR MOUNTAIN HIMALAYAN HABITAT
FOR THE NEXT TWO WEEKS,
GIVING OUR CREW A HOLLOW, HEADACHY DROWSINESS ON ARRIVAL
IN LUKLA TO REPLACE THEIR GIDDY EXCITEMENT
AFTER THE PLANE TRIP IN TO THE LANDING STRIP
We got up at five and out at five thirty after I packed the Action Packer full of my stuff and much of the others’ things to save here for the return to Kathmandu. If it is clear, we may take the flightseeing excursion around Everest, but not if we have seen it clearly in the summiting of Kala Patthar, which is the more honest way to see that mountain, which is even more clearly than when one is standing on the Kumbu Glacier on its slopes. We got to the airport at Kathmandu, with even more of the security regulations about not driving to within anywhere near it, having to schlep our bags, for which reason, I am lad to have trimmed down to a daypack and a duffel bag which contains my sleeping bag and a coat with a vest or two for cold weather up higher on the mountain.
As we took off into the clouds I had explained what we might see as we flew up and into the Roof of the World. Most were skeptical that we could see anything at all, until we broke through the cloud layer, and saw the jagged line of white mountains along our left, including Ama Dablam, Lohtse, Nuptse and Everest. The most thrilling site for all to see was the approaching inclined plain of the airstrip at Lukla as we flew into it with a rush and an immediate back compression of the props opf the De Havilland Twin Otter.
As before, there off loading was fast, and the army kept us moving to avoid any time lost, as the gear and duffel was tossed out and the engines stayed revved for an immediate takeoff, with a roar and a downhill hustle to get airborne before the clouds came in or any other planes would be approaching to make the same controlled crash landing.
We scurried up the hill to the Himalaya Lodge, all built of hand dressed rock blocks stacked in perfect rectangular fashion with mortar less walls. It is directly above the airstrip and below the PHC clinic that I had toured with Nguyein last time. In the distance up the valley we will be trekking is Kunde Peak with a large snow and ice cap, and behind us is Tetra Peak and behind it further obscured in the clouds is Meru Peak. The sun is out, but there is a lot of cloud being generated and the late morning remained sunny as we walked slowly through the high altitude piercing sun. We were getting finished with our tour when the clouds generated by that much sun-heated rising air turned to rain and we were dashed with a rain shower that happened again in the evening.
I had cautioned the troops to beware of any exceptional exertion on this first day at two miles up, and they thought that I was a wuss for denying them the chance to climb something nearby. After our tour of the village and the local lodge that is the annex of the Himalaya Lodge which will be our clinic, we came back up the hill for lunch and that is the last they were heard from for over two hours, each saying, “I don’t know what is wrong with me, I never take a nap in the middle of the day” Yawning and fighting their way through the light air not having ever encountered a rapid arrival at a high altitude where they will have to be working and walking for the next weeks. I tried to be slow and deliberate, and did lay down after setting up the clinic’s pharmacy with some of the drugs that were shipped by MAP accompanying Bruce Bonner, and a duffel of samples of good stuff carried by Jennifer from Indianapolis. As soon as we had set up on the picnic tables in front of the Himalayan Lodge, I snapped the pulse oximeter on my finger and found that I was 93% O2 Sat and a pulse of 71—considerably better than the others since I had been up in the Himalaya two weeks longer than they. But everyone had a bit of a headachy hollow feeling after only walking around the village and visiting the monastery and they children’s project in which the kids make Thangka paintings to sell to support the school in which they learn English and Tibetan Buddhism and its emblems. There was also a WWF (no, not the World Wrestling Foundation, but the World Wildlife Foundation) project of planting Nepali pine trees to reforest the amount that has been cut—so a seedling nursery is here. On return from the tour, I met several people who knew me from the last visit, and I heard several invitations to “chai”. We stopped at one of these from a Sherpa costumed apron-wearing matron who served us tea. Behind her was a picture in tow royal Nepal family portraits, one in formal clothes and the other in full military uniforms. The five are the same as were laid out to be incinerated on the river bank I had visited yesterday, including the crown prince in his brooding formal portrait –the “all Nepali family.”
My GPS reads LUKL = 27* 41.08* N 86* 44.06 E This puts Delhi at 510 miles at 278*, KATH is 61 miles @ 272* (due East) and HOME is 7,699 miles @ 347* (over the north pole.) So, the ten days the porters travel up from Giri, with a lot of effort for 70 R’s/kg we have flown in about forty minutes to rise two miles at about $120 US round trip from KATH.