20,000 Leagues Over the Sea (Part III: Coming Home Early)

With a kind of fresh perspective on our trip now that mountaineering was behind us (but all the gear still in our bags) Mana and I made quick work of the Dzongla valley and Cho La, a glaciated high pass. They all said it couldn't be done and they all said it especially couldn't be done if you had a late start, long lunch, and don't leave Dzongla until 1pm, but we were still determined to do the whole pass in one day. Well they were right. At dusk we descended rocky scree after traversing the glacier and watching a top-three sunset, Mana unable to find his headlamp. The talus field below was so littered with Honda-sized boulders that it took us at least an hour and a half in the dark to find somewhere to pitch a tent. That night Mana made it clear that he was headed straight down the Gokyo valley to the airport the next day, while I had been simmering a plan to take our last week and try finding Tibet somewhere to the north. It wasn't on our map but on the plane into Kathmandu I met a European fellow who told me in detail how he planned to visit the border from a pass in the north, methodically get lost, and then accidentally wander into Tibet. I thought that trekking to the border would be an appropriate send off for our trip, until I woke up in the Gokyo valley with Brendan's bronchitis. Maybe better prepared I would have done it, but going so far north would have put me short on time, I would have been carrying all of Mana's extra food on top of my 60 lbs, and the bronchitis really took the wind out of an already exhausted boy. I'm 20 years old and almost indestructible, but this time I wasn't, so for a day I hung my head in defeat and shuffled behind Mana as he hustled south.

Cruising into Lukla Mana and I literally saw the two-prop mountain plane land that would take off about ten minutes later, with us in it. Right then I was thinking about how good a plate of fried chicken momo's would be, but after a week I'd be remembering how good the Dal Bhaat was in that smoky, crowded, one room Sherpa lodge where the floor was cleaned with a rake and the cardboard behind the yak dung stove occasionally caught on fire. Funny that when squashed into patties yak dung is pretty unoffensive, and I swear that on fire it even smells sweet.

The scale of the Himalaya is like nothing that words or pictures could do justice, its like going out west for your first time after seeing only hills in Vermont and New Hampshire, your eyes don't quite know what to make of it. And Everest is neat, it's definitely the biggest black rock I've ever seen, but man Ama Dablam, the Lhotse face and Cholatse are some of the most humbling and mind blowing things I've ever seen. Ama Dablam is actually almost symmetrical on four sides like it has four jagged, Gothic flying buttresses coming off at right angles to each other. That said I don't think I would go back, not anytime soon at least. It was crowded, clearly set up for tourists with money. And the most interesting cultural experiences I had were with other trekkers from around the world because the local Sherpa are so conditioned to tourism that the authenticity is lost. I don't think there was anything enlightening about our trip to the Solukhumbu, but I don't think you can chalk it up to an eccentric vacation either. So call it another profitable experience in mountaineering and in life, as long as I get some good Facebook photos out of it.

I've learned that carrying a 50 lb. pack for three weeks at 17,000 feet is as much work as it sounds, that I know just enough Nepali to be dangerous if someone will listen to me without laughing, and that the next time I'm mountaineering I might bring a full length toothbrush but leave the half kilo of yet-to-be-eaten kidney beans and two meter-long aluminum snow pickets at home.


Lastly, a quiet prayer for October 8th and three empty seats.