Everest Circuit Rerouted III: Kathmandu

Thursday, 10 October 2013 06:40 Hrs (Kathmandu)

I cannot remember a time since I slept so soundly. My head must have barely touched the pillow before I was out. I cannot even recall processing the evening’s events except to wish I had the energy to record it in this journal, but that the day had been too long and my roommate was already asleep and I wanted to be as well. It came as no surprise then that when I did first awaken, it was 05:00 hrs local time (10:15 EST), a solid 8 hours later. Presently I am enjoying the buffet breakfast that reminds me greatly of Thailand with a hunger better suited to lunch.

Already I am considering taking a dose of Gastrostop, the truly amazing Nepalese dinner last night turning in my abdomen. Expected, to say the least, and something best reigned in now. Eating fruit for breakfast will not help but as with Thailand, their pineapple and lychees just seem so much sweeter than our own. As for that dinner, it was had with all 7 of us adventurists and our Nepalese leader, Meet.

...

So it is now 18:28 hrs and I am seated in the Fun Cafe located in the hotel’s lobby only it is dinner and no longer breakfast, and I am seated here on the opposite side. I have taken a moment’s respite from the group before we fly out tomorrow morning either at 06:15 hrs, or as soon as visibility allows. I am finally satisfied that I am as close to my 15kg weight restriction for that flight as I can comfortably be, relieved that for 2 or 3 dollars (all ‘dollars’ here are in USD) there is a 1 to 2kg buffer. I do not believe my roommate had truly comprehended the flight’s weight restriction. She is presently reorganising her gear, after her partially filled kit bag was still 12kgs. Mine will be 10.3kg at the outside, which I am pleased with.

The group is reasonably diverse, as ever a group of 7 can be. I am perhaps the youngest by a month. The newly weds are 30, while the two female friends appear to be perhaps 10 years older, more in speech than in their countenance. The only solo male traveler is similar again while the other solo female traveler is perhaps late 50s. A pleasant and friendly group, as earliest signs can tell. I imagine we will become all intimately familiar with one another’s ticks over the next three weeks.


(Postscript: It is a shame that I did not record more about my first experience in Kathmandu. What with trying to recover from our flights and a day of serious sightseeing before we flew out again for the mountains, there was little time that could be dedicated to my journal. Some things made a lasting impression not easily forgotten, however and it would be a loss not to record them now. Nepal was in the middle of a religious holiday when I arrived and the sheer press of people in Kathmandu was unlike anything I had ever experienced.

The city smelled of dust and exhaust fumes but in October at least it was far more pleasant than the persistent odour of sewage or spoiled food as encountered in Patong or Bangkok, Thailand. There were vehicles and scooters everywhere and I mean EVERYWHERE. While drivers stayed to the left of great concrete bollards down the centre of the arterial roads, there was no observation of traditional vehicle lanes. Cars and vans and scooters and motorbikes and brightly painted trucks from India all clustered in together edging past one another with only centimetres to separate them. Horns sounded continually, not used as the chastisement intended here in Australia or abuse, but just to let another vehicle know that there was a vehicle passing and not to change their course lest they side-swipe them. In the countryside where the speed limit was a generous 60kph, vehicles would use their horn when signaling their intent to overtake and asking the driver in front if it was safe to do so. In Kathmandu, however, the traffic was too dense or the road to rough to travel any faster than 20-30kph. In many places the bitumen was eroded by great gaping holes and oftentimes there was no sidewalk to speak of, foot traffic forced to share the road with the cars and bikes. I assure you that I skittered about very aware of the vehicles around me and lack of dedicated pedestrian crossings except, perhaps, for the police or military directed traffic crossing immediately outside Thamel, Kathmandu, the major market place walking distance from my hotel. The press of bodies within the market streets compared with the road traffic without. People swarmed everywhere, Nepalese and foreigners alike. Market streets were a single car width apart and you were forced up onto shop steps to give way to the vehicles that rolled past.

It was during my second day in Kathmandu that we witnessed the Hindus cremating their dead beside the river, their backs to the Fred Hollows Cornea Excision Centre, the deceased's family wearing white robes. The smoke was cloying and sweet as it swept across us. Upstream, Nepalese bathed in the river water under the shadow of Hindu fertility temples. Yogis posed for photos in exchange for rupees. There was so much colour. Hindus worshipping at the Pashupatinath temple across the river were adorned in bright robes that caught on the gentle breeze. While we were permitted to wander around the fertility temples and other Hindu religious monuments, as non-Hindus we were not permitted inside the sacred temple of Pashupatinath. The occasional Braman cow or bull could be seen wandering around but not nearly so many as might be expected of a predominantly Hindu city.

Across Kathmandu in Boudhanath, we wandered around our first great Buddhist monument, the Great Stupa. We would see many more stupa in the weeks to come but none so grand as this. Still, we did not yet know to keep our right to the monument and to the prayer wheels that existed at its perimeter. The whitewash was bright in the noonday sun in spite of the haze that we saw on the horizon, and the gold shone. From the very apex, we knew there to be a lotus flower though we could not see it then, not even from the fine vantage point where we lunched,our wallets lightened by the tourist purchase of mandalas (Buddhist paintings) and singing bowls. It was a wonderful cultural immersion, chaotic and colourful and exotic.)

Everest Circuit Rerouted II: In Transit

Wednesday, 9 October 2013 07:20 Hrs (Singapore)

Gate 54, Terminal 2 of the Changi Airport in Singapore is a cheerfully noisy place notwithstanding the early hour local time. Children and adults alike chatter excitedly and laugh, although from a stolen glance one could make the reasonable assumption that the more animated patrons of Changi are, by and large, not congregating here waiting for a connecting flight. The stony-eyed, more dishevelled patrons like myself are scattered throughout and we are quiet or even downright mute, but who could expect more of someone into their 26th hour of wakefulness with nary 2 or 3 hours light drowsing to rest. I possess hardly the cognitive function to keep myself awake and it is only in fear that I succeed. Fear of the unknown. Of falling into such a stupor that I miss my connecting flight. Of losing my documents, my phone, my hiking boots. The latter are tied to my pack, a lumpy pillow for my head upon an even lumpier bed of hard unforgiving chairs. And it is ever so amusing this weary, dull but still present excitement and nervous anticipation. For I am excited. And I am ever so nervous, but determinedly so.

The reality of it all did not strike me until I was through Australian Customs. It was the same for Thailand last year. I was purchasing last minute items for this trek right up until 21:00 EST before my flight which was scheduled for 01:05 EST the following morning – substituting gear that I had for technically superior and lighter options, equivocating on that damn camera tripod issue – and still the whole trip existed to me as little more than a fanciful dream. I was so engrossed in the motions of preparing for it that it had not yet become real to me. And then I had cleared Customs and the grin on my face grew to such fantastically foolish proportions because I WAS ON MY WAY!

For now, however, I am waiting until my wristwatch reads 08:20 Hrs and boarding can begin. It will be, then, only a few short hours until Kathmandu, Nepal. The dream of my adult lifetime: who knew that it would one day be a distinct possibility instead of the dream forever unrealised by physical, structural limitations. My cheeks are burning and my eyes are dry. My skin stings where I touch or rub it, especially around my eyes, nose and mouth, and I long only for a shower. But yet, I am so excited also.


Wednesday, 9 October 2013 15:15 Hrs (Kathmandu)

The utmost enormity of the Himalayas cannot be understood from photographs or video footage. Never could these mediums truly convey the intimidating bulk of it. Appearing on the horizon, almost as a bank of clouds at first, visible above the plane’s wing and not under it, visible as though it were at higher altitude than us, a suggestion of snow peaked land that as it draws ever nearer is refined until yes! that is it! Everest is second from the right, the pilot informs the chittering cabin, affirming our suspicions that this undefined white mass rising above the haze that is the curvature of the earth is not a cloud at all. And then the aisle floods as passengers in rows A through C try to glimpse that most infamous of mountain ranges, the tectonic plates colliding beneath them, forcing them ever up, UP!

It was not for long, however, as our first glimpse of Everest and K2 and the many others prefaced our increasing descent into Kathmandu and the apparently flat countryside beneath us resolved into mountains of impressive incline, both wooded and farmed. The farm land had the distinctive terracing as seen in other locales of steep incline such as Peru. I do not know why, but this surprised me. I had prepared myself for the tundra and scree and barren landscapes of Khumbu, not dense forest as blanketed the earth around Kathmandu. The houses were largely uniformly cuboid in arrangement with flat rooftops. Occasionally there was a flash from these passing rooftops becoming more frequent the further into Kathmandu the plane travelled. Solar panels, large and gleaming in the noonday sun, they had been erected upon many buildings, perhaps to ward away the frequent brownouts of which there were three very short ones in quick succession not long after I had washed the grit and grime of travel from my skin and hair. Standing in the pitch black bathroom, I was glad that I had expected it or else it would have come as a mighty shock. They were, thankfully, not even a minute in length. Not time enough even to reach for my phone to light the room.