by Rick Gunn
Sitting along the ancient stone steps of the Bagmati River, I fiddled with my watch. Looking up,I watched three men carrying a body wrapped in burial cloth, walking in concentric circles around a riverside ghat.
On the third and final pass around the cremation platform, the youngest son fell to his knees weeping as he lifted his father's lifeless body atop of large pile of neatly stacked wood.
The eldest son set the pyre alight, and a thin strand of smoke met the copper-colored sky. The fire broke into a full blaze. Nearby, children skipped and frolicked in the coolness of the widening stream.
I peered back at my watch which I had accidentally set forward to the year 2065. I lifted my camera lens and framed a charred limb being returned to the belly of the fire. As the shutter sounded, I became acutely aware of my own mortality.
Nepal had first made it's way into my imagination through a friend on a high school backpacking trip.
An avid climber and outdoorsman, Mike was captivated by the lure of the world's highest peaks. He talked by campfirelight of Himalayan summits inhabited by diminutive men called Sherpas and spoke with confidence of his plan to climb Everest.
Not long after that, Mike fell to his death in an ice climbing accident near the summit of Mount Shasta. Eighteen years later, I boarded a plane to Nepal.
Kathmandu seemed a city of unbridled chaos. Traffic-choked streets spawned never ending streams of dilapidated cars, rickshaws and wandering sacred cows. Setting out on foot, brightly colored Hindus spilled laughter down dusty narrow back streets. Scarlet daubed renditions of Shiva lay watch over open-air butchers, brightly colored flower stalls and baskets of multicolored spice which scented the air.
A robe-clad man with a turban and jaundiced eyes approached me silently, then pressed a small red mark just above my forehead.
"That was not for free," an Israeli acquaintance pointed out, as the now disgruntled holy man held out his stick-like hand.
Shedding their third world woes like water off a duck, Nepalis were honest, fun loving people that were quick to smile. But despite their hospitality, I would heed the call of the world's highest peaks. The next day I gathered some supplies and set out on a small plane for the heart of the Himalaya. In a feat of gravitational defiance, the weathered 10-seater howled as it struggled to clear the Kathmandu foothills. Soon the ear-splitting roar of the engine and severe drop in cabin temperature were nullified by fear for our lives. The plane bounced over hillside villages and into deep canyons, then skimmed the top of a peak. In the hair-raising descent towards our cliff side airstrip, I mumbled my last rites as I watched a group of Nepalis struggle to corral a yak off the dirt runway.
Disembarking onto the Lukla airstrip, I sought a jumping-off point within a week's walk from the Everest region. I wasn't alone.
According to Nepal's Department of Tourism, 84,584 visitors were issued trekking permits the previous year, of which 15,000 had visited the Everest Region.
Wandering the cobble and dirt streets, I searched for a porter to carry gear.
I needed only to whisper the word "porter" under my breath and a crowd of 20 barefoot villagers in jodhpur-legged pants surrounded me with the intensity of Wall Street day traders.
A toothless man leaned forward and mouthed the word "Porter?" into my face with breath that could have slain a small animal. I stepped backwards away from the mob, then ankle-deep into a pile of human excrement. Shaking my foot violently before the circle of men, I thought to myself, "Welcome to the Himalayas."
Within an hour, we were hiking with our new porter. We set out on a strip of decomposed granite through a deep Himalayan canyon.
Our porter Beekrum was of Limbu ancestry and offered a young face, honest smile and pleasant demeanor.
He beamed at the thought of $6 a day to carry two small day packs as opposed to his usual job as human truck where he hauled anything from cement bags, steel girders or even office desks strapped to his forhead - all for $2 a day. For him, the next two weeks would be cake.
The trail staggered drunkenly around intricately carved Chorten stones and under brightly colored prayer flags which invoked prayers into the wind.
From there it climbed up and across a cable foot bridge, 100 feet above the Dudh Khosi River.
There, mid-bridge, I found myself face to face with a drooling yak. The mammoth beast seemed less than happy as his Tibetan herder barked out kung-fu-type calls to coax the animal across the tenuous span.
I looked back to see Beekrum sheepishly waiting just short of the bridge. He had that "I'm-about-to-watch-someone-die" look on his face.
Just then the animal mushed past me like a bovine bulldozer, nearly knocking me from the bridge.
Later Beekrum informed me that nervous yaks displayed nasty habits, including the occasional human body toss or extended goring, which occur somewhat regularly on the crux of a bridge. Next time I'd wait.
Zigzagging upward through deep forests of fragrant pine and juniper bush, we climbed nearly 2,500 feet to the amphitheater-shaped town of Namche Bazaar.
After obtaining a room, I sprawled out on a tiny bed, digging into my pack for a well- earned chocolate bar I'd bought in Kathmandu.
Peering out of a small Plexiglass window, I watched as the silver-grey sun lit a sheer canyon wall. I popped half the bar in my mouth, moving my attention toward a group of haggling Tibetans. Sensing a strange crunch, I peered back at the remaining chocolate to find a half-eaten cluster of spider eggs. A delicacy I'd hope to experience only once.
From Namche we continued to climb to the hamlet of Pheriche perched along a stream-fed valley . The price of bottled water had now risen to $3, causing me to switch to purifying stream water. More importantly, Snickers, (now thoroughly inspected) had risen to $2 a bar.
From our position at 13,000 feet, Beekrum pointed up toward the trail, which ascended over a plateau into a high valley, literally to the top of the world. It was there that altitude would take its toll.
Moving slowly up the monolithic canyon, a mild sensation of having my head in a fish tank was soon replaced by my slow motion arrival into full-blown Jello-ville. By 14,000 feet I was reduced to three steps at a time ... one ... two ... three ... then breathe, just breathe. At that time anything seemed possible...bending spoons, to simply floating away.
Regaining my composure, I looked back down the valley, at a scene reminiscent of some high altitude battlefield. Exhausted bodies, clung to boulders, or head in hand.
When I looked back up for Beekrum, he had morphed, into a cartoon character, moving two dimensionally towards the Khumbu Valley.
Leveling off in the high glacial ravine, I tilted my head nearly 90 degrees to encompass the enormity Mt. Nuptse's great white mass.
For what could have been minutes, or even hours, I stood at geological ground zero. Where the Indian subcontinent's collision with Asia sent stratified earth nearly five miles into the air, and tumbling ice blocks the size of office buildings converged, shaping the blue-white tongue of the Khumbu glacier.
To travel here one was transformed; to the spiritual, the sacred.
I stared catatonic-like at my footsteps in the crusty snow as I stumbled into Lobuche.
A dilapidated stone villa huddled ridiculously against the hulking Himalayan backdrop. Beaten and cold, I sought shelter for the night.
Having had no alternative but a $2 dorm, I set my pack on a peice of plywood where I'd sleep wedged between 12 others on a shelf like bunk. I pulled a hair off my lice-infested pillow stained black with the grease of the last thousand trekkers. A cook came in and brought me my meal just as I had requested. Greasy noodles over burnt rice, on an unwashed plate, and accompanied by a glass with the last persons lip prints encircling the rim. I ate a few bites, then climbed into bed. That night I lay awake to the sound of wheezing, snoring, moaning, or throwing up.
The next morning, I lept from my bed with an ensuing gastronomical obligation that sent me running toward a small, stone outhouse.
A blue-faced occupant stumbled out with a lengthy exhalation as if surfacing from a long deep dive.
I stepped in on to the creaking floor, which hung over a small hole overflowing with excrement. I prayed for the integrity the of boards, my stomach and a nice sit down toilet.
Shortly thereafter, Beekrum and I set out, moving rapidly over the Moon-like landscape towards our final destination. Nearing the end of the monsterous valley My oxygen-starved brain jittered and popped like a chattering movie reel until we reached the village of Gorak Shep at 17,000 feet. A short hike from Everest base camp, I looked up to spy our final destination. A rounded brown lump of a mountain, dwarfed in the midst of a perpendicular landscape. In my zombie-like ascension, my beathing bordered spasmotic, as I consumed deep lungfulls of air for the final two hours. Somberly, I crested Kala Pattar's 18,200 foot summit where I scanned the circular collection of 8000-meter peaks: Cholatse, Lobuche, Pomoori, Khumbutse, the massive Nuptse, then Everest ... a summit I had spent a lifetime secretly longing to climb.
I was a mere 10,000 feet below the summit.
But is might as well have been ten million. For in the surrounding slow-motion, I was unspeakably exhausted. I looked upon the wedge-like summit for some time as it offered a two-mile strand of wind-blown snow into the upper airstream.
I thought of how virtually impossible it seemed, requiring almost superhuman strength.
I soon said my farewells to the sacred summits, then descended, walking nearly 15 miles, and covering some 8000 feet of vertical change before the end of the day.
Shortly before reaching the lodge, I stopped before a series of stone monuments which paid tribute to those who had died on the surrounding peaks.
They were a cast of characters from an ongoing tragedy, the ever-changing and eternal face of Everest.
I stared long and hard at the stones of Rob Hal and Scott Fischer, two of six who had lost there lives in the storm of 1996.
I thought of my friend Mike and other loved ones before turning away and descending in the dim light of the fading day.
