JOURNEY - on Mastering Ukemi, page 18
I felt suddenly overwhelmed. I’d basically talked Christian into this trip and so far he had seen nothing. “Well, that is disappointing,” I said.
“We had considered visiting Khundjole near the Chinese border, but now we are running out of time.”
I’d heard of it, once or twice but was not familiar. “Where is that?”
“It is on the back side of Gokyo Mountain. If you continue northwest from Gokyo you travel down to the base of the glacier and cross the stream. There is a bridge and Khundjole is on the other side of the bridge. It has a couple of new lodges and is becoming a bazaar. It is so close to the Chinese border that yak trains come there and deliver goods then turn around and go back... you see? Rather than go all the way to Namche Bazaar? I have not been there. It is a long, steep descent from Gokyo, but it is only 3,500 meters compared to over 5,000 at Gokyo. I considered it as an alternative to summiting this mountain, but now it is too late for us and we must return if we are going to see anything of interest.”
I nodded at him and thought about it. It was worth knowing about and at least an alternative to staring at fog and low-lying clouds. I pointedly looked at the book I was reading and slowly turned a page. I was still annoyed at his remark; calling me an American, as if that was an insult in and of itself. He got the message and stood.
“So I will leave you reading your very interesting book. Ja? Okay.”
He turned and slowly walked back to his group. I heard him say something in German and they all laughed. I let it go. But now I wondered if there would ever be a break in the weather and if we would have to return without ever having seen the most magnificent mountain views in the world. I closed my eyes and must have fallen asleep because after a moment I opened them to find the Germans gone and Chris sitting across from me reading and Curtis improvising on my mandolinden. It is tuned four steps higher than a guitar and has a mandolin body, but plays the same as a guitar, just not the same step-notes. A G chord on my mandolinden is a C chord on a guitar. He was finger-picking it like a guitar and it sounded very sweet, very nice. I closed my eyes again and the next time I opened them Bim was helping Cook set up lunch. I sat upright.
He put the dishes on the table and a smell assaulted my nostrils powerfully enough that I started to salivate in anticipation. When he uncovered the dishes I saw pieces of chicken in a sauce and rice and vegetables. I couldn’t help myself, I reached forward and took a chicken thigh from the serving dish and bit right into it. It was stringy, tough and dry and it was delicious. I looked at Cook and thanked him. He bowed slightly and said that this bird had stopped laying eggs. Then he and Bim left and we ate a wonderful lunch. We are meat eaters and unapologetic. In this part of the world, however, a chicken is worth far more for the eggs it lays then the flesh it can provide for one meal. A chicken is never butchered if it lays eggs. Hey, there’s a lesson….
We idled away the rest of the day and prepared to leave the following morning. After another sleepless night we dug out our goose-down coats and hats and gloves and prepared to climb up to Gokyo. At 15,700 feet it was the highest we will have climbed so far and it is well over 1,000 feet higher than the tallest mountain the Rocky Mountain chain. In my youth I had summited five of Colorado highest peaks - the fourteeners they’re called – and thought I was standing on the top of the world. If the weather would clear we would be so close to Cho Oyo it would feel like we could touch it. And you can stack two of the Rockies Mountains highest peaks one on top of the other and still not be as high as Cho Oyo. Unbelievable!
We left and moved out slowly. The climb was steady and intense, but a step and then a breath was still possible if we were not going up a switchback or steep slope. No one spoke and the view remained the same: fog, low lying cloud, occasional drizzle or snow flurries. In such an atmosphere a person tends to withdraw and so we went, quietly trudging onward. Eventually we crested a ridge and I made out the form of Cook standing in front of a stone lodge. It was really little more than a shelter, but it was at least enclosed on all four sides, had a roof and bunks inside. There was a shelter below and alongside for porters and yaks. It was deserted.
We went inside and I chose a bunk and threw my duffle on it. Bim started a small gas heater that some kind soul had brought and either left or donated. It was enough to provide some warmth and keep the frost away, but I would really have enjoyed my wonderful old cast iron wood stove from my home in Maine. Now that was something that would have warmed this shelter to t-shirt comfort. Of course I did not have a clue where the nearest tree could be found so it would have done us little good.
It was tea time and Cook began the time consuming job of trying to boil water at 15,700 feet in altitude. I went outside and tried to lighten the mood by giving the guys a guided tour. I pointed east and said, “Down there is Ngozumba Glacier. It begins well up the southeast slope of Cho Oyo, one of the 8,000 meter giants. There are fourteen mountains in the world over 8,000 meters and we can see four from here.
“Yeah,” said Chris, “the view is spectacular.”
“C’mon Chris, I’m trying to…”
“Sorry!” He threw a hand into the air and walked away.
I turned to Curtis and Christian and shrugged. “No. I’m sorry. But I can’t help the weather.” I went back into the shelter and found Bim and Cook tending to the water.
He saw my face when I came in and must have thought I was unhappy with the lodgings, such as they were. “Sahib, we had rooms in the lodge for last night, but when you changed, that is, when we did not come they gave our rooms to the next group. I am sorry.”
“What rooms? What are you talking about?”
“At the lodge. In Gokyo.”
“I thought this was Gokyo.”
“No, Sahib. “Gokyo is over there.” He pointed.
I stepped back outside and looked around. We could have been anywhere. There was only fog and drizzle. The last time I was here it had been glorious. The glacier sends crystal clear water cascading down into a series of lakes that are an intense emerald green. There are huge boulders that look as if they are just discarded playthings for giants. There was a lodge, I remembered, but not much of a lodge and yes, this was not the same type of terrain for the village. Now that Bim had told me I recognized that this was clearly not Gokyo.
My three companions walked up and I told them what Bim had said to me and Chris once again looked peeved. He was clearly not feeling well. Several nights of little sleep and thin atmosphere can combine to put a person severely out of sorts. “I want to go there,” he said.
“Okay,” I slowly responded, “but Bim made it clear that there is no room for us. We have experienced this before.”
“I know,” he said. “That’s fine. They’ll have something hot to drink and a place to dry off and get warm, won’t they?” He looked hard at the ground. “That’s all I want right now.”
“Okay,” I shrugged. “Let’s go.”
I went back into the shelter and told Bim to lead us to the lodges. He bit his lip and glanced at Cook, but he stood and took his coat from a bunk and walked out the door without a word. Ten minutes later we came from behind a huge pile of boulders, some as big as a house, and walked into the yak pasture in front of the lodges at Gokyo. Now I recognized my surroundings and I was shocked. Two new guest lodges stood where the old one had been and they were large and looked very comfortable. They made our stone shelter feel like it was, well, exactly what it was. Cold, damp, uncomfortable, and ugly. There were people coming and going and a few standing under the veranda roof. We went into the public room in the larger of the two and Chris walked over to a bench in the corner and sat down. I turned to Bim and asked him to please see if we could get some hot chocolate and a piece of pie or a pastry or anything sweet or cakelike and he nodded. I took off my coat and had to admit that the warmth felt pretty good.
There were maybe a dozen people in the lodge and I recognized several of the women who had been in the American group we had seen at the entrance to the national park. They had made it and gotten our rooms, apparently. Well, I guessed that was probably better than them trying to stay in our shelter. They seemed listless and unhappy and we all understood.
“You know guys, this might not be the best bet. I talked to a German who told me about a village on the other side of this mountain that’s a little lower, he says 3,500 meters, although I think he must be wrong about that. Anyway he says it’s more like a town than anything. Like a trading center… a miniature Namche Bazaar. They would probably have rooms for us and if all we can see is our hands in front of our faces, well, maybe we ought to go over there. It’s really close to the Tibetan border, so it might have some interesting things to see. All I know is that three nights in that little stone shelter sounds like a really hard way to go.”
I had barely finished when Chris agreed.
“Yeah, he said. “If it means going down from here and finding someplace warm and dry we can stay I’m all for it. I don’t care about summiting some damn mountain. I just wanted to see the Himalayas and all I’ve seen so far is fog and rocks. Let’s go!”
Curtis, calm and quiet as usual just shrugged his consent. I looked at Christian and he smiled his big, typical smile and laughed. “Hey, it’s been a load of laughs, so far. I’m in.” I really loved this kid. What a great traveling companion.
“Okay, we stay here tonight and tomorrow we go over to this town, Khundjole, and spend a couple days there and if the weather still hasn’t broken, we’ll head back to Namche. Okay?”
They all nodded and then we waited for Bim to return with whatever he’d found. He eventually came back with a very nice surprise; there was hot chocolate and an apple pie; we ate like starving children. After we finished I explained the change in travel plans to Bim.
He did not look happy. In fact he didn’t like it at all. He told me that we would have to go further up the mountain and then around and back down and that he had never been there, but had heard things were not good there.
“What do you mean, not good?”
“There are Chinese, sometimes.”
“You mean Tibetans, no?”
“No, Sahib. Chinese.”
“Do they bother anyone? I mean, we’re Americans.”
He shrugged. I turned to the guys and raised an eyebrow. Chris had seemed happier while drinking and eating, but had that surly look back.
“I don’t care,” Chris said. “I want to go. I just really don’t want to stay here.”
I turned back to Bim and he nodded his head. “Yes, Sahib.”
***
We headed out the next morning after another long, cold, sleepless night. A warmer wind was blowing softly up the valley and I knew I would be uncomfortable with my heavy down coat so I transferred it to my duffle and got out a sweater and down vest that I could just carry if I got too warm with the climbing. The others saw me and did the same. I hoped the slight change in the weather might signal a change and a clearing and I asked Bim. He looked up at the sky and held still for a minute and said, “Maybe.”
We walked quietly past the lodges and followed the path up the mountain. Most of the trekkers who would be summiting that day were already gone, but there were a few people around who were clearly less than amused by the low-hanging clouds and drizzle. I nodded to one man I vaguely recognized and he looked stonily through me as I passed.
We hiked doggedly for a couple hours and must have been near the summit when we took a branching trail that turned north. Eventually we started back down and after another hour we came to a stone shelter similar to the one we’d spent our last night in. We must have been near 17,000 feet and I was breathing with great difficulty.
Cook was crouching outside the hut and warming what looked like dhal bat. He must have prepared it the night before. That was fine with me. I’d take all the carbs I could get and the lentils and rice would provide some lasting energy. We rested and then ate lunch. We had already traveled farther than I had anticipated. And we had the descent to do this afternoon. After eating I did not feel like waiting, so I told Bim to get us moving and let Cook and his helper catch up. I knew they would pass us on the trail and be there an hour ahead of us anyway.
The trail down was mostly switchbacks. At least it was a good trail, clearly marked and steady. After several hours I heard the sound of water running. Not the big sound of the Dudh Kosi, but more confined, like a mountain stream running over stones. We came around one last switchback and then we were there. A stream that was clearly flowing off the glacier, that was in fact part of the glacier ran next to the trail. Bim led us along the stream for a quarter of a mile and we saw a suspension bridge perhaps twenty feet above the stream. We hiked up the trail and then crossed over the bridge. On the other side we followed the trail a few hundred yards and saw the beginning of a village. We passed the houses and walked into the town square where a flagstone court had been set in front of a large guest lodge. Several more guest lodges were down the trail and it seemed like a very nice village except there was no one there. I looked around for Nawang and did not see him.
Cook and his helper had passed us an hour ago and I figured that Nawang might be getting them settled, but we had never come into a village before without one of our sirdars being there to greet us. I looked at Bim.
He was not happy. He was staring at the lodge in front of us and I looked in that direction in time to see five or six men walk out of the common room door. Further down the road there were more men walking into the courtyard and I turned around and saw several more behind us.
“Uh oh,” said Curtis.
I looked back at the lodge in time to see four more men step outside. They wore some type of tunic with a red star on the lapel. All the others looked like the silver and jade smugglers from Tibet you see along the trail. They were all wearing yak fur hats and vests. The four in tunics carried machine guns. I looked closer and thought they seemed odd. They clearly weren’t soldiers; the only thing military were the tunics and guns. But they did carry guns and that was bad.
They walked up to us and two moved around behinds us and covered our rear. One, apparently the leader, spoke harshly to Bim in a loud voice, very unlike any Nepali. Bim answered and the man shouted something else at him and Bim cowered. He turned to me. “He says they are revolutionaries. He says they represent the people. They are the new government. He says he is the mayor, by the will of the people and that we must pay a tax to the people.”
The man barked something else at Bim. “He says that he is the representative, the legal representative of the Maoist government and we must pay a tax to him. He says he will give it to the people.”
I looked directly into the thief’s eyes and spoke to Bim. “How much does he want?” I asked.
Bim spoke quietly to the leader and he shouted something back at Bim. I could see Bim working the numbers out in his head. Finally, he said, “10,000 Rupee.”
Damn! I did the math and figured it was about $140-$150. About $35 each. That was not so bad, considering we were being robbed at gunpoint.
“Ask him if we pay this will we be able to stay and not be bothered again?”
Bim spoke again to the rebel leader and again the man shouted at Bim at length.
“He says no, we cannot stay. All the town now belongs to the people and for being insolent we must now pay 20,000 rupee.” Bim hung his head at this and I understood everything.
I looked at the rebel leader and all the clouds, the fog, the drizzling rain, the hundred miles of ascents and declines seemed to well up in me and before I could stop myself I told him to go fuck himself.
These were words he understood without a translator. Suddenly all four men were pointing their guns at us and he was screaming at Bim and Bim dropped to his knees and put his hands behind his head.
“Sahib! Sahib! He say kneel! All kneel and put up hands!” I thought Bim might start to cry from fear. Christian and Curtis dropped to their knees and put their hands behind their heads. Chris took a step forward and looked slowly at me and I glanced down at the flagstones. He grimaced and slowly went down to his knees. I turned and looked at the rebel leader. Everything was suddenly quiet. I could feel the ice-picks that were grinding inside my knee joints and the hunger that never seemed to go away. I could feel the miles and years weighing on me and I knew I’d had a hell of a good life. I also felt an anger building. I tried to clear my mind. I tried to become calm and feel the ki flow, but all I felt was an overwhelming desire to kill these bastards. Some aikido master. Some hotshot 6th dan. I couldn’t even control my own mouth.
“No.”
I felt something slam hard into my back and stumbled forward. I managed to stay on my feet. The rebel leader was pointing his machine gun at me again and screaming at me and at Bim and Bim was yelling at me…”Sahib, he will shoot you if you do not kneel. Please, Sahib!”
”No!”
Whoever had hit me before hit me again and this time much harder. My back screamed out and as I turned back the rebel leader hit me in the face with the butt of his machine gun and I went down. I vaguely felt hands on me. There were hands going through my pockets. I was laying on my left arm and tried to get it out from under me but each time I moved someone would strike me and finally everything went gray and then stars exploded everywhere.
I became aware of hands lifting me and then felt myself being dragged. I felt warm bodies on both sides and realized that I was being half dragged and half carried down the trail. Finally I managed to say “Stop, damn it.” They did.
It took a moment to get my eyes open and my head clear enough to shrug away from Chris and Curtis. They had grabbed me and lifted me up when the rebels had told them to leave the village. We were almost to the bridge. “Stop,” I said. “Just stop.” I slumped down on a boulder and took a few deep breaths. That helped to clear my mind. My cheekbone hurt like hell and I knew that it was just the beginning. My right kidney was certainly bruised, but I would not know if it was fractured until I had to urinate. I had experienced both injuries before, several times over my forty year martial art career and they both hurt like hell. Don’t let anyone tell you they don’t. But neither were they fatal. I would live. I just had to suck it up. I can do that.
