a perilous journey, hard work, guides and porters, beauty, a dark and stormy night, leaving on a jet plane

Langtang is about 120 km north of Kathmandu, easily within sight of the Tibetan border. However, 120 km on a Nepali road and in a Nepali car, can take anywhere from 6-12 hours, despite the surprising speedy recklessness of a Nepali driver. Dad and I got to experience very different car rides, one that lurched it’s way through hills and valleys in the morning sunshine, and one that inched it’s way past sheer drops in the dark of the night and fog, with lightning flashes to provide a little atmosphere. More on that later…
After our first long, rocky but relatively pleasant drive we spent the night in Sybru Besi (pronounced Shehbrue Baysie), where dad encountered the first of many hikes in beer prices and I took advantage of the first of many opportunities to tease him. Before dinner we took a walk, finding ourselves on a hill above the valley containing the Langtang River, which we were to follow to it’s source in the Himalayas, and with many people hard at work below. There was much construction on the road, and you could tell that the lack of pavement (all 60 kilometers) wasn’t for a lack of desire for smooth driving. Even that many hands have a hard time competing with vertical mountain faces, monsoon rains, and the destruction caused by landslides. Down below our perch on the hill we could see women sitting atop piles of rough shale breaking down bigger stones into construction-size pieces with small hammers. The tap-tap-tap of their work was a better reminder than anything about the hardship and monotony that some people face every day. Next to these women sat children, bored and hardly less lifeless than their mothers on those piles. I don’t know if I’ll ever really be able to comprehend that level of poverty, or the huge amount of good fortune that I have been so lucky to receive, but reminders like these are important reminders to appreciate what you have and always be generous.
This was part of the reason why dad and I decided to hire both a guide and a porter, although we both originally wanted to carry our own weight up the mountains and find our own way through them. We were both glad of the decision as Suresh, our guide, did provide lots of information and explanations, for example pointing out huge beehives attached to sheer cliffs, some of which had been harvested by villagers via hundred-foot long rope ladders. While an incredibly nice man, Suresh was sometimes like a golden retriever puppy: overly eager to please and bounding easily up the hills, two traits that smack and the pride and independence of me and my dad. In contrast, our porter Lok was incredibly shy and quiet. We only found out our last day of trekking that he had two children, one a 3 month old daughter! Both of us found that we interacted and talked a lot more with all the Nepali guides and porters. An amazing guide who we saw many nights named Durga called me “chori” which means daughter, as well as ‘bird’, both because I remind him of his daughter (also 20) and because my mouth is always moving, just like hers.
The trek itself was phenomenal and each day brought different kinds of scenery: primordial forests with twisting trees and green light, huge mountains cradling us in the river valley, rhododendron flowers of pink, white and red, and finally the snowy peaks and tundra-like land of kyanjin ghompa, populated by wild-looking horses and herds of yaks. Along the way we saw plenty of Tibetan culture and met many nice people running teashops or guesthouses. Although part of me would love to see these towns before the influence of tourism, the other part recognizes how hard these people’s lives must have been before tourists came. The ground, especially up high, is ill-suited for farming, and there were two nights of snow while we were trekking, despite the fact that this is the ‘hot time of year’ in Nepal. Despite the nightly chill and the constant wearing of hats I loved seeing snowy peaks again, and appreciated the cooler air while hiking, as sweating all the way through your clothes is hardly Alaskan (or attractive).
Our crowning achievement was climbing a peak called Kyanjin Ri which got to 4,700 meters. We started around 3,800 m, so it was quite the morning climb, although we got to the top in only two hours. Although I didn’t consider altitude problems when we chose Langtang, I did worry about my overall fitness. In Sankhu I would usually go for several walks during the day, usually at least one that counted as a short hike. Unfortunately, none of it seemed to qualify as real condition for something like an 8-day trek through tall Himalayas, and I suspected my dad, always (overly?) active, would absolutely smoke me. As luck would have it, we were actually about the same speed, although he was much more affected by the altitude when we got higher up. Luckily neither of us got true altitude sickness, which is characterized by vomiting, headaches, weakness, and the general breakdown of your dignity. The only cure is to go back down to a lower altitude, and we saw and met several people who had to re-trace their steps, as well as at least 4 helicopters flying past, most likely to get people who had serious altitude sickness. Dad only had some really heavy breathing on steep climbs, but continually pointed out to me that not only am I 40 years younger, I also have more hemoglobin, and “there’s just less AIR up here!” Dad- you are an absolute beast, and I’m glad I have your genes so I can strive to be climbing the Himalayas in my 60s.
Anyhow, we made it up and back down the valley in one piece, and arrived in Dunche in the early afternoon a day earlier than planned. After eating a sub-par and relatively uncooked pizza we were preparing to relax for awhile when our guide told us that there was a 4-wheel-drive vehicle preparing to go back to kathmandu that evening and that he would take us for cheap. This information was interesting to us because there had been a transportation strike in Nepal that day, and we didn’t know if it would start again the next day, thus trapping us in Dunche. Plus, we really really didn’t want to take the local bus which is supposed to seat 30 but often has over 70 people riding on it, stuffed into the aisle and hanging to the top, many of whom are puking from the slow, rocking motion of the bus and the overwhelming heat of the sun and way too many people too close together. In ten minutes we’d re-jammed our bags with smelly gear (forgetting dad’s hat on a hook), crammed our stuff into a jeep-like vehicle, and packed ourselves in along with a British man and 4 Nepali guides/porters.
That ride is probably the closest I’ve come to a near-death experience and it lasted for 6 and a half hours. Soon after we started on the unpaved road one of our windshield wipers stopped working, and then it began to rain, thunder, and lightning. This rain caused semi-flooding on patches of the road when we finally got down the mountain to the valley. Worst of all, when darkness fell the rain turned into patches of impenetrable fog, which is terrifying when a road is only 20 feet wide and one side is an unprotected drop into space. At one point the driver jammed on the breaks and when I poked my head out the window to peer through the fog we were two feet from the edge of the cliff, pointed straight off into emptiness. Despite the danger, a 6+ hour drive is also full of monotony, and I found my mind wandering randomly. I thought about summer jobs and the probability that I’d actually get one. I thought about making pesto popcorn and watching movies when I got back home, and also how weird it would feel to have a cushion-y bed and a clean house and middle-class neighborhood to wander through every day. I thought about Harry Potter spells that would be useful in this particular scenario. For instance ‘Impervius’ to repel the water from the windshield, and ‘wingardium leviosa’ to keep us afloat when we drove off the cliff. Too late I realized I hadn’t brought my wand trekking, and plus Hogwarts isn’t real.
We made it back to Kathmandu tired, but in one piece, and have spent the last several days doing some sightseeing and buying way too many gifts for the lucky people we love. This morning I helped dad pack and hunted down a reasonably-priced taxi to the airport, waving goodbye as the tiny car honked, clunked and aggressively drove away, dad and his Nepali man’s hat inside. My flight is this evening, and while I know I want to come back to Nepal it isn’t hard to leave. Saying goodbye to the kids in Sankhu and to the mountains and yaks in Langtang were difficult, but it’s easy to say goodbye to the pollution, noise and aggressive men of Kathmandu.