The second of three very hard days’ trekking, today doing what took 2 days outbound. Nominally, the going gets easier since you're losing altitude with the benefits of warmer, thicker air, but that's where the advantages end. In Nepal trekking nothing is easy; there is no such thing as level and every knee-crunching downhill is followed by a lung-searing uphill.
It's strange to see a track in reverse because you rarely look behind you when walking so the views are fresh and the hard-won trails are unfamiliar. You're also travelling the same ground at a different time of day, in different light and weather.
We had forgotten the steep descent (now ascent) from Tengboche to Deboche that we’d covered a week prior in dim light and snow. It was a reminder that just because you've been to EBC, you are not the master of the terrain or the altitude. The ascent left us breathless and dazed and ready for a stop in Tengboche.
We recovered for a while in brilliant sunshine at the monastery that we'd bypassed on the outward trek. One of the three biggest in Nepal, and the oldest, it is a modern reconstruction sitting in the ridge top with unlimited views of Everest and other major peaks; a place of simple, natural beauty.
You may have noticed the recurrence of "boche" as the last syllables in these Himalayan names. I understood it to mean "place" and at the entrance to the monastery is a large rock with what looks like a footprint in it. "Teng" we were told is footprint hence "The Place of the Footprint".
The monastery's principal ceremonial room was brightly decorated in murals from the life of the Bodhisattva, gongs, silk pennants, huge brass alpenhorns, high seats for the principal monks and rows of cushioned benches for the acolytes and novices.
We didn't stay long. This was to be our longest and hardest day.
The descent from Tengboche was in blazing, direct high altitude sunshine. We'd been lucky with our ascent the week prior as the snow and lowering light were powerful incentives to get it over with.
This stretch of trail was like the high water mark on a beach sprinkled with stranded flotsam and exotic sea creatures. We passed dozens of trekkers struggling with the ascent in the heat: An elderly man was dressed as if for a summer picnic in an English garden, floral gardening hat, open cotton shirt revealing a milk-white chest and absurd red shorts and simple tennis shoes; a girl in the most colourful, stylish hiking clothing including pink boots, wired to her noisy iPod; Mr. Cool climbing and casually reading from his Kindle while those around expired from effort; a fit-looking man obviously unsympathetic to his tubby, flushed partner who was beached like a whale on the shore. Many others looked like potential altitude or fitness victims.
How many of them will make it, we wondered, and did we also look as callow, or are we simply judging them through the painful memory of our own experiences?
You do wonder what people think they're doing in these dangerous regions so obviously unprepared: Don't they research the basic requirements of clothing and fitness, the dangers of taking things lightly at this altitude? Is the exotic so dull that they have to shut it out by escaping into the pages of a novel, or drown their hearing with the banalities of the Top Forty?
Doesn't the name “Himalaya” provoke a reaction of awe and wonder and make you want to look up, breathe and absorb? How can the highest mountains on Earth be uninteresting? Are we so insulated by our comfortable lives we are unappreciative of “outside”? Are our senses so deadened by overload that we have no appreciation of reality? Is our modern reality limited to fleeting images on monitor screens and half-heard words?
At Tengboche we learned of the unfolding tragedy on Everest: up to 60 people caught by a collapse in the icefall below Camp 1. Numbers were uncertain since no one keeps a count of the porters coming and going; no one knows how many Sherpas are out surveying new routes or portering or constructing campsites or whether Western climbers were involved.
Gopal exchanged news with every team of Nepalis we ran into. Gradually the numbers were refined: up to 16 people missing with several injured and more who escaped unscathed. Gopal and Ram are sad because they have many friends on those expedition teams.
I was in a semi-fever by lunchtime, with over 5 hours to go to Namche; throat on fire, lungs yielding yellow-green mucus in painful paroxysms. Through my daze I was nevertheless astonished by the scale and dimension of the landscape we traversed. We'd descend to a fragile suspension bridge over a milky torrent of glacial water, and an hour later we'd notice the river as a scratch in the immense depths of the valley whose side we'd just ascended in a grim, unrelenting climb. Even then we were only a fraction of the way up the slope that towered over us with tiny hamlets and homesteads dotted the slope impossibly high above us, linked by a lacework of rough paths.
How we looked forward to the "yellow brick road" section of well-maintained track near Namche. I had promised myself to donate to the public-spirited Sherpa whose project this was, but he wasn't there when we finally reached the unfamiliarly level and wide section.
We all staggered painfully into Namche Bazaar, exhausted and battered by a 9-hour day in which we'd covered 3 days of the original ascent. We attended to bruised toes and blisters before showering and feeding.
The first shower in 10 days was a magical renewal. The first beer and nameless "steak" in 2 weeks never tasted better. We were a cheerful team but everyone was prudently asleep early. There is another huge day following this.
