The first time I saw Mount Everest close up was December 1966, when
trekking in the Khumbu was still a rare adventure. (It’s still an
adventure, but not as rare now as half a century ago.) My trek into the
‘fabled valley’ and mountains was all the more memorable because Sir
Edmund Hillary was there with his family. Thirteen years after he topped
Everest with Tenzing Sherpa, Hillary was back building school houses
and other projects, and celebrating Christmas with the Sherpas.
High over Khundé
I flew from Kathmandu in a Twin Pioneer operated by Nepal’s Royal
Flight and piloted by Flight Lft. Ken Hart. The Twin Pioneer was a
surprisingly maneuverable STOL (short take-off and landing) aircraft. As
we approached the upper Khumbu Ken briefed me over the roar of the
engines.
“Below us, on the left, you’ll see Namché Bazar,” he shouted, pointing
ahead into a maze of mountains and river gorges. “Then we will fly
directly over Khundé and Khumjung villages. Look closely, and you’ll see
Ed Hillary’s new Hospital.”
Within minutes we were over the Khundé ridge, waggling our wings at the
hospital staff waving up at us. Then we flew down past Khumjung over an
old monastery with its new aluminum roof (another gift from Hillary)
glinting in the bright sun. We turned over the Dudh Khosi (‘Milky
River’) gorge below Tengboché monastery, and after a last glance at Ama
Dablam, Taboché, and Mount Everest, Ken banked the plane and we
descended in a slow glide south toward the tiny airfield at Lukla.
That brief tour above the Khumbu was a thrill, something rarely done
today except for by occasional charter flying into the more recently
built Syangboché field above Namché. Lukla field was short and rough
(unpaved) with a 12% gradient. Today, the field is longer and paved, but
still steep, which makes for exciting uphill landings and downhill
take-offs.
Lukla was all potato fields and a few small farm houses. Today, it is
big town full of hotels and shops, with potato fields somewhere off in
the distance. It was the first airfield serving the Everest region, and
is now one of the busiest in all of Nepal, especially during trekking
season.
I had made prior arrangements to be met at the plane by a young Sherpa
named Pasang Kami and a porter (his brother-in-law), Sona Iishi. In
subsequent years, Pasang Kami became more well known as ‘P.K.’ while
working as a popular guide and expedition sirdar. On this early trek, he
and Sona Iishi were more than guide and porter to me. They became
lifelong friends whom I had the pleasure of hosting at my home in
America a few years later.
From the airfield we trekked north up the valley of the Dudh Khosi,
taking our time to enjoy the countryside and the people. We arrived at
Namché the next day.
On Christmas Eve, we trekked over the ridge to Khundé and spent a
delightful evening with the hospital doctor and the Hillarys, sipping
Christmas brandy and ‘talking mountains’. During the holiday, the
Hillarys hosted a Children’s Christmas festival featuring Father
Christmas played by Max Pearl, one of Sir Edmund’s colleagues. This New
Zealand version of Santa Claus arrived dressed in a red parka, riding a
dzopkyo (yak crossbreed), tossing hard candies to the gleeful
youngsters. The rest of the day was spent playing games.
There was also a short high altitude marathon in which Hillary’s New
Zealand mountaineer friends challenged the local Sherpas. A Sherpa won.
The 1966 race was a predecessor (perhaps the very first) to what is now
known as the Everest Marathon.
Kapa Kalden
In nearby Khumjung we visited the aging Kapa Kalden, a noted Sherpa
artist, and his (then) young son, Pasang. As a ‘kapa’ (artist), Kalden
deviated slightly from the traditional Tibetan style of religious
painting to illustrate common village and mountain scenes with sacred
overtones. While he lived, his unique landscapes avidly bought up by
early foreign visitors to the Khumbu. Today, they are collectors’ items.
The artist and writer Desmond Doig once wrote this about Kalden’s paintings:
With stylized simplicity, the Sherpa artist Kalden portrays the
Himalayan homeland of his people, brave, devout, and incredibly hardy
mountaineers. Clouds with buttonhook eyes wreath the peak of Khumbila,
so sacred that no Sherpa may stand on its summit. Above the village of
Khumjung, lamas and laity pray before a flag-bedecked shrine.
Stair-stepped houses crowd close to a Buddhist temple. Women trudge
through the streets with back-packs, while cattle roam near the chortens
harboring revered relics.
Many of Kalden’s paintings feature sacred Khumbila peak overlooking and
protecting the Khumbu, along with local temples, monasteries and Sherpa
houses. One in my small collection also shows the Hillary school below
Khumjung and the Hillary hospital at Khundé. Another is of Tengboché
monastery, surrounded by mountains and shrines and chortens, and a few
of the artist’s benefactors (buyers)mountaineers and trekkers being
served tea and snacks by the Sherpas. And, often as not, there’s a
Tibetan mastiff dog in his pictures.
Gipfeln und Wipfeln
The trail to Tengboché monastery goes east out of Khumjung, down
across the Dudh Khosi gorge, then up a long forested ridge. Ama Dablam
peak, resembling a ‘Mother’s Charmbox’ to the Sherpas, towers overhead. I
had heard a lot about the beauty and tranquility of Tengboché, and was
enthralled as I entered the monastery compound. “Not a breath of wind
stirred, not a person was seen,” I wrote later. “High in the north
eastward, far above t Everest sailed silently the Imja Valley. I he snow
plume of stood breathless and drank in the austere silence and
peace...” It reminded me of these lines (in German) from Goethe’s ‘Ein
Gleiches’:
| Über allen Gipfe |
ln Over all heights |
| Ist Ruh; |
is peace; |
| In allen Wipfeln |
In all treetops |
| Spürest du |
You feel |
| Kaum einen Hauch; |
hardly a breath. |
| Die Vögelein schweigen in Walde... |
The little birds are silent in the woods... |
At the monastery, Pasang Kami and I had tea with the young abbot and
chatted with some of the Buddhist monks. We were their only visitors,
for in those days relatively few foreigners came to the Khumbu (except
during climbing season). That was well before the trek to Everest Base
Camp (EBC) became so popular and hordes of trekkers began jamming the
trails and inns and crowding into the bakery cafés at dawn to buy oven
fresh pastries. None of that existed back in the 1960s. Instead, the
Khumbu I experienced looked and felt much as it had for many
generations.
Rigi-kur and Tom-gi Nima
The next night, near the village of Pangboché, P.K.’s wife, Namdo,
prepared rigi-kur for dinner. Rigi-kur is a Sherpa culinary specialty, a
thick potato pancake cooked on a hot flat rock over the campfire. It is
served with a smelly cheese called somar, along with yak butter, fresh
garlic, Tibetan salt and a liberal sprinkling of red chili powder to
give it zing. It is eaten with the fingers. One is a whole meal.
Late the same evening I stood alone in the cold watching the alpenglow
paint the high peaks a fiery orange. The Sherpas call it Tom-gi Nima,
the ‘Bear’s Sun’. A violent wind was sweeping across Everest creating
the peak’s tell-tale plume streaking east, high into the night sky. The
dramatic effect reminded me of Robert Frost’s ‘Fire and Ice’:
Some say the world will end in fire,
Some say in ice.
From what I’ve tasted of desire
I hold with those who favor fire.
But if it had to perish twice,
I think I know enough of hate
To say that for destruction ice
Is also great
And would suffice.
It was so late in the season, and so cold, that beyond Pangboché we were
alone on the trail. As we passed the mouth of the Imja valley to our
east, we saw the trail coming down from Dingboché, the last and highest
Sherpa settlement in the Khumbu. We would visit it on our return. For
now we kept going up the Khumbu valley past the summer huts of Pheriché,
where the Himalayan Rescue Association runs a small hospital today,
then on through Phulung Karpo, the ‘Highlands of the White Ox’.
Death of a sadhu
At the high pasture of Dughla we spent the night in an empty yak
herder’s hut. It was there that Pasang Kami told me the strange story of
a Hindu sadhu (holy man) who had trudged up here from India about the
time of the 1963 American Mount Everest Expedition. At Dughla the
scantily clad old yogi informed the Sherpas that he was about to die.
Then he composed himself in contemplation, waited..., and soon expired.
The Sherpas buried him beneath the earthen floor, in a shallow grave
under the very spot where I where I slept that night. Am I
superstitious? No. But I shuddered thinking about.
Continuing on up the Khumbu glacier, we passed through Lobuché where in
those days there was only one stone hut. Today, Lobuché features big
hotels with fancy menus, soft beds and hot showers. That would have been
nice!
The view from Gorak Shep
On the afternoon of December 31, we arrived at our highest camp,
Gorak Shep. We spent a bitter cold night in our tents, and awoke to
celebrate New Year’s Day 1967 by trekking up the glacier to what is now
known as ‘Old Everest Base Camp’. It was a “tortuous route,” I wrote in
my journal. “The moraine and a maze of seracs were the most demanding
obstacles.” Pasang Kami knew the best way to EBC. He had been there the
year before, carrying supplies up to the South Col on the 1965 Indian
Everest Expedition.
From base camp we had a grand view of the Khumbu Icefall, but what we
saw strewn around the campsite was disgusting. I described it in my
notes as “Frankly, a garbage dump. Refuse from all the major expeditions
lay strewn over the tossed and jumbled ice and moraine in an endless
eyeful.” It was decidedly unpoetic; but, thankfully, there are periodic
expeditions specifically to clean up the litter. We made sure that we
left nothing behind.
On January 2nd we climbed Kala Patthar, the ‘Black Slab’, 410 meters
straight uphill from Gorak Shep. “The wind whistled cold as both Pasang
Kami and I fingered my cameras, tripping shutters in a free-for-all of
fabulous views,” I wrote. From the top we had a clear view of some of
the world’s most impressive peaks. “To the east was the Everest summit,
the West Ridge, the South Col, Lhotsé, and Nuptsé. South of the Khumbu
glacier rose Ama Dablam, Kangtega, Tamserku, Taboché, and Tsholatsé
peaks. Westward, out over a sheer 1,000 foot vertical drop from our
perch, spread the glaciers of Changri La. And towering tranquilly over
us, almost at touching distance it seemed, [was] the white cone dome of
Pumo Ri”.
Kongma La
On our return down from Gorak Shep we camped one night at Lobuché.
The following day Pasang Kami and I crossed to the east side of the
glacier and climbed steeply up and over Kongma La (pass). Along the way
we saw what gave the pass its name, flocks of pheasants, kongma to the
Sherpas.
From the top of the pass, the track dropped precariously down to a
frozen lake, and from there we had a long trek out and down to
Dingboché. We arrived late, and spent the night in the house of
Dingboché’s only winter resident, a toothless old Sherpa lady. Nowadays
there are better accommodations.
Yeti scalp and guestbook
The following day we stopped at Pangbgoché and visited the small
temple on the hill. There we were shown the famous ‘yeti scalp’ and
hand. Sadly, the yeti scalp was later stolen away.
Thirty-seven years later, in 2004, I returned to Pangboché. The old
temple was closed to visitors, but I persuaded the elderly caretaker to
retrieve the dusty old guestbooks from a box in an attic. After some
searching I found the page with my 1967 signature, just below those of
Willi Unsoeld and family who had visited Pangboché some days ahead of
me. Willi Unsoeld had summited Everest three years earlier, on the 1963
American Mount Everest Expedition while on leave as director of the
Peace Corps in Nepal. After that he worked for USAID in Kathmandu.
An ‘other world’
One evening, back at Tengboché, I slipped into the dark kitchen room
and sat with the monks around a dying fire while they ate a thick Sherpa
stew with bread. I watched and listened and took notes as the youngest
novices bore the brunt of many jokes and pranks, taking it all in good
spirits. The glow from the dying embers caught their smiling faces and
highlighted their dark red robes. And though I understood little of what
was said, I felt a sense of communion.
Fyodor Dostoevsky once wrote that “Much on earth is hidden from us, but
to make up for that, we have been given a precious mystic sense of our
living bond with the other world...” Was this the sort of “other world”
he meant, I wondered. Whatever, it was a magical moment for me, rich
with ancient and mystical religious tradition, in a place located about
as far as one could go in those days through the Khumbu to the edge of
Tibet.
I left Tengboché the next morning with a khata scarf from the abbot
around my neck and the haunting gong of the monk’s call to prayer
echoing behind me.
Sometimes happenings that last only moments stay with us for years
