Kathmandu June 15, ‘07

Bloody Mary at a posh hotel bar! I believe I have reached Kathmandu’s expat haven… I have only been travelling for ten days and it seems rather scary, though I know this life all too well from Nairobi.

I woke up this morning to the drumming of the rain. Looking out of the window, the hills were covered in lush green forest. Crossing the border and driving down to Kathmandu I felt like I had entered a whole new world. The landscape, the smells, the people – all so completely different from the Tibet that I left last night with its barren, desolate, harsh landscape.

Two days ago I arrived at Drepung Monastery, situated about 8 km from Everest Base Camp at an altitude of approximately 5000m. Arriving in the evening one can see the peak of Everest sticking up above the clouds. With the stupa of the monastery in front, it makes for great postcard photographs. After eight hours of fairly rough roads from Shigatse, I am pretty tired when reaching my destination, but also excited to finally have arrived. It is still light, though it is almost eight in the evening and I manage to walk the kora (a minor pilgrimage circumambulating a sacred site) clockwise as one should, up the hillside around the monastery before the sun sets. The landscape is bare and the wind is cold. I wonder why anyone would settle up here. The only thing that really seems to thrive in this cold barren place is the yaks. And those there are several of.

Staying at the monastery over night – a place cannot become much more basic than this. Rooms are lined up along a dark corridor, each with four beds, dirty sheets, yak blankets, a small tin bowl balancing on some wooden sticks presumably to function as a wash basin, and last but not least; a candle for those dark nights with no electricity. There is a small common room where basic noodles, biscuits and tea are served. It is the only room with heating as the old stove where the tea is heated is placed in the centre of the room. The heat is welcoming and several thermoses of hot milk tea are emptied during the course of the evening.

It is freezing cold at night and the wind howls through the window cracks. The cold makes even traditional butter tea almost drinkable, the heat and fat being just what the body needs to keep itself warm. Outside the stars have never been so close and bright, covering the sky like a thick carpet. If it had not been for the cold penetrating wind I could have stood there for hours – just gazing up at this wonderful spectacle of millions upon millions of small lights. Back in my room I prepare to go to sleep, excited about the hike up to Everest’s base camp the next morning. I start with thermal underwear, woollen socks, a huge knitted jacket with fleece inside, which I was smart enough to pick up one day in the market in Lhasa, my warm pashmina and my woolly hat. Crawling into bed I start pulling the other layers over me. First a yak blanket, then the duvet, and then another yak blanket. I am still cold. The wind is blowing through the windows underneath which my bed is placed. I reach over to the bed next to me; another duvet and two blankets. I pull it all up to my chin and eventually, to the squeaking noise of the wind, I finally fall asleep.

The next morning, I am up before sunrise. What I thought was a brilliant idea, namely to get up and see the sunrise over Mount Everest, turned out not so brilliant but a rather dark, quiet, cold morning. The sun rose much later then I thought, and packed in thick fog there was little to be seen. The brisk air makes me wake up quickly and as the fog cleared, the mountains appeared with their massive peaks covered in snow. It is a rather striking sight. One feels rather small and insignificant in the midst of this powerful landscape with Mount Everest towering above them all. As the weather gets warmer, I start to walk the four kilometres up to the Everest Base Camp.

Mt. Everest rises a massive 8,848 metres above sea level. The Tibetans call it Chomolungma, meaning “Mother of the Universe” or “Goddess Mother of Snows”. A rather fitting name for this awe-inspiring piece of massive rock, softened slightly by its layer of bright white snow, it is apparently still rising. It is a powerful sight. Chomolungma demands respect. She is merciless and moody, though some seem to have an urge to challenge her superiority. Among the first to set out to reach her peak, were George Mallory and Andrew Irvine. On June 8, 1924 they started their ascent. A year earlier, Mallory had famously responded to the question of ‘Why climb Everest?’ by simply stating ‘Because it’s there’. It seemed that this was him the justification to do so. But Mallory and Irvine never returned, and it was not only until 1999, that his body was found in the ice high up on Chomolungma’s steep slopes. No one knows if he ever reached the top, but the general agreement amongst climbers appears to be that he did not. The first successful ascent did not happen until 29 year later, when Sir Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay finally reached the top on May 29, 1953. As I stand by Mallory’s memorial, looking up at Chomolungma, something tells me that I would never want to challenge her. In 1996, 15 people died trying to reach her peak, 8 people on the same day – May 10; a day that has been since documented in books and movies. It was the deadliest year in the history of Everest. And since then the Chinese have become much stricter in terms of access beyond the first Base Camp. Walking back to Drepung Monastery, I am content that I was granted this spectacular audience with the “Goddess Mother of Snow”, and with no further need to linger, I jumped in the car and start the long drive ahead towards the Nepalese border.

It is the next day, several hours drive and a long hot shower later, that I find myself sipping a Bloody Mary while waiting for my friends and scribbling these notes down…