My Trek to the Everest Base Camp-Part 13

By the time I descended to Periche, I had made my peace with the incomplete climb. AMS might have succeeded in aborting my climb, but She could not take away the joy, the serenity I was experiencing. I had lost a little, but gained a lot. I had pushed my body well beyond its comfort zone, and had succeeded, mostly. I found new confidence in my physical abilities. And I had experienced Beauty, in Her truest form.

In Ajit’s absence, I got busy calculating the income of the owner of the Periche tea house (he was a millionaire), understanding Nepal’s maze of caste and communities and general chit chats with fellow trekkers. My only take away in that short time span was that the Sherpas were at the peak of the pyramid among the mountain communities of Nepal. They monopolized the most lucrative professions on the Everest Trail – owning Tea Houses and being Mountaineers. It was not uncommon for a retired Sherpa mountaineer to become a teahouse owner. But often, like, in the case of the Periche mountain palace teahouse, they had been wealthy for generations to own significant chunks of land along the trail, in the first place. Money begot Money, here. There were no heartwarming rags to riches stories here.

It was day 11, and I was having a relaxed breakfast –thinking I had one more rest day, when Ajit landed up –barely 24 hours after we parted ways in Dughla. Damn! This man was fast. Speedy Gonzales without his Snail Paced wife! I tried to lure him to stay back in Periche, but our man is a Race Horse with Blinders, remember? He had touched the finish line and now – all he wanted to do was to gallop back to Bangkok as soon as possible.

So I packed up, said my good byes and left.

As we got out, we noticed that the clouds had taken over the sky. If we had gone together, today would have been our day of ascent at Kala Patthar and there would have been no views! The Gods –or Mother Nature -had conspired to allow Ajit to experience the very last show. For a long, long time.

And we saw some clouds streaked a shade of purplish blue. Like they had just returned from a wild hair color experiment. I don’t know enough about clouds or mountains to know what caused that, but whatever that was, it was unusual and intriguing.

On the way down, Ajit started to remember that I was right there, behind him, chugging away. So slowed down at many places to talk with me. Finally. Couple Time. On this fortnight long couple-only trip. It was almost romantic.

We were both excited to head back to Trayi- our just to be 6 year old daughter. We had saved 2 days because of my premature descent and we wanted to surprise Trayi and Ajit’s parents by returning early.  And I started planning all the gifts I wanted to buy in Kathmandu – for my daughter, my husband’s parents, our friends who had helped us, the nanny, my parents back home, my trainer, etc. We had much to be grateful for and I wanted to share that with those close to us.  We had seen several things on our first day in Kathmandu, and we would have time to go back and pick up some nice souvenirs.

The first night, we stayed at one of the two teahouses at Phunki Tenga –yes, down from Periche, Orsho, Tengboche and half way to Namche. Coming down was fast for sure.

We spent much of the evening playing with a cute chubby pink cheeked, bright eyed 3 year old little girl – daughter of the owner – who increased our longing to go home.

Day 12 we retraced our path back to Namche. The cloud curtains stayed shut- just opening for a few minutes enroute not even allowing us to say a proper good bye.  We had lunch at Namche and as we continued down to the point where we had first seen Everest, we hoped She and her friends would emerge to give us a warm send off, but they all stayed hidden. It was as if the mountains needed a rest after putting up one dazzling show after the next for 10 days in a row. It felt incomplete, leaving like this – without saying a proper farewell, but Nature had decided otherwise

The 2^nd night of the descent, we trailed downwards of Namche and stayed at Monjo. As if making up for the complete absence of kids on the upwards journey, we met another local 4 year old rock star at Monjo. A compulsive performer, -and again the kid of the teahouse owner – this cute boy put on some music, climbed on a dinner table and started to dance. And kept dancing, till he was dragged away by his mom close to an hour later! Memory of our 5 year old daughter tugged our heart strings yet again.

At our Monjo tea –house, we met a group of first time mountaineers from USA. They mentioned to us that all flights to Lukla had been cancelled for 2 days now and that they had hired a chartered helicopter and flown in, as they did not want to lose time.  They were reticent and unfriendly, this group of mountaineers. Show-offs, Ajit and I concurred.

On day 13 – November 2 – we started the day early. It was cloudy and misty. We wanted to reach Lukla asap and attempt a fly back to Kathmandu the same day if possible. We were now unbathed since Periche and were reversing socks and other critical pieces of clothing to enable reuse.  The thought of a hot tub, a wonderful scrub and a relaxing foot massage back home, sounded inviting.

The last two days of descent had been intense and  I was exhausted by now. I found every step hard. We reached Phakding at lunch-time. After lunch, we proceeded to Thado Kosi – our first night stop.  Kusum Kanguru was hidden as well. We remembered Thado Kosi as a short walk from Lukla – so we sent Balaram ahead to see if he could get us in on the last flights for the day, or -more likely- on the flights for the next morning.

The way the flights worked in Lukla were that, by default, your tickets are open tickets- valid for any flight on your airline – on the day of your travel. Once you show up – the day prior to your travel –usually - you have the right to a confirmed seat on the day you are scheduled to fly. On other days, you can get a seat, if enough people for the day don’t turn up. This system works well, most of the time. Because, sometimes when you are trekking, you may either complete early or may decide to extend your stay.

So Balaram rushed ahead to Lukla to see if he could get us tickets either for the same day or the next morning. Yes it was cloudy, but maybe there would be a few flights we hoped.

Without Balaram by my side, bolstering me on, I slowed down so much, many people walking past me might have assumed I was stationary! I kept waiting for the trek to end, but it did not! Finally, with sweat trickling down my back and with mist covering our faces, we stepped into Lukla.

Balaram was waiting for us at the entry to Lukla. He had Good News and Bad News.

The Good News was that, although Lukla was crowded- this was peak trekking season and about 300-400 trekkers were returning to Lukla from the trail everyday -  he had found us room in a really nice teahouse that had a –much needed shared hot shower.

The Bad News was that what the Monjo mountaineers had said was indeed true. Bad Weather – the cloud curtain we had seen the entire route – had stopped all flights to and from Lukla for the last 3 days. The flights would resume only after the clouds decided to clear out of the sky. There were already several hundred trekkers in line, waiting for the flights to start. We were stranded in Lukla. Indefinitely.