Trek to Minya Konka - Day 2

The top of my tent is glowing with the coming light. I look at my watch and see that it’s 6am. The day has begun. I have been holding my water since about 4:45 so the last hour of sleep has been pretty uncomfortable. As I sit up, I can feel every muscle running down both sides of my body, my lower back is achy and my outer thighs feel as though they are bruised. I check. They’re not. It’s going to take a couple of days to adjust to sleeping on the ground especially with the mat I was given. This thing is for shit.

My first task today is to put on my easy on shoes and pay a visit. When I return to my tent, one of the staff is standing outside it. He has his back turned to me so he can’t see that I am outside as he asks no one inside if they would like some tea. When I reply, “Yes, please,” he is visibly startled. He waits for me to get in through the vestibule before handing me a green plastic cup of hot water with a Lipton’s tea bag in it. I can actually hear the record skip. Lipton? Isn’t this the historic tea route of Tibet? Where’s the good stuff? I pop out the Lipton bag and grab a jasmine honey green tea that I brought from home. Just in case.

About 15 minutes later, I receive another “knock” on the door with an offer for washing water. This variety of toilette is slightly better than a French bath and significantly better than nothing. I use my cleansing towels and clean myself as best I can without taking off all my clothes. After I dress, I repack my duffle so it can be reloaded and moved to our next camp. I have to make room this time for the sleeping bag I rented so I take the time to pack carefully.

By 7:15, I hear Bart’s yodel announcing breakfast. With the light now completely up, I leave my tent and am disappointed to see nothing. No view, no sun. Nothing. The Five Sisters are lost behind a dense cloudbank and the entire meadow is enshrouded in a low hanging, wet fog. It’s like Los Angeles where one day, you look out your window and there’s the Hollywood sign clear as a bell and then the inversion layer hits and the next day you can barely make out the buildings two blocks away. Despite our being landlocked, I optimistically presume it is like a marine layer and will burn itself off by noon.

Breakfast includes Tibetan yogurt, which is especially tart. Everyone mixes some Danish bought Mueslix into a couple tablespoons full. I offer up the Ghirardelli Hot Chocolate mixes I brought from home. I make a cup for myself and everyone else spoons it into their coffees. All of us happily chat over our breakfast and not one of us is a bit concerned about the weather.

About an hour into our hike, I take a picture of my group on a bridge made of trees tied together side by side. The only visible color is of the prayer flags that hang along both sides. The fog is thick and grey and has cast a pallor over the entire scene. It’s as though I am looking at my friends through water. But everyone is smiling and hopeful, standing linked arm in arm at the middle of the bridge over the middle of the river.

Immediately after the bridge, we have a long, steep climb followed by a fairly level though rocky trail for several hours. We run into a group of 4 young men at 11am. They are all dressed up and wearing what I would call street shoes. They tell us that it’s their day off and they’re heading into Kangding for some fun. By this point, Kangding is about 25 miles away along a mountain trail and then highway. I think of the old cliche “when I was your age, I walked 30 miles in my bare feet to get to school.” In this part of Asia, that’s oftentimes true.

At 1pm, we start looking around for a place to eat lunch. Our horsemen have still not passed us and we are concerned we have wandered too far ahead. Bart tells us that there is a hut somewhere around the field in which we are standing but it is difficult to see more than 10 feet ahead of us. What looks like the outline of a cabin, turns out to be a 12’x12’ boulder. By this point, as my mother would say, it has started to “spit” so we give up on shelter and put on our rain gear, throw our bags on the ground, lean up against some rocks and enjoy our meal. I made myself a PB&J at breakfast because I don’t want the yak meat and fried egg sandwich.

Bart is carrying a walkie-talkie identical to the one I have at home. It was a gift from my philandering ex, Scott. Not only did he thoughtlessly give the gift of himself to anyone in a skirt, he also gave really thoughtless gifts. Once, he gave me a tent, camping pillow and a headlamp because he wanted to go camping. Another time, he gave me a handheld computer fishing game that you initiated by physically casting it. He thought it was so much fun that I let him keep it at his house. Then there was the Abercrombie & Fitch t-shirt that featured a 50’s style image of a ski lift drawn in the sparkly white coating used to decorate Christmas ornaments. The statement “We go down when you go down” was written across the chest. Nice.

When he gave me the walkie-talkies, he had been insistent that I go mountain biking with him. I am not a big fan of biking in general and mountain biking in particular – especially the downhill part – but I really didn’t see the point of biking with Scott since we would inevitably end up a couple miles apart due to our vastly different skill levels. The walkie-talkies were a symbol of our unbreakable union, I suppose, our solidarity on the wild, wild mountain. Despite the selfishness of the gift, this was the only one that actually proved of use to me when one Sunday in a Malibu canyon, my chain broke. Scott sure was pissed when I interrupted his ride with my SOS and he had to ride all the way back to fix it.

Bart is not experiencing the same responsiveness with Phillip, perturbed or otherwise. After calling him every couple of minutes and then calling him once on every channel, he gets nothing but static. He is getting increasingly frustrated since it was Phillip who gave him the device and doesn’t appear to be using it. Additionally, as the local guide, Phillip is supposed to be assisting Bart in the guidance of the group, not assisting the staff.

Bart is worried about the weather and our questionable proximity to camp and gear. As the rain starts to pick up, I start to worry as well. We put our packs back on and continue to walk through muddy rocks and yellow grasses. I rig my umbrella under my bag’s chest straps so I can walk empty handed. Occasionally, I put my hands out from under my shelter and feel the raindrops growing larger and heavier until finally they turn into sleet and then into snow.

It is snowing so hard now that I cannot see anyone behind me and all I can see of Bart is the red of his pack cover. My head is down and I have positioned the umbrella slightly ahead of me to shield me from the snow, which is falling almost horizontally. The wind has picked up substantially so I have to hold the umbrella with both hands and steady it as best I can. I am soaked when Bart tells me that we are very close to our campsite, so I am not completely miserable. But then I realize we have yet to see our horses. I look at my watch and it is 2pm. They should have passed us three hours ago. Bart suggests that we start looking for a yak herder tent so we can take needed advantage of their renowned hospitality.

We smell the smoke of a campfire and search around the white and grey landscape until we spot two black yak hair tents. They are positioned about 20 feet apart to form a sort of courtyard facing the Gyazi Chu river. This is likely done for practical rather than aesthetic reasons. We don’t see but we can hear their horses slightly above the site. Bart ushers Julia in the tent and then Louise and Carol. He quickly follows them and calls for me to hurry. When I approach the tent door, I notice a small t-shirt and a pair of socks hanging on the rigging. Likely, they were placed here yesterday to dry in the sun and today they are covered in snow and dripping with icicles.

I remove my pack and crouch down to enter. The flap is thrown back to welcome me but as I step inside, my lungs are blasted with wood burning smoke. There is very little air in here so I smile at everyone who are seated on the couch/beds, shake my head as if to say “I can’t breathe” and I run back outside. But it is snowing even more vehemently outside so I know I have to figure out a way to endure this. I remember the Indian sweat lodge that Julie and I participated in while at the adventure spa in Colorado. Lodges are an Indian ritual intended to cleanse the mind and soul, but the physical reality of them is an unbearably hot sauna inside a tepee. Our sweat lodge held a total of 14 people, including our Indian guide. Everyone sat knee to knee in Indian style around a pile of red hot rocks. I was nervous about doing it because I find it difficult to breathe in saunas. I much prefer a steam bath to the sauna’s dry, unforgiving heat. But Julie convinced me to give it a try, telling me I could leave if I couldn’t bear it. I wasn’t in the tent more than 30 seconds before I found myself face down in the dirt and gasping for air from the tiny crack between the tepee and the ground. Defiantly, I adjusted and made it through the ritual. When I emerged, I felt relaxed and emotionally uplifted but I looked like I had just stuck my finger in a cigarette lighter.

I turn back to the yak tent and crawl back inside. There is a spot on the bed with Louise, which is the closest spot to the tent’s door so I grab it. My pack has been thrown on top of a large pile of kindling.

The entire tent is oriented around the fire, which is used to generate heat, cook food, clean dishes and boil water. There are holes poked in the yak hair fabric of the entire tent for added ventilation. I don’t think they are especially effective but they are pretty, twinkling like tiny stars against the darkness of the tent. There is a hole in the tent’s roof directly above the fire through which about 40% of the smoke is vented. The rest lingers inside the tent forming a visible layer roughly at eye level. The front wall has a large stack of corded wood with some pots and pans stored on top. The back wall of the tent is an actual foundation made of piled stone. I learn that because these herders return to the same wilderness each year, often for three or four months at a time, they use the same foundations over and over again for added stability and soundness of the structure.

I presume the three ladies seated around the fire are wives of the herders, who are likely out wrangling their yaks. They are engrossed in conversation and barely notice us peeling off our wet clothes and laying everything out at our feet before the fire. Within minutes, our boots start to steam. I feel like we have taken over the joint but they don’t seem to care. One lady starts boiling water for her noodles. She throws her trash, including plastic, directly into the fire. I guess she missed the Johns Hopkins alert on dioxin emissions (I hold my breath). Another woman eats handfuls of sunflower seeds, shucking the shells between her front teeth and spitting them on the floor. When she smiles, bits of seed and shell remain wedged in her teeth. It is considered entirely acceptable to spit and snot your nose directly on the dirt floor because at routine intervals, the tent is swept clean.

Carol briefly engages the ladies by showing them her book of pictures from home. It turns out to be a useful tool on our trek, a means of introduction or breaking the ice and amusing our hosts. Many Tibetans have a fairly narrow perspective of life beyond their own village, making images of Westerners with their families, dog, house or Christmas tree very intriguing to them. It seems that where America is concerned, their vernacular is limited to the stereotypical, so when I tell them I am from California they stare at me blankly. Not even “Los Angeles” elicits a response. But when I say “Hollywood,” they all smile, nod their heads and say “ahhh” as though they understand. I would have generated the same reaction had I said “Brad Pitt.” To Tibetans, they are the same thing.

I grab my camera to take a couple shots of Julia and Bart across the fire. The starry holes sparkle behind their heads and they sit in a haze of smoke. Small sparks spit up from the fire. The picture is a complete blur but I like it anyway. It is a sort of abstraction of this entire experience, hazy and unclear but twinkling nonetheless. It only took the neighboring tent 30 minutes or so to drop by after hearing about our presence. They arrive accompanied by a small boy who is wearing the traditional Tibetan men’s costume of a one-armed robe, though he wears his with a thick fisherman sweater underneath. He has the most perfectly round apples for cheeks. He stares at me so I dig in my bag and offer him a pear, which his mother plucks from my hand with a nod of thanks. When I offer him the trail mix, he shyly dips a fist in the baggie and grabs as much as he can hold. Rather than eating, he clings to it with both hands and stares at us intently. I know the chocolate is melting in his hands but he doesn’t care. Today, after all, he got to see something alien.

We all pull ourselves a little closer together to make room for our new visitors but the Tibetans prefer to sit on a few pots that they place around the fire. It’s easier this way to continue their conversation as though we are not here.

We hear the jingle of our horses at last and run out of the tent to let them know we are here. Phillip tells us that our campsite at Adala is just ahead and to stay here where it is dry. He wants time to get the tents up. Phillip is fully geared but his three staff members are dripping wet. They have walked into the mountains in outfits they probably wear wandering around Kangding on a Friday evening. We don’t bother asking where they have been. By the looks of them, it hasn’t been an easy 8 hours.

We stay with the yak herders’ wives for another hour during which time the yak herders come home. We watch as one woman makes dinner for them, noodles, some kind of meat and various spices. They have moved on to their tea when another man arrives. A negotiation begins including the women. One woman pulls a package from the shelf formed by the foundation on the back wall. It seems to be a record book of some kind. In only a few minutes, they arrive at a price and the woman exchanges 60 yuan for a baggie of fungus encrusted worms, a far better price than we saw even yesterday.

Finally, it is time to leave so we offer the ladies what food we are carrying as well as a small amount of money as a gesture of thanks. This is welcomed on such occasions in Tibet, perhaps even tacitly expected. We walk out into the grey day and the continuing storm and walk only a short way before we realize that Phillip is pitching our camp across the river rather than the one we expected to use on this side. We jump a few rivulets, cross faster water on a log with arms straight out for balance and quickly arrive at a point of no continuation. The water is icy cold and flowing quickly. Bart calls Dorgi with the walkie-talkie and tells him to lead a horse over to ride us in. Dorgi leads the horses off a section of the embankment that is so steep, the water skims the horse’s belly. Dorgi is all smiles when he reaches us and insists that someone get on the horse with him. Louise gamely obliges him while Julia is helped onto the other horse. When he returns, Bart refuses to allow either Carol or me to ride as Louise just did. I am very happy that he took this position because if he hadn’t, it likely would have been me riding gunshot, the thought of which was making me increasingly nervous. I have been afraid of horses since I was thrown from one on my 15th Easter Sunday. I ended up having my elbow tapped and wearing a full arm cast for a couple months. I still remember the sound of that thing banging against my desk when I used it to steady the answer sheet of my PSAT. Strangely, I also have a fantasy including horses. I am riding bareback along the beach with my sun kissed hair fluttering long and dreamlike behind me. It seems kind of Harlequin now, but it worked for me when I was 7. So when Dorgi returns for me after taking Carol to the other shore, I deny my reality and embrace my fantasy and I ride to the other side unharmed.

We don’t linger long over dinner because of the continuing snow and the fact that the staff uses the mess tent as their sleeping tent. At this point, everyone needs to be sheltered. It has snowed at least 4 inches since our arrival in camp and for this reason it is discernably warmer tonight. I am comfortable wearing only long underwear in my bag. I do a crossword, read my book and fall soundly asleep at by 9:30pm.