Tumling to Sandakphu

How does one describe waking up to a crowing rooster to watch dawn unfold itself at 3000 meters, spilling across the southern faces of the highest mountains in the world?



I guess I can't really.

Sitting there, I thought about how distance can create beauty. From 50 miles away, the cold, the wind, the fear of a fatally misplaced step does not exist. Instead, one sees the perfect white of snow and ice, wisps of frozen crystals blowing off the peaks, and the stark profiles of the ridge lines. I feel similarly in the emptiness of the southwest, or in the few forests of thousand year old trees that still stand further to the north, or watching waves crash on to a shore with a regularity unpuncutated by millennia. In such places, observing the structure of things at non-human scales is unobstructed, and this creates a special sort of experience where it is easy to let go of the fundamental insignificance that is one's idea of the self. The basic goodness of the world is so nakedly apparent that the fear of losing something valuable by forgetting the ego falls away into the void between the human scale and that other.




But the spinning planet is of course oblivious to our amazement, and the fiery dawn soon calmed into a clear, cold morning. We went inside and had some porridge and were on our way. Within the first mile, we changed our angle enough that we had a clear view of Everest. Jill and I stopped to let Dabar catch up (he often hung back, stopping to chat with friends he met along the trail or take advantage of a spot with cell reception to send a message or make a call - yep, 15 years ago it was McDonald's most places, Coca-Cola everywhere, now it's internet most places, cell phones everywhere). Dabar pointed out the peaks to us. This was not an angle that Everest is frequently photographed from, so the profile that we were presented with was not as familiar as expected. In fact, Makalau visually dominated the group more than Everest and it was this sharp profile that I first stopped for. Later at Sandakphu we were able with the binoculars to make out some known details.



Dabar led us up a not often used path along a ridge adorned with weathered prayer flags. Small fire pits showed the ashes of someone else's stories.

After an hour or so, the trail started down to Garibas, a village nestled into a pass where we stopped for tea and some snacks. The way down wound through forests of bamboo, rhododendron and Taxus pine, or Himalayan Yew. Dabar said that a strong tea made from the needles was used as an anti-cancer medicine. Strawberry vines crept around the edges of the trail. A few times we heard what might have been animal noises and one time it was a troupe of monkeys, but the rest of the time either whatever it was never revealed itself, or more often, it was a small group of cattle browsing on the new bamboo shoots. The trail itself had been there for quite a long time. Nearly the whole thing was cobbled and then overgrown. Runoff gullies tumbled down the hillside, braiding in and out of stone staircases that were never perfectly regular to start with. Much of the trail was in shade and there was frost in the parts that never got sun.

In the village, we stopped at the Sherpa Tea Stall Garibas, this displayed painted white on a green board. Two cats sunned themselves on a shelf by a window, through which we could hear a small fire heating tea. Garibas has a cell tower. Dabar tried to make a couple of calls but the reception didn't seem to be that great, but this instigated a bit of phone shuffling among the few locals who were hanging around. While this was going on, two women, one older and one younger, and a small boy arrived. The women carried large bundles of firewood and the boy, who must have been about five, was proudly carrying an armful of sticks.

We sat there for a while. The sun was warming my back and I was not cold and neither was it particularly humid, so I was surprised to see that my breath was visible.

From Garibas, the trail ascended steeply, and then leveled out, winding around the side of a hill to Kalapokhri, the black lake. About an hour out of Garibas, the change in weather that had been heralded by the lenticular cloud crowning the sunrise on Kanchenjunga had arrived. The wind picked up and washed our trail with cloud. I stopped to watch three white prayer flags on long poles held straight by the stiff wind. I stood breathing as the clouds flew past against the blue palette of sky. Imagining the prayers flying off towards the Himalayas carried on the wind took very little effort.

After leveling out, the trail wound around on the northeastern side of the ridge looking out over shady forest. Streams of the cleanest water that we had seen in India crossed the trail, iced over when the hill blocked the sun for most of the day. It was quiet, and we walked at our own paces in silence for a couple hours until the last bit of uphill to Kalapokhri.

From Kalapokhri to Sandakphu was another 6km, much of it steep uphill, so even though it was only early afternoon, we decided to stop there for the night. The village of Kalapokhri is a collection of huts sitting at a low place in the ridge. The place where we stayed was over a small rise from the lake (more of a pond) at the intersection of a few trails. When there was a break in the cloud, we could see Tumling in the distance and were surprised by how far away it looked. We had reached the low end of the altitude range where yaks can live, and the lowland cattle were replaced by these large black and white shaggy beasts. A corral next to the guest house where we were staying was home to about a dozen young goats who constantly clamored for attention. They were very cute and I repeated my desire to have a herd of goats of my own.



In the evening, sitting around the charcoal fire in a low ceilinged room wallpapered with old newsprint Dabar and I talked about how in the US most heating and cooking is done with electricity or gas, and that wood fires are often a luxury. He is surprised that goat milk is more expensive than cow's milk. In India it is the opposite. We talked about old forests, about the small areas of protected forest in our respective countries and how sad it would be to grow up without ever visiting a stand of trees each as big as one of the houses in the village. I told him about pink fleshed salmon and he smiles and shook his head slightly, his tongue sticking half an inch past his teeth - a gesture clearly indicating that his imagination was giving him something that tasted really good.

After dinner, the clouds had cleared and the moon was not yet up. There were more stars than I have seen in a long time. At Chaco Canyon, the glow of Gallup 100 miles away on the horizon is visible, but that is probably the closest that I can call to mind. India may have far more in the way of toxic and septic pollution, but even in the cities light pollution is less than in the west.

The next morning I woke early enough to go outside to see the village before it woke up. An Indian tourist who had been driven up in one of the land rovers and had explained to Jill that it was too windy up at Sandakphu to appreciate the view, as well as elucidated a selection of his theories about the universe was awake too, greeting the crisp morning air with a cigarette. Perhaps he was from Kolkata and it made him feel more at home. In any case, I was glad that he didn't try to come say hi.

As the livestock and their keepers began to stir, I went in to wake Jill. We brought a couple of the ruled hyperboloid stools out into the morning sun and drank tea as our hosts started their morning chores. An old man with an argyle sweater vest walked by with pails of fresh milk for our porridge, and a young woman set out a dish of corn for the goats. As each had their fill and interest in eating began to wane, the head butting and rough housing that had simply been part of getting to the food became a game that started taking over the area until they were chased away down the hill to spend the day foraging.

After a lazy breakfast (they really did have to go milk the cows first) we were on our way again. The trail wound around to the west and through a village where a baby goat had just been born. It was still wet and the mother was licking it clean while nudging it up onto unsteady legs. A little while past this village we came to the next pass. We rested a little while before the trail started uphill in earnest. For a while, we were keeping pace with a young man and his two yaks, and at one point a train of ponies passed us on the way down. It was quite steep, but the clean air and the views and the promise of the view that lay in store invigorated me and I felt like I could have run up the hill.



Our trek peaked at Sandakphu, 3636 meters above sea level. Above a sea of cloud stood a panorama vanishing into central Nepal and rising up to Everest, less than 100 miles to the east. A series of jagged black ridges, behind which could be seen the distant peaks of the Tibetan Himalaya, connected the Everest group to Kanchenjunga, lying only 50 miles to our north. From here the panorama continued across Sikkim to Bhutan and Chomling in the east.



We spent the rest of the day reveling in the views. We climbed to the highest point around, a jut of rock topped with an arch festooned with hundreds of flags.



India has many ways of wearing at a person. The noise, the pollution, the poverty and the way so many people are culturally or consciously blind to these things, not to mention the constant supply of people who see a white person and perceive nothing more than a fat wallet made mobile get to be more than a bit much. Knowing that that place is there, that as I write this the moonlight is reflecting off the ice and illuminating my panorama makes all the hassle disappear, and I can remember that not all of this place is this insanity of a city.