Mount Everest – A chance to touch your own soul

“Mama and me are going to Mount Everest with a bunch of friends,” I told my daughters. This was after 22 of us, aged 16-60, had finalized a plan to trek up to Everest Base Camp.

“Isn’t that the tallest mountain in the world?” my 9-year-old asked. “That’s why we’re going, but we’re going only to the bottom of it,” I replied, and saw a very unimpressed look on the face of my 7-year-old. “Why would you take 10 days to reach the bottom of the mountain?” she enquired, probably slightly concerned that she’d have to be without both her parents for that long for the first time ever. “Because we have to climb more than 5000 meters, and one meter is roughly how tall you are, so imagine 5000 of you stacked up on top of each other!” I gestured, confusing her ever more. “And there’s less oxygen in the air at that level, so it’s hard to breathe and it’s also freezing cold,” I cuddled her tight trying to justify to her that what we were going to do was pretty valiant and she should be proud of her parents.

“How many people go this base camp every year?” she questioned further to crosscheck if what we were embarking on was really that big a deal. I quickly looked it up and announced that about 40,000 people do it annually. “How many people go to the actual top of the mountain?” her calculating mind asked. “Around 500,” I replied. She raised her eyebrows at me, clearly believing that she’d proved her point that what we were setting out for was simply a high-altitude picnic.

As I continued scrolling for more trivia, I was surprised to find out that fewer than 7000 people have summitted the top of Mount Everest (8848 m) in the 70 years since it was first scaled by Sir Edmund Hillary and Sherpa Tenzing Norgay on May 29, 1953.

So, in remembrance of its 70^th anniversary, a month earlier on April 29, 2023, about two dozen of us set out to get to the top of the bottom of a mountain. An early morning Air Vistara flight took us smoothly away from the dusty suburbs of Mumbai and planted us in breezy Kathmandu. We were greeted at the airport by an ornate statue of Lord Buddha, which said, “Welcome to Nepal, the birthplace of Lord Buddha.” Until this point, I had always thought the Buddha was Indian. But how does it matter; he transcends these imaginary boundaries made by man and his teachings are universal.

THE DEATH RIDE

The next morning, we were scheduled to take a 30-minute flight from Kathmandu to Lukla (the starting point of the trek) but were informed that our flight was diverted to Ramechhap Airport, which is a 5-hour drive from Kathmandu.

So, at about 2 AM, we huddled into 2 minibuses and were driven along the craziest serpentine roads with the largest potholes by drivers unaware of an entity called death or motion sickness, even as one half of our group threatened to puke on the other half. We drove along the edge of a cliff yawning into the valley, with one half of a bus tyre constantly threatening to roll over. I couldn’t help but remember Hunter S. Thompson who famously tried to describe the edge, himself confessing that “There is no honest way to explain it because the only people who know where it is, are the ones who have gone over.” We were mentally prepared that we were flying to the most dangerous airport into the world; we just weren’t prepared that the road to it was also the same.

We arrived at Ramechhap as if we had come back from war, battle weary. The airport was four concrete walls open to sky and two rooms. Hordes of trekkers with their multicoloured backpacks converged in chaos to make their flight.

THE FLIGHT PLIGHT

We were booked on Sita Airways. And that’s where our Ramayana began. Every other plane took off apart from ours. Our flight, which was via a 14-seater plane, was overbooked, is what we were told. Who overbooks a 14-seater? We then got inside information that a group of international trekkers had paid the airlines more and so we were offloaded. By the time it was our turn to fly, the pilot had overflown his hours for the day. Our flight was supposed to be only 14 minutes long, but no exceptions were made.

By noon, the airport wore a disserted look. We took a stroll on the runway with a security guard who empathised with us. Parts of the airplane were dismantled in front of us for oiling and greasing, clearly indicating that we weren’t going to fly out from there that day. Driving to Lukla meant travelling on the edge of another cliff for 20 hours, which the group vetoed. We found accommodation in a guest house nearby and played volleyball with the locals instead, hoping to take the first flight out the next morning.

We walked over to the airport before sunrise but received news that the weather was not going to allow us to fly. Grey fleecy clouds had descended upon the mountain range, hanging over its neck like a sword. We coyly requested our pilot to take the risk, as we had already lost a day. Instead, he showed us a few YouTube videos of planes crashing into the mountains while trying to land at Lukla Airport.

Surrounded by several 7000-meter-tall peaks, it is not without reason Lukla is called the most dangerous airport in the world. The strong winds and thin air make it harder for the engines to generate thrust. Additionally, there are no radar or navigation systems at the airport, so pilots are fully dependent on what they can see from the cockpit. Also called the Tenzing-Hillary Airport and built by Hillary himself with the local sherpas, the runway is only half a kilometre long and inclined at a 12-degree slope. We agreed it wasn’t worth the risk even if it was the ‘runway on the roof of the world.’ “You can only go to the mountain on her timeline, not yours,” my wife said, trying to appease our impatience. I wondered who had assigned the feminine gender to a mountain.

A few hours later, the weather cleared up and one flight with half our group took off, with them sending pictures to those of us on the ground. We saw their broad smiles in the pictures they sent us from their twin-seater airplane, until they realised that the weather Gods had changed their minds a few minutes before they could land at Lukla and they had to take a U-turn mid-air to return to us, thankfully alive. It was gloomy once again. According to neuroscience, bad weather makes us turn inward and invites us to think more deeply, more clearly. We sat down to renegotiate our strategy over a few beers. Some of us were willing to shift the trek to Annapurna Base Camp. Our guide told us that while that was more scenic, the trek could also be full of leeches; I was unsure if our blood being sucked out was the scene he was referring to. Others were resolute about making it to Everest because it was a dream they had harboured for years. I, like for most things, didn’t have an opinion; I was just happy to be that high above sea level.

I remembered the American poet Ada Limon’s stunning poetry. “We’ve come this far, survived this much. What would happen if we decided to survive more?” I thought this poem would come to mind towards the end of our journey, but here I was, thinking of it at its very beginning. We were drained waiting for over 48 hours for a 14-minute flight, but we decided to brave one more night. The next morning, as the clouds lifted their veil over the brown mountains, we were on the first two flights of Sita Airways – Ram bharose.

It was a perfect touch-down at Lukla Airport, as the plane came to a halt 2 feet short of where the runway ended. A security guard pretended to screen our luggage as it was handed over to us. We had the famous trekkers’ breakfast at the damp and musty Buddha Lodge, stacked up on water, and started walking amidst planes taking off and landing at arm’s length.

THE FIRST WALK

Our first destination was a 4-hour walk to Phakding, a name that brought a mischievous grin to anyone who said it. We walked through the town of Lukla bumping into dzos, an animal that’s a hybrid of a yak and a cow as little school kids in blue uniforms, with pink cheeks and well-oiled hair, effortlessly strutted down the rocky steps that we were gingerly navigating.

We came across large boulders with Buddhist inscriptions. “You must always walk around these clockwise,” one of our guides, Shyam, told us, and we circumambulated in the right direction. He was in his mid-fifties and had been to Everest Base Camp over a hundred times. He looked like a younger brother of Om Puri, with his mottled face, but had a silken voice that gently prodded us to keep walking. We bumped into haggard trekkers who were returning from base camp, some of them looking like their noses were going to fall off, most of them parched from the sun and the cold. “It’s hard as hell, but definitely worth it,” most of them said, breathing heavily when I asked them how it was, with one solo trekker confessing, “I cried the last three days.”

We walked along a turquoise river as it bounded enthusiastically over granite boulders. There was a freshness, a sense of being undistracted in these spaces. The sight of a verdant expanse below and snow-capped mountains in the distance took away the weariness of walking, and we finally made it to our lodge in Phakding. We had dal and rice (our every meal over the next 10 days) and tucked ourselves into rooms separated by cardboard partitions, through which you could hear your neighbour breathe, let alone listen to everyone’s uncensored conversations.

THE FIRST CLIMB

The next day I awoke at first light and washed my face and brushed my teeth with water so cold it stung. When we assembled for breakfast, we bumped into Poorna Malavath, a 22-year-old girl from Telangana, who was the youngest girl to summit the top of Mount Everest just before she turned 14. At 22, she was now guiding an expedition to base camp, with one member of her team aged only 9. I, at 42, could only stare at her in disbelief and awe, even more fascinated by the human spirit. She later told us that she has summitted the tallest peaks of all seven continents. “The first step is the most crucial,” she said, as we parted ways to continue the second leg of our journey to Namche Bazaar, a 10-hour climb.

The clouds had made way for a blustery day, the sun shining bright on us, as countless vistas of the monumental mountains interspersed between deep ravines and several footbridges made way for some spectacular views completely enrapturing me. I couldn’t help but gawk in reverence for the sherpas who carried logs of wood, cylinders, crates, and other unimaginable loads on their backs, some of them doing so with cigarettes in their mouth. “Won’t smoking make it harder for you to breathe?” I asked one of them in Hindi, as he took a break for a puff. “This is medicine for altitude sickness!” he quipped back to regale us. “Plus, it keeps you warm,” he added, and marched on at 3000 meters.

Acute mountain sickness can occur if you ascend above 2500 meters. I later found out that the people of Nepal have different DNA than lowlanders that evolved via natural selection over centuries, enabling them to live comfortably at high altitudes. Their DNA contains DNA from Denisovans, one of the early hominins that interbred with Homo sapiens. To survive altitude sickness, one of our Gujju groupies had made camphor potlis for all of us to tie around our necks and inhale from deeply, as it was too late to interbreed with someone who had Nepali DNA.

“Anyone can develop altitude sickness,” Shyam explained. “It doesn’t matter how fit you are.” He went on to narrate the story of how, in 2010, Martina Navratilova at age 54 developed pulmonary oedema while attempting to climb Mount Kilimanjaro in Tanzania and had to be brought down immediately and hospitalised. I took two extra puffs of the camphor after listening to that, and soon thereafter we stopped for lunch to devour some more dal and rice, preparing for an even more uphill climb, which was both metaphorically and literally breath-taking. The steps became steeper, the climb harder.

“I try to best explain,” our other guide, Dinesh, started speaking with us in broken English, practising it with us to master it for his foreign clients. He was a lean and lanky chap who had completed his mountaineering training, but domestic responsibilities kept him from leaving for long expeditions and he had to resort to being a guide for treks to base camp. “There are five rules to climb the mountain,” he elaborated as he saw us pant. “Eat well, sleep well, drink well, walk slowly, and strong mind,” he concluded simply. I focused on number four, soaking in the sun before it set as we finally reached Namche Bazaar.

Namche is a pretty town with enormous rotating prayer wheels greeting us as we entered. It’s also a party town situated on the slope of an arch-shaped mountain, with amazing views of giant Himalayan peaks from anywhere in the valley. Little children ran all over, flashing their enormous fuchsia smiles.

Some of our boys slugged on beer at the highest Irish Pub in the world, while others strolled the market for more mountaineering gear. Multifarious shops lined cobbled streets running up and down the hill. “This town is famous for yak cheese and butter,” Shyam told us, “but it’s actually the female, called a dri, that gives the milk that produces all this,” he said; the yak refers only to the male. “Even in the animal kingdom, the males want to take credit for everything that the females do,” I pronounced as we sipped on coffee made from ‘yak’ milk at the Stupa Café that marked the entrance to the town.

We spent the night at a French-sounding teahouse called Camp De Base, and had our dinner at Thokathok restaurant. I don’t know what that word means in Nepali, but in Gujrati, it’s surely not a place to dine at! As Namche is situated at around 3500 meters, we had a reserve day here to acclimatize and were told we could walk up to the glorious Hotel Everest View (built by Takashi Miyahara, a Japanese-born tourism entrepreneur) for breakfast to get our first glimpse of the mountain, but it was pouring and misty and foggy and hazy, and hence we stayed in to have the last hot water shower of our trip.

THE FIRST GLIMPSE

After Namche, scarcity hits the mountains. Green slowly turns grey. Bushes make way for gravel. The price of mineral water goes up by a hundred rupees every 500 meters. There’s no wi-fi, no network; you can barely charge your phone. There is no heating and temperatures rattle around 0 degrees Celsius. Most lodges don’t have attached bathrooms. I remember washing my bum once with water so cold that everything I thought was supposed to come out went right back in, refusing to venture out. And they tell me that the outside of a mountain is good for the inside of man. I reminded myself that my goal in life was not to be more spiritual but to be more human.

The Nepali name for Mount Everest is Sagarmatha, meaning ‘the head in the great blue sky’, and the area we were trekking in was the Sagarmatha National Park. The next three mornings, we walked to the towns of Tengboche (3867 m), Dingboche (4410 m), and Lobuche (4930 m). I wondered why all these names ended with ‘che’; perhaps the Gujjus had settlements here even before the Nepalis arrived.

On the first of those three mornings, on Buddha Purnima, as the full moon made its way for an even fuller sun, we got our first glimpse of the top of Mount Everest, with the sky’s golden light bouncing the snow off it in tiny puffs. It was simultaneously majestic and simple. Beautiful and brutal. It merged into the landscape with humility and yet stood out with hubris. It swept you off your feet while firmly rooting you to the ground beneath. It stood in the way and yet it was the way. It synchronously both discarded and illuminated the notion of heaven. It was both the portal to the sacred and the profane. It was both the cacophony and the stillness. I wondered what Edmund Hilary must have felt to be the first to summit the mountain. I wondered what he must have felt when two decades later his wife and daughter died in a plane crash in the Himalayas.

Over the next three days, we continued to walk and climb arduously at the deepest yearning of our paradisal pursuits, watching the clouds floating like soft feathers jumping from one mountain to another. Shyam constantly chanted, “Slowly, slowly…” in the background, which, in his graceful intonation, urged us to move faster. In the days we spent together, he told us the story of how a group of ladies from New Zealand, all above the age of 60, have visited him over 10 times to trek in different parts of Nepal. All of them retired nurses, they run a free medical camp in his village as a gesture of gratitude every time they come.

THE ONWARD JOURNEY

We passed by tiny stupas with meditative Buddha eyes engraved on them and tombstones built in honour of the people who had succumbed to the mountains. Bright prayer flags adorned the little settlements along the way, snapping away in the brisk wind. “The blue colour is for the sky, white is for the wind, red for fire, green for vegetation, and yellow for the earth,” Dinesh told us, as we became more rooted with the elements amidst fellow trekkers that appeared more languorous than when we started.

We knew we were walking really high when there were choppers flying below us, airlifting people who were getting sick or those who just could not move any further. “The more you try to avoid suffering, the more you suffer,” I remembered Thomas Merton, as I saw a 12-year-old hooked onto an oxygen tank being helped by his team to reach the helipad.

We stayed the nights at modest accommodations where we overdosed on mountain whisky – a combination of ginger, lemon, and honey in hot water to warm our inners, while our outers gently shrivelled away. Shafts of sunlight streamed in through the foggy windows to awaken us in the mornings. It was both exhilarating and exhausting at the same time to be in the midst of ethereal beauty through the hardship. As Leonard Cohen put it in one of his finest songs, we’re “none of us deserving of cruelty or the grace.”

I felt my blood freeze in my veins at -15 degrees Celsius when we reached Gorakshep (5164 m) three days later, where a notice at the entrance of the town said, “There is no reliable water resource around, therefore we cannot provide drinking water.” We got ourselves mineral water at Rs. 500 a bottle.

FINALLY, EVEREST

Everest Base Camp (5364 m) was now just three hours away. We could see in the distance a snow-covered glacier speckled with yellow, blue, and red tents. After three days of perfect weather, once again, there was a large cloud cover looming over us. We marched on with renewed vigour and rigour, safely leaving it behind in the distance, and the sky miraculously opened up for us. We paraded on gravel and roved on rocky terrain as we finally reached our destination in the gathering chill of the early evening. The bean-shaped boulder that has Everest Base Camp graffitied on it with red spray paint, alongside numerous inscriptions of people’s signatures demonstrating a sense of been-there, done-that. It’s quite ironic that you can’t really see Mount Everest from Everest Base Camp, and that only the top tenth of it is visible on your way there and back.

We jumped atop the boulder and did all the routine touristy things like taking pictures by thumping our chests and pumping our fists. I had a premonition that a group of people would walk out of their tents and invite me to join their expedition to the very top of the mountain, but that thought quickly vanished when I remembered the story of a surgeon who summitted the peak but lost all his fingers to frost bite on his return.

Even though we returned from the base camp valiantly that evening, our journey wasn’t complete. Some of us had planned to scale Kala Patthar (5645 m) to watch the sun rise over Everest. It is from the top of this mountain that you can see a third of Everest. So, the next morning at 3 AM, wearing 4 layers of clothes with headlights strapped to our foreheads, we started the ascend amidst a starry silhouette of snow-capped mountains. As the sun began to rise a few hours later, a silver hue outlined the plethora of peaks that ensconced us.

“I can’t feel my toes,” my friend told me as we took small steps in the dark, breathing twice as hard. “Just wiggle them a little,” I joked, but after a few minutes he mentioned he couldn’t feel half his foot. He realised that discretion was the better part of valour and decided to descend. When he reached down, I was told his feet were purple; if he hadn’t decided to turn back then, he would have needed an amputation.

A few of us continued to ascend, placing our feet precariously to avoid slipping on the snow lining the rocks. As the sun loped upwards, the mountains changed colour from crimson to golden and then brown. I dared to remove my gloves and take a picture, only to realise I couldn’t feel my fingers. I shoved them right back in and started shaking them manically to restore some circulation. Once I could feel my fingers again, I continued my onward journey to reach the top and be treated to a staggering, celestial, 360-degree view of 120 Himalayan peaks – the closest one can be to finding salvation. The sight of such mountains resolves all anxiety. This was our heaven to find and make in the midst of our mundanities. To dwell in its beauty and be free from our earthly cravings. After munching on a few protein bars, we sat in silence and reached out to the far side of our thoughts. Paradise was finding wonder in that moment. We prayed homage to Mount Everest and descended quickly because the water we had carried up to drink had frozen over.

I later found out that George Everest had no direct connection with the mountain that bears his name, which he never even saw. He was, however, responsible for hiring Andrew Scott Waugh, who made the first formal observations of the mountain, and Radhanath Sikdar, who calculated its height. In March 1856, Waugh wrote to the Royal Geographical Society to announce that the mountain was believed to be the highest in the world and proposed that it be named “after my illustrious predecessor.” Everest’s name was used as a compromise owing to the difficulty of choosing between multiple local names for the mountain. George Everest initially objected to the honour, as he had had nothing to do with its discovery and believed his name could not be easily written or pronounced in Hindi. That is why the Nepalis still call it Sagarmatha.

We returned to Kathmandu two days later and showered after what seemed like ages. Hot water suddenly seemed like a luxury. I gorged on burgers and fries and all the meals after that made up for the few thousand calories we had lost surviving on thinned-out air. We strolled the streets of the vibrant city which made us feel like it was Goa in the mountains. A few of us opted for the invigorating Trekkers Massage in one of the tree-covered streets of the city. We feasted in rooftop cafes and got a feel of the local nightclub. We went as friends and returned as family. We went with more head on the hair and returned with more hair on the face. When I returned home, my children refused to recognise me with my beard.

I took along with me Pico Iyer’s latest book, The Half Known Life: In Search of Paradise, because that, in essence, was the purpose of our visit. Iyer chronicles a lifetime of pilgrimages with soulful curiosity ruminating on the transience of things, on the transience of us, reflecting on “The thought that we must die … is the reason we must live well. The fact that nothing lasts, is the reason why everything matters. The beauty of travel is that a visitor can see graces in a place that locals take for granted.”