The Incredible Journey, Part 3

Posted on 30 May 2009
Tags: Stories, Travel Tales

by Michael McCarthy

Lower Dolpo

It was a ten-mile trudge to Dunai from the airstrip, a tiny taste of much harder things yet to come. Although Dunai lies at 6,500 feet, the day we landed was 105 degrees and there was no bottled water for sale. After a 3-hour hike with no water we were close to fainting, but were welcomed with open arms at the house Tinle rents in the center of town. Houses are built of mud and stone, with a few expensive imported wooden cross beams for support. Wood, as we were about to find out, is a priceless item in Dolpo.

Arriving at our base camp for the expedition did not mean that our problems were over. Our first discovery was that all our hired horsemen from Dolpo, except for one, had departed to go look for “worms,” a strange half-plant, half-animal creature that only lives in Dolpo and can only be harvested at certain altitudes and times of year, where it is sold at a good profit as an aphrodisiac to the Chinese. Since the annual cash income of most citizens of Dolpo ranges from nothing to perhaps $50 a year, we could not blame the horsemen for finding better employment, but without horses we could not make the trek.

After much debate and discussion, it was decided to hire porters to carry the loads. Porters are the local men who, for very modest sums, will strap virtually anything to their backs and carry them about the mountains. They put a leather tump line around their foreheads and stuff all baggage into a wicker basket, and then carry these baskets on their backs. Nepalese men average between 5′2″ and 5′6″ and weigh around 100 to 120 pounds, but the average porter may carry loads as much as 80 pounds at one time.

The temperature on my chronometer registered 105 degrees as we set out of town. We had six porters carrying over a ton of supplies. The lead porter appeared to be 60 years old and certainly weighed less than 100 pounds, but he hoisted two duffel bags, neither of which I could pick up, and then threw three smaller backpacks on top. In order to get the entire load vertical, he lay flat on the ground and was pulled upright by another porter. Immediately I had serious reservations about him carrying this immense load over some of the highest mountains on earth, ten hours a day, for at least three weeks.

We walked for three hours, during which time the porters had to stop every quarter mile for a rest. The path was rough and covered in fine dust and rough stones. None of the porters wore proper boots or shoes, favoring a type of cheap Chinese Army running shoe held together by dirt and wishful thinking. Some wore beach thongs. In the heat none of the porters appeared to be carrying any containers of water. That afternoon I drank six liters of water myself, and I was carrying only a small backpack.

At 2 p.m. we received a great stroke of luck, the kind of good luck that was to visit us time and again during the trek. At a campsite where we stopped for lunch, we came across two horsemen who had come down from the mountains especially to look for us, requested by Pema Lamo’s father, who was the only horseman from who hadn’t abandoned us. They brought five new horses, making six for the journey. This stroke of luck essentially saved the expedition, for there was no way the porters could ever have carried those massive loads for a month.

The journey north from Dunai to Upper Dolpo took us past a rushing torrent of turquoise-blue water roaring through a steep canyon whose ridges rose 3,000 feet above our heads. The third day brought us to the shores of Phoksumdo Lake, one of the most beautiful sights in the world, a gorgeous blue mountain lake reached only after a brutal 2,000 vertical ascent.

Next was another vertical climb of 2,500 feet, bringing us to a mountaintop of 12,500 feet, followed by a long dangerous descent for three hours to the end of the lake where we set up camp. While the first three days were hot and sunny, heavy clouds suddenly moved in and a heavy storm threatened, not an adventure to be caught out in the open in small tents.

The next morning was cold and dark, and just as we made preparations for departure, the heavens opened. Luckily there was a cave nearby, used by porters for such purposes for thousands of years. Over those years, travelers had stripped the ground bare of any available wood, and we made a fire with the few roots and bushes we could find. We had only enough wood for an hour and it was very cold at that height. We were in deep trouble again. It was find fire or perish.

Suddenly, far across the meadow, came the cries of the horsemen. It was Tinle yelling “Alloo, allay!” We ran towards the sight of smoke, and found Tinle standing next to a rock cliff that allowed for good cover from the rain, shoving the better part of a whole tree into the fire! A gigantic blaze gave off a blast of heat, and Tinle stood there cackling and laughing like a demented elf, doing some sort of mad mountain dance, calling out “Ver’ good! Ver’ good!”

We spent almost 30 hours huddled together under the cliff, while the fire blazed and the horsemen scoured for more wood, everyone sleeping together all night in one giant group. The next morning the rain finally stopped and we were on our way again.

Being caught out in the open in a heavy deluge, without cover or proper rain gear, is bad business above 12,000 feet. As far as I could see, though, the porters had no rain gear of any kind. If it rained, they sat under a tree. Since our main trekking party was often an hour or two ahead of the horsemen, we were often without our tents and jackets, not good if the weather suddenly turned.

On day six we started our ascent of the Gandala Pass, to 17,800 feet, the highest pass on our journey. We began the day with repeated river crossings, jumping across the wild torrent on slippery rocks, sure death if you happen to miss your footing. Our hearts were in our mouths every crossing. We continued onward and steeply upward, hour after endless hour, to meet the horsemen a thousand feet from the top of the pass for a late lunch of tea and a snack of my power bars, kept stashed in my bag for such an occasion.

There was no wood at 14,500 feet. Then we began the push to the top, stopping every 15 minutes, then every ten minutes, then every five. Finally we were walking one minute and stopping two. Then walking 30 seconds and stopping five minutes. Purpa and Chewang were suffering from altitude sickness, and we were all completely exhausted, but the top of the pass never seemed to come.

From the corner of my eye I saw three tiny dots emerge from the east, a strange direction for any travelers to come from. They were not carrying any bags, had no horses, and were moving fast. They went out of sight behind a ridge and I forgot about them, until suddenly they re-emerged again right next to us on the path. Each was neatly dressed in a blue cap, green jacket and matching pants, wearing new boots and bright shiny swords. The man in the lead was carrying a boom box wailing Tibetan songs. He passed me by as I sat on a rock and I said “Tashi Delek” (hello).

Lama hurried up to me and said not to talk to or follow the man, that they were Maoists and with luck they would keep walking. But no luck this time. They simply sat down at the top of the pass, and waited.

A few thousand feet earlier, as I had sat down and rested, I had noticed a broken bottle and several beer cans, and was amazed. As the joke goes: “How can anybody who drinks that much walk this far?” I was soon to find out who. After a very long wait, in which we vainly hoped the terrorists would lose interest in us, we gathered up our hopes and trudged the final quarter mile to the top of the pass. There, in a roaring wind right on the ridge itself, sat Tinle and our horsemen with all our horses and baggage, and to my amazement Tinle was giving the riot act to the Maoists full blast. The three cadres sat with their heads down, listening to the tirade, saying nothing.

Riding a horse can be thirsty work in the Himalayas, and Tinle likes to keep his whistle wet for emergency purposes like chewing the rear ends off bandits. Drunk as a lord, he was given the Maoists an earful, telling them (as I was told later) what cowards they were and why they should go home with their legs between their tails. But while the cadres were putting up with a tirade, they weren’t leaving without the money.

The gist of the discussions, as I learned afterwards, was that the Maoists were shooting for gold. They wanted money from me, Lama, and the entire trekking party. As we were to discover, the regular “fee” for entering their territory was $200 US per person, or $15,000 Nepalese rupees, an outrageous sum of money almost equal to the average Nepali annual income. Worse yet, we were to find that the Maoists extorted money from any porters they came across, from the teachers in the villages, and they expected people to vacate their own beds so the cadres could sleep in them during their patrols (which explained why they could walk without any bags). They ate poor people’s food and never paid for it, and other such dastardly deeds.

Somewhere during the discussions, Lama discerned a crack in negotiations and told me to go to my bags and get my money. Earlier in Kathmandu he had told me to take $200 in US funds out of an ATM and hide it in my bags, so I guess he knew what the score would be. I handed the money to Lama, who made a show of counting it, and passed it to Tinle’s daughter Dawa Lamo who made a show of counting it. She passed it to the Maoists, who made a show of counting it, and Lama demanded a receipt from them, which was soon forthcoming. As soon as we had the receipt, Lama told me to get up slowly and walk over to the baggage again, and then to keep walking. I did so, and slowly the horsemen got up and walked over to where I was.

In a flash, two of the horsemen grabbed me by an arm, we dropped over the edge of the ridge, and we going down the other side so fast my feet didn’t touch the ground. The far side of the pass was snow and mud and slush, but we flew down the slopes like we had wings. Each horseman had a death grip on my arms and we dropped down in elevation like a stone down a well. Within seconds the other horsemen and Lama and Chewang and Samchoe and the CED kids were flying by me, all of us heading downhill in record time. We dropped 1,000 feet in five minutes and then paused to catch our breath.

“We’re free,” yelled Lama. “They took no cameras, no bags, nothing.” We had crossed the boundary into Upper Dolpo.

Continue to Part 4: Upper Dolpo

The Incredible Journey, Part 2 | Intentional Traveler Says:
May 30th, 2009 at 1:31 AM

[...] The Incredible Journey, Part 3 | Intentional Traveler Says: May 30th, 2009 at 1:26 AM [...]

The Incredible Journey, Part 4 | Intentional Traveler Says:
May 30th, 2009 at 9:37 PM

[...] < Read The Incredible Journey, Part 3 [...]

Journey to Dolpo; Following the Snow Leopard Trail

Tracking Jack; Following Keroauc to Desolation Peak

Cambodia: From Angkor Wat to Phnom Penh

Sunrise over Nepal; From Kathmandu to Pokhara

Taiwan, the ‘other China’

Somewhere Down the Lazy River; Yangshuo, China

The Karma Diaries: A Season in the Himalayas

A Quiet Day in Mad Kowloon and other Tales of Intentional Travel

In Search of the Ancient Ones; The Anasazi of Old New Mexico

Deep Into Denali; The Serengeti of the North

In Search of the Spirit Bear; The Great Bear Rainforest of British Columbia

Street Children of Phnom Penh

What is Intentional Travel?

Project Kindness

by Michael McCarthy

Lower Dolpo

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