Nepal Trip Report

Bideshi 1 and I recently took a much needed vacation from her work here and went to Nepal. It had long been a desire of mine to see Mount Everest. So we did the trek to Everest Base Camp and climbed Kala Pattar - which is a little "hill" that tops out at just over 18000 feet (thin air up there) and gives one of the best views of Everest you can get from anywhere in the world - or so they say. It was spectacular to be sure. The scale of those mountains is unbelievable. The hike to Everest comes up from the south and for most of the trip you have a good view of the Lhotse ridge, most of which is at an elevation of around 27000 ft. Down at the base of the mountain, there are some other peaks that top out at about 15000 ft, which is taller than any mountain in Colorado. From the valley these 15000 ft peaks look tiny, like you wouldn't even call them mountains, they're just little rock piles at the base of a mountain! And Kala Pattar, which is 4000 ft taller than any mountain I've ever climbed, was just this little hill, the pinky toe of Pumo Ri. Mind blowing stuff.

It was also cool to get a look at the ice fall where people start the route up Everest. I hear the route is really well marked because so many people go up and down it each season, but looking at it from a distance, I couldn't even imagine trying to find a line through the mess. I guess some of the crevasses are so big you just rappel down and then climb out the other side with ice tools. That's how it was with all the big mountains. I'd look at them and have no idea what the climbable line would be. I definitely won't be going up any of them any time soon.

The walking part was mostly easy, though there were a couple of prolonged uphill sections that had Bideshi 1 looking dour-faced and cranky. But she managed to suck it up and proceed without complaint. The biggest challenge for anyone attempting the trek is adjusting to the altitude. From my experience climbing and reading about climbing, I was aware that there would be some risk of AMS (Acute Mountain Sickness) or even HAPE or HACE (High Altitude Pulmonary/Cerebral Edema), but in my mind these were pretty unlikely – and, if fact, the worst symptom either of us experienced was a fairly mild headache that went away over night. However, on the way up we heard some stories that certainly gave us pause.

We met a young woman one evening in Phiriche, a small village at about 14000 ft, who was recovering from a very near brush with death. She was from Oregon and fit and had plenty of experience backpacking in the mountains. She was traveling alone and had made it up to Everest Base Camp and then spent a night at Gorak Shep, the final town on the route (elevation 16864 ft), and then climbed Kala Pattar the next day. She made it to the top of the hill in an hour-and-a-half (which is pretty fast), and felt like the hike was easy. She had no adverse symptoms – not even a headache, no dizziness, nothing. Then she spent another night in Gorak Shep and woke up at about five in the morning and felt like she was drowning. Her lungs were filling with fluid. She was coughing up pink stuff. She felt dizzy and stupid. She new enough to know that she had to get down to lower elevation, but her brain was too addled to know that she should ask for help. So she just jammed her stuff into her pack and started hiking down. But she said she felt drunk and kept stumbling and falling and her legs were totally banged up. Apparently she passed several people on the trail and just told them that she was feeling bad and headed down. What she should have said was, “I have HACE and HAPE both, please help me get to the clinic in Phiriche before I die!” but, of course, when you have HACE you can’t think clearly. So she just waived and stumbled on.

About 10 hours later (the same trip took us five) she stumbled into Phiriche, and went into the first building she came to. She told us that she thought she was walking into a hospital. In fact she had walked into a common treker’s lodge and passed out unnoticed on a random bed. Apparently there was a party going on at the time on, and it wasn’t until the following morning that someone heard her coughing, woke her up, and dragged her into the clinic.

At the clinic she said she kept passing out until the doctor slapped her and said, “listen, you have a fatal condition. You need to concentrate and talk to me so that I can help you live.” I guess she got it together well enough to answer some questions. Then the doctor gave her some Diamox and Viagra (which was apparently first developed to treat problems with the lungs before men noticed a particularly desirable side effect…) and told her she had to get down the following day.

When we met her later that day she was feeling significantly better and pondering her options for decent. The doctor had said that she could either take a helicopter for $5,000 or a horse for $200. But our hero was cheapskate and felt like even the horse was too expensive. She was feeling so much better she thought she could probably just walk down. Take the horse! For cryin’ out loud we said. Get a receipt, heck you’re insurance might even cover it! When we parted company that’s what she had decided to do. Here’s hoping she made it down okay…

We also heard some other stories without such happy endings. A British guy told us a story about a German who’d gotten sick a Gorak Shep just the day before he arrived there. Apparently the German had come down with HAPE in the evening and been told that he needed to take a helicopter down first thing in the morning. Unfortunately he didn’t make it that long. In the middle of the night he went to the bathroom, and that’s where the lodge staff found him, stark naked and dead, the next morning.

Then some Swiss told us about a Japanese group they’d met in which a woman had died, and while they were talking to them another woman from the Japanese group keeled over and fainted. They didn’t know how she’d fared.

So in just the time we were there at least two people had died – not climbing mountains or anything - just doing the very same thing that we were doing. It kind of made us wonder, “are the views really worth it?” And yet we really felt fine the whole time. We took it real slow. Bideshi 1 set the pace. I followed along in tow, and we both acclimatized just fine. I think the people who had problems were fit people who had just gone up too fast – because they could, because it felt easy – and their bodies just hadn’t had time to adjust.

We met another British couple, Carl and Alice (who’s pictures you’re looking at, actually. More on that later..) who were also very fit and had done lots of trekking before. Alice said she’d been feeling horrible the whole time. Every time they got up to a new elevation she felt nauseous and sick and had a splitting headache. We were basically following the same itinerary, but come to find out that Carl and Alice had been walking really fast. What might take us four hours to do, they’d do in two. So we said hey I bet that’s your problem. Slow down. Look at the view. You’ll probably feel better.

We met up with them later in Kathmandu and it sounds like they did feel a little better when they went slower. So the moral is, when walking at high altitude, enjoy the view, meditate on the turtle, and … walk…very…slowly.

In addition to amazing views, Nepal was a nice cultural change from Bangladesh. The Nepali people in general were very friendly and helpful and seemed genuinely glad that we were there. I suppose the same could be said of Bangladeshis, but in contrast to Bangladeshis, they did not pry into our personal lives or persist in interactions that we had politely closed. Nepalis were just far less pushy. Getting into the country was also remarkably painless. The officials were efficient and courteous - without any of what we have come to refer to as "the South-Asian Male Ego." The food was also amazing. In Kathmandu you can get food from pretty much anywhere in the world, and it's all reasonably good and some of it is excellent. I'm sure this is a result of the booming tourist industry. I suppose some people would complain that the experience of traveling in Nepal lacks "authenticity" because there is so much catering to foreign tastes, but coming from Bangladesh that was part of what made it so great. People there are used to dealing with foreigners. It makes things easy.

The not so great thing about the trip was that we lost our camera. On the first day of the trek we set our packs down on a stone wall in order to fill up some water bottles. Jen had been carrying the camera and would have had to take it off in order to take her pack off. The best we can figure, we just left the camera sitting there on the wall. We didn't realize what had happened until the following morning. Some porter, no doubt, was very psyched about his find. Luckily we met several other people on the trip and some of them gave us their photos so we’d have something to share with our readers.