11th November: Letdar (4,176m) – Thorong Phedi (4,440m)
I had to get up for the inevitable pee in the middle of the night. Although it was freezing, the stars were out – a good sign. After the few flakes which tried to fall earlier, we had all been afraid of snow falling higher up and blocking our precious pass.
At 6.00am we all had to drag our finally warmed bodies out of bed into the coldest dawn yet. I was dreading the breakfast scuffle. If we took as long to get served as we had at lunch and dinner yesterday, it would be 08.30 before we got moving. We had been warned that accommodation was grotty and limited up at Thorong Phedi so we wanted to be early birds. Eugene suggested just gnawing on biscuits to keep us going until we reached a hypothetical tea-house. I was ravenous, as usual, and thought I’d feel a lot warmer with some hot tea and, preferably, noodle soup inside me. Once again, Narayan proved the hero of the day and took us to the other Letdar guest house, where he happened to know another porter/guide who was able to smuggle us into the kitchen. This was tiny and dark but warm, with the usual blackened pots and pans hanging from all corners. We joined the cook and Narayan’s friend around the crackling fire. I placed my thick ski gloves on the fender and soon thawed out with a tin mug of black tea in my hands and a tin bowl of steaming noodle soup balanced on my padded trousered knees. Eugene was able to get his fix of porridge and Beth hers of boiling water and we were on the road by 7.45am.
The air warmed as the sun rose and we were soon comfortable walking in just sweatshirts with fleeces tied round our waists to pull on in windy spots. It was quite bleak up here and the slopes in shadow looked grey and foreboding. However, where the life-giving sun hit the mountainside there were patches of green, the bare rocks were lit to a warm golden brown and occasional patches of a purple heather-like plant brightened the landscape. We stopped for tea and chocolate in brilliant sunlight and watched other trekkers panting their way up the valley. At this height you get out-of-breath very quickly even on pathetically shallow inclines. We met a German couple heading in the opposite direction and hastened to ask them for news from above.
‘We go Thorong Phedi,’ the woman answered in clipped, Germanic English. ‘I cannot go pass. Heart can’t make it. Lungs can’t make it. I have to go down.’ She sighed and looked distraught at the memory of her struggles.
As she limped on downwards, Beth remarked that as the woman appeared to be in her late sixties and not particularly fit she had done pretty well to get this far. I must admit that every time we encountered a returnee who had failed to make it over the pass, I was filled with trepidation.
A mere 6km separate Letdar from Thorong Phedi so at just before 10.00am I found myself posing, as so may others must have posed before me, in front of a sign that read:
WELCOME TO THORONG BASE CAMP:Thorong Phedi Hotel Lodge: Thorong Phedi Hotel Lodge: 15-20 minutes’ walk up
My heart leapt to think that I had made it this far and was still feeling fine.
‘I wonder if the sign means 15-20 minutes’ walk at normal speed or at 4,000m plus speed, mused Beth. ‘i.e. walking a dozen paces then stopping for breath.’
Fortunately, it proved to be the latter, Eugene went off to inspect the accommodation and I followed the arrows to the police checkpoint and had my permit stamped at the highest point where such legalities exist. I spotted Patrick, Peter, Paul and co. sitting drinking tea and scoffing part-frozen bars of Indian ‘Dairy Milk’ around a table over a wall. How do they always manage to overtake us even when we have had a good head start? I told myself that our little group always do things slowly and surely, preferring to take extra time to absorb our exceptional surroundings. After all, we are privileged to be here, have paid enough for the honour and might not come back this way again.
Our lodgings proved an agreeable surprise. Our courtyard room was built of very solid stone and contained three reasonable plank beds. The Hilton it was certainly not, but we had been led to expect the worst at Thorong Phedi and had been bracing ourselves for a crowded dormitory with bug-infested mattresses strewn across the floor.
We plonked our bags down on the earth floor. My back pack already looked like a veteran of many years world travel rather than mere weeks after being hauled around the trails. It was coated with dust and boasted several scuff marks. We had to pay the princely sum of 240 rupees for this palace. Considering that our first night at Bahundanda had cost 5 rupees each, this shows that gross inflation is possible at such elevated heights. The higher you go, the higher you pay and Thorong Phedi Hotel Lodge certainly has the monopoly up here. Now that we had stopped moving, it was damn cold too and the restaurant, with hot tea and a snackette, beckoned. After the primitive facilities in Letdar, this establishment felt fairly civilised. I chose a sunny seat next to a chalked menu of the day’s specials and ordered a peanut butter sandwich and apple pie. We ordered dhal bhat for Narayan and Shandra, as usual. They never eat anything else, and unlike travellers with more demanding palettes, never seem to get sick of it. I love the dhal and veg curries I make at home. My version of dhal is a thick comforting paste of red lentils, with turmeric and a garlic, onion and chilli spiced oil as a garnish. My veg are carrots, peas, cabbage and spuds, fried with an aromatic mixture of cumin and fennel seeds, fenugreek leaves and coriander with a good scattering of chopped fresh coriander leaves and garam masala. The version you get in most Nepali places – especially those high above the growing zone, consist of a ridiculously huge mound of rice with a ladle of watery stuff with the odd lentil floating in it and a few strands of soggy cabbage.
My sandwich arrived with a big pot of lemon tea. My apple pie was a similar shape and consistency to a house-brick but it was hot and filling. As I was gnawing my way through it Rob and Clare arrived looking cold in Gortex and bobble hats.
After lunch we decided to go on our ‘keep warm/get to a higher point than we are going to sleep’ walk. In the courtyard outside our room, we encountered the ‘Exodus Mob’. We have kept running into this group periodically since the beginning of our trek. Rob and Clare have a friend, Steve, who is travelling with this organised group of around 12 trekkers. Our main contacts among them are another Steve (an older guy with a greying beard) and yet another John. This John hails from Newcastle and distinguishes himself by never wearing anything but a grubby grey singlet and micro-shorts, whatever the temperature. Here he was now displaying his lanky bronzed limbs in startling contrast to all the fleece and wool bundled figures around him. Eugene, who isn’t exactly one to complain about the cold, stood next to him in his tracksuit bottoms, fleece pullover, down jacket scarf and woolly hat and I took a silly photo.
A cold wind got up as we made our way slowly up the steep slope behind the hotel. It always seems to get windy from about mid-morning, then drop again in the late afternoon. This was something to keep in mind when crossing the pass. Narayan has told us that we’ll do our best to get over the top by about 10.00am. At our current speed, this will mean leaving at about 4.30am. He’ll wake us at 3.30. Yuck! We have heard that there are rooms with heaters available in the Thorong Phedi Lodge at an exorbitant price. However, they had all been taken when we checked in. Beth said that she was quite glad about this. Not that she minded paying the extra, but getting out of a cold bed to climb a mountain in the dark would be bad enough, but levering oneself out of a warm one would be well nigh impossible.
We walked on upwards, slowly and steadily, stopping for breath occasionally, until the hotel was tiny below us. The sun had vanished behind a thick bank of cloud and I suddenly felt very cold indeed. I decided to save my energy and knee joints for tomorrow, left the others to go on to the tip of the first false peak on the way to Thorong La, and clambered back down the mountain. By the time I reached our courtyard the sun had emerged again and I found Narayan and Shandra sitting with a group of other porters on mats behind a wall out of the wind. They moved up to make a space for me and we had a chat and laugh in pidgin English and even more pidgin Nepali. Narayan calls both Beth and I Didi which means, literally, older sister. It seems that everyone calls all women this. At first I was upset when people of a similar age called me this. I’ve always been told I look young for my age. What had happened? Had the ravages of this trip aged me by a decade? However, when one of the porters who looked old enough to be my grandfather, addressed me as Didi, I decided that it must be a mark of respect. I have never heard any women, except small girls being addressed as bahini (little sister) so assume it’s not used for anyone over the age of 18, as happens with mademoiselle in France.
The sun moved on, and so did I, to a little corner where it still shone, against the restaurant wall. John and the Exodus Mob were there drinking coke and beer (despite the Doc’s warnings that it was best to avoid alcohol at high altitude. I stayed with them, drinking water until the sun said goodnight to Nepal and headed off towards India and the west.
After that I huddled in the restaurant over a glass of steaming lemon tea. I tried to read but it was too cold to take my ski gloves off to turn the pages. I was glad when Clare and Rob joined me and we could talk instead. Clare felt my hands and was astounded at how frozen they were. She had always thought her own circulation was rubbish until she met me. The possibility of frostbite, or my feet becoming so cold that it was impossible to walk, filled me with panic. I remembered the time I climbed Mount Fuji in Japan and this happened. My friends and I must have been the most clueless group ever to attempt the ascent of a major mountain. We left our flat in Tokyo on a warm and humid September Saturday, taking just a spare sweater in case it was a bit chilly at the top, a few bananas and a couple of small bottles of water. After burning piles of rubbish we found at the base restaurant to keep warm, we started climbing at 11.00pm to reach the summit by sunrise. It rained as we ascended along dripping, leach infested tracks. Luckily, we’d met some friends at base restaurant who had leant us their spare cagoules, but we were nice and wet and chilled by the time we reached the snow line at c. 3,500m. One of my flatmates felt sick and headachy. We had never heard of altitude sickness and just kept stopping while she threw up. By the time we reached the top, I was so cold that I could not have cared had the bloody thing been erupting and my gloveless hands felt like half thawed fish fingers. Another flatmate’s boyfriend, in a sudden flash of inspiration rubbed them against the warmest place we could think of between us – his crotch!
Clare and Rob decided to come along with us the next day, glad to have Narayan as guide and some team support. The altitude wasn’t worrying me now. I had acclimatised well, as evidenced by my ever present hunger. However, the cold filled me with dread. I even briefly contemplated going back but quickly abandoned this notion. It would be a long walk back alone, probably with my pack, as I couldn’t be so selfish as to kidnap Narayan. Anyway, I didn’t want to leave Beth and Eugene. They were rare travelling companions, sensible yet adventurous and fun. Clare, who was also miserably cold, and I took solace in the fact that it was only two days before we’d be back at a more reasonable altitude and it would be warm again. Life in a T-shirt would be my goal to aim for. That should spur me on to make it over that blasted pass.
Dusk was falling when Beth and Eugene reappeared. They were elated, having walked as far as the first false peak where they were rewarded with a spectacular view. We were all tucked up in bed by 6.00pm this evening, water bottles of umleko pani (boiled water) clenched around our thermal socked toes. It felt like the night before Christmas when I was a child. I couldn’t sleep. The time ticked slowly by and I kept having to steal glances at the alarm clock just in case it was nearly three thirty yet. At least in my down sleeping bag I felt warm. But I wanted morning to come. Now the BIG DAY was in sight, I couldn’t wait to get up and tackle it. I was also anxious to get it over with. Perhaps it felt more like the night before an exam than Christmas Eve.