Thursday 26 March 2008 Phakding, Nepal

26 March 2008 Thursday

Up today at about 4am unable to sleep and needing to pack for the trek. Easily done by 6 my departure time to the airport for the 7:30 flight to Lukla. My watch must have been off by 15 min or I never set it that accurately, because I thought I was coming down for the taxi at 6 and it was 15 after. I was a little afraid I might miss the flight but there was no traffic and I was there in 30 minutes. I checked in and went to the waiting room. The flights were not announced in English so every time a flight was announced I had to watch the color of the boarding passes the passengers were carrying but they never had my color. About every fourth flight I’d go and ask one of the guards but he’d look at my ticket and just motion me not yet. My flight was finally called at 8:30! Glad I rushed here.

The flight had a few bumpy moments and a bit of time spent in zero visibility, but was otherwise uneventful. Naturally, we were offered cotton for our ears, and pieces of hard candy as a snack by the stewardess, everybody took both. My baggage was in the check area at the end of the flight and there were many eager youngsters to help me get to the lodge where I had always found a guide/porter, and in fact as I arrived there an employee of Peak Promotion said he had received Wong Chu’s call and had found me a porter. I was introduced to Kami Sherpa the proposed candidate for the spot. He was pretty tiny, about 5’1” and 120 lbs I imagine, but eager, and, as it turns out the brother of Nwang Sherpa my guide in the year 1999! He looked sober and cheerful so I agreed to 800rps per day and he pays for his own food.
After finishing that business I sat for some breakfast. There was an Indian looking fellow who had been sitting through my arranging for the guide/porter and we finally introduced ourselves. He said he was from New York, and I responded I had lived there 18 years and had gone to NYU. He said he lived on Bleeker Street, I was taken aback, what a weird place to live, I assumed it must be far west on the street because near NYU it was very commercial and honky tonk, no serious people live there. He said he lived at the intersection of Bleeker and La Guardia. I was shocked, then he added he was a professor at NYU and lived in the faculty housing there. I confirmed, “You mean the buildings with the Picasso sculpture out front?” Yes, those. I was doubly shocked and totally impressed, knowing the general intellectual profile for a student at NYU(which was way over my head, even though I was a student there once), I imagined he must be some kind of genius or near genius to be on the faculty. And it wasn’t just any old faculty, it was the Stern Business School, one of the highest ranked in the country.
His guide came in and they left but I said I’d see him again that night at Phakding the resting spot for the first day of trekking.

Kami and I were the last to leave Lukla and the first to arrive at that evening’s lodge. At first I wondered if I would be exhausted by my big photo bag and it felt too heavy as I slung it on my back for the first time in earnest, but everything clicked perfectly and I walked strong and without fatigue. The distance is rated for a 3.5 hour walk but we arrived in 2.5 hrs, no problem.
Later, I had another chat with the NYU professor, Anindya Ghose, and I explained the nature of my photographic project and he told me about his work. His specialty is internet marketing.

That night I met several interesting people from many countries we’d criss-cross paths with over the next week or so.

Tuesday 25 March 2008

I awoke in the night about 1am and couldn’t get back to sleep. I am making progress reading the autobiography of Mahatma Ghandi – it’s a surprisingly unremarkable life to the point I’m at.



Went to breakfast at Hot Bread at 7am – got a pair of pants for 600rps because the pair I brought was ripped – then went to Tribhuvan University to try to find Dr. Shreeham Upadhaya. The Professor has written some scholarly books about the economic history of Nepal, and must certainly be one of the most distinguished professors up there, and yet as I arrive no one really knew him or even which department he may be in. I finally found someone who had his mobile number and spoke with him later in the day – we decided to meet when I returned from trekking.

He wrote in one of his books about the Treaty of Segauli of 1816 between The East India Company and Nepal which I believe may have the recognition by Britain of Nepali Territorial Integrity and Sovereignty which would mean that England’s subsequent naming of a mountain within Nepal would represent an abrogation/violation of the Treaty.



For the rest of the day I collect the rest of the things I need for my trek which will start on Thursday.



I visited with Wong Chu Sherpa at Peak Promotion(he was sirdar to the Imax Everest team with David Breshears). He wanted to supply me with a guide and porter or a guide/porter. I told him I had always had a problem with his people because anytime I was with them in the Khumbu and I’d want to climb up somewhere they’d always have some lame reason they wouldn’t want to do it. He said that wouldn’t happen.

I told him I wanted , among other places to go to the Khumbu Icefall and he said “Well, that really wouldn’t be possible” and gave some reason, and I said to him, “See, I’m not even out of the office and you’ve already told me it’s not possible to do something I really want to do, it’s a bad attitude, even you can’t be positive enough to say, if it works that’s OK, if the soldiers or the laison officers don’t permit it then it can’t happen” He could tell I didn’t want to book with him but offered to call ahead and have one of his people in Lukla find me a good independent guide/porter.

I asked him if he thought that the name Everest was right for Nepal or perhaps the Nepalese should be more forceful with the name Sagarmatha. I told him that my thinking on this subject had been influenced by his exhortation to adopt ‘Right thinking” while climbing or approaching the mountain, and I believed this to be an example of right thinking. He said he would be diplomatic about the issue and give no response.

I bought two small cans of Primus gas for my stove at $5.50 each before leaving his office.

Monday 24 March 2008 - Kathmandu

24 March 2008 Monday

I tested the lensboards I had made the last night at home and they are perfect. All my stuff is ready to go – I regret not bringing my rope and tent but how really could I have? The bags I did bring, all four of them, weighing about 50lbs each and the little one only30lbs(!) – had to be carried by me at several junctions or I would have had to ferry them – which I did consider many times, but which thing to leave unattended?
Anyway, I say to myself I have always considered myself a travel-lite photographer who shoots at and on a human vision scale, and the idea of adding the climbing paraphanalia and the additional people necessary to pull that off may cloud my landscape vision. There’s always that insecurity thing nagging at us all over every issue which says, ‘Take this extra thing, you may need it’, or ‘Get that extra piece of equipment, it may come in handy’, but at some point we are crippled by the weight of all that extra and don’t even achieve the simple thing we set out to do – and then again, this thing I’ve set out to do isn’t exactly simple but for this moment I think I should move quickly, and light, get what I can, and, when more resources become available, come back for what I see but can’t touch now. I keep thinking of Reinhold Messner, his Fair Means approach – he carries nothing; no rope, no pro (protection), no oxygen ! He uses only his own personal resources and resourcefulness.
It’s 8:15am. I’m back at Hot Bread my favorite coffee and pastry shop in the center of Thamel, sitting on the second storey terrace. The pastries are wonderful, the sights and sounds of the city rising are ever as they’ve been, a gentle bustling town with narrow streets on a human scale, that set against a cacophonous background of honking cars, rickshaw and bicycle bells and the, at times, incessant beep of motorcycles horns.
For 60rps I get a 5” diameter 1.25” high quiche either mushroom or mushroom/chicken and a raisin bun for an extra 30Rps also a small pot of coffee on the terrace upstairs is 77rps (the dollar is currently trading at 62.3rps per). The quiche is heated in a microwave(!). The ubiquitous Eurasian tree sparrows hop around at my feet hunting for the tiniest crumbs. These birds are amazing! I grew up with them in New Jersey, we called them English sparrows, I've seen in everyplace I've been in the USA including Hawaii, also Hong Kong and in the airport in Frankfurt.

23 March 2008 Kathmandu, Nepal

23 March Sunday

I took a taxi from the airport to the Tibet Guest House and as I walked in, I recognized every staff member and it seemed they recognized me. They welcomed me back as if I had been a long time in the mountains trekking, but like a person coming home after a long absence there was a special moment of recognition that’s higher than usual, almost as if we all recognized some real but unspoken degree of community or family bond that existed between us.
They gave me a break on the room, $15.00 which was my previous rate instead of the current rate of $25.00.
Rikshi, the bellboy who’s been here forever and looks like he’s wearing the exact same clothes he had worn when he helped me in ’98 and every other year and has the same little mustache, showed me to my room. Since I had just come from the airport bank and had only big bills, I gave him a 500rps note, he thanked me greatly and said it would buy milk for his baby for a month.
I quickly changed and went to Qayoom’s but he’s in Kashmir now. I burst into his rug shop and bellowed with my arms flung open, “My Brother’s!” and Yuseff, Q’s natural brother, gave me a bear hug and was astonished to see me after my 5 year absence as if a ghost stood before him. We talked for awhile then I went for food, realizing that jetlag and the fact that I had slept only an hour or two on the plane and was truly exhausted.
I lay down at about 3:30 – woke up briefly at 7:30 but this sector of the city’s electricity was off, went back sleep and with minor awakenings in the night, slept til 5am! So great to be back in Kathmandu! What a magical place. A lot of people grouse it's gone downhill with tourism and commercialism but compared to everywhere else still one of the greatest places on earth to be.