Backpacks and Bra Straps (31 page)

“This is killing me! I just… Oh, it’s so hard,” Steph would moan.

“I thought you said you were training every day at home,” I said.

“I was.”

“You said you did the Grouse Grind at home every day, sometimes twice a day.” I just shook my head when she didn’t answer – Steph had been known to exaggerate in the past. We’d often catch her out in her fabrications, but most often she was the one who paid for it, not us.

“Don’t forget that she just came from sea level to about three thousand metres (10,000 ft),” Mom defended her. “We, on the other hand, have had the chance to adjust to higher altitudes for the last couple of weeks. So far, once I get into a rhythm, it’s really not so bad. I think it’s harder if you take a break, because getting your muscles moving again is torture.”

“Yeah, that’s so weird,” I agreed. My body and mind both wanted to stop and rest, but whenever I did, I actually felt worse. I’d huff and puff like I could hardly catch my breath, yet when I was walking my breathing came steadily and easily. I was happy to notice how strong I’d become during our six months of backpacking and that I had much more endurance than I’d ever had in my life. My legs weren’t stiff or sore at all, and my heart and lungs felt strong. It was the breathing that affected me most, and I supposed the altitude was to blame. Whenever we did stop for a breather, mostly to keep Steph company, our Sherpas would wait behind and say encouraging things to keep us motivated.

“Doing good. Is good walking,” Dendee said. “D.L. wants to know, are you hungry?”

“I am Dalai Lama,” the shorter, plumper one reminded us, trying to sound convincing.

Dendee shook his head with a charming smile, then pointed at the junior Sherpa to confirm, “No, Dawa Lobsang is his name. Just D.L. is okay.”

“Dalai Lama,” he said, crossing his arms with a loud hrmph.

“You were right, Dendee,” I said huffing and puffing. “This is the hardest day. I believe you now.” Bree and Ammon were up ahead sitting on stones while they waited for us to catch up.

“Dendee, how much further is it?” Steph asked after a few hours of hiking.

“No, no. Hard part not beginning yet,” he said, his deep dimples and warm eyes smiling at me.

“What? You mean we haven’t even started the hard part?” I said as I saw Steph’s face fall.

“Before we do, let’s eat,” Mom said, calling a well-earned break.

We learned what was best to eat on the trek by following the Sherpas’ lead. The menus, though limited in their selection, were always written in English. For the second time I happily anticipated a bowl of hearty Sherpa stew. A big bowl filled with noodles and big chunks of potatoes, meat, and vegetables was always served fresh. It was a delicious meal I knew I’d look forward to eating every day. Waiting anywhere up to an hour and a half after ordering testified to its freshness.

“Dendee, did they have to go catch the chickens first? It’s taking so long,” Steph joked.

“Yes, catching chickens,” he nodded.

“What?” she said.

“They’re probably just digging up the potatoes. It should be ready any time now,” Mom said.

“No,” Dendee said, playing along. “I think right now they planting the potatoes. Maybe we get food in few months?”

“Hmm, maybe I shouldn’t have ordered that yak burger then,” Ammon said.

When our food finally came Ammon bowed thankfully and received it with his right hand, left hand placed in the crook of his right elbow. The rest of the family followed suit, knowing that Ammon always modelled the proper etiquette. I’d already learned from other cultures what the left hand was reserved for. I’d become accustomed to the rule of not touching anything with that hand, and ever since we’d spent time in Mongolia, I’d decided to play it safe and always accept my food in such a fashion.

When Steph clumsily took her soup bowl with both hands, I nudged her, “No, no. Only with your right hand.”

“What? Why?” Steph asked, looking quizzically at me.

Bree was already snickering before I told her, “They wipe their bums with the left, so you never touch your food with that hand – or anything, really.”

“Eeew, I would never!” Steph looked at me like I was insane. She promptly dropped her left hand below the table, and Bree laughed so much she nearly choked on her food. It felt good to finally have some answers for once, especially answers that provoked such startled reactions.

Once we’d factored in a lunch break, that day’s expected five-hour hike had stretched to seven. As we hobbled into Namche Bazaar, Stephanie stopped next to a stone wall that was covered in brown patches. “What is that stuff? What’s on all the walls? Those brown circles.”

“It’s poo,” I said.

“What?! Like Poo-poo paddies?” she nearly screeched. “What do they do with them?!”

“They use the yak poop for fuel. For their fires,” I told her.

“Oh, Savannah,” she said in a ‘you can’t fool me’ tone.

“What? You don’t believe us?” I said. “How come?”

“Because I’d be able to smell it,” she said.

“Well, I must admit, sometimes the cold is better than the stench, though we’re kind of used to it by now,” Ammon told Stephanie, who was still cringing at the very idea of burning yak poo. “It’s Bree’s favourite new perfume. Couldn’t you tell?”

“Yeah. Yum, yum, yakky poopy. I love it,” Bree smiled, greedily breathing in a lifetime’s worth of the fresh air. We walked around the corner and found a pile of fresh manure piled high. Steph crinkled her nose and scowled in dismay while visibly holding her breath as we listened to the flies buzzing around.

There was a girl about our age squatting with her hands in the wet dung, skillfully mixing it with hay. Patting and tossing it from hand to hand to flatten the substance into pancakes, she then smacked the muck against a stone wall to let it dry in the sun. The finished product was neatly stacked and stored outside alongside the stone and mud houses like any other stack of wood would be. An older woman was piling the already dried patties from another wall into a wicker basket so she could carry them home on her back. We often saw women and men carrying these large baskets full of processed yak feces.

“Why would they do that?” Steph asked, unable to take her eyes off the busy women. The younger lady noticed her standing there, and she smiled and waved an eager brown hand at us.

“We already told you, but you don’t want to believe us,” I said, waving back and continuing to walk, anxious to find accommodations in the Himalayan town.

“And you know that once they’re finished preparing the yak poo patties,” Ammon said, with an exaggerated pause, “they will go straight into the kitchen to make dinner.”

Steph practically turned blue when she heard that. “Well, I could stand to lose a bit of weight, anyway.”

In the lodge that night, we giggled when Steph asked, “What is that smell? It’s like…” Smelling is believing, and we were finally able to dismiss her doubts by showing her the pile of dried poo patties in a basket by the stove in the middle of the common room. I could see her begin to take much more shallow breaths, as if oxygen were running low. Personally, I wasn’t bothered by it at all. I quickly adjusted to the familiar, rich smell of burning poo and hay mixed with the kerosene they used to light it.

“Steph, I still can’t quite decide if it’s better to breathe it in through my nose and smell it, or inhale through my mouth and taste it,” I teased. Her lips pursed and her eyes widened in disgust. Steph’s constant reactions to all the differences on this side of the world made me remember my naivety. I often recognized my own initial culture shock in her, and it brought back so many memories.

Acclimatization
37

“W
hat?! You’re kidding me, right?” I said, tripping on the uneven, jagged path in my flip-flops and coming dizzyingly close to the sheer drop off.

“I wouldn’t kid you about that, Savannah,” Ammon said.

“We have to hike this exact same path twice?”

“Seriously, it’s to help us acclimatize,” he repeated. “You know, we’re going up to almost five thousand metres today (16,000 ft), and though we’ve been higher before, it’s important to be careful about these things. I know someone who went skiing at just three thousand metres (10,000 ft), and he went completely loopy. You really never know how you’re going to react to the altitude.”

“And you wouldn’t want to have to turn back because you rushed it,” Mom added.

Steph had already started to feel a bit nauseous, so an acclimatizing day was in order, even if it hadn’t been highly recommended by both the guidebooks and the Sherpas. It was torturous to think we literally had to climb all that way up, only to turn around and head back down to where we started. Then we’d have to do it all over again tomorrow! Dendee spoke better English than D.L., so he offered to come along as guide, translator, and porter, even though we weren’t bringing our big packs along. He carried one of our daypacks with sunscreen, water, and Snickers bars, which had become our staple energy snack on the trek. I had an inkling that he liked to keep a close eye on Bree and her buns of steel. Bree, of course, was doing what she does best: flirting. She loved any attention she could get from any boy in her general area, and her latest victim was poor Dendee.

“I did my best to hire the ugliest Sherpas I could find to minimize Bree’s temptations but, as you can see,” Ammon said, nodding his head in her direction, “there’s no stopping that girl.”

Whenever I’d roll my eyes at her, Mom would say, “Oh just leave her be; it’s the age she’s at. We can only hope she’ll grow out of it.”

We’d gained some height on the trail and could see Namche Bazaar nestled below like an eagle’s nest tucked away on the mountainside. I could also see a crashed helicopter, half hidden on its side under a tarp. I wondered how many planes and helicopters had been lost in the Himalayas and then overgrown with trees and eaten by the forest.

Short, husky horses were grazing peacefully when we reached the plateau at the top. The two-hour vertical climb was fraught with steep switchbacks above Namche Bazaar and we’d gone up another three hundred metres (1,000 ft). The views above us were spectacular.

Clouds hugged the surrounding mountains, giving the impression that we’d reached the heavens. We could practically reach out and touch them as well as the stone faces of the mountains in front of us. Stopping to take in the awesome view and catch our breath, we set eyes on Everest for the first time since we’d been in Nepal. We’d caught a brief, distant glimpse of the famed mountain when we were crossing Tibet on the Friendship Highway, but our quest was now even more attainable and Everest beckoned us to venture closer.

When we got back to the lodge that evening, we enjoyed chatting with everyone in the communal seating area. Bedrooms at the hostels along this trek were always just large enough to fit a couple of beds and maybe a bedside table or two. They were only meant for sleeping which encouraged trekkers and Sherpas to hang out together in the lodge’s common room in the evenings.

More often than not we had the trails to ourselves, but the nightly lodgings were generally lively times where we shared meals and mingled with the few other trekkers. One father and son duo, fellow Canadians who had arrived in Namche Bazaar the same time as us, were our favourites. The young man, Jay, had saved up to take both of them on the trek. It was his aging father’s life-long dream to trek in Nepal and lay eyes on the one and only Mount Everest. We admired Jay for giving his father such a remarkable gift and for cherishing the experience with him.

Jay was a doctor who volunteered with the Doctors Without Borders (Médecins Sans Frontières AKA MSF) organization. He had days-worth of interesting stories to tell. Before we knew it, we were leaning over the long trestle table, enthralled by his varied experiences in hospitals all over the world.

“My worst nightmare would be those bugs that hatch and crawl out of your skin,” I said. “I would just die if that happened to me.”

“Oh, you wouldn’t believe the kinds of bugs I’ve seen,” Jay said. “I have enough stories about worms alone to fill an entire book.”

“Eeew. Worms are so disgusting.” Bree squirmed. “Well, not normal worm-worms. I’ve eaten those kind straight out of the garden. I mean the gross ones, like tape worms. Have you seen those? Sometimes we joke that Savannah has one because she always eats so much but never seems to gain any weight.”

“Yeah, tapeworms. The cestodes. They’re pretty bad. The problem with them is they’re hermaphroditic so they breed quite easily. They are usually self-fertilizing. How scary is that?”

“That truly is like out of a horror movie,” Bree said, setting her hot chocolate down, unable to function normally hearing his tales.

“And then there are the whale tapeworms that can get up to about 30 metres long (100 ft), though I’ve never seen a worm quite that big. Probably because those ones only live in whales, and there aren’t too many of those in African villages. And then there are other types where you have to lure them out by dangling a piece of meat in front of the infected person’s mouth.”

“You’re kidding me!” Steph gasped.

“Nope. As long as you can catch them at the right moment, they’re not too bad to deal with.” Jay grinned and winked at me, enjoying the reactions he was getting from Steph. “Seriously though, it’s the dracunculiasis that are really awful. They fester under the skin and you have to dig ‘em out. If you pull too hard, they just break and keep growing, so we’ve got to pinch one end and tie it to a stick. You end up having to roll it up slowly, twisting it just a little more each day. Sometimes it can take up to a week to get one out. And those ones hurt. But the Loa loa worm, now those…”

“And there he goes again. I’ve never even heard of these kinds of bugs,” I said, hanging on his every word.

“Well, the Loa loa filariasis is a skin and eye disease. You get it from the bite of a deer or mango fly, which are the vectors for the Loa loa worm. They’re pretty nasty. If they reach the tissue in your eyes, you can literally see the silhouette of them crawling behind the eye. Luckily, they don’t affect the victim’s vision, but they’re extremely painful, especially when they squirm around or move from one eye to the other across the bridge of the nose.”

This morbid conversation took place in the open dining room over a dinner of
dal bhat:
lentil soup with rice, certainly not the best of circumstances when the stories naturally morphed into discussions about diarrhea and other symptoms of various diseases he’d encountered.

“I swear I’m never going to Africa after hearing these horror stories,” I said, then nudged Ammon. “You know that’s a continent, right?”

“Doctors Without Borders, eh?” Mom said. “That sounds like something you might like, Ammon. You’ve been talking about maybe going to medical school.”

“Yeah, that could be really cool. I’ve heard of Doctors Without Borders. They provide free medical care in about seventy countries around the world.” Ammon talked to Jay for a long time, getting as much information about the program as he could.

By this point Bree had turned all kinds of colours and I was afraid she might start re-enacting her Kyrgyzstan theatrics. I leaned over and whispered to her, giggling, “These poor other trekkers are probably thinking, ‘Those dang Canadians. Don’t they ever shut up?’ ”

Looking around the lodge at the other trekkers on the trail, my new peers, I noticed how old most of them were. The average age was somewhere around thirty-five and up, so I was easily the youngest foreigner around. Sometimes I felt awkward in the lodge, surrounded by so many older people, not because of a lack of common interests, but I wondered if they were asking the same question I was.
What had this fifteen-year-old girl done to deserve this amazing opportunity?
Many of them had planned this trip their whole lives before they finally got a chance to fulfill their dream. I was beginning to feel like one very fortunate young woman, and I marvelled over how much my attitude had changed. In just a few short months, I’d gone from feeling resentful and being mad at Mom for dragging me away from my friends and pets and school to having a sense of wonder about everything around me and feeling truly grateful for what she’d given me.

We adopted a rhythmic routine during the trek, something we’d lacked thus far. It felt surprisingly good to be able to anticipate the day’s events. We got up around 7 a.m., had breakfast, and started hiking by around 8:30 a.m. or so. On average, we trekked about five hours a day, up and down and around, through villages and mountains. We could have hiked longer, but by then we’d generally gained enough altitude for one day, and clouds would often start to roll in later in the day, trapping the whole village in a foggy veil.

By 6:30 p.m., it was dark, and most of the lodges just used candles for lighting. After a normally uneventful but extremely social dinner with Sherpas and other trekkers, we’d retire to our beds sometime between 7:30 and 8:30 p.m. We were usually the last ones to surrender to the night.

The first night of the trek, Ammon had slept alone in one room, while Mom and I paired up and the best friends shared another. But the next morning, Ammon had admitted, “I was a bit freaked out by all those sounds in the night. Did you hear them? It was way too creepy and lonely to do that again. It’s pitch black at night here.” We girls couldn’t let that pass without a ton of razzing about our ‘fearless leader’ being afraid of the dark. Despite our teasing at his expense, he shamelessly insisted he wouldn’t be able to stand being alone for weeks, so we had to come up with an alternate plan. From then on, Mom shared a room with him, and the rest of us had a slumber party every night. This worked out better anyway, because we only had to pay for two rooms instead of three. In order to stay warm, especially at the higher altitudes, Bree, Steph, and I would push the two single beds together so the three of us could snuggle up to share body heat. Though this most often solved the problem of being cold, it posed other problems.

The various rooms we stayed in were often so small that our door wouldn’t close anymore with the beds pushed together. Rather than sleep apart, whenever that happened we agreed to sacrifice one of the sheets to hang over the doorway for privacy of other trekkers and Sherpas.

We typically indulged in girl talk, making lists of kids’ names, designing wedding dresses, dreaming of our Prince Charmings. Snuggled up on the wood-frame beds we’d eat our Canadian candy until we were so hyper we would cry. Sometimes we wet our pants laughing about old jokes and funny memories; other times we laughed our way into forgetting just how stiff and dirty we were.

About halfway through the trek we spent a night in a recently repaired room that felt like we were sleeping in a large cardboard box. The floor was bouncy and felt really unstable, which made us question our safety and wonder if they’d had to fix it because it had collapsed at some point. That only put us off our usual night-time shenanigans for a few minutes, though.