Dead Lucky (7 page)

The news was a complete surprise because he had not received my e-mail. It was great to hear his voice, calm as always despite the horrible battles taking place in the streets.

“I will call you tomorrow after we know whether the king is to call another curfew. Probably the evening will be safe, and I can bring your friends to my house for dinner. So, Lincoln Daai, I will talk to you then.”

THAT FIRST EVENING there were drinks at the lobby bar of the Vaishali Hotel, and the space was full of men, generally serious-looking, wearing
7Summits-Club.com
T-shirts or similarly branded Windstopper jackets. I was at the edge of a conversation when someone mentioned that the expedition doctor was Russian. I had worked with Russian sailors on Greg Mortimer's Antarctic climbing cruises. The Russians were good fun when they let their hair down, but the rest of the time they seemed set upon establishing a national characteristic of being noncommunicative. And so when I heard the distinctive accent and idiom of Russian from the man beside me, I took the initiative.

I turned with a beer in my hand and said, “So you are the doctor?”

He smiled at me, a tall, balding man with glasses, the kind of person who looked like a doctor.

“No. I am the expedition leader.”

Every e-mail, every discussion to this point, had implied that Harry Kikstra was the leader. He had debriefed us on the journey from the airport. He had answered our every question.

“But I have heard that the doctor is Russian.”

“Yes. He also.”

I could think of no other comment.

“I am Lincoln,” I said, and I extended my hand.

He shook it with a strong, warm grasp.

“I am Alex.” With a sweep of his arm, he gestured to the woman beside him, whom I had already noticed. “And this is my wife, Ludmila.”

Ludmila smiled at me, tall and confident of herself and her appearance. I excused myself and made a beeline for Richard, who was standing by the bar.

“Yeah, mate,” he said. “Harry and Alex have got some kind of arrangement. Harry is looking after us, though.”

The next morning we learned that there would be a curfew enforced from eleven A.M., which gave us two hours of shopping time. The four of us set out with me leading the way, Richard and Christopher following, and Mike filming. We extracted Nepalese rupees from an ATM, bought snack food for the trip from a supermarket, picked up a few items from different trekking shops, and tracked down some medicines needed to supplement our medical kits. Suddenly all the shopkeepers started clanking down their roller-shutters, and soldiers appeared on the streets to make sure everyone was obeying the king's decree.

While we were shopping, there were riots elsewhere in Kathmandu. This became a pattern that repeated itself over the next few days, a mere frustration for us but a nightmare for the people of the city.

That evening at Ang Karma's house we enjoyed a dinner cooked by Kunga with “one dish by Karma.” We sipped on Tibetan millet beer called
thongba,
except for Chris, who drank Coke. Karma's mountaineering business was going well. He had a Korean team on the north side of Everest—the climbers and Sherpas already in Tibet—and other teams on other peaks. Karma was optimistic about Nepal's future, believing that the current crisis would erupt in greater violence but that the ultimate result would be the return of democracy, with the Maoists a part of the government. As Karma drove us back to the Vaishali, we were stopped a half dozen times at checkpoints, with soldiers carefully shining flashlights on us before waving us on.

SEVERAL SURPRISES awaited me during the official expedition meeting, which began at seven o'clock on the evening of April 10. Alex was indeed the leader of the expedition. With him were other Russians—guides, camp managers, a doctor, and a communications expert. The biggest surprise was that thirty of us were waiting to be briefed—climbers from the USA, Ireland, England, Italy, Holland, Norway, Denmark, South Africa, Russia, and Australia—a huge mountaineering team by any standards. The climbing Sherpas, kitchen staff, and Tibetans, plus the Russian crew, more than doubled our number. Years ago I had decided that my ideal expedition size was four to six people, so what on earth was I doing here? The answer, of course, was that we had accepted the commercial expedition because it suited our purposes. If I admitted to any of these climbers that I had no idea I was joining such a huge team, I would be thought an idiot.

The mystery of the two leaders was also revealed. Harry and Alex were partners in a cooperative sense. Harry's business was 7Summits .com, while Alex's was
7Summits-Club.com
. Harry's primary role was marketing, and for this expedition he had elected to be Thomas Weber's guide and the director of the film about his climb. In these circumstances, Alex had taken on the leadership role and management of the logistics for the expedition as a whole. He outlined the structure of the expedition, explaining that there would be an A-Team and a B-Team, and that each team would have twenty members. I was greatly relieved to hear that not all thirty were climbers—some were Russian guides, some were trekkers or filmmakers heading for either Advance Base Camp (known familiarly as ABC) or the North Col, and the remainder were summit climbers.

Alex outlined the trip. As soon as the curfews permitted, we would drive from Kathmandu to Zhangmu, the town on the Tibetan side of the Nepalese border. Because there were grave dangers in heading to high altitude too quickly, acclimatization stops were built into our itinerary. Acclimatization would continue after we arrived at Base Camp, the approach being to head up toward Everest, retreat to Base Camp to recover, then repeat the process, increasing the height and distance every time. In this way, we would ready ourselves for our summit attempts.

After the meeting, we walked a short distance down the street to the Rum Doodle Restaurant, which courts customers by offering free meals to climbers who have reached Everest's summit. All of us ate for free that night because it was the expedition's Welcome Dinner, courtesy of 7Summits-Club. I sat between two Americans, Slate Stern, an attorney from Santa Fe, and Vince Bousselaire, a preacher from Colorado who had mortgaged his house to fund his climb. I relaxed as I began to enjoy their company. Everyone seemed to be happy and excited, judging by the volume and volubility of the conversation.

When the food had been eaten and all the plates had been removed, and as coffee was served to those who wanted it, Alex stood up to make his welcome speech. His words were received well by all and forgotten moments later by many—such are the effects of alcohol. I was among those who were sober, and so his final remarks lodged in my brain.

“Tomorrow morning,” Alex said, “we run to the Monkey Temple. This will be for seeing the fitness of you for climbing the Mount Everest. We want to see you have the fitness. We will run at seven o'clock before the breakfast.”

I did not like the sound of this. Going for a run was okay, but I was worried by the concept of testing us and the military mind-set behind that. If Alex was going to operate a boot camp program, I wanted no part of it.

Nevertheless, at five minutes to seven the next morning, Mike and I went downstairs and waited outside. Christopher came down a few minutes later, but there was no one else in sight. In the dining room, set up at a table opposite each other, we found the two Americans I had sat between at dinner the night before, Slate and Vince.

“Slate's your man!” said Vince, when I mentioned the run. “I've still got a sore hip from running with him yesterday, so I'm going to take it easy.”

“But I've already started breakfast,” Slate protested, “and I wasn't planning to run today.”

I looked at my watch. It was already seven fifteen.

“Alex said we should run to the Monkey Temple and back before breakfast. So where is Alex? Where are the rest of them?”

“Too much vodka,” suggested Vince.

I looked through the window of the restaurant, but there was nobody waiting outside.

“I'm going anyway,” I said.

Slate pushed his plate away and said, “Okay, I'll come. I ran there yesterday. It's a good route.”

He washed down his coffee with some water, then we set off, with Slate leading the way out of the hotel compound and north along the narrow potholed street. Rather than an expedition jogging team of thirty, it was only Slate and I determined to reach the temple. We soon hit a major road and turned downhill toward the river. The road had a footpath, but there were too many pedestrians, even though it was only seven thirty in the morning, so we ran on the road. We crossed a bridge and ran along beside the river, which smelled and looked like a sewer. Slate started to draw ahead, so I increased my pace to catch up with him. Within minutes he had gained a two-hundred-yard lead. There was a bridge ahead, which meant a choice of paths, so I had to speed up if I was not to lose him. Luckily, he stopped at the bridge to adjust his iPod, and from there we ran together up a flight of steps to a Hindu temple. While Slate paused and looked around, I tried to get my breath back. Next was a road with high brick walls creating blind corners, which meant traffic was a danger. Finally, we ran along the tree-lined path that led into the grounds of the temple. The huge Buddhist stupa of Swayambhunath—our destination, the Monkey Temple—was on the top of the hill. Vince had mentioned that Slate had run up the stairs three times, so before Slate suggested the same discipline, I recommended that we walk.

It was many years since I had been to this place, as my favorite of Kathmandu's two big stupas was Boudhanath, which was more peaceful because it was not overrun by hungry monkeys. Both stupas were very similar—gigantic white masonry domes, each topped by a square gilded block. On each of those square gilded faces was painted a pair of all-seeing, all-knowing eyes. The blocks on each stupa were oriented so that every pair of eyes pointed to one of the four cardinal points. On top of each block was a thin conical tower, with shapes symbolic of the earth, the sun, and the moon at its zenith.

Because it was on the outskirts of town, one advantage the Monkey Temple did offer was a broad view across the city—but not now, at the end of Kathmandu's dry winter, when the dust was heavy in the valley and the precocious first rains of the monsoon had not yet fallen.

The morning was warming up, and I sweated heavily as we ran back to the hotel. As an adventure racer, Slate was very fit and he happily asked me questions as we ran. I tried to give short answers because long ones left me out of breath. At last I gasped, “Let's just run. We can talk when we get there.”

Back at the Vaishali the waiters were still serving breakfast, for which I was grateful. I never asked Alex what had become of his glorious morning run, but I also never again worried about his military inclinations.

THE PROBLEM of my overlooked boots was resolved, thanks to Barbara. I phoned her from the roof of the hotel, using Richard's satellite phone, and learned they were on their way to Kathmandu. I also learned that Dorje had scored a triumphant goal against Blacktown, leaders of his ice hockey competition. The next day I rang the Radisson Hotel, where Sue Fear was staying. She had been delayed in Kathmandu by the curfews and promised to bring the errant footwear to me the following afternoon. True to her word, she arrived at the Vaishali, and we adjourned to the bar at the Rum Doodle Restaurant so that I could buy her a beer.

I was delighted to see Sue, quite apart from her role as the courier of my precious booty. I had called her in Sydney the day she left for Kathmandu to wish her good luck with her climb of Manaslu. Now I had the time to tell her that although I had never set foot on Manaslu, it was a special mountain for me. Its beautiful form loomed directly across the deep valley of the Marsyandi River during my prolonged and difficult first ascent of Annapurna II's South Face.

Sue blurted out her frustration at being stuck for a week in Kathmandu by the king's mindless curfews. On the climbing front, she was excited by the prospect of being on the same Manaslu expedition permit as Junko Tabei, who in 1975 had become the first woman to summit Mount Everest. Sue hoped to be climbing light and fast with Bishnu Gurung, a strong and experienced climber and a good friend.

She also gave me some advice. “Remember how I had stuff stolen on Everest? Well, I have heard some really bad stories recently.”

It was not what I wanted to hear, but Sue loved to talk. She related some chilling examples of theft and deceit high on the mountain. I had suppressed my dread of the overcrowding on Everest and the resulting competition and opportunism, trying to pass off the confrontations as misunderstandings.

Both of us were leaving Kathmandu before dawn to avoid whatever travel restrictions might be imposed the next day, and so we stopped our reunion at one beer. Downstairs outside the Rum Doodle we hugged and promised to share stories afterward. With a quick kiss, she turned and strode down the narrow street, small in size, huge in confidence, not looking back. With my boots hugged to my chest—just where Sue had been—I watched her blend into the evening crowd. I never saw her again.

HIMALAYA

T
HE VALLEY OF the Bhote Kosi gorge is one of the few breaches deep enough to allow a road to be cut across the backbone of the Himalayan chain. From above the border town of Zhangmu, the road is very narrow and exposed to rockfalls and avalanches. Much of the road skirts the lip of a vertical precipice. Although it's called a highway, it's high only in altitude. As the road heads deeper into the gorge it follows a series of ascending switchbacks, and it seems impossible that there can be a way through. Solace came with the thought that every slow hairpin bend that we rounded in low gear brought us closer to the Tibetan Plateau.