JOURNEY - on Mastering Ukemi (6 page)

He stood there staring at me and I realized that he was not only serious, but that this was something that he really wanted to do. Other members of the dojo were watching as well, and I turned to look at them and then back at Christian.

“
You don’t need to pay for it. Hell, I’ve wanted to go back for a long time and I have a little money set aside. I’ll tell you what. You pay for the land costs, and I’ll take care of my own plane tickets and expenses and we’ll call it even.” Then I went into the house and told my wife that I was taking a trip. But, she already knew that.

Organizing an expedition to Nepal can be easy or hard. It’s easy if you know people and only have to send an e-mail requesting transportation, accommodations, porters, Sirdar, (guide and translator) and let someone you know at the other end take care of all these things for you. Or it can be difficult for someone who cannot readily find Nepal on a map, knows nothing of third world diplomacy and does not understand how things work in this part of the world. I do.

After Christian’s parents came to dinner and we discussed the trip I began to get excited about going. His mom was not happy, but after talking with my wife about her two previous expeditions to the same region, and after looking at many photographs of happy indigenous children and towering mountain peaks, even his mom started getting excited for him.

I gave them a list of the special equipment Christian would need for the journey. Heavy, goose down sleeping bag, expedition-weight goose down parka, top-grade, lightweight hiking boots and at least four pairs of the best socks they could find. These things needed to be purchased here with a long list of other items that could easily total over a couple thousand dollars. The upside of this is that if he took care of these items they could last a lifetime and he could get many years of enjoyment out of them camping in the high Rocky Mountains and hiking almost anywhere.

I had everything I needed with a few small exceptions. Some logistical juggling was going to be necessary because I intended to bring a much better camera than I did last time. It weighed about three pounds more than my previous one and was quite a bit bigger, but I wanted to take some lifetime photographs on this trip. It might well be the last time I would be able to go to this part of the world and I intended to make the most of it. The juggling was due to the self-imposed weight limit of thirty pounds.

Thirty pounds of gear is not much when you factor in sleeping bags and three pound cameras. We would wear our hiking boots and carry certain things during the day, but a porter would transport most of our gear for us and I refuse to ask a human being to carry more than thirty kilos. That would be thirty pounds each for Christian and me. We would need certain emergency gear that is absolutely required. We would be as far as five days away by foot from the nearest medical help and a blizzard in the high country could require us to hunker down for several days, so a minimal amount of survival food would be required. We would each carry a light pack with some clothing, foul weather gear, and emergency supplies, but the majority of our gear would be in the hands of our porter and Sirdar.

Break falls require trust. When attacking a powerful combatant we must believe that we will prevail, however if that opponent is strong, centered and has captured our center and energy, it is vital to our survival to escape his intentions. Thus we take
ukemi
, escape.

While preparing for this expedition it was necessary to understand the opponent would be the heart of the vast Asian continent near the roof of the world. It would be formidable. Yet there could be no escape. Not from the exposure, the fatigue, the hunger, and especially not from the brigands who are wandering the countryside calling themselves freedom fighters or Maoist revolutionaries. By any other name they are thugs. Still they have been leaving foreigners alone for the most part and if approached money has been sufficient to send them on their way. Call them what you want but they are still thieves. I was far more concerned with problems caused by altitude or a medical emergency.

We began to implement an exercise program that included ‘hiking’ in full pack up and down the towers at our local football stadium. These towers were about a six percent grade that switch-backed up and ended at the upper deck. From there we would go up the final forty steps that took us to the highest row of seats and then turn around and start down. It took about fifteen minutes to go from the bottom to the top and then back down again. We would do this three, four or five times and we tried to go over to the stadium and do it three times a week. It wouldn’t help to acclimatize us for altitude, but it would help develop stamina and strength needed for the long road. At this point every ounce of preparation is worth many pounds of grief later on. We needed to prepare as completely as we could.

When learning to take
ukemi
a person begins by doing simple roll backs that lift his posterior up off the ground, but to not go so far as to take him all the way over in a back roll. He sits and then rolls back bringing his knees up to his chest, legs crossed and tail bone off the mat. Then he rolls forward until his knees are on the mat and his butt just barely off the mat. All the while he does this he practices extending the energy we call ki forward or over his shoulder depending if he is moving fore or aft. This is a basic exercise, but it is vital to all that follows in his training.

Like those beginning students we were trudging up and down our pretend mountain in ninety-degree heat late one afternoon. It was ninety degrees because after a certain point in the year it is always ninety plus in the afternoon in Florida. It just is. If you want to go outside and train at anything you do it in the heat or you don’t do it. We had no choice. This was as close as we were going to get to climbing and descending in long enough increments to do us any good. And so like the beginner who trains at those back rolls, we were climbing to prepare ourselves for what lay ahead. Christian asked me if we would do any aikido training over there. I said no and let it go. He asked again if there would be any opportunity for any workouts at all, or maybe if there was a dojo in Kathmandu. I told him I did not believe that an aikido dojo existed in Kathmandu, but even if it did we were there on other business. Still, he persisted.

“
Sensei, I think it would be fun to train in a completely foreign culture. You know, you wouldn’t know the language or anything. You might get something from it you wouldn’t see anywhere else.” He stopped and adjusted his pack. “And anyway it wouldn’t be a big deal to add a
gi
and a
jo
or
bokken
with us if we are going to leave our bags in Kathmandu while we are trekking in the high country.”

Is that what this is all about?” I asked. “You feel you will want a weapon?”

“
Well, it wouldn’t hurt anything, would it? A jo would look like a walking stick to anyone who saw it.”

“
Except that everyone who goes to Nepal has high-tech, collapsible, graphite or boron walking sticks that cost about a hundred bucks a throw.” I said. “And we will, too. I forgot to add that to the list I gave you, but you will definitely want a set of those.”

“
Why don’t I just bring a
jo
?”

“
Look, Christian, if you want a weapon we can go to the Khukuri House in Thamel. You can buy a nice lightweight knife for the trip and no one will think anything of it. Everyone carries Khukuri knifes in the high country. Well, not everyone, mostly farmers. But it would certainly not be out of place. And it would be a lot more useful as a tool than a
jo
would be. I actually plan to do this myself.”

“
Oh.”

“
Oh, yeah.”

We walked to the bottom and started back up again. Sweat was running down my back and into my jeans and the weight I was carrying in the pack began to chafe. Christian stopped and took his shirt off and threw it over a railing.

“
I’ll get that on the way back,” he said.

“
No,” I said. “Either put it back on or put it into your pack. You won’t be leaving anything on the trail but your boot prints. Don’t get into some weird habits now.”

We trudged on for another circuit of the ramps and steps and I began to feel as if my heart would pound right out of my chest. I switched to crab walking sideways and back across the ramp. We would have to exercise all the steering muscles in the ankles and calf for a long time before we would be ready.

Chapter 5

Randori

We were having a party on the fourth of July. Kids were running around and sparklers were more popular than cookies and soda for the moment.

Christian was at the barbeque taking orders, Curtis and Chris were holding court for all the kyu ranks and wives were hurrying back and forth with potato salad and other necessary things. It was a nice evening. Hot weather had moved in the last week of May as always and few people enjoy evenings out of doors during the summer in Florida, but sometimes you get a break. An early afternoon thundershower had dropped the temperature by thirty degrees. After it passed and the rain dried up it had only recovered by half.

I was discussing the upcoming journey with two of my students. They had asked to see pictures of our earlier trek and we got the old photo albums out. My wife had been there first on a trek almost twenty years ago and her pictures are in slides, but she had a few to show as well as the several hundred from our trip together from five years previous.

“
This is the town of Jiri.” I said. “This is where the road ends. If you want to go east toward Bhutan, south toward India, or north toward Tibet you need to go from this point on foot.”

“
Are the paths well maintained?” asked Ron, a wonderful guitar player and singer.

“
That depends on the season.” I said. “During the rainy season, the same as here, the paths are slick wet clay and hard stone. It’s very dangerous and very unappealing to trek.” I found another picture and showed it to him. “Here is a photo of Laurie going straight up. It doesn’t look like much, but look closely at the path. It’s stones buried in clay worn into the hillside. The only direction you can travel once you leave the road is either up or down. We didn’t cross fifty level feet again until we got back.”

“
The rainy season is the same as here?” he asked.

“
Well, yeah, it is. You know, if you got a globe and put a pen on Orlando, Florida and then gave the globe a spin it would drag that pen right across Mt. Everest. Orlando and Mt. Everest are the same latitude.”

“
Really! Wow,” exclaimed Jeremy. “I wouldn’t have guessed that. You think of all that snow and ice, I guess I assumed that it was a lot further north, what with all those people freezing and all. That’s wild.”

“
It is all about the altitude. I would imagine that if you could step outside thirty thousand feet straight above us it would be about twenty below zero, right now. I don’t know, but around there, somewhere,” I said. When you are in the low country Nepal is a lot like Florida. There are a lot of the same plants and except for the humidity it even feels much the same. Of course, once you go into the foothills or higher, it quickly changes.

“
The paths dry out during the autumn months and then begin to turn to a nasty dust that gets into everything. Because the only level place to stand or squat is on that path, and because yaks and other beasts don’t exercise toilet manners there is a lot of dung that gets worked into the clay during all the wet and rainy months. After this dries out and turns to dust everyone breathes it in all winter and you see people hacking and coughing all the time. They even have a name for it.”

“
What’s that?’ Ron asked.

“
It’s called yak dung hack.” I said.

They both laughed. I saw Laurie coming across the patio and motioned her to come over. “Honey, what do they call that bad lung infection up in the high country in Nepal?”

“
Yak dung hack,” she said. Then she looked at Jeremy and Ron and said, “You don’t want it.” With that she turned around and went on her way. We watched her go and then I picked up another picture.

“
This is a field of marigolds about eighty-five hundred feet up. You can see how all the fields are intensely terraced in order to have a level spot to plow and cultivate. Imagine that all that work was done by hand.”

“
Why would they grow marigolds if the amount of cultivatable land is so precious?” Jeremy wondered.

“
You know, I can’t tell you that. I just don’t know, but I will say that it is very important to the Nepali people to have those flowers around. They seemed to be everywhere. And something else; they stain the hell out of your cotton clothes. When we first arrived in country we were greeted by our sirdar and he gave us all a necklace, you know, like in Hawaii, of marigolds. I thought it was wonderful until I got to our hotel and found golden and red stains on my shirt.”