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Shopping
One of the reasons we do not use an Indian trekking
company is one of my weakness', I know I love shopping, love going into the
Himalayan store in Manali high street and amassing great piles of supplies on
the counter. In high season I can be seen wandering around with Lobsang and
Temba, tatty bits of paper in my hand, looking for that special jam or this
special coffee; the stuff gets transported to Lobsang's place, and as this was
one of our budget special treks, all the trekkers terrorised the shopkeepers of
Manali, bouts of shopping interspersed with spring showers, snack and tea
breaks, and the news of the Nepali royal family massacre.
 Go north, young man
Next day was the usual last minute panic, Dave
buying Frisbees and Kim flirting with beggars (her parting line as she wound up
the window in his face: "OK, book us a room"). The Rohtang pass is what John
Keay called the most abrupt change on the face of the earth.. "In all but name,
Tibet begins on the Rohtang". By late afternoon we were at Darcha, not the
nicest of campsites, but good to be out in the hills at last.
New concepts in 20th century dining
Like most Himalayan road heads, Darcha was easy to
leave, despite last minute sock shopping, and the discovery that the "huge"
dining tent we had was not really suitable for the stools we had purchased. That
first night in Palamo someone suggested folding the tables down and sitting on
the floor, and over the next few weeks various suggestions, gas lamps, tea and
coffee jars, carpets, and camp chairs made our little home in the hills a great
place to retire to at the end of a long day. It is still with us here at
Pangpema, and the signatures of Dave, Lara, Kim, Lucas, Lisa and myself have
been joined by many others, faded slowly by the high altitude sun.
And cooking?
Lobsang, no mean cook himself, had introduced me to
our kitchen hand Temba, at the start of the trek, and in fact Temba was to be
our cook; mellow and easy of character, the only cook I knew who lost weight on
our treks. "Chicken body" as Lobsang jokingly called him, would prepare breads, cakes,
perfect rice and crispy salad, and the most subtly spiced Indian food on the
subcontinent, looking back every day I would see Lobsang's Popeye-like gait, and
behind Temba's skinny lope, turn sideways and he vanishes. Four months of Temba's
cooking and I still loved it, every dish (and so did everyone else, without
exception).
On passes
In the next 3 weeks we were to cross 9 passes, but
every one different in character; in fact we were to make 40 pass crossings in
the next few months, each with moments of its own. My brother Jamie once said
crossing a pass was something to keep and treasure, a little bit of magic in the
back pocket, in times of stress back in civilisation you could slip your hand
in, touch it, and capture that moment again, but to feel it you have to live it,
lungs pounding, blisters burning, head throbbing, till you stand on top.
Suspended there between past and future, the present is luminous. The passes are
snow locked and silent now, but the flags we put up on each crest, rimed with
frost, are still there. Friends ask me how I can visit the same place again and
again but that first pass of the summer and my eighth time on the Shingo makes
the point, as, each crossing has been with different people, different weather,
different moments; 74 year old John in the autumn plodding up rock and scree, 20
something Lucas loping up the snow slopes in the spring, 23 year old Hannah on
her first Himalayan pass in' 98, Joel as a sun bleached young wanderer (with
hair) in '88. That day in May we slid down and were happy in camp by 11am.
Desert passes, exposed passes, passes we lunched on top or simply gawped on top,
and passes we had pujas on top of. Soul food moments all of them.
On trekkers
I had left Zanskar late last autumn with my head
spinning with its beauty. A September crossing with a good trekking friend, and
every village in motion with the harvest. I returned as they were slowly shaking
off their long winter, lucky again to introduce people to its beauty, and have
such people in our group. Dave, uncertain initially then at the end shaking my hand to thank
me, Lara laughing as the locals laughingly asking her if she came from Nepal,
Kim, buzzing with her love of it all, caught for me in the moment she drenched
herself in whitewash before the locals could, Lucas constantly in motion with
his long legs leaping down crazy scree slopes, and Lisa crashing her own pain
barriers every day but despite illness getting there.
The Cake
The group had purchased a huge amount of dope in Manali but
inexplicably not enough tobacco or papers to smoke it with, and thus it was
decided as it was a rest day to bake it in a cake. Then it was decided against
Lobsang's earnest advice to put not one, not two, but three tolas in, and the
cake was produced with dinner.
A short debate ensued as to when to eat it, and it was decided
"now". Kim, half sensible, only had half a slice, and the soon to be insensible
others, a slice each. Me, an adult for some time, had none, an easy decision as
my last hash cake episode was horrifyingly familiar from recurrent nightmares,
and that happened in 1975.
So the usual "its having no affect" crap started, but the
observant would note that Lara was taking an unfeasibly long time to cut that
samosa, and a very stoned silence fell over the group, broken only by the sound
of Lisa passing out. Dave got up and stumbled towards his tent, looking back
over his shoulder as if all the fiends of hell were after him, while Kim stood
and looked at the fairly uninteresting rock wall of the valley with a look of
moronic rapture on her face as if she was communing with some Zanskari
manifestation of Timothy Leary.
By this time I had had enough and went to drink a beer in
Dolma's shop with Lobsang and decide how long we would have to stay up to make
sure none of them choked on their vomit or swallowed their tongue, no great loss
as they all seemed to have lost the power of speech anyway.
Two godfathers later we strolled back to see the charming scene
of Kim and Lara feeding Ruscoe the local dog, Lara kneeling down better to enjoy
the sight of Roxy tucking in. On drawing closer it became apparent that Lara was
in fact puking and roxy was indeed eating the puke while Kim lent support with a
glazed look on her face.
So the evening progressed and the next day, Dave sitting bolt
upright in his tent "I am having a really bad time" and Kim and Luke somehow not
falling to their death walking stoned on one of the trickiest trails in the
Himalayas to Phuktal.
Luke had no bad side affects and the trek went on.
I decided the next time I saw any beer I would drink all of it.
Lobsang and the Tibetan mafia
Here the night after my 3rd ascent of Tengkoma all
I can hear is Lobsang snoring next to me, here on a busman's holiday; cooking,
carrying loads and having a wonderful time. Fresh memories of the days we walked
into Kanchenjunga base camp, a long line of small Tamang porters in front, there
would be the unmistakable Khampa figure of Lobsang towering over them all.
I met
Lobsang in 1998 and since then we have adventured all over the Indian Himalayas
and shared riotous times in Leh and Manali, from the night the police went crazy
in the ibex bar and thrashed the place with rifle butts and a drunken officer
pointed a very shaky revolver at us and ordered us out and Lobsang faced him
down! to the party at the end of Caravan when we took over Johnson's bar and
danced all night.
Today Lobsang climbed his first 6000m peak with me, and in honour of the moment I gave him my Suunto watch. Lobsang is the total centre of
our operations in India, and stories about him could fill a whole website - but
to trek without him would be unthinkable. Initial appearances suggest a gangster
but is an astute and sensitive caravan boss, learning the names of all the
trekkers and caring for them like the loving soul he is; their weaknesses,
strengths, he picks it all up, who likes salad, who hates mornings, or how
strong at altitude this or that trekkers is. Fond of a drop of rum, generous,
his high pitched giggle has lightened every day in the hills; overgenerous,
emotional praise maybe but I got lucky the day I met Lobsang! [Jamie' comment:
no, ALL true.]
This year we also
got as lucky as one can be with Temba, whose creations in the cook tent pleased the fussiest of
eaters, and the rest of the boys, Tsarap, and his brother Punchok, our ponymen,
who treat their animals like errant but well loved nephews, loading them with
care, seeming to just stroll carelessly along but watching the beasts every
minute. Heading towards the Kongmaru La, I watched from above as one
horse stumbled and slipped. They had the whole caravan (15 horses) stopped and
waiting in less then a minute, and the horse was unloaded and dealt with in less
than 5 minutes. Punchok is married, a Tibetan doctor, deeply religious and
always with his animals while the others partied at night. Tsarap, dark and good
looking, but very aware of his family responsibilities, putting his sister
through college with the salary we pay him, fixed in my memory with a bidi
clenched in his teeth, asking me how high his horses had taken our climbing camp
on Caravan 6666. Rum in hand, the bidi dropped straight in the rum when I told him
"5800m".
On Singge
In Tetha village we met Singge, a skinny,
undersized boy of 8, hanging around the outskirts of the other kids, wearing a
t-shirt and nothing else, and Lobsang learning he was an orphan fed him and gave
him some clothes. We talked of doing something for him, and in September, found
him again and learnt his story; we are hoping to change his sad life by, among
other things sponsoring him to
school in Manali.
A day
There were times when I was a teacher in London
battling with a hard class on a rainy London afternoon when I could only get
through it because I was a trekker, and I knew when term ended on a Friday in
December, April, or July that there was a taxi was waiting outside to whisk me
away to Heathrow and in a matter of days I would be heading up the trails of the
Himalaya. Each day on the trail is like a slowly developing photo in a B&W lab,
blurry as you start, the colours expanding before you as you live it. It was
Hugh Swift, the Guru of Himalayan trekking wrote "On the trail, life is
instantaneous; its right before your eyes. The days expand, and life is fully
lived" Our days always began with the smell of fresh brewed coffee, and ended
with Lobsang taking orders for hot drinks, chatting and playing games in the
mess tent, reading or writing, and drifting off to bed.
By Padum we were in the routine, each day enlivened
by something new, no trek is ever the same. Outside Padum we were waiting for
dinner when a storm hit, thrashing our tents, for an hour holding
onto the tent poles, Lucas fielding campsite bits as they blew away, Kim's tent
filling with sand; intrepid trekker she is, she contributed to the evening by
rushing to gather rocks to weigh the tent down, then dropping them with a shriek
"spider!".
"Zanskar's weather, like Bombay's fashion, cannot be
trusted...", Kim in particular had to face some demons on the trip, being a
little nervous of exposed trails, having trekked the route
several times, I had tended to forget that some of them were a little dangerous.
after trekking to Tso Moriri with us, Kim completed her own Kora of the
Himalayas by visiting Pakistan and Tibet, and this is her account, written
months later by the fire in The Kangtega lodge, of part of the trek..
The second part of the trek is reckoned to be the hardest in the Himalaya, and trying to recall some of those
moments here in an email cafe in Dharmasala, the memories run together; was it
Hannah in 1998? or Lisa that got sick on that pass; my brother Jamie in 1992 I
remember crossing the horizon on a pre dawn start, or Dave? I know that on the
last night in Hanumil I did not want it to end, I had just started to know these
people; I know that trekking with this group gave me the confidence that the way
we operate in India, from fresh coffee to our tent lay out, was the best, but I
knew, and I think I had forgotten, that to trek in Zanskar is about love; love
of a people whose life has not fundamentally changed in centuries. Whenever I
encounter something mean spirited in this world or in myself, I try to focus on
Zanskar and know I will be going back there, and I know everything will be ok.
A thousand, two thousand passes,
passes in the lands of strangers,
I will cross three thousand passes,
to go to my own country
Zanskari song
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