April 17: Sama Gaon

From Mike:

So it’s been a while since I’ve last written.  We’ve been having technical difficulties with our solar panel and right now I’m writing from inside a stone building in Sama Gaon – the final town before Manaslu base camp.  Since the last writing we’ve stayed in the following towns: Laposhea, Dobhan, Philim, Bihi Phedi, Lihi, and now here we are in Sama Gaon.

We are now at eleven thousand five hundred feet and everyone is feeling well with the exception of Jerome.  Jerome’s had a bug for the last three days and today was the worst; good thing we’ll be taking a rest day tomorrow.  Krishna, our chef, made Jerome a birthday cake two days ago, but unfortunately he couldn’t enjoy it because of a sour stomach – the rest of the team assured him that it was good.  Krishna and Preem, the camp boy, seem to disappear into the shadows and two hours later bring out the most amazing food; it’s simply unbelievable.

The Garung porters who have been with us since day one turned around and returned to their farms today.  It was a great experience spending the entire week with the same group of porters; they really warmed up to us and to our overactive cameras.  There is no break given for youth or femininity here; fourteen year old boys and women, young and old, carry seventy pounds, just like the men.  I’m sure some of the loads are well over seventy, however, as several strong guys are carrying two of our big duffels, which are over fifty pounds apiece.  All the loads are carried via a namlo – a tumpline – which wraps around the load and stretches across the forehead.  I tried carrying one of the kitchen loads and nearly broke my neck.  I think the trick is to locate the strap high on your head so that the load is directed directly in line with your spine. 

The trekking was spectacular between Bihi Phedi and Lihi following a steep river gorge along staircases which have been carved out of the rock walls.  We then entered pine forests which were studded with red, white and pink rhododendron trees – not bushes, trees.  The final hour into Sama Gaon crossed a large flat valley filled with grazing yaks, chaunri gais (female yaks), jovas (male half yak half cow) and jomas (female half yak half cow).  Today was the first time we actually saw yaks as they cannot survive below eleven thousand feet.

We stopped at a Buddhist monastery in Lho where Ki Kami, one of our Sherpas, organized a ceremony in our honor.  The local monk prayed that we have a safe journey on the mountain.  Ever since Bihi Phedi we’ve been in Buddhist territory.  The people have also changed from Garung to Sherpa and Tibetan.  We regularly pass kinis, chortens and mani walls along the trail and all of us are ever mindful to pass them on the right.  Kinis are structures which have a passageway straight through, many of them are decorated on the inside with Tonka paintings, which I figure are instructions for a good life.  Chortens are simple rock piles and mani walls are walls decorated with carved stones, some of which have pictures and some simply repeat "oh mani ped me ohm" (pardon the spelling), which means “hail to the jewel of the lotus.”  You hear this chant quite a bit around here and I’ve been joking that before this trip is over we’ll be chanting “oh mommy take me home.”

It’s getting cooler out and I had to break out the down jacket for the first time.  We’re really going to be hitting some temperature extremes on this trip, at lunch today my watch was reading 102.6 degrees Fahrenheit and 10,260 feet in elevation.  It may dip into the thirties tonight.  We had our first glimpses of the mountain today and though it is a monster it appears doable.  The proof will obviously be in the pudding but it looks like if we take it one day at a time we have a reasonable chance at this bugger.

Before I sign off I’m going to have to return to how unbelievably cool the little stone building in which I now sit is.  Sama Gaon is the first village on the trek with electricity – they have a small hydro plant nearby – and the computer is actually plugged into an outlet.  As I look around it’s like a scene out of Indiana Jones, there’s a smoky fire burning in a small stove, women in traditional Tibetan dress are hustling about and every piece of wood used to make this place has been hewn to shape with an ax and years of skill.  Wow.  As the sign says “Don’t change Nepal, let Nepal change you.”

Namaste  (Oh, one more thing, whenever you meet someone on the trail, you exchange the greeting, Namaste, which serves as both hello and goodbye.  What’s really special is when someone says Namaste bai, which means Namaste brother.  We couldn’t be more different but we’re still brothers.)

Greetings from Jerome:

I have heard that people are wondering if I did make the trip.  I am alive and somewhat well in Sama Goan, just four hours from base camp.  After seven days of trekking we are going to take a day of rest.  I have a bad GI bug that has given me a hard road to this point.  The countryside is as spectacular as the people. I hope to keep you all better informed once we work out the power problem with the solar cells.  Goodbye from Sama Goan.

Greetings From Tom:

So the trekking phase for the trip is over.  We spend a day here in Sama Gaon and then turn to climb this mountain called Manaslu.  We had a wonderful journey through vast stretches of Nepal.  All the sights, sounds, and smells went by almost as fast as the faces on the street during a New York cab ride.  Some of the experience will clearly last forever: 

·         Six A-frame bright green tents lined up in a neat row in the middle of a small village square next to a two story stone school complete with a second story balcony with railings painted with yellow and green.  The balcony served as a gathering and viewing place for the locals to watch forty school children present a display of local song and dance to the strange inhabitants of the green tents.

·         The roaring, at times thunderous, sound of the Buri Gandaki River below as one treks along steep cliff side trails sometimes cut into the rock outcrops.

·         Children springing out of one room stone houses to greet the strangers.  Some greeting with a sincere namaste, others using the greeting as a prelude to ask for a pen as if it were one word.

·         Two hour breaks for lunch on the trail.  Each time in a different village, each time drawing the full attention of the local children.  Lunch is a time to nap, write, eat, and nap some more in the warm sun of this wonderful landscape.

·         Our Sirdar, Narwang, comically covering his eyes walking along the trail for a short distance using one of our trekking poles like the cane of a blind man as if to suggest that the American trekking pole is nothing more than a crutch.

·         Suspension bridges, logs across side channels, white river sand with the lug sole boot prints of six Americans next to the bare foot tracks of 87 porters.

·         Young and old Nepali women with multiple piercing in their ears displaying earrings with small stones set into silver and gold and one pierced nostril with a tiny gold stud dressed in bright reds, purples, or greens on the top of a flowered long skirt.

·         Playing leap frog all day with our porters.  Then in the evening visiting their camp to observe the joy they feel in the work they do and the loads they carry expressed through their nightly song and dance.

It has been a wonderful past eight days trekking. The experience has only been exceeded by the fact that today we had the first full view sight of the mountain we came to climb.

Dispatches