Going Up - The Trek to Phoksundo

Day 1

The light was very bright coming in the windows of the little airplane, so when we landed and I applauded the Swiss pilot on his landing, asking how he could possibly see the strip, he told me he couldn't really...proof once more that God and some luck were the only things keeping us alive and moving forward. When our team landed in Juphal, we walked out onto the dirt landing strip and picked up our bags. We were asked to show our passports and permits (at least we got to use the damn things, after all the trouble they caused!). We met Matthew, a British missionary living in the region, for tea at a local hotel while we waited for Balber to arrive. Balber is a Dolpa native and would be guiding us to the lake. Our plan was simple - Two and a half days up, and two days back to the lake, then the rest of our team would cross over the two mountain passes to Do to manage the yaks while I turned back to make it back to a plane in time to leave for America. Quickly, we had to adjust as we learned that recent snow had closed the treacherous pass (two mountains above 15,000 feet), so the only way to Do was to come back to Juphal and go back around the other way - 4 days up, 3 days back (too long for the time I had). Ishak and Rochelle would go with me to Phoksundo first, then come back with me and loop around to finish the rest of the trek to Do. We headed out.

We took a truck, one of the only in the area (they were proud to say it had been airlifted by helicopter to the region for $35,000 - a steal, if you ask me) that fortunately had gasoline, down the mountain to the entrance of the Shey Phoksundo National Park. We sat in the truck bed where metal barred benches had been placed. Packed like sardines, we bounced and leaned with the truck as it 4-wheeled itself down the mountain, breathing in the clouds of dust it was kicking up as it went. We were stopped along the way and asked to provide proof of our permits, which were in our bags on the roof. The truck emptied at the bottom of the mountain and we followed a glorious turquoise river for a relatively painless hike to the first stop, where we had to pay the entrance fee of $30 and once again provide our permits. We hadn't eaten in hours, so we had noodles with egg sitting in the family's home. We sat on a bench watching a very dramatic Nepali TV series with a lot of crying. I watched the fancy multicolored ducks eat with significant efficiency the many MANY flies. Rochelle and I went through the first of what would become routine water filtering, and we were on our way.

We stopped a few times along the way, sitting at the river to eat an apple that Balber had brought us from his home where he grows them. Rochelle and I used her knife to peel it (safety fanatics we were, but don't judge - we couldn't afford to get sick this early on). She took some pictures of the pretty horses we saw, with colored ribbons tied in their tail hair and colorful woven saddles. Each was loaded down with 50kg bags of sugar or rice. One thing that became clear early on was the number of animals that take this trail. Huge groups of goats, cows, yaks, or zos (mix between a cow and a yak) would be seen in the distance, kicking up dust. We'd pull to the mountain side to let them pass, watching in awe as their shepherd's various whistle tones would drive them one way or another. I got familiar with the droppings that each left behind and was an expert at not stepping in it, until I didn't care anymore. Poop and dust were the most common make up of the trail, with some dirt and rocks rounding out the list - this was no Annapurna or Everest trail, clearly marked and cleanly laid for high paying foreigners. This was used, a lot, by locals who brought their families and livestock along the trail, which narrowed in some places to just a foot across, and was unbelievably steep in places. I daydreamed of falling off, and what options I'd have if I did - let's just say it was a short daydream.

Dolpo is described as a truly isolated corner of Nepal, and it's even more isolated than usual for trekkers in November, since trekking season ends in October. This year, thanks to the April earthquake, tourism was down around 30% of its usual levels, so we were also exotic, rare animals in this area. Most people who come to this region to trek take porters (which run about $16 a day) who carry their things and cook for them in addition to guiding them. For the most part (except for two desperate moments when I took advantage of my friends to get myself physically up certain parts), we were on our own. We found a very cool abandoned flat-roofed village, overgrown and which had plants growing purposefully on the roof. We were told this is a winter village where animals from the northern region are kept, but without them there, it was eerie and quiet. 

We stopped once to survey a village that Balber works with for his ministry, observing them drying large amounts of bright red chili peppers on the roof. We also found marijuana plants growing freely - the people use the leaves to feed the animals, mix it in their own food sometimes, and use it for medicine.

We stopped on this night at a hotel where we were split up by gender - Rochelle and I in one clay room, and Matthew, Balber and Ishak in the other. The rooms had been built right into the boulder and were wired for electricity. After dinner of Dahl Baht (rice with lentils), we rolled out our sleeping bags on the beds. I slipped on the "stairs" (more of that fantastically structured trail) going to the bathroom and scraped up my hand - injury #2 in the books. The bathroom is a little shack right next to the river with a squatty potty. We brush our teeth and spit into the dirt, using our bottled water to rinse. We can't shower, so we wipe our dusty selves down with wet wipes.

Rochelle hangs out her wet clothes and teaches me how to prepare for the cold night and the next morning, explaining each of the layers, and what to wear to bed, and how to pack the bag most efficiently. We're tired, but feeling pretty good - not that sore, not that discouraged. This is totally do-able, right?

Day 2

After breakfast of an omlete (egg between two pieces of chapati), we ready ourselves to leave. All of our stuff is out everywhere, and in the morning we heard too many groans from the men as we re-packed. We learned then to set the expectation in advance to know what time we'll leave to prevent that moving forward. I take some cold meds to prevent myself from being stuffy, and we're off.

This is SLOW, and so painful. We start right off the bat crossing a wooden fork of a bridge, created after the other bridge collapsed and before they came up with a good alternative, and then straight into switchbacks. My breakfast hasn't processed into usable energy yet, and I'm sucking wind. I take a puff of my inhaler and realize that I have to blow my nose every five minutes to keep it from water-falling down my face. Also, I'm on altitude sickness preventative meds, day three, and the side affects include losing nerve feeling in my hands, dehydration, and sensitivity to the sun, all of which I'm experiencing. I'm freezing and sweating as we go from shade to direct sun, stopping to take off clothing every few minutes. I suddenly realize, only an hour into day 2 of 6 that this was an incredibly stupid thing for an out of shape girl who runs a bake club and who hasn't even been camping in years. What's worse is that everyone stops when I stop, making me feel like I'm holding everyone up (which I am), and when they don't stop, I genuinely worry that I'll fall far behind and just quit. I finally sat down one too many times, and Balber starts pulling things out of my bag, loading them into his. I was horrified - I will NOT be a burden. But I was a burden, and there wasn't anything else I could do. With some of the weight lifted, I finally hit my stride, and by the end of the day, took back all my things to proudly carry myself. I even wanted to keep going when we stopped for the night, which was a bright feeling in an otherwise very difficult trip.

Ishak, Matthew, Rochelle and Balber

We stopped to eat walnuts that had fallen from the trees. Balber taught us how to crack them from their shells with a rock, so we all sat there, trying to keep the nut in one piece while we smacked it repeatedly. Another pitstop to let some children and their mother carrying wood on their backs, supported by straps over their foreheads, pass us. We had another Nepali apple while we waited. The sun was out, and this river we're following is really breathtaking. This is also the day we went along a ledge in the cliff that I was sort of amazed we could traverse at all, let alone these huge animals.

Our lunch stop was more dahl baht at a family's "restaurant"/home. I sat on a log which was burning on one end and enjoyed not having to move my legs for a minute. The family asked if we had medicines with us, and when asked why, presented their son, who had a black growth on the back of his head. Rochelle is an EMT, and I married a doctor, so together our experience means that we have ZERO ability to diagnose or treat this poor kid. We advised they see a doctor, which we knew they likely wouldn't. This is apparently something that happens a lot - trekkers are asked to leave their medicines with families who are going to self-diagnose and take the meds to solve much larger problems then those meds can fix.

We stopped at another hotel for the night and sat around as it grew dark and cold waiting for someone to go to the next town to get the key to let us in. While we waited, we watched the women weave scarves between breast-feeding their many children. There was no shame about the process (as there shouldn't be) - just shirt down, baby in, and wait. Rochelle and I were once again in our own room, this time on the second story up the most interesting staircase I've ever been on - like it was built externally as a ladder and added later (I'll bet that's actually what they did). They took our light bulb, which was turned on by attaching the actual wires to the metal on the battery. They borrowed the same bulb to give us a light at dinner, then brought it back and reattached it afterward. What's for dinner? Dahl baht. Best value for your money. Matthew abhors any and all spice, so they make the foreigner dish without any spice, and the Nepali dish with plenty. This means the dish gets more boring every time I eat it even faster than dishes with flavor :-)

I stayed up this night, even though I felt like crap from the cold, to help Rochelle get some night shots of the little homes and stars - it was really lovely. We really felt like we were in one of the most remote parts of the world...probably because we were.

Day 3

The next morning, we left very early - we skipped breakfast and did an hour of hiking to the next hotel where we got "brunch." We'd go down now to two meals a day since preparation took a long time. While we waited for them to prepare the dahl baht (with potatoes and cabbage this time!), we discussed where in the world we would each go if money weren't a hindrance. It was freezing cold so near to the river, so we squeezed ourselves inside the kitchen area to keep warm by the stove.

After our meal, we began again, passing a boarding school with beautiful wood carvings and then, we hit the first of the switchbacks. We had been warned that this would be our hardest day, but I had no idea how difficult it would be. The trail was barely visible, crowded by spiky bushes. We climbed painfully until we reached what I initially thought was the top. It wasn't.

While we rested there, seated on a boulder, my friends pointed out the next stage of our journey - a tiny speck of something near the skyline almost directly above us. It was a shack, situated high above us, that we needed to reach. My nose is cracking and bleeding by now from all the wiping I'm doing for my cold, and the altitude is choking. My inhaler gives no relief from the lack of oxygen this far up, above the tree line, and I gape like a fish out of water, desperate for air. I can feel hot spots forming on both feet as I move them slowly, locking my knees like Ro taught me to keep my exhausted muscles from feeling the brunt of the effort. The trail is so steep, and mostly comprised of sandy dirt. It was like running vertically in sand. I stop to let a group of yaks pass me. Throughout the whole trek, everyone we meet who isn't a shepherd asks us where we're going. Our guide stops and talks with each of them, and I trudge ahead because I can't speak Nepali and will shortly be behind again. Balber was built for this place - he can get to the lake in just a day from Juphal. He's patient with us, but he's much more able than I, even at his age, which I assume is close to 60.

Matthew is my companion, distracting me with stories. He lent me his trekking poles for this part, which I leaned on heavily. My bag was heavy, even though we had left some non-essentials behind at the last hotel. I drank water to lighten my load. It was disconcerting to me that in three days of trekking, I never needed to use the bathroom on the trail. It was as if the water was evaporating the minute it hit my system. My lips were dried, shriveled lines and my nose was flaking skin. I ran out of the "good" toilet paper yesterday using so much of it on my faucet of a nose, and I was down to the crappy stuff. This difficult part took only an hour to do - to reach the shack - but it felt like five. The sun beat down, and my legs refused to lift. Then, with some added help from Balber who took my bag for me the last 5 minutes of my climb, I finally reached the shack.

I collapsed, unable to speak to anyone. Ishak asked me his favorite line - "Kendra, you doing good?!" His response to the question was "I'm always good," even when you knew he wasn't. My answer to this question was directly impacted by my mood and ability at the moment. In this moment, I had no answer.

I ate a bag of cookies and took my shoes off to mend the blisters forming. Two Tibetan boys were there with us, giggling over who would marry Rochelle, since I was taken. When we began again, we climbed even higher still, to a height around 12,300 feet. I turned around and looked at how high we were - it didn't register. I walked without thinking for the last leg, watching the boys run ahead of us, climbing trees and wrestling one another on the cliff, flying up and down the trail with their thin shoes. I was so jealous of them, and they were likely amazed at how difficult I clearly found this. I will say, I was not the only one who was hurting or glazed over - you can be assured that I was in good company (except for Balber, who was never really affected by any of it).

We finally began to descend, back to 12,100 feet, where we ran into the Tibetan families coming down from upper Dolpo. The kids belonged to their family group, who had brought all they had in woven sacks from the north, including all of their livestock which were grazing nearby.

Then, we reached it - Phoksundo. The town was eerily quiet - arguably empty - but many animals that looked very well cared for milled around. When we crashed near the lake at a table, my body shut down. I didn't notice the things around me, I couldn't feel my legs, or think. I had worked so hard to get here and I barely noticed anything. Ishak came over and told me they wanted to introduce me to a local celebrity - an old man with a log white beard - a Tibetan lama - who had starred in a French film twenty years back called Caravan. I turned it down. I sat next to a rock covered in yak blood from the "meat preparation" the day before, and its drying pelt beside it and just stared into space. It was getting dark and cold, but we needed to find people to let us in to the hotel, so I walked down to the lake to see the ponies there.

There was a shelter there where the Caravan man sat, so I joined them sitting on the ground around the fire his wife had prepared. He was pulling meat from what used to be a goat's head and eating it as he talked. When he learned I was sick (that much was very obvious), he blamed the dust, saying that must be the cause, and offered me some yak soup. I declined, wanting them to keep their food for themselves, and wanting to keep my germs to myself, but I was mesmerized watching his wife prepare it. She propped the soup pan up on three rocks, balancing it over the fire. She added barley and snapped something that sounded and looked like little bones in - yak cheese. Then, she brought out a blood red yak bone and cut the meat from it using the bone as her cutting board. Other Tibetans slowly trickled in, joining us on the floor or standing outside. I leaned myself against something covered in the corner, hoping to just blend into the background until we were let into our hotel - then I needed to go straight to bed. When you can't understand anything being spoken around you, that is a strange but also wonderful thing - you realize how much listening you really do in a day. The hum of Tibetan and Nepali around me was soothing. Nothing was translated for us.

Then, my friends left to check out the hotel. I was too broken to walk, or move, unless it was a for sure thing, so I sat amongst the Tibetans around their yak soup all on my own. I couldn't talk with them, but I could smile, and they did too. I suddenly snapped myself out of the fog I had been in. KENDRA, LOOK AROUND YOU. DO YOU REALIZE WHERE YOU ARE?! I did, finally, for just a moment, and I soaked it in deeply, which we do so seldom in life with our experiences. My friends came back, announced the hotel's availability, and I shook all their hands as I left the covered area, glad that I had woken up in time not to regret my lack of attention.

I rolled out my bag in the freezing concrete room on my bed. A window above me wouldn't close fully, but it didn't matter much since it was colder inside than it was out. I dropped off to sleep and awoke just in time for dinner to STILL not be ready. I sat in the kitchen with Rochelle under her sleeping bag as a blanket and drank yak butter tea. It was like warm chicken broth, salty and fatty, but really good. During dinner (you guessed it! dahl baht), we realized we had cell service and reached the travel agents about my flight. Bad news - 80% of flights had been canceled since we left. I only had two possible days to get home, and one of them was slipping away due to our pace as a group taking longer than expected. We talked about when to leave in the morning, and I begged, even at the possible loss of my flight home, to be able to sleep as long as I needed to. They agreed. We all needed a break, and turning around so quickly after arriving would have been tragic. I don't remember falling asleep, or the food I ate - I do remember watching the family all fall asleep while waiting for the food to cook on the floor. They always have rugs and animal skins on the floor to sit on. But that night I slept hard, a completely dreamless sleep.