So, let's start with my plan to do an 8 day overland trip on my own into Tibet. I had this plan well before we got to Nepal, but upon landing, found that the gas crisis + 8 days of driving wouldn't gel, so I dropped my plan (and my head in sorrow) at missing my crazy adventure. But no fear! While interviewing one of the mission leaders at YWAM, they mentioned a trip they would take with Rochelle, a Hawaiian YWAM-er who was coming the following week, to deliver yaks in the Himalayan area of Lower Dolpa, and to visit Lake Phoksundo. Did I want to go too? Ummmm - is it rude to say ABSOLUTELY OH MAH GOSH WHEN CAN WE LEAVE? Probably. So I said I'd think about it. Derek went for the idea even more than I did, wishing it were him instead, so I signed up. I had no idea what I was getting into.
I had no gear, so as you read in my cooking class post, I bought all my stuff and wrote them to say I was ready to go. We were supposed to leave Thursday or Friday, the week of the Diwali festival (which you've also read about in past posts). Rochelle would land Wednesday, and we'd fly out Thursday. I sat with bated breath. By Wednesday, American Kendra was starting to panic - no news of the flight, and Rochelle had barely stepped foot in the country. So, Thursday, with offices closed for the festival, I hopped on YWAM leader Ishak's motorbike and headed to the YWAM center to meet Rochelle and talk about our trip. This discussion was one of the most tense, crazy talks I've ever been in - scribbling all over notebook pages, talking about how neither of us had the funds to do it, me citing time constraints, etc. But, we felt we should do this, so we got on the bike - all three of us - and headed out to get the last of Rochelle's gear (and to get me a proper trekking bag - apparently, school backpacks don't work that well...). The only thing worth mentioning from this crazed afternoon was that when we were weaving in and out of crazy people traffic - I wish I had a video from my perspective - my knee rammed into a wooden cart. Injury one in the books.
We decide two critical things - first, that we don't need a trekking permit for the restricted area we're going to enter (and they're expensive and impossible to get during holidays like this anyway, so good for us!), AND since flights are being canceled left and right domestically, to save time, we took a night bus (12 hours give or take) to Nepalgunj, the only place from which you can fly to this region, to hopefully at least make the second leg to Dolpa on the next one out. By now, it's Saturday.
So, we get into a neighboring city of Kohalpur and park ourselves at a ministry center for Frontier Missions, where they train people to go out and plant churches. Classes are going on when we arrive, and we were welcomed and fed and took our time sleeping off the heinous bus ride (I really need a separate post for overnight buses in developing countries - just use your imagination). Here we met Rajendra and his lovely wife, and we got on so well...until Sunday. We find out Sunday that there WILL in fact be a flight the next morning to Dolpa - the first in days! There is fuel for the flight, and enough people (two things that caused flights before it to be canceled - we even seriously considered getting on a cargo plane for a bit...I shudder to think how willing I was to do that, with only one engine on the dang thing). But, now we learn from a contact in that region that we WILL be turned around at the airport upon landing if we don't have that permit. Well, s#*^.
We spent SIX HOURS running around Nepalgunj on the advice of someone I spoke to in the Kathmandu Immigration Office which issues the permits - any travel agency in that area can issue you this permit. Turns out even immigration officers will tell you what you want to hear, even if that is in no way true. What's worse, we lose hours and hours from people who don't know how to help but spend loads of time trying to instead of pointing us to the next place. I was so defeated. We realize the only way this trip happens is if we skip the flight Monday and instead fly BACK to Kathmandu to get this permit. So we do - spend hundreds of dollars flying back to the place we just left, and on arrival, have only 3 hours to get a permit that typically takes 2 days to issue. But hey, we know a guy. Rochelle and I fight through the traffic caused by the petrol crisis - at an all time high - to meet our contact, only to be told that they need the $150 per person fee in $USD. But...we don't have USD, we have Rupees, loads of them (you pay for everything everywhere in cash, including plane tickets) and the ONLY way to get US Dollars is at the airport (where we just came from) WITH an outgoing boarding pass. So, it's impossible. Well, s#*^ again.
My blood sugar hits an all time low as we sit with knotted stomachs at the travel agency, Apple Pie, waiting for a miracle. And it happens - my guy Dilliram shows up with $300USD with 2 hours to go until the office closes. Chiring, our travel rep, flies on the keyboard entering our info. We head home to wait and get our night bus lined up (we're hoping to make it in time for the next flight out to Dolpa at 8:30 the following morning so we can't wait to fly), and are able to pick up the permits (yay!) and then our passports (which Chiring forgot to give me - small wrinkle).
We pay a small fortune for a car to take us back to the horrible bus, and we're off. On these bus nights, we sustain ourselves with cookies to avoid getting sick from the food served around midnight at the restaurants. We did not sleep at all, placed in the back of the bus right over the wheels - I was actually airborne, fully out of my seat, multiple times. Rochelle and I chatted about life, knowing we were tempting fate with our hope of making the morning plane, and immediately hit traffic (petrol crisis again). We realize this likely won't work - frankly, I can't believe it took us that long to realize that all of it might not work. But we kept pushing - we were determined. At many points, we wondered whether God was really trying to tell us not to go, or whether we were really supposed to but it was supposed to be really painful getting there...I'm still not positive which it was.
We learn that the flight the next morning has been moved up - by two hours - to arrive at 6:30, and our bus is delayed 2 hours from traffic (even with a bribe offered to the driver if he could get us there in time), arriving at 8:30. We show up, walk ourselves to the center in Kohalpur (it's incredible how quickly you can get accustomed to a foreign place when you're seeped in it - it's like home somehow), and sat on the veranda, contemplating the missed flight. That was my last chance. My flight for the US would leave the following Wednesday, and the trek would take at least 6 days, barring no issues (of which, we clearly had nothing BUT), I was out, and I told them so.
Then, while trying to maintain my feigned "I'm totally fine with getting to miss this opportunity with all the work and money and time that's gone into it" attitude, I have a complete breakdown. I'm hyper-ventilating and sobbing and trying so hard to stop but I'm way past that. I'm horrified that I'm showing these emotions in front of my friends, and especially in front of the Nepali men we're with. They kindly step off the veranda and let me cry it out. Then, Rochelle, who sat quietly next to me the whole time, first tried to explain why it was probably better that I wouldn't be going, and then switched gears and offered that she could read something to me - something that was important in prompting her own visit to Nepal. She read Isaiah 43 aloud. I've never read verses that meant so much to me as those did - it was like they were alive. It didn't hurt that I hadn't slept in two days, was out of money, patience and any sense of pride, completely humbled by the circumstances around me that, despite giving it everything I had, failed to be controlled. I could walk through fire and not be burned, I wouldn't be drowned by the rivers. I was summoned by name.
It took me five minutes - I did the math, and realized that I could pull this off...BARELY, and likely I'd face some serious repercussions when it didn't work out, which I believed, based on the last week, it wouldn't. But I had to try. We booked our flights for the next morning, Wednesday, spent one more night in Kohalpur (at the same hotel as some big deal politician, none the less, who had guards with AK-47s outside the door), and flew out the next day in the tiniest plane I've ever seen (8 seater, Pac 750) to an incredible adventure. I had no idea the new challenges I'd face next, but they were certainly new challenges to me that I'll never forget.
I enjoyed reading!!! Thanks Kendra. It reminded me so many things. Sorry for your knee.
ReplyDelete