vaga #7/3 …one foot forward another back…..

PART III

National Park "Sagarmatha"

Lukla, and setting off with "my boys" as I called them

I resume after landing and eating something, arranging the  backpack details, filling the water bottle, adjusting trekking clothes. There, Pemba, the porter, was waiting for us and yes, he is a Sherpa, of the Sherpa ethnic group. It is an ethnic group that lives in Tibetan areas, the trekkers who make their treks in that area and hire the Sherpas to carry the packages. Hence, the deformation of the name "sherpa" because they were Sherpas who acted as carriers, but in other regions of the Himalayas there are other ethnic groups that act as carriers.

Lukla, is beautiful with buildings and stone houses of two and three floors in perfect condition and everything very clean. The main paved street and locals offering things for trekking at a very high price, although mostly were closed, as were the "tea house". Tea house"; is the name given in Nepal of the Himalayas to places of accommodation, or restaurants and are family-owned, they function mostly in high season, at this time their owners go to other places to obtain another type of income and one or the other is open. They are cared for by the family and live with them, sharing kitchen, stove, dining room, they are authentic, welcoming and the life of the Nepalese is appreciated. There are many varieties, some that are designed to receive numerous trekkers to the humble house of a family that becomes a bedroom. There have been programs to teach families how to run the business, keep the accounts, and they're all well standardised. They manage with a minimum of English needed just to attend. There are also luxury hotels that bring their guests by helicopter, directly to the hotel located with some extraordinary views, they are rather for people who settle there to observe the landscape or take walks near the place.

leaving Lukla, with "my boys"

Lukla, felt it had a special energy and magic, knowing in that place of such difficult access and limited in addition to being a beautiful town, it does not seem that you could reach it on foot since its houses, and paved streets are of great magnitude. beautiful architecture, orderly, you do not see poverty in the architecture, all of well-structured stone. However, inside the houses they live in poverty. With a slow life, silent, since they live inside the houses, not like the Southeast Asians where they live in the streets, so you see very few people, they only go out for the water that is in certain places to wash pots and clothes.

Leaving the village we entered the National Park "Sagarmatha" with an elevation of between 2,845 to 8,848 metres that reaches up to Everest itself and borders Tibet, it is also one of the sacred parks of the Himalayas. The forest and wildlife are taken care of and the priority is to gather resources for their culture. It has 6 summits over 6 thousand metres. The landscape has in the vast majority mosses and low grasses, and you will find wild goats, deer, snow leopards and the Indian Leopard. The name in Nepali is "head of the sky", but popularly it is the park dedicated and honoured to the first Nepali woman, Sherpa, who ascended Everest in 2000 and then in 2002. She was dedicated to the education of children and mountain organisations, she died in 2007 on an ascent to the Lhotse in the same park. A point is that her name PEMBA, woman and our porter shared the name Pemba, it turned out that in the Sherpa culture it is common to put a name for each day of the week, Pemba corresponds to the Saturday of her birth.

We started a fairly simple walk, always on the ground or a footpath of stones, through a valley with forest at times. Quite a bit of activity is seen around the trail, however all in silence, a house here three others there, a monastery on the other side of the valley, temples, places of prayer, crops, stupas, old people praying, children playing, cows, Tibetan flags, and sacred flags of Buddhism (they are different) are everywhere (vaga #6 puff Nepal,  dedicated to Tibetan sacred flags, the vast majority of photos are from this chapter), and porters coming down with their empty baskets on their backs. After a while I saw a stone staircase with irregular steps and long, !!! Puff!!! Can I or can't I? It was the first test to climb something steep and long, my fear was the cigarettes, will my lungs cope, will my ability to breathe be fine at a height when oxygen is lacking? I climbed it without difficulty, I started to test myself with each little challenge, and I was passing the tests. Those hours were a magical walk, so beautiful, and how could I absorb everything, I was looking around in awe, this made it easy and without fatigue. After 5 pm we arrived at a "tea house", called "resort" because it had a room with a private  bathroom and  hot water, it was the first and the last. To eat and sleep, we were the only ones there.

photos leaving Lukla, many houses bordered the trail and what impressed me a lot was the religious spirit, on all sides stupas, places of prayer, and sacred drums, those that turn and say a mantra, are everywhere, and of sizes, designs of the very varied. The central photo is Raphael at the sacred entrance to the valley, a drum on each side.

This I will repeat and again the good of low season, without tourists, one, so you can appreciate the life of the locals at least when passing by, the silence and walking alone as it always was and is what I like. For example if I arrived at that "tea house" when it was full, it would be noisy, there is tension to be attended soon and continue, disrespect is commonly seen, or complaints out loud about the food or what I had to share later with some Spaniards impossible to avoid them, only two tables in the place, and they spoke in Spanish with Rafa we ended up talking with them, and it was to hear partly complaints or gossip,  which does not interest me, I am in a magical place. In high season more than 300 trekkers enter a day, it is not easy to find a room for everyone the restaurants are saturated and the tension to arrive soon to find somewhere to sleep, in addition I would be walking among about 300 trekkers, guides, porters at that time. Surely we were the only ones who entered that day, since no flight from Kathmandu arrived after ours. Yes, the downside is  the weather, always cloudy, some rain, and we could barely see the mountains in magnitude, however I did not change for nothing to see the life of the place, the silence versus human whirlwinds.

the landscape of soft hills, cultivated, scattered houses, the first photo a monastery, there were several in the distance, which Gopal indicated to us, the high mountains were not seen because of the clouds.

A sequence of photos from that first day, which was only about four hours and everything that came our way. They were the most varied hours of seeing different things, I almost did not stop to take photos because I delayed the walk, so I took fast pictures and rather I was enjoying looking, and testing my feet and abilities.

The next day after checking that I did not have any sore muscles ha, we left at dawn and the landscape was changing, one or another house, more nature was imposed, and we began to pass valleys, without realising it we were leaving them behind one after another. We stopped almost  every two hours or three hours to take a break, sitting on a stone or leaning on something, recharging with water, breathing, sharing some comments. Those breaks were wonderful and how Gopal knew exactly when, he knew how to read the tiredness of each one and knew where there are no longer places in a row, sometimes hours with nothing. Gopal, always informed us of the next stretch to walk, down the valley , across one river, and then we cross another, it does not have much difficulty, etc ...

After lunch and resting for 40 minutes he told us that the next stretch would be with a strong and long slope, we would climb to reach 3,400 m.  the next 4 hours would be demanding, hummm I didn't want to know more details. I never asked how much longer before we needed to rest, eat, or sleep by strategy, I did not want to walk around telling myself it is an hour or a half more before lunch, or to sleep, nothing, without getting hooked with the times that are left to rest, it worked for me. Walking, especially in the mountains for me is a spiritual state of silence, feeling the one outside and the one inside one. Reaching a state of peace, without inner noises, just letting yourself be carried away in silence, and it is achieved. Being in the hands of Gopal where you do not have to worry about anything logistical, that was a wonder to walk without thinking where to stay, or if we would arrive before it gets dark, etc ... That was an unexpected gift, delivered and just enjoyed. Rafael, liked to walk in silence and didn’t comment on everything, it was mutual this to have our silences for hours. It was also time to observe the landscape, the birds, the trees, the valley, the river in silence the details and sometimes see the nothingness itself, just being.  

…..houses of peasants away from villages……

deserved breaks and there I could take photos, the first photo is in "another" sacred entrance with inscriptions of mantras on the stones on both sides and one must respect them, the otherwas a rest with Pemba.

About three hours after climbing a steep slope of a hill for a long time without rest, and we had to arrive before dark, at one point Gopal asked me – "are you OK madam?" - , one, because of the hardness of the walk up hill without rest and two, because of the height, -"yes, I'm OK"-, but I said it looking at the ground, and without stopping. One when you are very tired you walk looking at the ground, you do not have the strength to raise your head and look at the landscape, and I did not stop walking, I do not like it, even for a few minutes, because it is difficult to resume again. I was exhausted, but zero complaints about that. He replied, -"you are a strong woman"- there I would have wanted to answer -"I need my beer, cigarettes and a long rest, and please take my backpack from me, I'm done-", but it was only a short and dry, -"I'm OK"- . I have climbed several hills and without naming the "Pochoco", in Santiago, and it was part of my former land and the first part was very steep and hard, it always came to mind "how many times did you climb only the difficult part of the Pochoco", I climbed it many times, it was at the back of the house, technically the garden and always left me without breath,  then this was the same but longer. I repeated this argument to myself several times to move forward, one foot forward another back… concentrated on that only and it also worked. 

the photos of the walk of that second day the landscape changed, one goes inside through forests, one or another houses and nature imposes itself. We crossed the first rivers with their beautiful bridges full of flags

A great joke in that stretch before arriving at Namche Bazaar, which was the destination, on a curve there was an African-American man of 2 meters high with the build of a professional basketball player lying on the ground, collapsed. So he threw himself to the ground where he fell, it is serious, usually one looks for a rock, or leaning against the hill, no, he literally fell where he stood, neither did his guide manage to help him. I passed him without difficulty the curve where he had collapsed, and I told Rafa out loud in Spanish who was a few metres ahead -look how the grandmother passes the basketball player-, once I passed him I took a photo because it was a contradictory image, I laughed inside. I knew it was because of the height, physically he had it to spare, but it is the "puna" -altitude sickness-, you exhaust yourself before realising it, you lack oxygen to the lungs, and it is difficult to breathe, and it is expected. Surely the black race has less ability to tolerate height, because they are not a race developed in high-altitude geographies. I knew it was that, I do not have those problems, I have climbed to heights of 5 thousand metres previously on Kilimanjaro without the problem of "puna", (but, I was 40 years old then) but now I smoke, not before and that had me restless. The next day he was having breakfast in the same "tea house", he was the only one besides us, I told him -"good morning"- he did not look at me, nor answered, his pride was very hurt, but he did talk to Rafael. Then I ran into him several days later, in the last stretch before reaching the base camp, I was already on my way down, and he was going up and it was impossible on a trail that a person can not greet one another, he just told me where Rafael was, and swallowed his painful pride, even worse because of the advantage I took from two days.   

the photo of the text and an advertisement as a "fantasy" located in a strategic place of that climb and when you are ready to give up you see the sign ... 15 minutes away there is an "Irish bar".... you smile, you cheer up.... It was closed

We arrived at Namche Bazaar, in the daylight, to eat and sleep. They are small joys that gets your head up again and even more so to find a town so, so extraordinary. There you rest one day, so that the body adjusts to the height, it is "mandatory" for all trekkers, and that does help if one arrives burnt at a height of 3,400 metres and after about seven hours of walking. They are two stopped "acclimatisation techniques" suggested and almost mandatory this one and the other at 4,400 m. Altitude sickness can cause death from oedema of the lung, or in the brain, falling into a coma or causing heart problems.

we arrived at Namche Bazaar and accessed through its sacred door

I summarise, that day and a half of a unique beauty, entering the heart of the Himalayas, is another world, to see its inhabitants, temples, stupa, animals, landscapes. It was and is an unforgettable day and a half, the other days I was already confused  by the landscapes by the similar, or less impressed and more accustomed to that beauty, or fewer things to see of its Sherpa culture.

the photo says it all, my joy of having passed the test