Circling Mt. Annapurna

Circling Mt. Annapurna

 

25^th May to 9^th June 2024

 

 

One of the (pleasanter) outcomes of retirement for me has been the doubling of my trekking quota to twice a year. And, this May/June, I did the Annapurna Circuit – an anti-clockwise round around Mt. Annapurna (at 8,091 m the 10^th highest mountain in the world, known for its high fatality rate) in western Nepal. The trek was memorable for being long and challenging, and for the fact that the trekking group consisted of 9 women (out of 13 – we also had a trek leader, a guide, 3 assistant guides and 6 porters) – my first time with a women-majority group. What was it like?

Picture: Some of us at Thorang La top on 5th June 2024

I have been walking in the hills since 1981 and have seen many changes, the key ones being the gradual encroachment of comfort and convenience into trekking arrangements (early days – carry everything oneself; then – porters or mules for the tents and kitchen stuff, everything else oneself; later – carry just day stuff, everything else on porters or mules; now – a special potty tent) and communication facilities (my key requirement of any trek, that I should not be reachable on a phone, is getting increasingly difficult to meet, and this trek had some people day-trading on stocks along the way – they even managed to lose some money due to the exit polls scam). But nothing had quite prepared me for being with many women on a long expedition. Trekking used to be a male space – attempts by wives and assorted women friends to join my various trekking groups were fobbed off with a blunt ‘we don’t want girls’ until 2014 when I joined my wife for the Kailash Mansarovar Yatra and, 22 years into our marriage, discovered that she could walk. She has since joined me a few times, but you would concur that wives are different from random strange women on a trek.

 

So, who were these random, strange women? They were mostly in their 40s and 50s (with two significant outliers), were mostly professionals into either software or fashion, were all experienced trekkers, and most had spouses who they did not appear to miss in the slightest. All of them had that rare combination of good looks, intelligence, and substance (exceptions to the ‘brains x beauty = k’ axiom) but, lechers be forewarned, being zoomed past on a tiring uphill section by a bunch of middle-aged ladies is not pleasant for the fragile male ego. Some were deeply competitive and quite self-focused, and rule #1 of the trekking bro-code, no one to be left behind, was conspicuous by its absence. Did they have it easy? No – the world was not their toilet (as it was for me), and there were difficulties with altitude (they were popping Diamox left, right and centre) and terrain (including a scary landslide section along the way). Did they whine and moan? A little bit – including referring to our trek leader, as soft-spoken and decent a guy as it gets, as Gabbar Singh because he insisted on a difficult acclimatization hike to Ice Lake on one of our rest days (see schedule below). Our guide got on their wrong side towards the end of the trek (I suspect he was used to dealing with gap-year-backpacking European students, and had little clue how to handle a gaggle of arrived Indian women) and ended up like a rabbit in headlights – I took the poor guy out for beer and a meal in Pokhara, just the two of us, to ease his nerves. Did they take advantage of the fact that they were women? Also, a little bit – for example, by one of them dazzling the assistant guide who was assigned to the tail of the group so that, when she was last, he was glued to her and carrying her haversack but when one of us poor males was last there was no sign or sight of him, we could have been left for dead for all he cared. Was it fun being with them? Absolutely! Evenings were spent all-together in the dining room of whichever teahouse we were overnighting in, with plenty of music, gossip (there was an inordinate interest in each other’s relationship status), debate, games, et al, and I learnt a lot about the female gaze and how to recognize cosmetic surgery. There was also, it has to be said, some amount of khichpich, and I discovered that the joke about a key difference between men and women being that ‘men can forget to invite somebody for dinner, and they can still be friends’ qualifies as a truth said in jest.

Picture: With my buddy S2 on Ice Lake, 30th May 2024

And the men? Also interesting, also arrived! My roommate was a serving infantry colonel who had done time in South Sudan and Alaska and had commanded his battalion in Siachen, and he laughed off my remark about his presence on the trek being akin to a gigolo having sex for pleasure by saying that, forget about this, he spends his leaves trekking alpine style (wherein you travel alone, carry everything you need, and live off the land). My quota of football discussion was had with a 14-year-old boy who was using this trek to train for a climb in Russia and who was the fastest walker in the group – he also correctly predicted Real Madrid’s win in the Champions League final. And the management professor who was trekking with his 13-year-old daughter (one of the outliers of the previous para), we discovered that we knew each other well without ever having met because we shared an alma mater and had many common friends. All of them were experienced trekkers and very good fun.

 

The trek itself was long and tough. We saw the value of our acclimatization detours, when we got really screwed, only later. For example, the day spent going to Ice Lake (an unremarkable body of water but reaching there involved a one-kilometre gain in altitude from Manang) and back prepared us for similar altitude gains in subsequent sections of the trek. The two days spent going to Tilli Cho Lake (a trekking destination on its own and now #3 on my list of beautiful high-altitude lakes after Bandh-e-Amir in Afghanistan and Tso Moriri in Ladakh) took us to 5,000 meters for the first time – again, great preparation for the Thorang La crossing. I had difficulty on the way to Tilli Cho and had even turned back for the base camp, and I am grateful that our trek leader came down and motivated me upwards and onwards.

Picture: The group at Tilli Cho Lake on 2nd June 2024

Possibly because of these detours, and possibly because of the great weather that accompanied us through the trek, I managed to enjoy rather than endure the dreaded Thorang La section that took us across the pass and into Mustang district of western Nepal. And I am grateful for that, because there was much to appreciate about this section – it was sublime rather than beautiful (for the uninitiated – beautiful objects are smooth, polished, comparatively small, whereas sublime objects are vast, rugged, powerful, magnificent; they are ideas of a different nature, with beauty being founded on pleasure and sublimity being founded on pain) in a way that is difficult to describe.

Picture: Thorang La - is it beautiful, or is it sublime??

Did I make friends? I would like to think so. Strangely, I had the most in common with S1 the 13-year-old – we were both read-aholics (she had read, for example, ‘Animal Farm’) and aspiring novelists with a liking for scatological jokes of a genre that my sons found funny when they were aged about 10. And I spent the most time on the trek with my buddy S2 who, despite her own fatigue, would try to see to my comfort in different ways (all of them appropriate, may I sadly add). And the others – A, whose husband, the lucky so-and-so, went to the same school as me; R1, the other 60 plus in the group and a testament to focus and determination; D1 and D2, who I almost didn’t recognize in Pokhara because they had glammed up; the tall and beautiful R2 who stood outside the dhaba at one of our bus breaks and had all the truck-wallahs stopping and turning, who in a candid moment mentioned that she had just completed a mid-career M.Tech from BITS, done while working full-time and parenting a teenager; V who had struggled all along until Thorang La, when she zipped up the pass along with our lead guide and ensured that what should have been a composite group ended up like a smear of water that stretched too long; and H, the professor of design with whom one could have an enlightened discussion on sustainable sourcing and the problems of ensuring compliance with the fifth tier of one's supply chain. I worry, however, that they saw an Ajit on the trek that is different from the real me, the boring and football-obsessed sociophobe.

Picture: Winding down in glamorous company at Pokhara on 6th June 2024

 

What else happened? I was fat-shamed by a horse. It was the day of the Tilli Cho detour, when I struggled with altitude and took a long time returning to the base camp. The others had already begun the journey back to Siri Karkha, and I was advised to take a horse else I would not reach by sunset on this landslide-prone route. I complied reluctantly and nervously – I have never used a horse and know that, while horses are unlikely to fall into the depths below on these narrow slippery pathways, the same cannot be said of the riders (and I’ve paid less for a Delhi to Mumbai air ticket on a full-service airline, which is a similar duration of journey). The horse-wallah looked at me in the way people look at a fatty making his way down the aisle of a plane towards the empty seat next to them, but he got me on the horse and moving while mentioning that I was too heavy every 5 minutes. I was about to tell him to go and do something anatomically impossible with himself, I was capable of walking through the night if I had to, when I noticed that the horse was stopping every ten steps and requiring cajoling to move forward. I initially thought that it feared the possibility of falling rocks, and then noticed that it was taking long, deep, tired breaths when it stopped, in the manner of someone carrying too much weight, communicating to its owner something along the lines of ‘WTF, get this fat lump off my back’. Never again!!

Picture: Discussing life with S1 - or were we cracking jokes??

 

I would like to conclude with a word of thanks to Col. Romil, our trek leader, an Everest-er himself and the CEO of Boots and Crampons (the company organizing the trek). It was my fourth trek with him, and it has always been a learning experience – most especially the way he combines the nitty gritty of leading a trek or a climb with the management of a company that has multiple expeditions in multiple locations on multiple continents at any point of time (he returned to Delhi on 9^th June and was off to Alaska to climb Mt. Denali on the 10^th) . I still haven’t figured out when he sleeps. But then, as somebody said, there is a reason for the word ‘special’ in the army’s special forces that he was part of. I am already looking forward to our next one together. With the same people?? Sign me up forthwith.

Picture: Back in Kathmandu, all scrubbed up and with our certificates

The Schedule:

Date	Activity	Comments
25th May	Delhi to Kathmandu
26th May	In Kathmandu – meeting other members of the team, equipment checks, briefings, etc.	I find that I don’t have a down jacket and a headlamp as per requirement, else am adequately equipped – will use my parka and normal torch anyway, so no purchases required.
27th May	0700 to mid-afternoon – Kathmandu to Besishahar (760 m) by bus   Mid-afternoon to 2100 hours – Besishahar to Chame (2,670 m) by 4*4 jeep	A long bus ride on the road west out of Kathmandu towards Pokhara, and then north at Ghansikhuwa to Besishahar. The jeeps moved at an average of 10 km per hour on these mountain roads, so the 60 km journey to Chame took 6 long hours.
28th May	Chame to Pisang (3,190 m)	S2 got hold of a guitar during our return from the acclimatization climb (a most interesting piece of negotiation with the guitar’s owner that was an education to witness), and we had a music session in the dining room.
29th May	Pisang to Manang (3,540 m)	A very nice hotel at Manang – attached toilets with western-style potties – heaven!
30th May	In Manang   Day trip to Ice Lake (about 4,500 m)	First day of getting really screwed – a 1-km net gain of height – a long uphill and an even more difficult downhill. I was by far the last to reach Manang in the evening. Was grateful that the hotel sent a motorcycle to spare me the last 3 km walk
31st May	Manang to Siri Karkha (4,080 m)	A relatively easy day.
1st June	Siri Karkha to Tilicho Base (4,200 m)	Again, uneventful!
2nd June	Tilicho Base to Tilicho Lake (4,919 m). Back to Tilicho Base and onward to Siri Karkha	A long, tough day. I had difficulties with the altitude and almost turned back to the base camp. I used a horse for the first time ever for the journey from the base camp to Siri Karkha.
3rd June	Siri Karkha – Yak Karkha – Ledar (4,250 m)	Quite easy after the previous day.
4th June	Ledar – Thorong Base – Thorong High Point	Seriously cold weather at High Point – a terrible night for the prostrate to act up (which it did).
5th June	Thorong High Point – Thorong La (5,416 m) – Muktinath (3,800 m)	Started at 0400 hours along with the ‘lalloo party’ (the studs started at 0500). Reached the La before being overtaken (for a change). Had my usual difficulty on downhills to Muktinath.
6th June	Muktinath – Jomsom – Tatopani – Pokhara by bus	Dinner with S2 and D1 at The Harbour, Pokhara – I was the envy of the local blades.
7th June	In Pokhara – sat in the hotel room, completed the book I was carrying ‘let my people go surfing’ by Yvon Chouinard about the Patagonia story.	Beer and dinner with Lakpa Rinji at Thakali Kitchen, Pokhara.
8th June	Pokhara to Kathmandu by air	Lunch and the afternoon at Annie and Suresh’s
9th June	Kathmandu to New Delhi by air	Back to the furnace.

 

On Friendship

 On Friendship

Ajit Chaudhuri – 20^th December 2023

 

An early disclosure for those who, from the title of this note, are expecting a comparative analysis of hook-up sites on the dark web (or something similar); this is on a topic I am perhaps even less qualified to expound upon – a mountaineering expedition to the 5,287-meter Friendship Peak in Himachal Pradesh.

So, what was an obese 60-year-old doing on the said expedition?

A question no doubt on the minds of the other participants when we met in Solang Nallah a few miles north of Manali – they were a group of supremely fit athletes who had trained for months and were primed to take on the peak, and my grey hair and girth marked me apart. A question that my spouse had raised earlier, along with a suggestion that I look at myself in a mirror, ignored because, as the saying goes, ‘no man is a hero to his wife and his butler’. A question that the expedition leader had also raised when I enlisted, dealt with by (falsely) claiming that I was as fit as when I had done the Everest Base Camp (EBC) with him in 2021.

A valid question, may I add, given that I was subsequently at the tail by miles every day and did not even attempt the last section of the climb; given the difficulties I had in getting out of a tent and into the cold night air to you-know-what, which prostrate problems frequently required me to do; and several similar issues. But – I had recently retired (and was at a loose end); I had not indulged in some days walking with a little weight on my back and soft ground under my feet since 2021; this was the only show in town by the people that I trusted, B&C; and I was keen to make the shift from trekking to mountaineering before I turned seriously geriatric. And, sometimes, ‘a man’s gotta do what a man’s gotta do’.

I’m delighted that I did what I did, despite the above. Why?

The first reason is Mount Friendship itself – not high but requiring technical knowledge and equipment – so an ideal peak to make the transition from trekking to mountaineering. Opinions varied from the climb being a breeze, especially with sufficient time spent training on the equipment beforehand, to being super-dangerous, with high winds, many crevasses, and the ever-present possibility of avalanches. Our own expedition got caught in a 2-day blizzard on our way up, resulting in us having to turn around from camp 1 on the first day and return to the road head, and then do the 2-day walk up to camp 2 in one day, spending both days walking with snow pelting into our faces (a schedule is appended). It also resulted in the summit camp (camp 3) being uninhabitable because of heavy snow and us therefore having to begin the summit attempt from camp 2. The summit climb was subsequently deemed too dangerous, and the group returned from the about 180 meters below it. But I have attempted a mountain (not yet sure if that gives me the right to describe myself as a ‘mountaineer’ at cocktail parties) and can now show off to my trekking friends (who know the difference between trekking and mountaineering) on how to tie crampons or walk with snow boots.

The second is the group that I was with, intimidating at first sight because they looked like participants at an ironman competition but in time taking on distinct hues and personalities that I was both comfortable with and liked very much. There was a young man who had no issues in attempting to climb a mountain but had difficulty talking to girls; a national-level kho-kho player who was on his second attempt on the mountain, the first too had been unsuccessful, who philosophically suggested that ‘if a mountain does not want you on it, the mountain will not have you on it’; a recently hitched software engineer who did not know whether he would have a job when he came down the mountain because his office had undergone a regime change; a PhD candidate who had decided to pursue pure science after his engineering degree instead of raking in the bucks writing code; a retired army man who ran a printing business that required his presence 24/7 but still took time out for long distance cycling; a corporate hotshot who ran marathons on the side, who was here with his family to give his son an experience of a lifetime; a marathoner businessman on his first foray into high altitude, looking to challenge himself by dealing with the unexpected, et al (I could go on, but this note would turn into a ramayana).

There were two others who, like me, stood out at first sight – the only lady in the group, who had been to EBC and who was here with her husband and son, and her 12-year-old son, with whom I had something in common despite us being significant outliers at the respective ends of the group’s age distribution curve. He knew football, and I mean really knew it – players, clubs, matches, tactics (he knew, for example, who Riquelme was) – and we spent a lot of time discussing the game.

As a group, some things stood out. One was the support for each other, along with the conducive atmosphere and positivity in common areas such as the mess tent. Another was the way they handled the disappointment of not achieving the objective of the expedition – there was not one dissenting voice at the announcement that it would be too dangerous (helped by the fact that ongoing avalanches in the upper reaches were visible to the eye during an acclimatization walk), and the group’s joy at reaching where they reached in the extreme conditions seemed no less than what it would have been on summitting. For me, they were a wonderful representation of youth in a forward looking, meritocratic India, and very different from the semi-educated angry losers or rich entitled f---s that one usually comes across.

The third reason is the opportunity to be with Boots and Crampons, and expedition leader Col. Romil, once again. Nothing threw the organizers (including Giri, Ravi, and team) off – the weather and the resultant changes in schedule, the significant distance between the group’s head and the tail every day in a tough terrain, the fact that the mule party carrying our stuff was having difficulty negotiating the route, inter alia – it was just another day at the office for them, and the participants could concentrate on the walking and climbing and not on food (which was fantastic), stay and logistical arrangements. And, as always, time with Col. Romil had me asking questions of my value system and assumptions about life.

I would like to conclude with some thoughts on success and failure. Are they Boolean binaries, one or the other, or are there shades of grey with some success in failure and vice versa? In this expedition, I was perhaps the only one who met his primary objective, that of returning alive. And yet, there was a sense of serious achievement in the group, that we had followed the day and reached for the sun. Because, as they say, ‘life is either a daring adventure or it is nothing’.

 

Schedule
Date	Activity
13 Oct	Travel from Delhi to Manali on an overnight HP Roadways bus
14 Oct	Reach Manali, travel Manali to Solang Nallah Acclimatization walk to Solang village (alone) Night in Hotel Iceland
15 Oct	Acclimatization walk with Sweta, Pulkit and Malik along the River Beas Acclimatization walk with expedition members to local temple Equipment check, night in Hotel Iceland
16 Oct	Solang Nallah to Dhundi (road head for expedition) Dhundi to Camp 1 (Baharthach), return to Dhundi due to heavy snowfall Night in camp at Dhundi
17 Oct	Dhundi to Camp 2 (Lady’s Leg), night in Lady’s Leg
18 Oct	Practise with snow boots, garters, crampons Acclimatization walk to summit base camp and back to Lady’s Leg Night in Lady’s Leg
19 Oct	Acclimatization walk to ridge over Beaskund Lake
20 Oct	0030 hours – group begins walk to Mt. Friendship (I did not join) Night in Lady’s Leg
21 Oct	Lady’s Leg to Dhundi – onwards to Manali by vehicle Team dinner at Corner House Café Night in Manali – end of expedition
22 Oct	Personal trip: Manali to Keylong by bus Walk to Gumling Night Halt in Hotel Chandrabhaga (Keylong)
23 Oct	Walk around Keylong, visit to Roerich Gallery and local Gompa. Night in Keylong
24 Oct	Keylong – Manali – Delhi by bus
25 Oct	Arrive in Delhi

 

The Dutch Disease

THE DUTCH DISEASE

Ajit Chaudhuri – June 2022

Safety is not a metric, it is a value!

 

Joining a large, old, well-established and highly successful organization, as I did this March, is not easy – especially when it is towards the fag end of one’s career. The bureaucracy is mind-boggling in its complexity, and simple tasks require oodles of patience and perseverance, a very thick skin, and a sense of humor. There is little separation of work from personal life in a town in which one is recognized as an officer of the organization wherever one goes, and therefore little scope for, forget about cocaine-inspired episodes with underage prostitutes or drunken bar fights with the local peasantry, even stuff like running a traffic light or making a reference to the virtue of someone’s female relatives in conversation. And as for the observation of hierarchies in every act and conversation, including referring to others in terms indicating either knighthood or ownership of a brothel, depending upon gender, the less said the better.

And yet, I feel like a fish in water!

A reason for this is the opportunity to roam around in small and remote mining locations scattered across the Eastern Ghats, and to meet the communities that reside alongside and are affected by its operations. This note is about one such location – the iron ore mines at Noamundi and Katamati on the Jharkhand – Odisha border.

Noamundi is a beautiful 130 km drive from Jamshedpur, with an excellent road that meanders its way through forests, meadows, rice fields, the occasional village haat with fresh vegetables and locally brewed hooch on prominent display, and small towns such as Chaibasa and Jagannathpur. Much of it is a company township, with residential areas, a club, offices, a shopping area, workshops and all, and then there is the mine itself – a high grade iron ore mine that feeds steel plants in India and abroad.

The area was verdant forest until, about a century ago, the soil was found to contain iron ore in abundant quantities. And then, the laws of Mammon took over. The tribal communities that occupied the land were shunted out, the forest was cut down, and open cast mining began. Mining involves – taking over a large tract of land; ridding it of its occupants and stripping it of its forest cover; drilling into the land; blasting the soil; organizing the soil pile and loading it onto a dumper; transporting the soil/ore to a plant where it is sorted and cleaned; and then transporting to a loading station where it is put onto railway wagons or trucks that move it to a port or to a steel plant. It’s not pretty – it involves displacing communities, cutting trees, raping the earth, running trucks day and night to move material (and dealing with the offshoots of this, including increased liquor consumption, more accidents, noise pollution, a rise in prostitution), et al.

And yet, what are the alternatives? Economic growth is recognized as the best way out of poverty – 10% growth in gross domestic product per capita every year results in average income doubling in 7 years, and 14% in 5, and average income doubling for a large country is huge even if the likes of Adani and Ambani disproportionately benefit. Such a pace of growth requires abundant quantities of raw materials, minerals and metals, energy, and so on, without the option of colonialism to obtain them that was available to countries that industrialized earlier, who were able to pass on the negative externalities of high growth on to others. And, in the process, some people get screwed – it is not possible to make steel without mining (which involves all that is described in the previous paragraph) and without running a blast furnace (air pollution plus generous contributions to global warming), it is not possible to run chemical plants without polluting, or to produce power without displacing – not in the quantities that a 10% plus per capita growth rate requires. And, no matter how much the world progresses, irrespective of new laws on land acquisition that favor land losers, business responsibility standards that recognize environmental and social factors, and woke corporate bosses (mostly from the IT sector, which does little direct displacing, extracting or polluting) spouting claims about people being stakeholders, a community continues to be in deep shit if anything worth mining is found in its vicinity, anywhere in the world. Dutch disease, the term for the negative consequences of natural resource discovery for an area and its resident communities, is an inevitable outcome.

 

The mining area stands in sharp contrast to the verdant forest that is behind it. I visited with my colleagues Tulsidas Ganvir, the boss of our work in Noamundi, and Mohit Gandhi, a young management trainee attached to us for a short duration.

Some outcomes, though, are not unmitigated disasters. One originated from a decision to train women to drive dumper trucks in the mine, the 100-tonners pictured below that transport the ore to the plant. The first batch of 22 were difficult to find, and required much outreach within the communities in the vicinity of the mine. But they have proved such a success (apparently they actually observe safety rules, respect speed limits, AND do not constantly require smoking breaks) that their numbers are being increased, and this time around a mere announcement of vacancies got applicants. And now, many girls who had dropped out of education are returning to school to complete class 10, the minimum educational qualification for a driver, with the ambition of getting jobs as dumper drivers. The law of unintended consequences playing itself out to advantage!

 

My colleagues and I posing with a 100-tonner Komatsu in the mine.

All very nice, some of you may be wondering, but surely time hangs a little heavily in the place. And, for its residents, I have no doubt that it does! But, as a short term visitor, I managed to keep myself reasonably occupied. On one occasion, I managed to wangle an invite to dinner at a home in one of the local villages, and sat on a charpoy in the open, took in the evening air and the surrounding jungle, imbibed homemade hooch aka haandiya and followed it up with home-cooked desi chicken, rice and chutney – no restaurant could compare. On another, I was asked to attend a function to inaugurate a local community hall – I demurred on the assumption that it would be full of politicos and their speeches and was told, don’t worry, it is being organized by the local adivasi association (and not the company) and that therefore there will be less talk and more festivity. The picture below is evidence that I was persuaded to change my mind.

A Fortnight to Remember

 

A FORTNIGHT TO REMEMBER

Ajit Chaudhuri

 

Some fashionable things are worth doing!

I was not keen on the Everest Base Camp (EBC) trek for a long time – stories in the trekking community suggested that it was fancy (rest-houses at every location, internet mostly available), crowded (as indicated by that iconic photograph of the traffic jam on Mt. Everest) and expensive, and that one’s precious time and money would be better expended along other routes on which phones didn’t work. The feeling changed in a conversation with Kathmandu-based friends, who said that Nepal had three treks seriously worth doing; the Manaslu area in Upper Gorkha because it was beautiful, the Makalu area between Everest and Kanchenjunga because it was untouched, and the EBC because ‘some things just have to be done’.

I got an opportunity to ‘do what has to be done’ this year – I had just returned from a trek whose co-leader mentioned that his next one was to EBC. The thought of doing this with someone who had earlier led a successful summit of Mt. Everest was too tempting to resist and, notwithstanding my advanced age and lack of preparation (other than the afore-mentioned trek), time and money, I promptly signed on.

There is a plethora of information on the EBC trek! This note is about what is not mentioned in the brochures and internet writeups, which I discovered the hard way.

One, the trek is long – you will be walking for 11 continuous days, away from basic comforts, with just high mountains around you, with the same people for company.

Two, it is high, with four distinct sections – below 3,000 m; between 3 and 4,000 m, when altitude starts becoming a factor; between 4 and 4,900 m, where the greenery disappears; and 5,000 m plus, where a good night’s sleep is difficult; and therefore, how the group acclimatizes is important. We took it easy going up, taking our time along the lower sections, spending a day at the same place once we crossed 4,000 m (and using that day to climb to 5,000 m – see the itinerary appended below), reaching places and then, no matter how tired we were, climbing another 2-300 m before coming down to our night spot. And we zipped on the return – three long and tiring days that extended into nights, a time that my knees still remember.

And three, it is hard, with steep up-hills and down-hills, and long stretches of moraine on the route into (and out of) Gorakshep along the Khumbu glacier.

Offsetting these factors were, one, the group that I went with; a mix of adventurous youngsters, middle-aged professionals, and (last but not least) nice-looking women, and led by an experienced Everester – 10 of us (I was the official buddhow – so everyone laughed at my jokes, appreciated my singing, put up with my crap and generally helped me along) and supported by a guide, an assistant guide, and a yak-wallah and his helpers – all of whom knew the terrain inside-out and for whom this was the equivalent of just another day at the office.

Two, the sheer beauty of the trek! This took me by surprise (trek brochures are like ads on Tinder in that everything is described as beautiful and each one is, I guess, in its own way) – each section was seriously beautiful, in completely different ways from the other sections. I just had to look up for fatigue to disappear, anywhere along the trek. The Doodhkoshi River that flows from the Everest region actually looks like frothy milk making its way southwards to the Ganga (we went up on its western side and returned along its east), and views of Mt. Amadablam and others were with us most of the time. The only thing we did not see was Mt. Everest in all its majesty, even from the base camp, we had to climb up Mt. Kalapathar the next day for that (begin at 0330 hours, climb to 5,600 m, come down and continue walking until 2200 hours on the day, I was so screwed – but I am spared having to say ‘Yes, I went to EBC, but I did not really see Mt. Everest’ while showing off at cocktail parties).

And three, the fun! This too was a surprise – treks are, for me, a test of endurance and I do them for many reasons but having fun is not among them. We chanced upon a restaurant in Namche Bazaar (Sherpa Bar and Steakhouse) whose owner was a music enthusiast, and we got him to sing Sherpa songs on a traditional instrument. We also commandeered the restaurant’s guitar and took over the space, both on the way up and down – and some of the group turned out to be serious singers. We celebrated a birthday in Dengbouche’s 4410 Café in similar riotous fashion, organizing a guitar and filling the place with music and laughter.

Another highlight was the flights to and from Luk La. A small plane takes one through some stunning mountain landscape before reaching the world’s most dangerous airport, where the runway is a short slope that ends with a deep drop into a valley located far below (where one’s plane would also end up if it did not lift off in time), and where flights cannot operate in bad weather, clouds, and a variety of other reasons. We were lucky – flights were cancelled for four days before our return, and then operated for a day (our day) before closing for an extended period once again.

We were lucky in our timing in another way – Nepal, a tourism dependent country, is in deep shit because of the pandemic and this otherwise extremely crowded route was near empty. Other than three Italians, the only other foreigners on the route with us, occupying the rest-houses, eating the food and employing the guides, porters and yaks, were Indians. Things will change, the mountain is not going to disappear, and I hope they do soon, but it was also nice to experience the EBC trek at this time of less rush and of local appreciation for the noisy but unafraid-of-COVID Indian.

I am glad I did it, and wish I had done it many years ago, when my legs would have laughed off the ups and downs, and my lungs the altitude. Better late than never, I guess! And, in case you are considering it yourself (if an obese 58-year-old can do it, so can you), my advice is – one, it is not a walk in the park, so prepare adequately and scientifically; two, go with a group you trust; and three, go vegetarian on the trek (never thought I’d say something like this) – cut meat (and everything else) is carried up into the Everest area by porters, a disgusting sight that one sees only on the way down, and the meat is therefore usually ancient by the time it reaches one’s plate. Spare yourself!

The group on Mt. Nangarshang (5,077 m), our acclimatization climb, on 2^nd October 2021.

Trek Itinerary
Day	Journey	Altitude
26th Sep	Mumbai – Delhi – Kathmandu. Night in Boudhi Boutique Hotel, Thamel
27th Sep	Kathmandu to Luk La (2,846 m) by air, onwards to Ghat on foot	2,600 m
28th Sep	Ghat to Namche Bazaar	3,440 m
29th Sep	Namche Bazaar to Khumjung	3,790 m
30th Sep	Khumjung to Phortse	3,840 m
1st Oct	Phortse to Dengboche	4,410 m
2nd Oct	Day at Dengboche, acclimatisation climb up Mt. Nangarshang (5,077 m)	4,410 m
3rd Oct	Dengboche to Lobuche through Thuk La Pass	4,940 m
4th Oct	Lobuche to Gorakshep, onward to EBC (5,364 m) and back	5,164 m
5th Oct	Gorakshep to Kalapathar (5,644 m), back, onward via Lobuche to Pheriche	4,371 m
6th Oct	Pheriche to Namche Bazaar via Tenboche Monastery	3,440 m
7th Oct	Namche Bazaar to Luk La	2,846 m
8th Oct	Luk La to Kathmandu by air
9th Oct	Rest day in Kathmandu
10th Oct	Kathmandu – Delhi – Mumbai
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