Project Himalaya diary | Joel's memories of 2001

Shopping

One of the reasons we do not use an Indian trekking company is one of my weakness', I know I love shopping, love going into the Himalayan store in Manali high street and amassing great piles of supplies on the counter. In high season I can be seen wandering around with Lobsang and Temba, tatty bits of paper in my hand, looking for that special jam or this special coffee; the stuff gets transported to Lobsang's place, and as this was one of our budget special treks, all the trekkers terrorised the shopkeepers of Manali, bouts of shopping interspersed with spring showers, snack and tea breaks, and the news of the Nepali royal family massacre.

Go north, young man

Next day was the usual last minute panic, Dave buying Frisbees and Kim flirting with beggars (her parting line as she wound up the window in his face: "OK, book us a room"). The Rohtang pass is what John Keay called the most abrupt change on the face of the earth.. "In all but name, Tibet begins on the Rohtang". By late afternoon we were at Darcha, not the nicest of campsites, but good to be out in the hills at last.

New concepts in 20th century dining

Like most Himalayan road heads, Darcha was easy to leave, despite last minute sock shopping, and the discovery that the "huge" dining tent we had was not really suitable for the stools we had purchased. That first night in Palamo someone suggested folding the tables down and sitting on the floor, and over the next few weeks various suggestions, gas lamps, tea and coffee jars, carpets, and camp chairs made our little home in the hills a great place to retire to at the end of a long day. It is still with us here at Pangpema, and the signatures of Dave, Lara, Kim, Lucas, Lisa and myself have been joined by many others, faded slowly by the high altitude sun.

And cooking?

Lobsang, no mean cook himself, had introduced me to our kitchen hand Temba, at the start of the trek, and in fact Temba was to be our cook; mellow and easy of character, the only cook I knew who lost weight on our treks. "Chicken body" as Lobsang jokingly called him, would prepare breads, cakes, perfect rice and crispy salad, and the most subtly spiced Indian food on the subcontinent, looking back every day I would see Lobsang's Popeye-like gait, and behind Temba's skinny lope, turn sideways and he vanishes. Four months of Temba's cooking and I still loved it, every dish (and so did everyone else, without exception).

On passes

In the next 3 weeks we were to cross 9 passes, but every one different in character; in fact we were to make 40 pass crossings in the next few months, each with moments of its own. My brother Jamie once said crossing a pass was something to keep and treasure, a little bit of magic in the back pocket, in times of stress back in civilisation you could slip your hand in, touch it, and capture that moment again, but to feel it you have to live it, lungs pounding, blisters burning, head throbbing, till you stand on top. Suspended there between past and future, the present is luminous. The passes are snow locked and silent now, but the flags we put up on each crest, rimed with frost, are still there. Friends ask me how I can visit the same place again and again but that first pass of the summer and my eighth time on the Shingo makes the point, as, each crossing has been with different people, different weather, different moments; 74 year old John in the autumn plodding up rock and scree, 20 something Lucas loping up the snow slopes in the spring, 23 year old Hannah on her first Himalayan pass in' 98, Joel as a sun bleached young wanderer (with hair) in '88. That day in May we slid down and were happy in camp by 11am. Desert passes, exposed passes, passes we lunched on top or simply gawped on top, and passes we had pujas on top of. Soul food moments all of them.

On trekkers

I had left Zanskar late last autumn with my head spinning with its beauty. A September crossing with a good trekking friend, and every village in motion with the harvest. I returned as they were slowly shaking off their long winter, lucky again to introduce people to its beauty, and have such people in our group. Dave, uncertain initially then at the end shaking my hand to thank me, Lara laughing as the locals laughingly asking her if she came from Nepal, Kim, buzzing with her love of it all, caught for me in the moment she drenched herself in whitewash before the locals could, Lucas constantly in motion with his long legs leaping down crazy scree slopes, and Lisa crashing her own pain barriers every day but despite illness getting there.

The Cake

The group had purchased a huge amount of dope in Manali but inexplicably not enough tobacco or papers to smoke it with, and thus it was decided as it was a rest day to bake it in a cake. Then it was decided against Lobsang's earnest advice to put not one, not two, but three tolas in, and the cake was produced with dinner.

A short debate ensued as to when to eat it, and it was decided "now". Kim, half sensible, only had half a slice, and the soon to be insensible others, a slice each. Me, an adult for some time, had none, an easy decision as my last hash cake episode was horrifyingly familiar from recurrent nightmares, and that happened in 1975.

So the usual "its having no affect" crap started, but the observant would note that Lara was taking an unfeasibly long time to cut that samosa, and a very stoned silence fell over the group, broken only by the sound of Lisa passing out. Dave got up and stumbled towards his tent, looking back over his shoulder as if all the fiends of hell were after him, while Kim stood and looked at the fairly uninteresting rock wall of the valley with a look of moronic rapture on her face as if she was communing with some Zanskari manifestation of Timothy Leary.

By this time I had had enough and went to drink a beer in Dolma's shop with Lobsang and decide how long we would have to stay up to make sure none of them choked on their vomit or swallowed their tongue, no great loss as they all seemed to have lost the power of speech anyway.

Two godfathers later we strolled back to see the charming scene of Kim and Lara feeding Ruscoe the local dog, Lara kneeling down better to enjoy the sight of Roxy tucking in. On drawing closer it became apparent that Lara was in fact puking and roxy was indeed eating the puke while Kim lent support with a glazed look on her face.

So the evening progressed and the next day, Dave sitting bolt upright in his tent "I am having a really bad time" and Kim and Luke somehow not falling to their death walking stoned on one of the trickiest trails in the Himalayas to Phuktal.
Luke had no bad side affects and the trek went on.

I decided the next time I saw any beer I would drink all of it.

Lobsang and the Tibetan mafia

Here the night after my 3rd ascent of Tengkoma all I can hear is Lobsang snoring next to me, here on a busman's holiday; cooking, carrying loads and having a wonderful time. Fresh memories of the days we walked into Kanchenjunga base camp, a long line of small Tamang porters in front, there would be the unmistakable Khampa figure of Lobsang towering over them all.

I met Lobsang in 1998 and since then we have adventured all over the Indian Himalayas and shared riotous times in Leh and Manali, from the night the police went crazy in the ibex bar and thrashed the place with rifle butts and a drunken officer pointed a very shaky revolver at us and ordered us out and Lobsang faced him down! to the party at the end of Caravan when we took over Johnson's bar and danced all night.

Today Lobsang climbed his first 6000m peak with me, and in honour of the moment I gave him my Suunto watch. Lobsang is the total centre of our operations in India, and stories about him could fill a whole website - but to trek without him would be unthinkable. Initial appearances suggest a gangster but is an astute and sensitive caravan boss, learning the names of all the trekkers and caring for them like the loving soul he is; their weaknesses, strengths, he picks it all up, who likes salad, who hates mornings, or how strong at altitude this or that trekkers is. Fond of a drop of rum, generous, his high pitched giggle has lightened every day in the hills; overgenerous, emotional praise maybe but I got lucky the day I met Lobsang! [Jamie' comment: no, ALL true.]

This year we also got as lucky as one can be with Temba, whose creations in the cook tent pleased the fussiest of eaters, and the rest of the boys, Tsarap, and his brother Punchok, our ponymen, who treat their animals like errant but well loved nephews, loading them with care, seeming to just stroll carelessly along but watching the beasts every minute. Heading towards the Kongmaru La, I watched from above as one horse stumbled and slipped. They had the whole caravan (15 horses) stopped and waiting in less then a minute, and the horse was unloaded and dealt with in less than 5 minutes. Punchok is married, a Tibetan doctor, deeply religious and always with his animals while the others partied at night. Tsarap, dark and good looking, but very aware of his family responsibilities, putting his sister through college with the salary we pay him, fixed in my memory with a bidi clenched in his teeth, asking me how high his horses had taken our climbing camp on Caravan 6666. Rum in hand, the bidi dropped straight in the rum when I told him "5800m".

On Singge

In Tetha village we met Singge, a skinny, undersized boy of 8, hanging around the outskirts of the other kids, wearing a t-shirt and nothing else, and Lobsang learning he was an orphan fed him and gave him some clothes. We talked of doing something for him, and in September, found him again and learnt his story; we are hoping to change his sad life by, among other things sponsoring him to school in Manali.

A day

There were times when I was a teacher in London battling with a hard class on a rainy London afternoon when I could only get through it because I was a trekker, and I knew when term ended on a Friday in December, April, or July that there was a taxi was waiting outside to whisk me away to Heathrow and in a matter of days I would be heading up the trails of the Himalaya. Each day on the trail is like a slowly developing photo in a B&W lab, blurry as you start, the colours expanding before you as you live it. It was Hugh Swift, the Guru of Himalayan trekking wrote "On the trail, life is instantaneous; its right before your eyes. The days expand, and life is fully lived" Our days always began with the smell of fresh brewed coffee, and ended with Lobsang taking orders for hot drinks, chatting and playing games in the mess tent, reading or writing, and drifting off to bed.

By Padum we were in the routine, each day enlivened by something new, no trek is ever the same. Outside Padum we were waiting for dinner when a storm hit, thrashing our tents, for an hour holding onto the tent poles, Lucas fielding campsite bits as they blew away, Kim's tent filling with sand; intrepid trekker she is, she contributed to the evening by rushing to gather rocks to weigh the tent down, then dropping them with a shriek "spider!".

"Zanskar's weather, like Bombay's fashion, cannot be trusted...", Kim in particular had to face some demons on the trip, being a little nervous of exposed trails, having trekked the route several times, I had tended to forget that some of them were a little dangerous. after trekking to Tso Moriri with us, Kim completed her own Kora of the Himalayas by visiting Pakistan and Tibet, and this is her account, written months later by the fire in The Kangtega lodge, of part of the trek..

The second part of the trek is reckoned to be the hardest in the Himalaya, and trying to recall some of those moments here in an email cafe in Dharmasala, the memories run together; was it Hannah in 1998? or Lisa that got sick on that pass; my brother Jamie in 1992 I remember crossing the horizon on a pre dawn start, or Dave? I know that on the last night in Hanumil I did not want it to end, I had just started to know these people; I know that trekking with this group gave me the confidence that the way we operate in India, from fresh coffee to our tent lay out, was the best, but I knew, and I think I had forgotten, that to trek in Zanskar is about love; love of a people whose life has not fundamentally changed in centuries. Whenever I encounter something mean spirited in this world or in myself, I try to focus on Zanskar and know I will be going back there, and I know everything will be ok.

A thousand, two thousand passes,

passes in the lands of strangers,

I will cross three thousand passes,

to go to my own country

Zanskari song

Joel's memories of Ladakh

A group

Getting there