Trek Chapter 1: Lukla

It’s taken me a while to figure out exactly how to tell this story, this story that is the second half of my trip to Nepal. The trekking story. It’s complex. I could just say, oh, we hiked up into the mountains and when the clouds parted we saw Mt. Everest and we stayed in local little villages and ate lots of rice and drank lots of tea. I actually entertained the idea of glossing over many details and writing just that and leaving out the ugly parts. That way I wouldn’t have to fear people accusing me of being mean and insensitive, or writing in a way that makes me look good and others look bad. But if I left out the ugly parts, I’d be altering the story all together, and there wouldn’t be much of a story left at all. So here it is. The story as I experienced it. Not all of the story is mine to tell, so there are parts I am respectfully leaving out, but the rest of it I am sharing with you the way it happened to me.

To be honest, I was dreading the trek from the very beginning, and I even considered canceling and returning back to the US 10 days early after the dental portion of the trip was finished. This was all over one person. Out of all the volunteers on our dental team, only 4 of us remained in Nepal to trek after our clinic time at the boarding school wrapped up. In total, there would be six of us. Myself, our Nepalese guide and porter, and Katherine, a Chinese dentist from the UK who was my roommate. Also along was a married couple. I will not be showing any pictures of them, nor will I reveal their real names. For the intents and purposes of this story, I will call them Chris and Michelle.

I did not like Michelle from the beginning. I am putting that out there right now. She and her husband are from Romania, but recently immigrated to the US and have lived there for the last few years. She is a hygienist, like me, and in the dental clinic our stations were next to each other. She has, what my sister would call, “a jagged aura”. I noticed right away that she was very pessimistic. And she was bossy. I particularly don’t like this trait in a person, because I do not like being told what to do. I actually have this little motto that I pull out from time to time: If you’re not my boss, don’t boss me around. There were a few times when she told me specifically which instruments to use and questioned my choice of anesthetic. The way I’d hear her talk to her patients would make my spine go rigid. Once in the clinic I turned around to see her right down in her patient’s face. “Do you want to loose your teeth!?“ she demanded to know from this young boy. “Because you WILL loose your teeth if things continue the way they are. Is that what you want?“ She was never able to “go with the flow” and was extremely idealistic. And this is an appropriate time to point out this woman does not have children.

In the clinic she was always upset because she often had to face not being able to give her patients the level of care she’d be able to give at home. The first day I respected this, but by the end of the week all her constant dwelling on it did was annoy me. One day we were walking back to our guesthouse after clinic, and Michelle was crying over one of her patients; a young adult with a 7mm pocket (hygienist talk…why she measured it in the first place I‘ll never know, since there‘s little you can do about it anyway). I talked with her as we walked along. I didn’t really like her, but I didn’t hate her either, and I did attempt to make her feel better. “Michelle, don’t focus on what you didn’t do for that patient and think about all the things you did.” What I really wanted to know, but didn’t ask, was what the heck did she expect? Wouldn’t it be common sense that if you signed up to do dentistry on one of the poorest countries on Earth, you’d experience the frustration of too many patients with too great of need, combined with limited time and resources, which would force you to compromise your standards of ideal care? It seemed obvious to me that as a any type of medical volunteer, you’d have to come to grips real quick with the fact that you have to do the best you can with what you have.

* * *

Two days before the trek, Those of us going on the trip met our guide at the guesthouse one evening after clinic so he could give us a quick run through. When we met, he introduced himself as Colin.

This guy was clearly very much Nepalese. Now just why the hell was his name Colin?

We were in a country where people had names like Topgyl, Prasuna, and Tsering. Why did Colin have such a Western sounding name?

We were picked up at the guesthouse at 5am the morning of the trek. There was a strike expected that day (why I do not know) and we needed to get to the airport extra early in case said strike snarled traffic. Although we made it to the airport without any hang ups, I did see plenty of police in full riot gear lining the streets.

At the airport we had some down time so I decided to strike up a conversation with Colin. Up to this point I’d been around the same few people the entire trip. Now don’t get me wrong, my dental team was a great group of people, but I was looking forward to having a new brain to pick. I went and found him. Up to this point, the only words we’d spoken to each other were brief introductions.

“So your name is Colin?”

“Yes, Colin.”

Colin had a strong command of the English language, but his accent was also very strong. By the end of the trek I had almost no trouble understanding him because I learned how to understand him, but it was tough at first.

“Colin?” I asked again, raising my eyebrows.

“Yes, Colin”, he confirmed.

“How do you spell it?”

“K-A-L-Y-A-N. Kalyan. It means ‘social welfare’ “.

That made more sense. Now I was getting somewhere. So Colin was actually Kalyan.

Around 7am we walked out onto the tarmac and boarded a tiny little propeller plane with Sita Air painted on the side. One my mom would refer to as a “Puddle Jumper”. There were two pilots, the four of us trekkers, Kalyan, and a flight attendant with a baby on her lap. Every bit of space left in the plane was packed tight with random cargo. We stuffed cotton in our ears and taxied to the runway.



While queued up to take off, I pulled a small folded note out of my pocket. It was a letter from Clarissa. As we’d said our goodbyes the night before, she’d slipped it into my hand and told me to save it until I was on the way to Lukla. Clarissa is a dentist and practices in New Mexico. We hit it off right away and when we showed up at breakfast our second morning in Nepal dressed alike, I knew we’d be friends for life. We've even made a pact to climb Mt. Rainier together in July 2012.



Her little note put it all into perspective, and I was glad I hadn’t bailed out on the trek. She thanked me for opening up to her and becoming her friend and that she had a great time seeing this part of the world me. She told me to enjoy everyone else and reminded me to take some alone time. Not to read or journal, but to sit and be quiet and take it all in. She told me she’d miss me.

Her words gave my nose that tingly feeling. That feeling that you get just prior to your eyes welling up with tears. When I finished it, I said a quick prayer of thanks to God. I have a great family, have had many wonderful experiences, have been given even more people to call friends and was now sitting on a plane heading into the magnificent Himalaya. God has given me an amazing life. After giving thanks I had one last request for the big guy: A safe flight.

Soon after takeoff, we were out of the thick, hot, polluted air of the Kathmandu valley and into the clean, clear air that comes with areas void of too many people, factories, and cars. As the terrain became more mountainous I watched out the front window, between the two pilots, as Luka came into view.

The airport is often referred to as Lukla, because that is the name of the village in which it is located. It’s official name, though, is the Tenzing-Hillary Airport, after Sir Edmund Hillary and his Sherpa, Tenzing Norgay, the first to summit Everest. It is famous (or more aptly infamous) for being the most dangerous airport in the world. At 9000’ above sea level, the altitude makes it more difficult to create lift for planes taking off. The runway is only 1500’ long, and is built on a 12% grade. This means there is a difference of 200’ from one end to the other. To put it another way, you land going uphill and take off going downhill. Because there is no margin for error, the pilots who fly in and out of Lukla are among the best in the world. If there is a mistake upon landing, you crash into a mountainside. If there is a mistake on taking off, the plane falls off of a cliff. Please don’t tell my mom any of that.



The landing was abrupt and quick. They usher you off of the plane and into the terminal as fast as possible in order to swiftly load the next group of returning trekkers onto the plane and back to Kathmandu. Since the weather turns without warning (I’ve never seen anything like it) they get as many passengers into and out of Lukla quickly, quickly, quickly as the weather allows. Because of aforementioned dangers, they do not allow any flights when conditions are anything less than ideal.

We ate breakfast in the courtyard of a small lodge next to the airport. I ordered an omelet, a trend that would continue throughout the trek. Because of my gluten allergy, I cannot have anything containing wheat, oats, barley or rye. There goes pancakes, bread, oatmeal, toast, waffles, and cereal. As I finished my omelet and sipped my milk tea, I leaned back in my chair and admired the view of gigantic mountain peaks ahead of me. I couldn’t complain.

We met up with our porter. He was a petite, polite, dark-skinned man named Kamal. He always had a smile but knew very little English, so the conversation between he and I was pretty much limited to “Good morning Kamal! How are you doing?” I wish I could have gotten to know him better, because we spend a whole week together. He is 30, seemed full of personality, and word out on the street is that he is looking for a wife.

A porter’s job is to carry the load of the group. We each had a backpack with the gear we’d need throughout the day, like water and extra layers, but Kamal carried our big bags containing everything else we’d need for the week. Sometimes he’d walk with us, but most often he’d set out ahead of us and meet up with us later. Here was a man carrying easily his own body weight on his back, going strait up the mountains, reaching the destination at the end of each day usually hours ahead of us.

Our trek officially began just outside of Lukla as we passed under an archway welcoming us and reminding us HAVE A NICE TREK! We entered a region of the Himalaya known as the Khumbu, which is the area around Mt. Everest. If you followed this particular path all the way to the end, you’d eventually find yourself surrounded by rocks and small tents and a giant mountain looming in front of you: Everest Base Camp. There are many trekking trails around the Himalaya and you can travel on foot all throughout the mountains, but I was excited to be on this one. While we would not make it all the way into base camp, it was still beyond cool to me to be on the first half of this very famous route.