From the Shadows to the Khumbu Giants

Dingboche (4350m), Nepal - Tues 7th Apr

Everest. An Expedition. Questions abound  - how far do you walk, how high do you climb... goals, achievement. But a real expedition is more, an adventure, a journey, an exploration not just of the Khumbu Valley with its spectacular panorama, but for most there's a wider purpose, an inner journey every bit as important and ambitious.

Kathmandu teams with energy, noise and shopping opportunities similar to many Asian cities. Flying to Lukla opens a window into a new land, one without cars, where transport is altogether different - a flight underneath the shadow of the Himalaya where you land on a postage stamp positioned precariously on the side of a fairly vertical runway, slowing down being encouraged by the sheer cliff face at the runway's end.

Packs strapped on, excitement mixed with anxiety, the emotions energised by a wonderfully new culture: the Tibetan prayer flags and the Wind Horse gloriously flapping prayers to the unseen spirits of the mountains, Yuccios loaded high in the lowlands and Yaks in the higher climbs, Lammergeiers (Bearded Vultures) soaring overhead, the amazing blossom and handkerchief trees of the lower valleys, the majestic peaks of the high valleys, the awe inspiring loads carried by the porters, and always the wonderfully open Nepalese people, smiling and demonstrating an integrity rarely experienced in the West. The initial trekking pace, gentle to assist physical acclimatisation, enables an overwhelming sensual avalanche. It's tough mentally. The monotony - view after view after view... each somehow trumping the last.

The first two days undulate through the lower valleys, crossing rivers on fairly unique suspension bridges adorned with prayer flags, every bit as thrilling as Disneyland's best ride. The final uphill struggle to Namche Bazar is lovingly termed "Bastard Hill" by our guide. It provides an encouragement; halfway up there's the first view of the High Peaks, of Everest itself. Cloud and rain enabled our hill to laughingly oblige its name.

Namche is surreal. A village perched on a mountainside, home to the Sherpa people. The morning's gift, a clear sky, allowing the sheer majesty of open curtains on dramatic mountains created overnight. Today's "optional" rest day started with a severe climb for our unaccustomed lungs. The reward a wonderful surprise. The first view... Everest, Lohtse and Ama Dablam. Words are inadequate. A picture seared on the retina and mind for many moons to come.

From Namche to Dingboche is a two day hike. Every step seems special, a fresh view, an even better Kodak moment, and still it builds and builds... You feel like you could watch the Big Peaks evolve for ever, the clouds moving in and out, waterfalls tumbling, prayer flags drumming in the wind, the glaciers defying gravity in saraks, and the peaceful melody of the Yaks, bells around their necks adding a choral accompaniment to the visual masterpiece of the Khumbu.

This expedition is more than special, it's real. Rolphe Oostra and Jo Bradshaw will go on to summit Everest and Lohtse during May, a hardcore dual challenge requiring ~36 hours in the death zone above 8000m, more than twice the norm. It's a unique privilege to listen to their stories, imbibe the mountaineering culture and folklore of the Khumbu, and be a small part of their preparation. Whatever anxiety we may feel on our trek is dwarfed by what lies ahead for them, yet they remain uniquely calm. It's their inner journey too...

Time for a story…

Farnham, England – We’ve just celebrated Easter. It’s the highpoint of the Christian calendar, celebrating the death and resurrection of Jesus. It’s a time of fresh starts, holding the mysteries of death and life in harness, restoration, healing, transformation… it’s a time for reflection.

One of my favourite quotes of recent years comes from Richard Rohr: “Jesus was asked 183 questions in the gospels, he only answered 3 of them”. Many of you will know that frequently Jesus’ response was a tell a story, a parable… the purpose was to allow the listener to wrestle with it, and try to explore and extract the meaning applicable. This might sometimes be generic, but often, it was specific, personal…

We returned to the UK after our IndoChina adventure just over a week ago. A fantastic voyage that will definitely hold many memories… not surprisingly, everyone is asking us about “our favourites”. It’s a tough assignment, but we’re trying to order our thoughts a bit more coherently and will shortly publish our “Awards” ceremony.

However, there is one vignette that’s stuck in my mind during the last week. It’s been poking at me, pricking, irritating, wanting to be explored. It’s a “story” that happened in Sapa, right at the end of our trip. You may remember we walked through the tiered rice fields, and I waxed lyrical about their beauty. It wasn’t quite the perfect day I portrayed. I missed out something. So enter Exhibit A, a photo.

There’s four people in the photo, walking closely together. May (our guide), Nicky, and two young Red Tzao women, local minority tribes people, following in close formation.

One of the joys of walking for me is experiencing the landscape, observing the beauty, and in a remote area such as this, drinking in the silence, the solitude. So I was less than enamoured when we started the trek that all-of-a-sudden “the tourists” were the centre of attention; about ten local women strapped their baskets on their backs (carrying their craft wares) and prepared to accompany us, uninvited. It was unhelpful in the extreme to start with… there had been a biblically heavy thunderstorm several hours earlier, and the packed red clay was a mud bath, intensely slippery. As I took each step gingerly, various people crowded around me and often I was unable to put my foot down as the space was taken away. The “crowd” dwindled down to two stalwarts who accompanied us on the entire trek. Occasionally they would try to open conversation in broken English. Their rationale was simple – “We are following you so that you will buy from us”. It was the act of service, the fact they had accompanied us that somehow made this their “emotional contract”, despite several clear statements to the contrary on our part. We didn’t buy anything, mainly on principle, not wanting to reward unhelpful behaviour; they had walked with us for several hours.

So… further conversation with May confirmed that we’d experienced a very common occurrence. When I wondered whether it would not be better to build a craft stall at the EcoLodge (where the walk started), May confirmed that the owners of the Lodge had offered to do exactly that, not happy with their guests being harried in this way. Despite numerous efforts over the months and years to explain that Westerners may not like this type of behaviour, the Red Tzao women continued: “If we don’t follow, someone else will, and they’ll get the sale”.

The vignette has been pressing me in the last 10 days – it’s asking me a question. “Where might your thinking, your approach, your actions be COMPLETELY wrong or in-appropriate? How could you remove the blindness to hear and explore a new, different & ultimately better way?”

Photo Journal – Images of Sapa

Photo Journal: Sapa in a beautiful place, the mountains, the rice fields, the colourful people…

Peeking through the mist at the beauty of Sapa

Sapa, Northern Vietnam – 42 days on the road, and the final venue is three days in the mountains up in the north-west of Vietnam, in what the French termed the “Tonkinese Alps”, right on the Chinese border. It’s remote, and the only reasonable way to get there is the overnight train from Hanoi. Surprisingly, we slept fairly well, no doubt enhanced for me by the complimentary beer; nice touch - British Rail? We were woken abruptly at 4:30am by a strong rapping on our cabin door – “Lao Cai! Lau Cai!” One of the few times you don’t celebrate a train arriving an hour early. From there it’s an hours drive through winding mountain roads, made more atmospheric by a total cloud whiteout and torrential rain.

And so we arrived in Sapa – WOW! It’s a rich tribal area, largely untouched and untroubled by the emerging 21st Century, with time honoured customs, folklore, stories and a wonderful sense of tradition. The recent influx of tourism to this remote region is changing things, albeit slowly, and in many cases unfairly. The hotels (even those based on so-called “Social Enterprise”) are syphoning profits without significant investment in the local culture. Hmong and Tzao people are used to travelling significant distances to tend their crops, search for firewood, gather water, attend the local market… yet now an additional journey, to Sapa, basket strapped to your back, filled with handicrafts to sell to tourists. “Why you not buy from me?” is a VERY valid question, yet an unanswerable one too when its repeated with each footstep.

I found Sapa to be a place where you question the Western right or morality in deciding what’s best, how a culture should develop, what is the nature of wealth. Is progress a satellite dish? Strangely the one beneficial technology norm is the ubiquitous mobile phone… Sapa is a place where by many definitions, people are INCREDIBLY poor. Extreme Poverty is often defined as living on less than $1/day; the hill tribe people of Sapa live on far less – but still they have adequate housing, generally plentiful food (it’s such a rich agrarian landscape), make their own clothing from hemp, have access to education (but generally shun it)… it’s a very hard life, but one that has been resistant to change. So what is poverty? And what right does a Westerner have to either define it, impose it, or explore whether “progress” is appropriate?

May, our guide, is from a Black Hmong village ~18km from Sapa. She grew up with 8 brothers & sisters (the “law” in Vietnam is two children maximum) in a very rural community where as children you were expected to search for firewood, collect crops, sew and harvest rice… the immediate “child labour” view is of a childhood lost, yet the attraction of an incredibly simple lifestyle with its ingrained traditions did often shine through. Arranged marriages are the norm, but not in the sense of interviews and pairings, but more of a “supermarket”. Parents of young men seek brides of the age of 14+, where the only qualification is availability and dowry (chickens and pigs); most families are started before 16. May didn’t marry till 18, and as is traditional went to live with her husband’s family. She has a four year old son who she is incredibly proud of. Yet the story from there develops in a way that is all too familiar elsewhere. A male dominated culture, where women are expected to do most everything, including the heavy manual labour. The men spend time together, drinking the local rice whisky, come home and if you’re lucky sleep it off, if not violence is not only normal but a male right. May was gracious and careful when I asked was her husband a good man, but she has managed to step forward. As an un-educated person, she taught herself English by speaking with tourists and working on a local market craft stall. She has been a tour guide for five years now, a “salaried” position (except we would call it freelance; no clients, no pay), and is much in demand as her intimate local tribal knowledge and familiarity with the landscape allow her to show an extra dimension beyond the tourist centre of Sapa.

We spent three days in this mountainous and scenic gem. May led us on treks through remote villages, to local markets which have likely been the same for centuries, and through the wonderful landscape of terraced rice fields. Yet we will have to return… not only because it was a place that captured us, but because the continuous fog with less than 10m visibility didn’t allow us to wonder at the panorama of peaks and crags; it was the third day before we realised there was a lake and Catholic cathedral right next to our hotel. Yet still it held a charm that resonated in a unique way…

Sapa was extra-ordinary, but mainly because its people and landscape are quite simply that. Beautiful!

Photo Journal - From Hanoi to Halong Bay…

Photo Journal: The contrast between bustling Hanoi, and the exquisite tranquillity & beauty of Halong Bay…

From Hanoi to Halong (without International Incident)

Halong Bay, North Vietnam – Hanoi is different. A sense that you are in “North Vietnam”; the loudspeakers with “helpful parking messages” (really?), the constant red banners with yellow lettering that I sense were not the billboards of aspiration, but more likely conformation. It’s a city where people live, rather than having it impose on them. There are many varied colloquial sights, such as the communal 5:30am morning exercise in the parks, badminton, Tai Chi, and Ballroom Dancing! The 6:30am morning flag raising at the Ho Chi Minh Mausoleum is filled with patriotic marching and music, but far more interesting is watching the white suited soldiers going puce blowing their whistles at the never-ending surge of Chinese tourists crossing the wrong line. The Army Museum contains the normal re-educational and propagandist rhetoric, but also a sculpture I found strangely moving, made from pieces of shot-down planes from the “American War”. Hoa Lo prison (otherwise known as the Hanoi Hilton, a PoW camp for American pilots) with it’s strange gateway “Maison Centrale” sign is now a museum, but I smiled inwardly when realising that most of the prison footprint has been re-purposed to build a significant multi-storey skyscraper… hotel?

While the British always talk about the weather, for the Vietnamese it’s the traffic. You can understand why… it’s the dominant and significant challenge that first assaults you as you venture beyond the safety of any hotel haven. While I’ve tried to explore the Vietnamese Green Cross Code previously, Hanoi poses a new challenge: walking. Sure there are pavements (sidewalks), but they are quite simply an obstacle course, a venue for spontaneous street restaurants and family dinners, a parking place for the myriad of scooters that if they’re not moving, have to go somewhere. So what of the poor tourist? Targets… an opportunity for mayhem! You might be surprised to learn though that walking is a mere kindergarten sport; the brave warriors have to tackle travelling on roads… not driving (that would be silly), but having the courage to attempt a journey from A to B, any A, any B.

On the two lane highway to Halong Bay, speed is regulated by continuous potholes (and no suspension). It’s frequent to see four-five abreast, each vehicle daring the other to move last; there is NO margin for error. The prime maniacs seem to be buses – these helpfully sound their horns (in perpetuity) to indicate their intent to enter any non-existent gap, in the brave hope that other road users will reinvent the laws of physics to create space for them. I’ve strangely grown to appreciate the horns, as their Doppler shift is a reassuring signal to re-open your eyes and celebrate a few more seconds of life. One must also celebrate the benevolence of the Koreans (Kia and Hyundai supply most of the vehicles). Consider the indiscriminate act-of-war that the mere act of increasing their anti-corrosion warranty would cause, perchance adding an extra layer of paint? Strangely we’ve witnessed virtually no accidents. It seems massively chaotic, but somehow it all (only) just works. The local Vietnamese almost always have a religious icon in their car, a Buddha to offer protection; I like to think our vehicle, with its bobbing head Mickey was the real source – the celestial Mouse would surely not let any tourist come to harm.

Halong Bay is a UNESCO World Heritage Site, lobbying to become one of the “new” seven wonders. Fabulous limestone crags erupting majestically heavenwards from the sea: 1969 islands… no more, no less. It makes one wonder what would have happened had Ho Chi Minh not died in 1969? The Bay is absolutely STUNNING! I’d seen the pictures of our floating palace for three days, a beautiful teak junk. So I was slightly disconcerted to discover an extremely run-down white painted boat, flaking badly and looking significantly in need of repair. The explanation, a new government directive that all Halong Bay boats must be white. So a quick spray job two weeks before ensures compliance but definitely not beauty. The reason for the directive was strangely absent, many explanations, but none that seemed valid. Googling “Halong Bay accident” (never mentioned) may be a clearer source…

“Sticker Shock” has increased gradually throughout our trip, and the beautiful Halong Ginger has lulled us into a beautiful relaxed reverie as we’ve lurched from one stunning view to the next, where photographs just can’t even try to capture the scale or beauty of what you’re affronted with. So to cocktail hour; while we may be “outraged” at the increased prices, it’s a sign of a travelling mind that it’s the principle, the comparative to the previous - cocktails are still less than our European norm. I was intrigued though that the Ginger has a Scotch collection, something of my PLBT (“previous life before travel”). An 18-year old Macallan, wonderful… a treat perchance? I think not – a “glass” was $196!!! WOW… I kept reading; one of the idiosyncrasies (?) of the Vietnam bar list is they will often not only give you the price of a glass, but also a bottle. Helpfully that was included – $14!! That’ll be a case then…

We cycled round Cat Ba island, witnessing numerous mirth opportunities as one poor chap’s back wheel fell off – “Fat Buddha” (a term of honour, prosperity, wealth) likely showed our guide’s superior command of English. The list of “rules” quaintly included “Speed down at sliding areas, sloping road…” (emphasis 2nd word, not first?), “Do not be Panic”, and “Do not race”. However, there were no such rules for Kayaking. So the first ever (annual?) “International Halong Bay Race” commenced, our two Vietnamese guides in one double canoe, Nicky & I in the other. I’d like to say Nicky was helpful, and maybe she was – she resolutely refused to participate, so no problem with synchronised paddles there! It was a splendid event, and I’d like to say I graciously agreed honours were even - my alter-ego Sir Steve was proud of me.

Photo Journal – Cham: The Places in Between

Historically Vietnam had three regions, the North, the South, and the Central area… the Cham Kingdom. We fell in love with the beautiful beach side town of Hoi An, full of charm and character. Hue, the former capital of Vietnam (till 1945), is full of history, but we struggled to really connect with it in the same way…

Photo Journal – Cham: The Places in Between