JOURNEY - on Mastering Ukemi by Daniel Linden (classic books for 12 year olds .TXT) 📕

“I’m sorry guys. I should have warned you to have a few things handy. A camera and a bottle of water are important: Swiss Army knife, flashlight and extra glasses, stuff you should have already thought about and prepared yourselves with. But this was a good lesson. From this moment on, you have to think of yourselves as completely responsible for yourselves. Don’t expect anyone on this trip to help you or carry you or be responsible for you. You have to do it all. From now on, you are taking ukemi.” I grinned. “And you are all my ukes.” I didn’t mention that I was an uke, myself. I was the leader of the attack on the mountains and my job was to make it seem harmonious.

That bought a moment of silence and then a few smart remarks and then a joke or two and the elephant was forgotten. But I remembered it later and would have occasion to remember it again.

We were finally leaving the valley when we stopped at a gas station to fill the tank. We all got out and made use of the spot behind the squat building and then bought a few soft drinks. Chris got a couple bottles of beer. I bought the driver a cigarette. It cost two rupees, about a penny and a half, but he grinned and smoked it happily and with obvious great pleasure. I almost bought him a pack, but then realized he would want to smoke them in the van and I restrained myself from this gesture. Our sirdar, a man named Bim who had remained quiet in the shot gun seat the whole way eyed the cigarette with obvious lust, and I got him one as well. No one was going to die of lung cancer in this country where you purchased cigarettes one at a time.

The sun was high and we were headed out of the valley. On each side of the road there were fields with soil turned under and harvested vegetables being carted one way and another. After a short time these fields turned into steep slopes that were terraced and being worked by one or two individuals with hand tools. They used short hoes and forked, wooden rake-like implements. After a half hour we came around a tight curve in the road and saw the entire expanse of the Himalayan Mountains spread out before us without the smog of the Kathmandu valley softening the hard edges.

They were breathtaking. The highest towering peaks on earth are strung out in a chain that stretches east to west across the continent like dragon’s teeth striking at the sky. The air was crystal clear and the sun high enough to allow easy looking, but still it was early enough for good quality light. Cameras began to click and I was careful not say anything. I did this myself the first time. After a while the unbelievable panorama of mountain majesty becomes so overwhelming that you are finally able to give a little perspective to the vistas seen everywhere, constantly, and begin to ignore shots that would have taken your eyes out a few days before, but your first vision of these peaks lasts like the memory of your first kiss; sweet, strong and eternal. Little did I know this would be the last time we would see these peaks for a long, long while.

The driver made a few noises to let us know it was time to go and we climbed back in.

It took about two hours before the first time we almost died of fright.

Looking over the edge of an enormously deep chasm gives me vertigo. Doing it while careening around a bend at speed while diverting out of the path of an oncoming, overloaded bus takes vertigo to a place where it seems almost pleasant. Sheer, stark terror is closer to the feeling we were experiencing as we sped down the narrow, hairpin turns of this alleged highway.

At times the road got so narrow that an oncoming vehicle forced our van to back up until a wider spot on the road allowed the driver to get far enough over for the other vehicle to pass. In fairness it was always a large vehicle that wanted to get by and as we were actually one of the larger vehicles on the road it was just the way things were. I believe that two of the tiny, normal-sized cars in this country could pass each other nearly everywhere that the road existed, it was only when we encountered a bus or truck that we exceeded the twelve or fifteen feet of pavement on certain hairpin curves.

Knowing this did not make it any better when I saw a bus bearing down on a tight inside drop and our driver not slowing one bit in his approach. We seemed on a collision course with neither driver willing to back off and be the one to back up. We were outweighed in this contest by about fifteen thousand pounds, though, and finally Bim said something to the driver and he veered way out until I was sure that the wheels were actually over the ledge and the bus moved to the inside. They passed so close to us that if I had held my hand out the window the full length of my fingers, I am sure I could have touched the side of the bus. I saw a brief flurry of faces above me and heard the tiniest ping – I don’t even want to know what that noise was – and then we were passing them and veering back to the mountain side of the road and the driver uttered a few short sharp words to our Sherpa and Bim was saying something to him. There was another quick exchange and the driver rolled his window down