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

and spat. He rolled it back up and then the discussion was over. Bim turned around and looked at me.

“I told the driver to be more careful. You are my responsibility,” he said.

I didn’t realize that Bim spoke any English, but I was careful not to show any surprise. I did not realize he would be our Sirdar, but should have. That is, unless we would have two English speaking Sherpas. I should have realized that if he were accompanying us to Jiri he would be the leader of the expedition. The last time he had been with me he was a porter and had not spoken more than a few words. I had assumed that Mr. Pasang had sent him along as a porter for us out of politeness. I was wrong. He had grown up a bit and I looked at him more closely and could see that he was now a man and had assumed an air of command and responsibility.

The way an expedition works is simple. The leader of the expedition is the Sirdar and he will have a number of Sherpas with him. These are the guides that handle all the daily details. Next there are porters and if you have a kitchen there will be Cook – who is equal but just barely – to the Sirdar, and his kitchen helpers and porters. The first time I came we had twelve trekkers. For that journey we had a Sirdar, four Sherpas, eight porters, Cook, and about twelve kitchen helpers and porters. So, a staff of twenty-six for a group of twelve. We needed every one of them.

The day begins with the Sirdar deciding how far the group will travel. He will then send a Sherpa down the path to notify the appropriate restaurants and hotels that we would be arriving and to make arrangements for our meals and our accommodations. Then the porters take off and finally when the trek begins for the day the Sirdar, unless he has chosen to go ahead and make the arrangements himself will lead off down the path. The trekkers are next and the last Sherpa will bring up the end of the line. This way as the fastest walkers move forward the lead Sherpa stays ahead of them. As the slower walkers trail behind, a Sherpa brings up the rear and no one gets lost and left behind on a snowy glacier’s ledge to freeze in the night.

There are many other aspects to the trekker’s day and many other duties of the staff, but that is the gist of it. Bim and I spoke casually as the van drove us through the Nepal countryside. He told me he had been promoted from porter to Sherpa guide and then to Sirdar and this was his third trip as Sirdar. (Author’s note: Sirdar was a rank in the 19th century British army, a commander’s rank.) He told me he was glad to be with me again and although I wondered for a few minutes whether he could possibly remember me, he asked about my wife Laurie and actually remembered her name. After a minute he took out a beautiful pair of Nikon binoculars, small and compact and very good.

“Bim, you still have them!” I was touched. “I will tell Laurie and she will be happy that you kept them and found them useful.” Laurie had given them to him after our last trip and I had told her he would probably just sell them, but she said she didn’t care. I felt a little ashamed as I remembered that, but I was happier that my wife had done something nice and that it had been appreciated.

Many years ago during her first trek in Nepal she had taken another young Sherpa man under her wing and helped support him through medical school. When I first met her I was surprised to see the amount of money she would send in equipment, microscopes and such, and thought she was merely wasting it until I met the man who had become one of the first modern Nepalese medical doctors. He was visiting the United States and came to pay his respects to her. The Nepali people are some of the most intelligent, industrious, and persevering people I have ever known and I found myself feeling a bit of pride that Bim was moving up.

We stopped for lunch. As we waited in the small restaurant I watched the people come and go and saw them go to the corner to wash their hands both upon entering and then as they left.

“I see why you told us to bring spoons.” Curtis said to me in a low voice.

“We won’t need them here. I’m sure they will bring us utensils of some type. We’re not the first foreigners to visit and they know we don’t eat dahl bat with our bare hands like they do.” Dahl bat is a puree of lentil beans and whatever else is nearby the cook. This mixture is served over rice and can be quite good, mediocre and sometimes just plain bad depending on the cook and what was available. The locals eat it by scooping it up in curved fingers and then pushing it into their mouths with their thumb. It is a quiet efficient method of eating and once used to it, you really don’t notice. I’ve tried it, but after nearly 60 years of eating with knife, fork and spoon, well, old habits are hard to break.

We were served and the dahl bat was good enough. They had given us an odd assortment of spoons and forks and I attacked lunch with the same enthusiasm I have for all food and drink. I had a coke, thinking that I was going to have to get used to the hard stuff again, that there probably was not going to be any diet coke on this trip. That did turn out to be the case,