A Gambling Man by David Baldacci (ebook audio reader .txt) 📕

for us. She smiled and jumped up and fairly danced down the trail to the vendor’s shack. Even the Nepali men admired her and though they outwardly considered her bare legs outrageous, they would be thinking of her later and laughing amongst themselves and remembering her.

When she reached the shack she was suddenly surrounded by children who stared at her so intently that I became concerned. I stood slowly and walked over to the trader and watched as Celine looked from one child to the next and how they stared at her in complete fascination. I suddenly got it! “It’s your earrings,” I said to her.

“Oh,” she smiled at me. She nodded and then bent low so the little girls could get a closer look. They were completely enthralled by the cheap, dangling glass beads of her earrings, and I was once again reminded how poor most of these people were. They literally had nothing and sometimes something that an ignorant trekker casually bundled up and threw to the side of the path would become something quite precious to one of these hard working natives. On my first trip here the guide asked if at the end of our trek we would be willing to hand our old dirty towels to the porters. They acted as if they had received cashmere coats when we did as he asked. I was so ashamed of my wealth that I nearly cried. They were so grateful and happy to receive something that we would have just thrown away, it was humbling.

One of the little boys reached out and wanted to touch the jewelry, but I warned her that an earring wrenched out of her ear might cause her to be more careful and she patted him on his head and stood up. Celine is a big, handsome woman and stood much taller than most of the Nepali people, both men and women. We got our cokes and I bought two Mars Bars and put them in my pack. I would need them, I knew, later. They, like the cokes, were from the Chinese side of the border and came over on pack trains that were run by Tibetan silver miners who smuggled low grade silver and semi-precious stones into Nepal on the old trade route through the mountains. These smugglers were a fierce looking bunch with ragged scars running down their cheeks and filthy yak skin vests and hats. We would eventually run into one of the frequent pack trains they walked beside and when they passed I would make sure that everyone got well out of their way.

Christian came over and squatted beside me and said, “That wasn’t so bad. Will it all be pretty much like that?”

“Sure,” I said. “Except we’ll be going downhill next.” I pointed to the trail and he saw that it did, indeed, run over the side of the mountain and begin descending into the next valley. “The way it is, here,” I began, “is that everything moves from west to east. You understand that in the northern hemisphere most rivers run from north to south unless they are in a mountain flood plain or in a tropical tidal pull? Okay, well we are going to move east over each mountain pass and then descend to the bottom of the valley. There we will cross a bridge over a river and do it again. Up and down, up and down until we reach the Dudh Kosi… the Milk River, and then we turn north and follow it until we reach the Solo-Khumbu, the Everest region where the rivers flow from the giant glaciers that surround and separate these mountains. The Dudh Kosi is fed by all these streams that pour off these glaciers and so we have to climb up to the crest of the glacier, cross the stream and then go back down to the river, follow it along for a while and then back up and down again. We do this for about two weeks until we get to Namche Bazaar. I’ve been over all this with you and the map.”

“Well, it doesn’t look anything like it did on the map. I can’t believe how high we climbed today.”

“Christian, we’re only about 8,000 feet. We have to go back down to the Yelong Khola, that means river, at about 5,800 or 5,900 feet and cross that and the Khimti Khola… wait until you see the swinging suspension bridges… and then we get to climb again.”

“How high?”

“Around 7,500 feet in altitude, and it is really brutal. We’ll be at it in the morning after a good night’s sleep and it will be okay. We’ll have lunch at a small lodge at Sangabanda and go on over to Bhandar after lunch. The pass tomorrow will be almost 9,000 feet, so it will be a lot higher than today. But tomorrow you will be in better shape and more accustomed to it, so it will actually be easier.

“How many days will it take to get there?” he asked.

I smiled and looked at him. Then I made an elaborate show of looking at my watch. I looked at him again. “You might want to sit down and rest a while,” I said.

***

Cook served lunch. It was stewed greens of some type with bit of rice and lentil beans. I waited until everyone had been served and taken plenty and then filled my plate. I‘ve been here before. The last time I lost thirty pounds in thirty days and was hungry all the time. I just could not eat enough of the local foods to satisfy the calories I was burning. I squirreled away Snickers and Mars Bars for emergencies. I was aware that the Italian and French expeditions brought mountains of food with them, cooks and bakers and portable ovens and what have you. Every meal has wine and several courses and they pay hugely for this monstrous extravagance. We