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

kite was nothing more than a supermarket shopping bag. It was the type you find in grocery stores today, a very light thin plastic. How he had come up to be in the valley of the Dudh Kosi River I have no idea, unless it had been brought by a trekker. Once again, it was remarkable how little these people had and how they could find value in the things we commonly discard. Beyond that I had no idea a plastic bag could fly as beautifully as a kite.

We continued up the river and finally found our way into the shadow of the mountain. There, the trail started up. We were at approximately 9,200 feet. For the next 2 ½ hours we walked on an extreme incline, switchback after switchback. To put this journey into perspective it is imperative to note that the women in the town of Josalle and other villages along the river climb up to Namche Bazaar several times each week to go shopping. What made this trip so difficult for us, aside from the fact that we were not able to train at altitude, was the fact that we were not able to train with real mountains. No matter how many times we climbed the stairs at the Citrus Bowl it did not account for much when faced with a climb from 9,200 feet to 11,200 feet in the space of 2 hours.

As I expected, Celine and Esra followed Bim closely for the first half hour. They soon dropped back however, and Christian and Chris and Curtis all stayed with our guide. I had to stop several times because I could not breathe, however about half way to the top my knees began to give me a great deal of trouble. Eventually I had to stop and sit. This was a real problem; not simply a matter of being out of shape or not being used in the altitude. My knees felt as if I had an ice pick jammed between the bones of the joint. After a while I continued climbing, and eventually found myself cresting the ridge that took us into Namche Bazaar. It was an amazing, sweet, relief to be walking on a relatively level surface.

Namche Bazarr is the last outpost. It is nestled in a bowl and surrounded by enormous peaks that exceed 26,000 feet. It is a real village, has electricity, an internet café, a laundromat, numerous restaurants, cafes, shops, wonderful lodges, and is the starting-off point for all expeditions to Mt. Everest. Here, climbers and trekkers from dozens of nations meet, swap gear, replace broken or damaged or lost equipment, tell tales, share aspirations, and weep over fallen comrades. Here you can walk amongst people who only come out of the mountain villages once or twice a year to buy essentials and then bump shoulders with Saudi Princes and members of the British Royal Family. Prince Charles is the commander of the Royal Ghurka Regiment and all Ghurka soldiers and he visited their homeland many years ago. It is really amazing the people who have made the climb to walk these streets shared by Nepali peasants, Tibetan silver traders in their yak fur hats and vicious curved knives, and hikers and climbers from every corner of the globe.

Bim was waiting for us when I finally reached the town square, such as it is. The village is in a bowl and has no square, but it does have a cleared area in the lower part of the bowl that opens into a field where yaks can be staked out and where the outhouses are for the common village. Several streets join and it is here that Bim waited for us to lead the way to the Thamserku View Lodge. My bag was already in a private room that looked out over some of the most majestic mountains in the world. At least that is what I remembered. All I was seeing today was cloud and drizzle.

The most majestic mountains are on the backside of the lodge and cannot be seen from the bottom of the bowl. All of the big mountains, all the giants that threaten 30,000 feet are off to the west and behind the mountain that backs the bowl. Still, 25,000 foot Ama Dablam, 26,000 foot Thamserku and 27,575 foot Lhotse Shar, in fact a whole chain of ri, or mountains run from the valley we had just climbed to Mt. Everest or Sagarmatha in Nepali. Namche, and further above Namche, Kunjung, sit on a mountain that rises between one giant formation and another, so that on one side you have a sheer wall and on the other a backing cliff nearly another mile high, so steep that later, when I took a photo of Namche from the overlook, most people swear that the photo was taken from an airplane. Fundamentally, you have an enormous valley on both sides and the only way into the high country, the highest country, is to climb up out of Namche Bazaar and go over and behind the mountain it sits on, then down into another valley, and from there you can choose your direction. To the north are the big boys and they stand like a picket fence of giants that stretches all the way west to the Hindu Kush and the Khyber Pass. To the east they roll into Bhutan and fade into mountains no higher than the Rockies.

Still, if I had been able to see them I would not have complained about a wall of snow capped peaks that stand 12,000 feet higher than the highest mountain in Colorado, and right out my window. I unpacked as we would be here a few days for the purpose of acclimatization.

I went downstairs and realized I was very hungry. I went into the restaurant. This is a room that is about twenty feet square with a narrow table that formed a U shape around the room. The cooking area occupied the rest