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

“Well, you just be aware that I know what you mean. Okay? So if you feel that way why are you going? Or have our guys treated you that way as well?”

“Oh, no! Our men have been perfect gentlemen. Maybe too perfect for my sister, if you see what I mean. All she has is being pretty. She has no sports, no hobbies, at all. She does not like other women for friends and is used to very much attention. Our men have been very careful to be gentlemen. I think she misses that attention. Or maybe she likes it too much.”

“I understand that,” I said. “But what does that have to do with you going, too?”

“Oh, I have to! I could not leave my sister in a group of men like that all alone!” She shook her head at me. “That would not be proper. No, I have to go along.”

“Okay, that gets me back to my original question. Will you need porters or are your new friends going to provide them?”

“They have told us not to worry about anything; they have a drover… you say, ‘drover’? Yes? They have yaks to carry everything and many people to cook and do everything for them.”

I nodded and turned to Bim who had been waiting patiently the whole time. “Bim, we should leave the day after tomorrow. We will need two porters for our personal gear. One for our kitchen, tents and emergency supplies and whatever Cook needs for his help. We need to be ready to leave after breakfast. The young ladies will not be joining us for Gokyo Ri.”

He nodded and left to make arrangements. He was probably relieved.

“Sensei, please don’t mention what I said to my sister. Please?”

“What, that men are pigs that only want one thing? I suspect she already knows that.” I think she would have smacked me again, but I turned and went back into the kitchen. Buz was telling a story and the whole group was mesmerized and listening to his every word… even Chris seemed to be ignoring a bottle of beer that perched near the edge of the table. I moved it without thinking and he picked it up and drained it without seeming to notice what he was doing.

“…So then we were trying to get enough light, - you know – from candles and flashlights… so that they could sew the finger back on, but we were out in the jungle in the middle of nowhere and barely had a first aid kit…”

I tuned him out. I’d already heard this one. I thought about what Esra had said. Maoist rebels in Solo Khumbu. Crap. I hate guys with machine guns.

***

Bim and two porters were waiting outside our rooms early on Wednesday morning. We quietly went through our morning rituals and packed our gear. I handed my duffle to one of the porters and followed Bim downstairs to the dining room where Cook brought us breakfast. I looked down at the muesli cereal and the tiny omelet and knew I was going to miss the Thamserku View Restaurant. I had eaten my way down one entire side of the menu. Well, there was still one whole side left to go when I got back.

Christian, Curtis and Chris were all quiet. They ate their breakfast and seemed to move with dread. All of the joking, all of the bantering, all of the good-natured jibes had been replaced with a solemn silence. We didn’t say much. We just ate and then gathered our gear.

As we filed out of the Thamserku View Lodge I saw Buz Donahoo standing on the street speaking with a small Nepali woman. I waved at him. He smiled and waved back, then went back to his conversation. As I shuffled past, he said to me, “I’ll see you when you get back,” in his growling voice and I nodded. We kept walking.

Bim led us out of Namche Bazarr on the old spice route around the back side of the mountain. There were spectacular views of the Dudh Kosi valley, but the mountains had already been covered by a layer of clouds that lay like a blanket across the enormous valley. On my previous trip I had taken several wonderful photographs of the Dudh Kosi Valley and the trail we had followed for the previous week. Swinging my camera on to the north I had taken pictures of Mount Everest, Thamserku, and Ama Dablam; the weather on that trip had been spectacular. Today the cloud bank seemed to be hovering around 15,000 feet and slowly sinking. Everything below was laid out clear and beautiful. Everything above simply disappeared. It was disappointing, and I know that Christian and the other fellows were getting tired of seeing nothing but cloud, fog, and drizzle.

We followed Bim closely around the mountain and after a few hours began to climb up to Khumjung. Normally we would bypass this village, however there is a small restaurant there that makes a particularly delicious apple pie and it is worth the extra time it takes for the diversion both as a means of acclimatization and a great piece of pie. We would not be concerned with traveling great distances now. Our concern now was to make certain that we acclimatized correctly and did not push our way into the mountains until our bodies had adapted. Climbing up to Khumjung and eating a piece of pie would help accomplish that.

As we sat in the restaurant Chris asked me, “Sensei, what was all the talk about how hard it is to climb? It isn’t so bad.”

“Well, Chris, if I told you that we’re going to climb from 9,200 feet to 11,300 feet in an hour you would have shrugged it off, maybe said it sounds hard, but still... Let me try and put this into perspective