Trekking in Nepal

 Back in 1994 me and my "Let's teach an aerobics class during lunchtime – it'll be FUN!" friends from JPL decided to go trekking in the Himalayas, and asked me to join them.  Sounds great, but anyone who knows me knows that my body was never genetically engineered for exercise.  The trip would entail hiking up and down the mountains of Nepal where there are no vehicles, no electricity, and no communication with the outside world.  Of particular note to photographers is there would be no place to get / charge batteries and no place to buy film.   (Yes, FILM.  See above about this being 1994.)  So my über-modern Maxxum 9000 stayed home, opting instead for two less power-hungry cameras: The Minolta SR-T 101, which can take pictures with no batteries at all, and the Yashica T4, a lightweight point-and-shoot with Zeiss T* optics.  And lots of Fujicolor color negative film.  I took two lenses for the Minolta – the 28-85, and a 50mm f/1.4 for low light shots.  (As always, click on any image to view larger and sharper.)

One of the children who couldn’t resist trying to play the Xaphoon, which I take with me everywhere.  It's a great way to connect with people in a country where you don't speak the language.  (Notice she’s also in charge of her younger sibling).

Me in trekking mode

To prepare for the trip I had to do some serious physical training for the first time in my life.  I'd put 2 gallons of water in my backpack and run up and down stairs for an hour.  We'd go on day-long hikes up the mountains in the Angeles Crest national forest.  Lots of bike rides and rock climbing.  After 6 months I was in the best physical shape of my life, which was of little comfort given that I still didn't approach the stamina of my friends who needed almost no training at all.  Lesson #1: Life is unfair.

Our trip lasted a total of 3 weeks, which included time in India (with a local family), then on to Katmandu, and then to Pokhara, where the walking part of the trip was to commence.  Pokhara was an interesting city; I never heard so much Bob Marley in my life.  They had planned rolling blackouts because the power plant was too weak, which made for beautiful candle-lit… well, everything.  And all the waiters were perpetually stoned out of their minds.  You hear about studies pegging Denmark as having happy residents; those folks clearly never surveyed Pokhara. 

Pokhara, the land of entropy

Anyway, our goal was to climb to the Annapurna base camp near the base of Mt. Everest in 11 days, at an elevation of 14,000 feet.  (The highest we were able to train for was 10,000 feet.)  Armed with knowledge of symptoms and treatment of altitude sickness, we proceeded carefully.  The other heuristic we employed was "Each must ascend the mountain at his own pace" – wise words for me; as it released me from additional pressure to try to keep up.  

The image that is synonymous with Kathmandu.  I took it just to cover my bases.

A mother and 2 daughters.  The father was not in the picture (literally and figuratively)

Every story you've ever read involving climbing Mt. Everest probably involves Sherpas, a Tibetan caste famous for their mountaineering skills.  To westerners, the name is practically synonymous with the word "porter", meaning the person who carries your bags for you.  So without any high-tech clothing and usually a pair of flip flops on their feet, they would carry between 80-150 pounds up and down the mountains – all day, every day.  You would think they would be in great physical shape with this much exercise; but in fact they age very fast and at the time had an average life expectancy of about 45 years.

Wait, it gets better.  Because of our infinite western wealth we all had the latest high-tech backpacks which were orthopedically sound, designed to distribute most of the weight to your hips and keep it off your spinal cord.  You'd figure we'd use these to actually carry our own stuff up the mountains.  (Nope.)  Anyway, the porters (turns out they weren't of the Sherpa caste after all) we hired to carry our stuff wouldn't have any of that.  They took our very expensive, orthopedically sound backpacks, threw them into some $3 baskets, and then carried the load with the basket hanging off their foreheads!  (Yes, we suggested that they carry the backpack as the backpack was designed to be carried.  That idea fell onto deaf ears.) 

The weight of the objects is transferred to their foreheads – even when the objects being carried are modern, orthopedically-sound backpacks.

The Land

Nepal is a beautiful country.  And proud, as evidenced by their time zone being 15 minutes off from that of their neighbors.  Every mountain is terraced to maximize the yield from dry rice farming.  And all of the kids are put to work, either helping with the harvest or watching their younger siblings.

Because firewood was once the sole source of fuel for the country, deforestation and air pollution ran rampant for many years.  And so for environmental reasons all wood burning was banned, and now the country relies on kerosene for most heating and cooking in the mountains. 

We stayed at what are called "Tea houses" – small youth hostels made of stone which permeate the trekking paths.  For about USD $5 / person you can share a small room with 2 mattresses, and for $5 more you'll get a delicious dish called Dal Bhat, which is essentially rice and lentils, topped by a mysterious kale-like vegetable.  The meal varied as we climbed in elevation, since about 6,500 feet or so white rice doesn't grow well, and so other grains were substituted.   Want to shower?  They give you two buckets – one filled with hot and one with cold water, along with a rag.  Give yourself a sponge bath at the temperature of your choosing.

Silverware is also one of those western luxuries that were hard to find in the mountains.  Everyone ate with their hands, but you have to do it right otherwise the kids laugh at you.  You must only eat with your right hand, as your left hand is reserved for cleaning yourself after defecating.  Now you know.

My favorite thing to do after a long day of climbing up and down mountains (while someone else carried my stuff – I still feel like a spoiled westerner for that) was to sit down and start playing my Xaphoon, a bamboo flute with a reed that sounds two octaves lower than an instrument of its size should sound.  I usually would start by playing some folk tunes I had learned on my way up.  Slowly, almost unnoticeably, I would find myself surrounded by the local children.  All of them quiet, all of them curious, with a look that was half unknowing and half amazement. "What in the world is that?" their expressions conveyed.  Five minutes later, all of the adults were surrounding me too.  All of them had seen bamboo flutes before, but none of them sounded like that!  The kids took turns trying to get a squeak out of the instrument.  I took pictures.  They taught me local songs.  We all bonded without uttering a word of each other's spoken language.  I've said this before – there is no better way to make a connection in any part of the world than by using music.

Me playing the bamboo Xaphoon along the way.

At night the porters would get drunk on Raksi, the local rice wine, and would start to sing and dance.  I would often join them as best I could, to the amusement of my friends, who understood that I wasn't genetically engineered to dance either.  

Tarra, one of our porters in a really great mood after
 drinking Raksi and dancing.

The Culture

Nepal is one of those countries where it’s essential that you ask permission before photographing anyone.  There are many there who subscribe to the theory that taking a picture of someone “steals a little bit of their soul”.  This is the country that taught me how rude it is to shoot candids, and to this day I continue to shy away from it wherever I travel.

If they wave back, you have permission to take their picture.

In my pre-trip research, we had all read that it wasn't uncommon for the porters to start re-negotiating their agreement halfway through the trip, when their negotiating position is strongest.  Sure enough, this happened to us, and even the guy who was in charge of the porters was of little help.  Fortunately one of our group from the U.S. spoke Hindi, and she was able to get everyone to come to an agreement.  She was amazing.  "If I ever start my own company, I'm definitely going to hire you!" I proclaimed.  Years later I actually did start my own company, but she was busy being a mission specialist for the space shuttle and wouldn't have given my company the time of day.

A farmer tends to his fields.

His fields.

Despite my intense training and making it much further up than I expected to, I started to feel the effects of the altitude a day before we were to reach our destination, and decided it was better to stay behind and acclimate while my friends pushed on.  So they got the best pictures that day.  C'est la vie.

And I got this shot.

Wrapping Up

So what did I get out of this experience?  Well, as always with something this intense, I learned something about myself, how far determination can get me, and that I really don't enjoy exercise as much as others possessing a different genetic makeup.  (Galen Rowell, the famous nature photographer who was also an exercise fanatic, would be disappointed with me.)  Also, having experienced such a relatively simple yet harsh lifestyle, you quickly realize just how whiney your friends are when you return - sure, they have a roof over their heads, a heated home, all the clothes and food they could eat, yet they would rather focus their attention on the fact that someone took 9 items into an 8-item checkout line.  

A lightly loaded bus.

I'm glad I had the experience but I would never do it again – in fact, this decision was reinforced when I found myself climbing a huge mountain in China 10 years later. 

Many people who look at this picture think, "Oh, look, how cute, she's smiling!".  Anyone with even a mild background in primate behavior, however, will recognize the threatening signs of eye contact and showing teeth, especially when feeding their young.  Anyone with a photographic background will recognize that this was taken with a wide angle lens, and therefore I had to be really close to take it.  This is another one of those images that demonstrate just how stupid and ignorant the photographer really was. 

Side note: After we returned, everyone pooled together their photos and put together a slide show for our co-workers about the experience.  The presentation was videotaped, the image quality is awful but there’s authentic background music and there’s a lot of impromptu narration by the 7 of us.  The 38-minute video can be seen here: http://bit.ly/2BhNaYn , and it was presented using the slide projector dissolve unit I had designed and programmed back in my engineering days.  You can’t see me in the video because I was behind the camera, but my voice was certainly the loudest.

Outside of the temple are “prayer wheels” which you spin for good luck as you walk by.

The seven of us.

Until next time,

Yours truly, Gary Friedman