Over In Asia

After Bupsa, on day 6, we ascended further still to Kari La Pass where now we had our first glimpse at the high peaks, and high they were! It took a few minutes to comprehend how high that was. They rose to another planet and showed the signs of a different world. We were on hospitable Earth, and they were on Icy Mars. And we were going to Mars, we were walking there. We enjoyed them for a half hour; a half hour I insisted we’d take to let the heights register in my coastal brain. Then we descended for the first time in a couple of days over the muckiest trails yet. They were mucky with mud and leaf litter and mule dung. I tucked my pants into my socks and accepted my fate. John Krakauer was right, “the way to Everest is not a yellow brick road.” After an hour or two of walking in wet mule droppings you tend to forget what you’re walking in. You elect to think about something else. Each step I sunk into the muck up to my ankles, and then to my shins. The balls of my feet cramped up; they weren’t used to slipping around so much inside my boots. Blisters in the form of hot spots soon followed. My socks were coated with a black and brown film that also coated my boots and my pants. There was no way of telling I was wearing clothes beneath my knees. I prayed for the trail to dry up. Eventually, it did dry up and we made it to the tiny village of Surkey, which sat at the bottom of a steep valley that had been scene to landslides from the 2015 earthquake. All around were signs of the slides that had no doubt wreaked havoc on the village. They scarred the valley walls with slashes of grey rock and dust. Anything in their path would have been destroyed, buried, obliterated. I took my boots off to let them dry, but the smell they’d soaked in all day was now a part of my life. It followed me into my dreams even. As I was waiting just outside the teahouse, reading a book on a long stone slab that acted as a retaining wall, a pack of mules made their way by. This was a common occurrence along the trail below tree line. The number of mules I’d seen over the past week numbered in the hundreds. But this group was different. One by one, heads down, they trod forward, oblivious, focusing on their next step and the mule directly in front of them. Over the years they’ve stopped caring much about their beautiful surroundings. They’re pushed forward by irate, stick wielding villagers and don’t seem to mind. If they stop, they understand they’ll either be screamed at or whacked with the bamboo stick, so they don’t. Such is the life of a Nepalese pack animal. I don’t make the rules. Which is why this particular event was somewhat peculiar, even alarming. For some odd reason, maybe because I was bored of waiting for my boots to dry or had reached a lull in the book I was reading, I started counting the mules as they passed, one tethered to the next and so on down the line. I guess I was curious how many there were. To this day I don’t know why that was the case. By and by, I counted 60, and 59 of them behaved just as they were told, as usual, and walked ahead. It was the one that didn’t behave that way that alarmed me, and only because I was counting. He was the 13th mule. As he walked by, he paused, straightened up, and turned his head, slowly, directly acknowledging me. We made eye contact. It was only for a moment, but a moment long enough for him to stand still and stare eerily into my soul until the slack in the line before him went taught again from the other pulling mules. He had a scar under his left eye. It sent shivers down my spine. A second or two was enough to do it, to elicit the fear of God. The rest of the mules after him walked straight, heads down just like the rest. That night I slept anxiously. What did that look mean? What was he warning me of? It meant turn around, get out, get away; it must have, it must have! The coming monsoon? The altitude? The landslides? Yes, the landslides! Of course! Praying not to hear a rumble, I didn’t sleep a wink. I counted the minutes until the morning when I’d climb out of the unstable valley and be rid of whatever voodoo that had been cast upon me by that heathen spirit, the 13th mule! When dawn came on day 7, Pancha and I packed our things as fast as possible and climbed out of the valley, safe at last. I guess the 13th mule was full of it. He’d ruined my night for nothing. A few hours later we linked up with the main EBC trail just up from the valley via a network of switchbacks. After a week of hiking alone through hillside villages, river valleys, and forests, we now hiked with westerners flown into Lukla airstrip. I could tell they were raw; many suffering already from the elevation and difficult terrain. It would take them time to adjust. Just then Pancha received bad news. There had been an accident on the road from Kathmandu to Phaplu the previous day. Seven people had died. They’d been on the same road we’d been on just a week before. They’d been in a jeep too. The same one? Maybe the 13th mule wasn’t full of it after all. In fact, maybe he was lucky number 13, signaling to us our good fortune at the same moment, perhaps, that the jeep careened off the cliff. The irony was obvious. Here I had avoided flying into Lukla airstrip for fear of an accident by plane and the accident I’d feared happened by jeep, on the same road I’d chosen to avoid accidents. Just after we’d received the news of those unfortunate adventurers, we reached Phakding, where we’d stay the night and be sheltered from the elements. We’d reached the village just in time - by good fortune again, or by the grace of God - because a minute after we were under a roof it began to hail, passionately. It had done the same just after arriving in Surkey the night before. I was beginning to think we were being looked out for, but by who or what I didn’t know; all I knew is that I was happy we’d stopped at the monastery.