Today we were finally determined to get to our destination, Api base camp, after four days of walking. No great achievement in terms of speed; the generally accepted time-frame is two days, but that would be the young and fit, who walk all the hours of daylight, and at a greater, steadier pace; I still have to stop for breath when we have the longer climbs, and my back, shoulders and neck still go into regular spasm. Not, I hasten to add, that I am the only drag on our progress. Both Usha and Aparna also hold us back at times; only Val seems to manage a steadier pace, and she puts a lot of that down to the pilates regime she has been embarking upon for the last two or three months.
But none of us are a match for any of the local mountain people, who tackle it all at astonishing speed. The other day, when we were reckoning we had a good two days to go, we met a couple of guys who were on their way down, and they had taken two hours that morning. And I think it might have been later on our trek that we encountered a young mother, astonishingly pretty, wearing flip-flops, with two young children in tow, all of them dressed up and on their way to a birthday party. She was also carrying a large shopping bag, and they all shot past us at a quite remarkable speed.
Chapattis again for breakfast, this time with peanut butter as well as jam (Aparna has brought a very heavy shopping bag of food, which Bharat was carrying separately, unti Vl suggested it be stuffed into the top of our big rucksack. He is still carrying it, of course, but slightly more easily.
Our journey at last was mostly uphill – we had some height to achieve, with base camp at just about 4000 metres. But there was also – blessed relief! – a certain amount of almost flat walking, for just about the first time, through some woods, across a meadow. There was also going to be a lunch break at Dhaule Dar, the village below base camp, but when we arrived we found it to be deserted, almost Marie Celeste-like. Nothing too permanent; it is still the festival of Dashain, and this was one of the most important days, so the whole village had decamped somewhere for some sort of big celebration – booze, we were told, and dancing, and most important meat (a relatively rare treat for most.) So we made do with cheese and crackers; for Val and me, more of a relief than otherwise. And then on, and up, a hefty climb for the final stretch – base camp was about two hours away, we were told.
But we are probably, at last, getting a bit fitter, and once again it was Val and I who arrived first at our final destination, and only after about an hour and a half. Along the way, we had a pair of dogs with us; not just Tommy, but another guy as well. For a while, there was some confusion as to who he belonged to and where he came from, but eventually we were able to discover that he was a trail dog, who spent his entire time following groups of trekkers from Siti, a long way back on the trail, all the way to base camp and then back again, mostly because he was fed biscuits, but also because he managed to get some affectionate treatment (as opposed to being kicked, slapped, etc, which was the sort of treatment he received in the various farmsteads.) He did like to have his ears scratched (and both Val and I liked to do it.) And since he didn’t appear to have a name, we gave him one: Dog.
There was another dog there too, a puppy called Tiger. We were convinced he was a relative of Dog, since he was the spitting image, only smaller, but we were told otherwise. He was, like most puppies, quite a handful, and Bharat frequently had to pick him up by the scruff of his neck and deposit him elsewhere, to save him chewing our pack straps, our trousers, Val’s leg…
I had had vague hopes at one stage that Base camp would prove to be a bit livelier, but no such luck – it was a pretty bleak place, just the one small building, and normally locked-up. A guy had walked up from Dhaule Dar with us, and we discovered that he was to be our hotel-keeper cum chef; by the time we arrived, he had already lit two fires: a small one just outside. Pretty feeble, if the truth by told, and desperately smoky. And another in the tiny kitchen.
The group of us left him to his preparations, and walked up to the sign-board just another hundred yards or so further on, in order to take the required pictures. But actually we had come up for the view, and this evening they were pretty feeble, as the clouds and mist had rolled in, which also made us all pretty cold.
There was some confusion as to who would sleep where. I had assumed there was just the one room for us all once again, but there was another, smaller one, tucked away. Aparna suggested we take that one, but by that time, Val and I had already arranged a bed for me, with the assumption that she would share with the other girls, but then they took the small room. And so, for the first time, I would be sleeping on my own. Not the greatest in terms of keeping warm, for it was bitterly cold.
We ate a pretty miserable dinner, then went to bed. The nights are very long, for there is nothing to do once dinner is done; it nearly always means waking in the middle of the night. And on this occasion, Val’s middle of the night was particularly disturbed, for Tiger the puppy had found his way in, first tearing up some of the straw mat she was lying on, then licking her face. She somehow had to chase him out in the dark (at which point he went and attacked Usha instead.)
