We were a half hour from New Delhi when we saw it. A jagged white wall rising over the mosaic of dun colored farmland to a height almost level with our jet. For long stretches the mountains were equally high. Then a peak would break for the heavens leaving everything else below it. One of these was Mount Everest. Another, Kanchenjunga, the third tallest mountain in the world.
Since 1975 Sikkim has been part of India, a tiny Bhuddist enclave of some 600,000 souls tucked between Bhutan, Tibet and Nepal. I have a memory of its king marrying a young American woman in a fairytale wedding. But that was long ago. The king is dead, his queen has moved to New York and their daughter leads trekking expeditions back home. As does the American adventure tour operator Geographic Expeditions, with whom I was embarking on their "Kanchenjunga Trek."
It was dark when we pulled into Gangtok, the capitol of Sikkim. We'd spent five hours dodging trucks made up like Christmas but with murder on their minds. Driving in the center of the two lane road to avoid 3 wheel auto-rickshaws, sacred cows and men carrying entire farms on their heads, they took dead aim at us and bore down with horns blasting. Every time I reopened my eyes they'd missed.
Gangtok was hundreds of highrises plastered against the side of a mountain, each containing as many tiny shops as could squeeze between their walls. Food, clothing, housewares, jewelry, all the necessities of life were pored over by Indian women in brilliant saris, Tibetan monks in deep brown robes, Nepalese and Sikkimese who haggled over every rupee. Roads were rutted and buildings crumbling but Gangtok was bursting with life.
There were 3 women and 3 men on our trek, most straddling retirement age. Manoj Sharma, our leader, a 34 year old Delhi native, brimmed with enthusiasm and good cheer. In Gangtok he saw to the formalities at the Tashi Delek, a third world hotel with first world pretensions. In my room a questionnaire asked, "Did you receive promptly your rooms service?"
Our visit to the Rumtek Buddhist monastery was a colorful introduction to Sikkimese culture, but frankly I was worried. Unlike the others I'd never hiked above 12,000 feet or slept in a tent where the description warned ominously, "It will be cold."
The road from Gangtok followed a gorge where lush green cliffs dropped to a twisting river, rice paddies terraced the hills and small farmhouses had million dollar views. Our young driver, Umesh Tamang, negotiated the hairpin curves as if he were immortal. We spiraled upward past bush-high marigolds and tree-size poinsettias until, cresting a ridge, we saw a snow-white, snow-bright peak blazing against the sky. Then we dipped down and it was gone.
Next morning we set off on an 8 mile, 6 hour hike through dense moss-laden vegetation. "A steady increase in altitude makes the first day's hike a tough one," promised our itinerary. "Namaste," called children clutching school notebooks as we passed our first tiny hamlet. "Namaste," we replied, the traditional Nepalese greeting used throughout the mountain states. In a yard a woman laughed with her neighbor. "Can you believe they pay to do this?" I imagined her saying.
"The steep climb is at the end of the trail," Manoj had told us. Oh really? Very soon we were mounting a path that seemed pretty steep to me. Then I overtook a woman in a faded sari bent under a huge basket supported by a thong looped around her forehead. Glancing without expression at my hiking getup she plodded stoically on.
Though we were already quite high, the trees hugging the trail were draped with skeins of lacy moss. As for the the pace, it was much slower than on the hikes I was used to. So I forged ahead and soon approached a young woman coming down using ski poles as walking sticks. "No snow?" I joked. "Plenty," she replied, not joking. "Really?" By now I'd zipped off the legs of my convertible pants and was sweating in shorts and a t-shirt. "Where?" "Around 12,000 feet the trail's covered," she said. "Hmm," I thought, "hmm."
"How do you like trekking?" asked Nancy from Wichita. "It's like hiking," I said. "Except," she replied, "that your gear is carried. You go places you can only hike to but you don't have to backpack. It becomes addictive."
"Do you still find trekking addictive?" I asked her an hour later on a steep, rocky incline. "Oh," she sighed. "When I'm climbing sometimes I think, 'Why am I doing this? Dumb, dumb, dumb.' But then there are these gorgeous views..." She would have continued but she was out of breath.
Around 11,500 feet I started stumbling. Puffing and panting I saw coming toward me a woman wearing a stylish wide-brimmed hat. Fresh and energetic she smiled and said, "It's a beautiful trek. The lookout at 15,000 feet is splendid." "Marry me," I wanted to say, "and I'll change direction and go with you." Instead I watched her shimmer out of sight, cursed my luck and lurched on.
At 2 o'clock I arrived at our campsite, a broad meadow where the kings of Sikkim had pastured their yaks long ago. I lay on the soft ground and basked in the warmth of the sun, alone on top of the world. Until the late afternoon when our porters arrived. Young and friendly, they carried huge loads of pots and pans, chairs and tables, food and supplies up tortuous trails. Soon after, the "dzos," great docile beasts with fearsomely sharp horns, lumbered in. They lugged even more stupifying loads, picking their way over rocks and roots slowly but steadily from site to site. Wearing bells around
their necks, at night they created beautiful music.
By evening the temperature had dropped sharply and shorts and t-shirts had given way to gortex and down. It was a gang of Pilsbury doughboys that gathered around the table in the dining tent when dinner was served at 7.
Next morning I crunched across frost-rimmed meadow grass. Skies that had been clouded the evening before shone with the clarity of crystal above razor-sharp mountains. "Our red blood cells are saying, "What's going on?'" said Priscilla, a professor of pharmacology at Yale. "They're mutiplying like crazy so they can supply us with oxygen."
After breakfast we climbed above the meadow to Dzongri Pass at 13,900 feet, a good place for an hour of acclimatization. Around us fluttered brightly colored Bhuddist prayer flags strung from pole to pole. For a moment we caught a glimpse of Tenzing Gang, a mountain
named for the first Sherpa climber of Everest, but the mist had rolled in and Kanchenjunga was nowhere in sight.
The trek gave time to wander into the acres of rhododendrons and azaleas that matted the hillsides. "We burn the azaleas for incense," said Naseem, our Nepalese mountain guide. "In April the azaleas are white, the rhododendrons red and pink. It is very beautiful." In the morning it had been winter in camp. Under the sun on a
high tufted hill it was late spring. In the distance a wind
chime sang softly, the bells of a pack animal. Just ahead the lower peaks were sprinkled with snow. Over them hung the magnificent amphitheater of the Himalayas.
"Is this where we're setting up camp?" I asked as we arrived at a small lake on a plateau covered with snow. "Look at that!" exclaimed Nancy as Mount Pandim appeared in the mist. "It looks like it's going to fall on us," Priscilla said. While we sat on folding chairs drinking hot Tang the porters set up our tents in the snow. Where there was sky it was robin's egg blue. The rest was a scrim of mist that a celestial stagehand parted to give us breath-taking glimpses of crags and glaciers and wind-swept mountain tops.
In a tumbledown shed we could hear our young Tibetan chef chopping away at supper. Somehow for 3 meals a day he kept several ancient pots boiling simultaneously over portable stoves and provided us with delicious multi-course feasts. Never before had I asked for seconds of cauliflower.
Well fed and weary we were in bed soon after dinner. But not until I had punched the frozen snow under the tent floor in a vain attempt to level it out. When necessary we used flashlights to avoid dzo droppings on our way to the toilet tents. Enclosing a small trench dug in the ground they were a test of leg muscles I can tell you. I wondered out loud how little old ladies managed. "Simple," said Nancy. "They miss."
Next morning we were to trek to over 15,000 feet for the best views of Kanchenjunga. The trouble was, Kanchenjunga still couldn't be seen. In the afternoon it began to snow, the clouds descended and looked as if they had come to stay. The plan was that if the weather cleared we'd be
awakened at 5. If not we'd have breakfast at 7 and begin our return trek, verifying what I'd suspected all along.
Kanchenjunga didn't exist.
At 4 AM I lay awake in my tent, bitterly disappointed. I was certain I could hear snow falling on the canvas. After all that work, and believe me trekking is work, I wasn't going to get the big payoff. So there I lay in self-inflicted misery, having figured it all out. Though every single day had started bright and sunny, today would be the exception. And then, at 5 o'clock, I heard a soft, "Good morning." I unzipped the tent, looked out and saw a heaven-full of constellations printed on a sky just beginning to glow.
Too excited to wait, I started alone on the path to the viewpoint. Just past the lake a foothill rose to a long high ridge. Beyond it the tips of the highest peaks were stenciled bright by the still hidden sun. Giving into temptation, I cut off the trail and started scrambling up, using frozen tufts of vegetation as footholds and grabbing at tough azalea roots and boulders for support. Soon I realized that the hill was steeper, the climb higher and I more foolish than I'd thought.
Two thirds of the way up the altitude kicked in. More and more often I had to stop, gasping in a desparate effort to get oxygen. Finally I reached the top and sat on the crusty snow, one leg hanging over the valley on the left, the other the valley on the right. Slowly and carefully I walked the ridge, sinking at times to my hips, until I saw dots in the distance and joined the group at the viewpoint. There Kanchenjunga was at last, the reason we'd signed on and the reason we'd come, its five individual peaks lit like tongues of fire.
"Wasn't that the most beautiful thing you've ever seen?" said Nancy when we were back at camp warming our insides with some liquid refreshment.
"Well, Taskmaster," said Malcolm, "what torture are you going to put us through next?"
"Aren't you the one who loves planning for the trek and then remembering it when it's over?" asked Manoj.
"Yes," said Malcolm. "Then I forget how hard it was and sign up for another one."
"360 degrees," continued Nancy who would not be disenchanted. "I've never seen anything like it." She had it right. We were thrilled.
For the first few days of the trek the mountains had toyed with us. On the return they were no longer shy. Each morning when we woke they shone like beacons. But every day as we continued our descent they slipped further away until finally, one morning, they were gone.
A couple of days later, or was it a lifetime?, we were in Darjeeling, sipping tea on the terrace of the Hotel Windamere. Far, far off we could see Kanchenjunga and Mount Pandim dominating the skyline. The other guests were properly impressed, but for us the impact was personal. We had slept at the foot of those peaks. Our mountains were with us forever.
GEOGRAPHIC EXPEDITIONS was founded in 1981 with an emphasis on specialized travel in Central Asia. They now cover the globe with highly imaginative, extremely well run tours and customized itineraries at reasonable prices. With an emphasis on outdoor programs in spectacular locations, their trips range from easy to rigorous. For information contact them at 800 777-8183 or 415 922-0448. Website: www.geoex.com. E-mail: info@geoex.com.
GETTING THERE: Many international airlines fly to New Delhi with a connection in an intermediary city. Only Air India, 212 751-6200, offers service without a change of airplane on certain flights that stop in London. It is wise to arrive early since Air India overbooks and bumps confirmed passengers when the plane is full.
Delta Airlines, 800 241-4141, flies to New Delhi, changing planes in Paris or Zurich.
WHERE TO STAY IN NEW DELHI: If possible participants should arrive at least a day or two early to adjust to the time change. I stayed in two of the finest hotels in New Delhi and highly recommend them both.
THE HYATT RECENCY, 800 633-7313, is grand and opulent with dazzling public spaces and spacious rooms. Its Indian, Thai and Italian restaurants are among the best in Delhi. Website:www.hyatt.com.
THE OBEROI is elegant and intimate with special emphasis on customer service and satisfaction. It too has gourmet dining. Call Leading Hotels of the World at 212 838-7874. Website: www.oberoihotels.com. Both hotels have huge swimming pools, quiet gardens and excellent shops selling fine Indian products.
TRIP PREPARATION: Geographic Expeditions provides a complete package of information and recommendations concerning clothing, visa and passport requirements, transportation, etc. Also included in the fee is an equally comprehensive medical and evacuation insurance policy. I brought convertible pants by EX OFFICIO, 800 644-7303. When the weather warmed up the legs zipped off. Highly recommended.
HEALTH CONCERNS: Geographic Expeditions also gives details about necessary innoculations and malaria medication. Precautions about what and what not to eat and drink must be rigourously observed. The author was careless and suffered the consequences.
INDIAN TOURIST OFFICES: New York, 212 582-3274. Los Angeles, 213 582-6611. Toronto, 416 962-3787. Website: www.tourindia.com.
