Peak (7 page)

"Motorcycle," Sun-jo said.

Zopa shook his head in disgust. "When you go back take a taxi." He reached into a fold in his robe and came out with a roll of rupees as big as his fist.

I didn't think Buddhist monks were even supposed to look at money.

He peeled off half an inch of bills and handed them to Sun-jo.

"What about my motorcycle?" Sun-jo asked.

"If you are lucky," Zopa said, "someone will steal it. Wait for me at the hotel."

The monk turned and walked away. I was relieved about the taxi, but that didn't explain why we had come all the way down to the Indrayani temple. When I asked Sun-jo about it he just shrugged and said that Zopa had his own way of doing things.

Mysterious ways, as it turned out, because when we got back to the hotel, Zopa was already waiting for us in the lobby. I didn't recognize him at first because the orange robe had been replaced by regular street clothes and an expensive-looking pair of sunglasses. The sunglasses made him look like some kind of celebrity, which I suppose he was to the trekkers and climbers gathered around him. It had taken us ten minutes tops to catch a taxi outside of the temple. We drove straight to the hotel, and traffic wasn't any worse than it had been on the motorcycle on the way to the temple. And yet, there was Zopa chatting with the hotel staff and guests as if he had been there all afternoon.

I looked at Sun-jo, expecting him to be as shocked as I was. He wasn't.

"Zopa does things like that," he said.

"How?"

Another shrug, which I learned later was everyone's answer to questions about Zopa.

"You'll get used to it," Sun-jo added, then went over and greeted the vacationing monk.

Now, you're probably wondering why I didn't ask Zopa myself. Believe me I was tempted, but I didn't think he would tell me. Or worse, he might give me some reasonable explanation. It's sort of like asking a magician to tell you how he does a trick. Or asking a tagger how he got those seventeen freight cars painted in a single night. It's all about the mystery. Sometimes it's better not to ask.

Up in the room, Zopa sorted through the gear, putting it in different piles while Sun-jo and I watched. Once in a while he would stop and have me try something on saying, "Fits," or "Doesn't fit."When he was finished there were three piles.

He pointed to one of the piles. "We will take this and trade for things that fit."

My boots, blue snowsuit, and several other items of clothing were in a separate pile with some other stuff. I pointed out that none of the things in that pile fit, either.

"I have another use for it," Zopa said.

I didn't know what that could be, but I didn't pursue it. Instead I pointed to the trade pile, which had several hundred dollars' worth of pitons, cams, ropes, and other expensive equipment.

"This gear is brand-new," I said.

"You won't need it to get up Sagarmatha."

This is what the Nepalese call Everest.

"My dad bought it," I argued. "He might need it."

"Your father told me to make sure that you have everything you need to climb the mountain. How much money do you have?"

I told him, but I didn't mention the credit card Mom had given me. I didn't think she'd be happy about a huge bill for Everest gear.

"It's not enough to get the things you will need," Zopa said. "Hopefully, we will be able to trade all this." He started to gather up the gear from the trade pile.

"Best not to argue," Sun-jo whispered, and he and I helped haul the gear downstairs, where a Toyota truck and driver were waiting for us.

IT TOOK HOURS
to get the replacement gear. In the process I got quite a tour of Kathmandu. It seemed that most of the places Zopa liked to shop were located down dark scary alleys. He was warmly greeted wherever we went, until the bartering started, when he and the proprietor would end up in a shouting match until a bargain was struck.

The most difficult things to find were my boots. I'd try on a pair I liked, tell Zopa they fit great, then he would make me walk, and shake his head.

"Not right," he'd say.

"What do you mean?" I'd insist. "They fit great."

"Too small," he'd say. "But when your toes fall off inside from the swelling and pinching they will fit perfectly."

We finally agreed on a pair that did fit great, but they were pretty battered up on the outside. In fact, all the stuff we bought was banged up.

"I hope this gear wasn't taken from dead climbers," I said offhandedly.

Zopa looked horrified. "Bad luck to use gear of the dead. No, this is from people who come to Kathmandu to climb and decide it is better to stay in bar and drink."

I must have looked horrified myself.

"Don't think ill of them," he said. "They lived."

Zopa also bought a few things for himself and Sun-jo, who I guessed was coming with us to Base Camp by the gear he was getting. Unlike me, he listened carefully to Zopa's opinions and bowed every time the monk gave him something.

It was late when we got back to the hotel. We went up to the room, packed everything, then loaded it into the truck.

"We leave for Tibet tomorrow morning at six," Zopa said.

He and Sun-jo got into the truck and drove away.

TIBET

THE NEXT MORNING
Sun-jo, Zopa, the driver, and two Sherpas were sitting on the tailgate drinking tea. By the look of their disheveled hair and rumpled clothes they must have slept in the truck.

Sun-jo confirmed that they had. "But only for two hours," he said. "We were out getting supplies up until then."

He wasn't kidding. There was so much stuff piled in the bed, I didn't know where we were going to sit.

We squeezed ourselves between the gear along with two Sherpas (brothers, named Yogi and Yash) and left the blue haze of Kathmandu behind us.

WE TOOK OUR TIME,
stopping at Buddhist temples and monasteries along the way, where Zopa picked up boxes of food and supplies. We already had plenty of food and some of the food he was given wasn't going to last very long up on the mountain. I asked about it but got the standard shrug in reply.

Away from the city, Nepal was everything I had imagined it to be. Beautiful valleys, rustic villages, fields tilled by oxen-pulled plows, all against the backdrop of the massive, sparkling Himalayas. I had been up on Mount McKinley and Mount Rainier, but they would be dwarfed by these snow-covered peaks.

We stopped for the night outside a tiny village. Sun-jo and I started to help set up camp, but Zopa waved us off.

"You two go climb." He pointed to a wall about a quarter mile away. "Don't fall. Come down before dark."

He didn't have to tell us twice. We jogged over to the wall. It wasn't a difficult climb, but about halfway up I had to stop to rest and catch my breath. Sun-jo, who had picked a more difficult route, scrambled up the rock like a lizard, smiling as he climbed past, which taught me a couple of things about him. He had much better lung capacity than me—and he was competitive.

Climbers will tell you that the thing they love about climbing is that it's just them against the rock, blah, blah, blah.... That may be true if they are alone on the rock, but put another climber next to them, and the race is on.

I was shocked when he blew by me so effortlessly. I was the kid who was going to climb Everest, and Sun-jo was just along for the ride up to Base Camp. Then I reminded myself that ten days ago I was clinging to a skyscraper a few hundred feet above sea level—not exactly the best training for scaling the highest peak in the world. If I was going to summit I was going to have to do better than watch Sun-jo's butt disappear over the top as I hung below him gasping for breath.

"I think you picked the more difficult way," he said when I finally sat down next to him on the rim. We both knew this wasn't true, but I appreciated his saying it.

We sat on the edge for a while taking in the view. It was too late to climb down before dark, so we decided to rappel to the bottom. Sun-jo offered to let me go first, but I shook my head. First up, first down.

When we got back to camp dinner was ready. Zopa didn't say anything about the climb, but there was a spotting scope set up on a tripod pointed at the wall. He must have watched the whole thing.

The next morning Zopa told us the truck was overloaded and that Sun-jo and I would have to walk with our heavy packs.

"Why did Zopa do that?" Sun-jo complained as we watched the truck drive up the road. "The truck is fine. We haven't picked up more than fifty kilos of supplies."

I shrugged, but I thought I knew the answer. Zopa thought that a hike with a full pack would do me good and didn't want me to walk alone. Sorry, Sun-jo.

The walk was hard, but it was better than bouncing around in the back of a truck, and it gave Sun-jo and me a chance to get to know each other better.

Sun-jo's father didn't want him to become a Sherpa.

"The reason I climb," he had told him, "is so you won't have to."

"Does your mother know you're on your way to Base Camp?"

"No. And she would be very upset if she knew."

Later that day I spilled my guts about climbing the skyscraper, which I immediately regretted. When Sun-jo figured out that I was telling the truth, he stopped in the middle of the road and laughed for at least five minutes. It didn't seem that outrageous to me, but I guess to someone who lives in the shadow of the highest mountain in the world, climbing a skyscraper is pretty lame.

"Does your mother know you are on your way up to Sagarmatha?" he asked.

"I don't think so. And she would murder me and my father if she knew."

We finally caught up to the truck that evening. Zopa suggested we take another climb before we ate, but Sun-jo and I revolted and told him to forget it.

The next day he made us walk again.

HE GAVE US A BREAK
on the fourth day because he wanted us all to cross into Tibet together.

We reached the Friendship Bridge about noon. I suppose if you're crossing south from Tibet into Nepal the name fits. But if you're going north from Nepal into Tibet there's nothing friendly about it.

The Chinese border soldiers were surly, suspicious, and rude. They examined our papers for nearly an hour and peppered us with questions I didn't understand. Zopa handled the answers calmly, but the rest of us were nervous—especially Sun-jo, who had started to sweat even though it was only thirty-five degrees.

"What's the matter with you?" I whispered.

"Nothing," he whispered back. "Chinese."

The soldiers nearly dismantled the truck looking for contraband. They didn't find any, but they did manage to steal some of our stuff in the process. Food mostly. But no one called them on it.

The day before, as we had walked, Sun-jo had given me a short history lesson about Tibet and China. It wasn't pretty. The People's Republic of China invaded Tibet fifty years ago. Since that time over six thousand Buddhist monasteries and shrines have been destroyed and hundreds of thousands of Tibetans have been killed or jailed.

Which brings me to that boulder in the middle of the road the prisoners were cracking into gravel. We passed by it an hour after we got over the Friendship Bridge, which sort of sums up what's happening to the Tibetans.

Or as Zopa put it later that night, "Our brothers in Tibet have been made slaves in their own country."

We stopped at every monastery that hadn't been burned to the ground or dismantled by the Chinese—some of them well out of our way. The monks were grateful for the food, supplies, and gossip Zopa and the Sherpas brought. It was clear that this was one of the half dozen reasons Zopa had for taking me to Base Camp.

Sun-jo and I hiked every day and climbed every evening. By the time we arrived at Base Camp ten days later I was feeling strong. So was Sun-jo.

PEAK EXPERIENCE

WE ARRIVED AT BASE CAMP
just in time to see Josh get into a fistfight with someone. At 18,044 feet, though, it wasn't much of a fight.

An older, red-faced man took a swing, which Josh easily ducked and countered by pushing him in the chest. The man landed on his butt in the snow. After this it was pretty much over except for the shouting.

"I want a full refund!" the man shouted. "If you think I'm going to sit around Base Camp while you and the others climb to glory, you have another thing coming!" (He was obviously one of Josh's clients, and not a very happy one.)

It's hard to get up when you are out of breath, swaddled in down clothes, with crampons strapped to your boots. Josh offered his hand to help him up, but the man slapped it away.

"George, you're in no shape to go any farther up the mountain," Josh said. "You heard what Dr. Krieger said. You have a bad heart, which you should have told me about before you signed up."

"My heart's fine! That witch doctor of yours doesn't know what she's talking about."

A pretty woman stepped up next to Josh. "You have a heart murmur, George," she said with a slight German accent. "Blocked arteries would be my guess. You need to get it looked at as soon as you get off the mountain."

"Well, I'm getting off this stupid mountain today," George wheezed, getting to his feet. "And my first appointment is not going to be with my doctor. It's going to be with my attorney! I'll sue you for everything you have, Josh."

"If you want to sue me for saving your life," Josh said, "go ahead." He turned and started to walk away, then noticed us and stopped.

"Looks like you have an extra climbing permit," Zopa said.

"Two, actually. We had a woman leave two days ago, hacking up her larynx. Apparently I'm responsible because she's threatening to sue me, too."

Josh looked at me. The beard he had cut off for my arraignment was growing back in nicely. "So, how was it?" he asked.

"It was good."

He looked back at Zopa. "Can he make it up the mountain?"