Nepal - From Outsourced director John Jeffcoat
November 28th, 2007
In 1993 I spent a semester abroad in Nepal as part of a Cultural Immersion Program with the School for International Training. I had never spent any time outside of the US other than a summer trip to France with a childhood friend. Aside from the language and the nudity on the beaches, it wasn’t all that different from home. But when I landed in Nepal, riding the bus to our school in Kathmandu, it felt like I had stepped into a different universe. The story I’m going to tell now is about one of the first treks I took in Nepal.
I only chose Nepal because I knew it would be a different experience. I didn’t care about hiking the Himalayas, I never did Outward Bound and didn’t have a clue as to what NOLS or a Nalgene bottle were. I had never owned a fleece or a head lamp (I now own several) and I had no interest in going on a spiritual quest to find myself. I just wanted to experience something different.
“People in Nepal are so friendly.” I expected everyone to act and be the same throughout the whole country. I was wrong. It’s true they’re not as crafty as most New Yorkers but they’re not all wonderfully happy people and once in a while you meet a bad egg, like the guy who stole my camera or the other guy I watched beat a man silly in a parking lot. Then there are the animals, the packs of wild dogs that tried to devour me on several occasions and the killer ants that nearly took me down with their surprise attack, but I’ll save those stories for another time. This one is about my first trek, to Khaptad.
There’s an old Buddhist saying “When you get to the top of a mountain, keep climbing.”
My books lay in a stack on my desk. The Dharma Bums, Snow Leopard, The Innocent Anthropologist, Johnathan Livingston Seagull; all creased from the hours of reading on the bus that would eventually bring us to the foothills of Silghiri. The longing for the peacefulness of the mountains had been planted and now it was time to “get to the top” and “keep on climbing!” as the old Zen Buddhists would say. I was ready for a trek of immense proportions. It’s just that I wasn’t ready for the rain.
My previous experience in camping was being able to clear a flat surface to sleep on underneath a lean-to at the Pound Ridge reservation in New York and finding a safe place to secure the cooler from those nasty raccoons. The car was always parked nearby and was often used when as the sun went down, we’d realize none of us had thought to bring a flashlight or matches.
Here in Nepal, my three companions were fierce and ready for our expedition. They had not only been to NOLS, but Outward Bound as well. They spoke frequently about getting to 21,000 on their next hike and had entire wardrobes made out of fleece and moisture-wicking materials unknown to me. They were the ones who had lent me the required spiritual reading for the trip we were about to embark upon. Their enthusiasm was contagious, adrenalin was pumping with every mention of our adventure! Our minds were ready to be set free!
We were told that on the top of the mountain there was a renowned spiritual saint named Khaptad Swami who had been meditating there for 50 years or so. I had planned to ask him if the Yeti existed.
“Now come on, let’s get to the top!”
“Porters? Baa!”
“We carry our own!
The school had hired porters and insisted that we give them at least some of our loads. I suppose they had gotten in to problems with overzealous students like us in the past.
The day of the trek our slight porter stood there in the rain in his shorts and paper-thin flip-flops as we loaded him up with our gear. The three of us all stood over six feet tall, our porter was a thin man, about 5′2″ and probably weighed in at 110 pounds. He would carry three times what any of us did and never show any sign of strain. Nepalese porters are truly superhuman.
The rain had been coming down all night and we were hoping to get an early start at 8:00AM. Well there it was at 8:00AM. “Paani Parcha” (Rain comes in Nepali).
“Tictcha -Hami Janus” (Oh well. Let’s go!).
Who it was that said it I don’t remember for sure. Maybe it was me, but from that moment on I knew I wouldn’t make it.
