Jess stopped, flicked off the straps of her rucksack and lowered it to the ground along with her walking poles. The morning sun was warm on her face and she decided that as well as the trekking jacket she’d removed earlier, she could dispense with the fleece.
The morning had started misty and cool, but within an hour the mist began to dissipate and the temperature rose steadily. Like everyone else, she’d been woken by the cockerel, a shrill crowing that obviated the need for an alarm clock, but had then lain for a while, curled up in her sleeping bag, listening to the sound of people stirring outside, putting off the moment when she would inevitably have to expose herself to the cold morning air.
Her hot-water bottle had some residual warmth so she used its contents to wash her hands and face, and after a quick breakfast of hot tea and porridge, they set off along with some of the other trekkers on the slow climb to Saramlang. As usual, they were overtaken and left bringing up the rear. Before long, they were alone with the mountain views and the sounds of the Himalayas.
“Bistari,” he had said for umpteenth time and she felt as if she was finally becoming acclimatised to the altitude.
“How high are we now?” she asked, without breaking her rhythm, slow though it was.
“I think about 2,700 metres.” A long way from their peak, she thought, but surely by then she’d be a seasoned trekker? “We walk for the whole day and stay in another teahouse tonight. We should be in Langtang by lunch tomorrow.”
“Are we staying in Langtang?” she asked. She couldn’t dispel the fear that, if there had been a landslide there once, there could be another. She knew it was irrational, but what would Peter think if, having lost one daughter in Langtang, another might suffer the same fate? She brushed the thought aside. There is no such thing as fate.
“No. We will carry on. The tourist trail ends there and we go on along the Chumtang mule trail. All the other tourists and trekkers will return the same way.
“Did you and Peter get any further than Langtang?”
“No. We did not know Miss Alisha was alive then.”
It was a sobering thought. So near and yet so far. In the absence of memory or identification, Lisa, just like Leila, may as well have been a stone’s throw away. And if, by some stroke of good fortune, Lisa had been found, Jess wouldn’t be here now and Leila wouldn’t be safe at home. It was too complicated to unravel and consider the possibilities, too disturbing to consider alternative hypotheses. Whatever had happened, had happened, and there could be no regrets.
“Had you been to Chumtang before?”
“No. There is no reason to go there. It is not on the tourist trail. I just went once to find Miss Alisha.”
“And now you’re taking me there to find her again?”
“It is my job,” he smiled at her.
They walked on, the mountains ahead of them, towering and majestic, reaching into the clear blue sky, amidst the constant rush of waterfalls cascading down from their left, disappearing beneath their feet and under the trail on their journey to the river far below. At times, they crossed over the rushing water on handmade bridges built from logs and branches. Sujay stopped and pointed at a giant peak to the north-east.
“Langtang Lirung,” he said. “It is over seven thousand metres.” Its snow-capped peak was visible above layers of thin cloud. She had never seen anything like it before other than in books or on TV, and for once she understood the true meaning of awesome.
By 1 p.m., they had reached the village of Tandhola. There were no teahouses here but Sujay approached one of the small houses adjoining the path and climbed up the stone steps to the open door. Three small children with dirty faces and ragged clothes ran barefoot to meet him and he greeted them fondly. A middle-aged woman emerged from the house, squinting in the sunlight, wiping her hands on a tea towel. She and Sujay talked excitedly for two or three minutes while chickens ran around their feet and a large cow bellowed from the adjacent barn.
“Come!” he called to Jess with a wave. She mounted the steps and the children ran up as if to greet her, but stopped and eyed her with a mixture of curiosity and disdain. “We take some lunch now,” he said and disappeared inside.
Jess followed him into the house. It was dark and it took a moment for her eyes to adjust, but a shaft of light through a roof window revealed a large room with three beds at one end, a pine table and chairs in the middle and large, brightly coloured cushions scattered haphazardly on the floor. An open fire set against one wall was home to several blackened pots and pans, one of them steaming, and next to it stood a rudimentary kitchen cabinet with Formica worktop, on which lay vegetables in various stages of preparation, including a pile of chopped greens that resembled cabbage. And on top of a tall mahogany dresser that seemed incongruous in its surroundings, and which was laden with mismatched crockery, sat a small black and white TV that chattered and squawked, its fuzzy picture swirling with lines of horizontal interference.
“Namaste,” said the woman with a wide grin, her hands pressed together in traditional pose, her parted lips exposing several missing teeth.
“Namaste,” Jess reciprocated. The woman wore a bright red cardigan with yellow hoops over a buttoned-up grey shirt, a heavy dark blue skirt that almost reached the ground, heavy striped socks and battered plastic sandals. Her black hair was tied back in a knot and her skin was brown and gnarled. Jess thought she looked in her fifties but then realised with shock that unless she was the childrens’ grandmother, she could be no more than thirty-five.
“Please, sit down,” said Sujay, and the woman returned to her stove. Jess dropped her rucksack and sat on a chair, noticing the children standing in the doorway were watching her studiously. She smiled at them but getting no response, foraged in the top of her rucksack and brought out a packet of boiled sweets. The kids’ eyes lit up and they ran over, plunged a hand in turn into the bag and ran outside squealing with delight. She looked up at Sujay who was watching her.
“Sorry,” she said, “excess weight.” But it made him laugh and she laughed with him.
They feasted on stir-fried vegetables, rice, chapattis and tea, although the woman declined to join them, continuing to chop and cook, attend to her stove and bring them plate after plate of steaming food whilst maintaining, without drawing breath it seemed, her interminable dialogue with Sujay.
When they’d eaten all they could, Sujay got up abruptly.
“Time to go.”
“What about clearing up?” she asked, her housekeeping instincts kicking in.
“No. She will do that.” But Jess felt uncomfortable.
“Can I give her something?”
“Yes. You can give her.” She got her purse from her rucksack and pulled out a ten dollar note.
“Is this okay?” she asked him, looking for guidance.
“It is too much. Two dollars will be enough. If you give her ten dollars, then every time I bring people here she will expect ten dollars.” Jess understood the logic but shook her head in dismay. Two dollars for a three-course lunch for two was an insult, she thought. She had to believe he knew best, but it didn’t make her feel any better. She wandered over to the woman who put her hands together again and smiled at her expectantly.
“What’s ‘thank you’?” she called.
“Dhanyavada,” he said.
Jess put her hands together. “Dhanyavada,” she repeated and took the woman’s hands, thrusting two dollars into it.
“Dhanyavada,” said the woman and stepped back, clearly happy with her pittance. Jess turned and saw the kids were back. She fished out a handful of sweets from her bag. The children stepped forward, hands raised, and she dropped three of the paper-wrapped sweets into each. They beamed and ran off into the sunshine, shouting and laughing.
They marched on into the afternoon sun stopping only to drink from their water bottles, the colour of the mountains changing gradually from green and yellow to a rich, dark ochre in the fading light.
“How much time do you spend away from your family?” she asked him at one point.
“Maybe two weeks or three weeks. It depends on the group I am taking. Then I have one or two days at home before I go off again.”
“You must miss them,” she said, knowing herself how it felt to miss the girls.
“Yes, of course. But I must work.”
“Does your wife work?”
“She does some laundry and cleaning, but mostly she looks after our children.”
“Must be very hard for you.”
“No,” he said without rancour. “It’s what we have to do.”
“Where did you meet your wife?” she asked, curious to understand the path of true love in Nepal.
“She was given to me. It was an arranged marriage.” Jess sighed, but mainly at her own ignorance. She’d been in Nepal only a couple of days and had already learnt a lot about their way of life, their attitudes, their hospitality, their faith, their work ethic and their poverty. She wished she could live up to their example.
“But you do love her?”
“Of course!”
***
She lay in her sleeping bag in her room in the teahouse at Saramlang, hot-water bottle at her feet, the bag pulled over her head, still wearing her thermal hat.
Her head was thumping. By mid-afternoon they’d reached 3,400 metres when the headache had started. She’d tried to ignore it, but it wouldn’t go away and got worse as they climbed higher until it felt like a sledgehammer pounding her skull.
Sujay gave her a maximum strength ibuprofen but it did little more than take the edge off the pain. To make matters worse, she felt vaguely nauseous and didn’t want to eat anything for supper, but Sujay insisted she try some plain boiled rice and she did her best to get it down. He convinced her that she needed the energy but she was beaten by the smell of fried eggs and dal bhat in the busy canteen and begged to be allowed an early night.
In the circumstances, she had neither the will nor the energy to take a shower. Instead, she had another pill and a cup of sweet lemon and ginger tea and climbed into her bed, praying the discomfort would soon go away. At this moment, in this place, she thought, personal hygiene was of little consequence to her or anyone else.
She was much better the next day, although she felt as if she had a hangover and approached the day’s climb with some trepidation.
“Today we climb to 3,700 metres, then back down to 3,500 metres,” he said to her over a breakfast she didn’t want. He tried to encourage her. “You must eat some porridge.” She knew it was for her own good, but it looked like gruel and had the texture of lumpy wallpaper paste. But she forced it down and to her relief, it stayed down.
The weather was fine and sunny when they set off though the temperature was just a few degrees above freezing, and she remained wrapped up in her warm clothing until around 10 a.m. when she could start divesting herself of some of the outer layers.
She said little on the way up the trail, concentrating on her breathing, refraining from overexertion, desperately hoping the nausea and headache would remain at bay. They did.
They stopped and sat on a boulder and she drank the previously boiled water from her bottle.
“Yuck!” she grimaced. “Why can’t we just drink the water from all these springs and waterfalls? It’s everywhere.” She gestured around her at the fast-flowing water, crystal clear and cold as ice.
“It might be okay, but might not,” he said. “You cannot take the risk. We have our own special bacteria here in Nepal that your English stomach will probably not like. So you have to drink the boiled water.” She nodded. She knew he was right, of course; she just felt like moaning. She was tired, her legs ached and her head was thick, but she was thankful the nausea was gone.
“How much further?” she said, taking another swig.
“Thirty minutes.” Everything in Nepal is thirty minutes away!
“Are you sure?”
He grinned, rocking one hand from side to side. “Thirty minutes-ish.”
It was forty-five. And then she was there. On that ridge. Looking down as Peter had, broken and defeated, as perhaps Lisa had in her battered state, broken and bloodied, but alive. Looking down on the desolation of Langtang.
“Jess, I think we must be going now!”