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“Hey Chris, do you fancy
climbing to Everest base camp?” Was a question that I was asked in May 2009.
The request may have sounded ridiculous to the people around me at the time,
however being the kind of person who isn't afraid to accept a challenge, I replied with a confident,
“That sounds like a great plan.” I had already planned on visiting Nepal in
the summer to teach English to Tibetan monks in July/August. So Sam, the man
who I would be climbing to base camp with, and I agreed to fly out to Nepal the
moment July began.
I would consider myself a fit
and healthy person as running, cycling, swimming, and climbing (rocks as well
as the stairs) are some of my pastimes; so I thought that I would be in good
shape to ascend all the way up to Mount Everest base camp at 18,500 feet. The
journey ahead of me was one of the most challenging and enduring ones I had
ever undertaken; it was also one of the most exciting!
Mount Everest base camp is the
point at which climbers camp for two weeks before they attempt the true
challenge of making it to the top of the highest peak in the world. However, a
permit to climb to the top costs around $50,000, so I thought that base camp
was good enough.
Although Sam and I started as
just the two of us, without any Sherpas (people to help carry our bags) or
Himalayan guides, within a matter of four days, we had assembled a group of
seven. This is when I first realized how quickly you could make friends in a
country where English isn't the first language. Our group consisted of two
teachers, including myself, a man from London who worked in politics, two law
students from Texas and another American who was working with foreign relations in Nepal.
‘What do we have in common?
What can we talk about?’ Would normally be running through my mind, but our
similarities quickly became clear when I stepped back and realised that we were
all into adventuring, visiting foreign countries and general fitness.
This may
not sound like much, but it was something to work with and we completed the
journey together, as a group of friends yet a week earlier, we wouldn't have
even recognised each other. The air was much less dense than at the altitude we
are used to living at. We had fifty percent less
oxygen, hence why we needed to have a high standard of physical fitness.
But we
made it, with the help of a few cans of beer as you may have noticed from the
epic
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picture
of Guy, Doug and me with the Khumbu Glacier idyllically creating a
backdrop to the end of such an epic adventure.
The next day we climbed up
another one thousand feet in order to catch a glimpse of the top of Mount
Everest itself. We were walking from five o'clock in the morning in sub zero
temperatures yet when the clouds swept back, the greatest peak in the world was
spectacularly unveiled.
For the next three days, we
descended back to Lukla airfield, which you may have heard of as it appeared on
‘the 10 most dangerous airports’ on channel five a couple of months back.
During this time, I had the opportunity to reflect on how we had spent the past
nine days. We had seen yaks carrying larger groups' supplies, monks painting
Tibetan prayers on boulders the size of cars, and met people, entire families
who never leave their village during their entire life. They never see what the
world is like below ten thousand feet.
The trip hadn't finished yet
though. I arrived back in Kathmandu where I spent the next week learning to
speak Nepalese, the culture and eventually teaching some monks in a monastery
on the outskirts of the city. I was in a group of six, five women and I – I
know, a tough job but someone had to step up! Two of which were helping out at
a hospital in a town that was separated by one of the most dangerous roads in
the world. Upon hearing this, I asked Sahana, a head of mathematics from London
whom I would be working with in the Monastery, if she would like to meet the
two working in the hospital. She agreed and suggested that we take a bus that
would take eight hours to get there along the treacherous roads. I asked if she
would prefer doing this by renting a motorbike, to which she agreed. Initially
this sounded like a quick visit to another town, but the biking trip was a
fantastic experience.
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We spent eight hours,
cruising through spectacular Nepalese valleys and countryside, zigzagging
through towns and sweeping round mountain corners that had no safety barriers.
When we reached the town that we had set out for, we ended up going out up a
nearby hill and spent sunset rowing out on the nearby lake accompanied with cocktails.
After this, Sahana and I
returned to Kathmandu to spend a week living and working in a monastery teaching
the monks their third language, as they were already
fluent in Nepalese and Tibetan. Nepal can be described as a developing country
as was noticed by the cramped and minimal conditions in which the people of
Kathmandu lived. However, in the five-storied monastery, each floor was
constructed with marble, the banisters plated with gold and we were being fed
good-sized meals three times a day. It was very interesting to see how great a
change in lifestyle could come from making a decision so early in life, as many
of the monks hadn't reached their teenage years.
We taught three classes of
monks in one small room where we were given one book in which to teach them
from, but thankfully beforehand we had gathered what resources we could from a
local market. By this I mean we bought pens, cello tape and paper. This may not
sound like much, but with a bit of creativity and imagination, it's amazing how
much you can create from so little. It gave us the ability to make word
association games and labelling games taking us outside. Competition was
brought in by creating teams and also being able to create clock faces and
pointers so they could demonstrate their ability to tell the time both verbally
and practically.
After this we headed back for
a group trip where all six of us were regrouped and taken on our final activity
where in the morning was bathing with some elephants and in the afternoon being
taken for a safari on their backs. But this safari was like no other the moment
we entered some grassy plains and straight into the territory of two Bengal
tigers. We never saw them, but we certainly heard them. Unfortunately our
elephant ‘pilot’ thought it was best to chase after these sounds rather than
away from them as he was hoping for a better look. There were ten elephants in
the safari and thankfully they must have scared the tigers off, as although
they could easily take an elephant by themselves, they couldn't take on ten of
them at once. That got the adrenaline pumping! Afterwards we carried on through
a jungle where we saw some deer – and more excitingly, some rhinoceros. During
the rest of my time in Nepal, we visited some ancient towns and ventured up to
other monasteries overlooking Nepal's capital.
Remember, all I had intended
to do during this trip was to climb a big hill and teach some monks. But thanks
to the amount of people I met during this five-week period and the
opportunities that arose due to this, I was able to experience things I had
never imagined only a matter of weeks ago. From this experience, I learnt that
firstly, when asked if you would like to do something that is out of your
comfort zone, don't hesitate in accepting! Secondly, when you have taken on
such a challenge and opportunities arise that you hadn't thought possible –
take them on. Just talk to people you wouldn't have thought you could talk to
and do things you never thought you were capable of. ‘The brave may not live
forever, but the cautious do not live at all’ – when faced with a challenge,
just go for it.
Chris Graham
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