The Himalaya wasted no time in humbling me. Our first full day of trekking had me doubled-over and gasping for breath. Truth be told, there were moments that day when I had misgivings about what we’d gotten ourselves into.We left Kathmandu on a Monday and flew on a small roller-coaster of a plane into the mountains. We landed in Lukla (9350 feet) and walked for about an hour downhill, crossed the Dudh Kosi river, and camped at Phakding (8700 feet.) Tuesday morning we were up early, heading up and up and up to Namche Bazaar, 11,300 feet. At that point we were 500 feet higher than the summit of Mt. Baker back home, yet we’d barely begun our trek.
We coughed, hacked and wheezed in the dry, dusty air. I had a big-time altitude headache and nausea. Though I have climbed most of the volcanos in Washington State and summited Mt. Rainier (14, 410 feet) eight times, that hike to Namche had me psyched-out, swimming upstream against a tide of negative emotions. I felt like hell physically and I made things worse by emotionally wrapping myself up in a blanket of self-pity and doubt.
Leah kept us going. She gave me pills for my illness and in her calm, even-tempered way, she talked me out of my funk. We’d take this trip one day at a time, she said. We’d stop for layover days when necessary. We would concentrate on the positive, not the negative.
A number of days later there would be a changing of roles, a time when I would play cheerleader, when I would keep us focused on the positive. That first day in Namche however, Leah saved the trip for me. She got me to look around and see the beauty of Namche and its people.
We would survive our first traveling crisis.
