Out There

Nepal-Fatal Footsteps

At 11,300 feet in Namche Bazaar the early, un-seasonal snow was falling in drippy, cold soggy flakes, settling in dumpling coloured clumps before oozing into the sodden earth. The narrow streets through the town were dank and the low hanging chilly air was suffused with wood smoke, cooking odours and the smell of the tinkling livestock in the shadows. Once wet, clothes in these conditions stubbornly refused to dry, even in the musty warmth of the now cramped guesthouse.

According to the Nepali Digest the storm was 'conceived in the South East Bay of Bengal, south east of the Nicobar Islands'.

Behind the town a track led up to the guard post that signified your entry into the Sagarmatha National Park (although the actual boundary is further down). You were only required to show your permit but a lengthy interrogation and a rifling through your gear could be guaranteed unless a bit of baksheesh, a few Nepalese rupees were handed across the desk at the same time as the document. It was at this level, only a few hundred feet or so above the town that the snow had fallen in its pure radiant unstained form, drifting in places to several feet or more. In the now cloudless sky the effect was stunning but also shocking & painful on the eye. And it was only when the sound under our feet had gone from a wet ‘slush…slop’ to a crisp crunch that you could appreciate and understand the reason for the tragedy that had occurred only a few days previous.

'Houses disappeared like a pack of cards in minutes'. (Nepal Digest)

Our route was taking us towards Gorak Shep and base camp, although that was an unlikely destination now. A few days before a number of trekkers had branched off and headed up the Gokyo Valley toward the Ngozumba Glacier and the lakes that lie on its western flank. The weather stranded us in Namche Bazaar for four days, they were stranded in teahouses and guesthouses in the deceiving lee of the steep Gokyo Valley walls.

'Cloudy and torrential rain battered central and eastern regions of Nepal, specially the hilly and higher elevated regions, effecting
landslide and avalanche. Many lives, those of Nepalese as well as foreigners, were lost'.

It was more than sobering to know that 13 people with the same intent as you had just been crushed and suffocated in their sleep. The manifestation of the reality came with the first smouldering pyre for one of the 9 Nepali’s that had also died in the avalanche. The smoking mound with scorched limbs protruding looking incongruous in this bright, magnificent Himalayan landscape.