Abode of the Gods. Kev ReynoldsЧитать онлайн книгу.
child and filled with a sense of wonder. In sunshine and shadow I drift without effort – sometimes among trees and shrubs, sometimes on bare and open hillsides. Life makes no more demands than that of placing one foot in front of the other.
Today we stop early. The harvest has been taken, ploughs have turned the soil in endless terraced fields, and that soil is now baking in the full sunshine. This rucked and wrinkled land fills me with delight, and I’m glad that Dawa has chosen this spot for our tents – two to each terrace with an airy outlook as though from a balcony. Max and I are on the second terrace down from the kitchen tent, which suits us both. Our loads having been dumped above us, I climb the terraces and manhandle a couple of kitbags, and with one under each arm foolishly jump down to the small field of baked earth below. Landing awkwardly, my left foot twists beneath me and I crumple to the ground in agony. I feel physically sick as I grip my ankle, convinced it’s broken. Sweat breaks out on my forehead, but I shiver all over.
‘Let me feel.’ The voice is John’s, a member of our group with a cultured voice and an authoritative air. Until now I’ve not found him easy company, but in this emergency he’s calm and efficient, and I recognise that whatever his background he certainly knows his first aid. His hands are gentle but probing, and he announces (with more certainty than I feel) that nothing is broken. But my ankle is swelling like a balloon. Bart calls for two bowls of water, one hot, the other cold, and after carefully removing my sock, my ankle is immersed first in one, then the other repeatedly until the hot water has turned cool. Then more is called for. I’m given pills to help reduce the swelling and ease the pain, and am carried to my tent.
Passing an uncomfortable night, I’m reminded that mountaineer Pete Boardman also damaged an ankle on his way to climb Kangchenjunga 10 years ago, and had then been carried by a relay of porters until he could walk again. Perhaps that should have given me confidence, but I fear my trek is over. ‘Nonsense,’ says Max. ‘You’ll walk. The alternative is to be buried here.’
In the morning my ankle is discoloured with bruising, and I’m given more pills to swallow. John carefully straps the wound in a crepe bandage, but when I ease my foot into the boot, I find I can only tie the lace very loosely. I’m given a stick to use and helped to stand, but as soon as I put any weight on the foot, pain shoots through my body and I feel sick again.
Pemba is now my constant companion as I hobble slowly along the trail, but a rhythm gradually develops and my pace improves, although it’ll be a full week before the swelling starts to subside. On the second day I lose my balance and sprawl face down on the path, twisting the ankle once more. Every part of me throbs with pain. Pemba helps me up, and soon after I’m seated upon a rock with my foot submerged in a clear forest pool at the base of a cascade pouring over a mossy green slab. I’m dashed with spray, and the water is cold enough to make my whole leg ache, but it’s sheer bliss.
Our trek takes us over ridge spurs and down to gorge-like tributaries, which we cross on suspension bridges that sway and shudder beneath us. The route is a helter-skelter, and there’s barely more than a few paces of level ground anywhere along it. Attractive houses cling to impossibly steep hillsides; snow mountains tease above distant hills before hiding again for hours at a time. Passing through the village of Mamankhe we discover a couple of houses with beautifully carved balconies decorated with containers of flowers. But for the thatch on their roofs they could have been transported from the Bernese Oberland. Padding barefoot along the trail nearby, two young children return home beneath towering loads of foliage – presumably fodder for their animals. They stand back to watch us pass, but say nothing. Much later the route takes us through a cardamom plantation, after which we splash through a side stream and make camp below a sad-looking broken village.
Yamphudin is still in shock. A month ago, at the tail-end of the monsoon, the Kabeli Khola burst its banks and swept half the village away. Huge boulders and mud banks remain where no boulders or mud banks belong. Trees have been uprooted, and river-ravaged houses stand among banana groves tilted at odd angles where the land has been uplifted by the force of the water. Villagers stare at us with vacant expressions as though life has been drained from them, but a policeman appears to check our permits, and while the tents are being erected he squats on his hunkers and draws deeply on a cigarette. He tells Dawa there’s an American climber with a broken leg waiting in the village for a helicopter to carry him out. Apparently he fell while crossing the ridge ahead, and since he was too heavy for his porters to carry, he had to crawl all the way down to Yamphudin. I feel the pain in my ankle and make a mental note to take extra care on our crossing tomorrow.
We discover there are two ridges to mount before we finally enter the valley that leads to the south side of Kangchenjunga. The first of these is crossed at the Dhupi Bhanjyang, below which the slope is steep, greasy and crowded with mist-hugging trees, while the second gives way at the Lamite Bhanjyang, where we catch sight of chisel-topped Jannu, Kanch’s most impressive neighbour that was first climbed by a French expedition in 1962. No other snow peaks can be seen, yet we know they are there. In another day or two, perhaps, we will be among them, but first we must descend with care along the edge of two monstrous landslide scars, then through a forest of chir pine, fir and bamboo, and finally among rhododendron trees above the east bank of the river that drains Kangchenjunga’s glaciers and snowfields.
There’s a bird that sings first thing in the morning with a sound like that of a gate in need of oil. But not this morning. The forest is silent. A heavy frost stiffens the tent, and the only sound to be heard is the rumbling of the river. Autumn is in the air, and the last deciduous trees are patched with russet and gold. Leaves drift in lazy spirals as the day slowly warms.
Once we’re on the move we rise along the true right bank of the river, exchanging broad-leaved trees for tall mossy-trunked conifers. On open meadows straggly clumps of berberis blaze scarlet.
Then all of a sudden mountains are just ahead. Well, a day or so’s walk away, but seeming just ahead. White-plastered mountains, they are, with crests etched sharp against a deep blue sky. My heart makes an involuntary leap in my chest, and I realise I’m smiling. This is an alpine world, for although the summits are maybe 4000 metres higher than our part of the valley, I’m unable as yet to grasp the scale of things, and I stumble. A sharp pain shoots through my leg, for my eyes are not on the inconsistencies of the trail. They are focused on peaks unknown.
We take to the broad, stony river bed. The river is only a few paces away. We can hear its thunder and see occasional bursts of spray tossed from midstream boulders, but other than that it’s lost to view. We pick our way towards the mountain wall that blocks the far end of the valley. There is no path to speak of, but our porters are ahead, the prints of their bare feet easy to follow in drifts of glacial sand between the rocks.
In the early afternoon we pull up a rise and come onto the yak pasture of Tseram at a little under 4000 metres. The size of a football pitch, sloping gently towards the river, it’s fringed with scrub and rocks. Rhododendrons bank the lower hillside, while a fuzz of cypress trees grows a little higher. A group of porters build a fire against a huge smoke-blackened boulder that stands on the edge of the pasture. The unmistakable sound of kukri knives hacking at the branches of rhododendron trees rings clear. It is one of the alarming sounds of the Himalaya, and although I hold no knife, the guilt is as much mine as that of our porters.
Other porters arrive, dumping their lozenge-shaped loads of tents and kitbags where they stop. They wipe their brows, look around, and in a glance decide where they’ll build their own fires. Moments later I notice one man sitting alone hacking at something by his feet, the curving blade of his kukri shines as he makes swift cutting movements. I’m intrigued – is he carving something? If so, what? I edge nearer and am horrified to discover he’s trimming his toenails with a blade as long as his forearm. One slip and he’ll be toeless.
On the eastern side of the valley lies a way to Sikkim over the Kang La. Some of the early expeditions used this pass on their approach to Kangchenjunga from Darjeeling. Frank Smythe crossed the Kang La in 1930 with an international expedition led by the German-Swiss geology professor GO Dyhrenfurth, and on arrival here he found a simple yak-herder’s hut. A long building with wide eaves, one end housed the yaks, while the other was reserved for the herder and his family. According