Mount Everest seen from Rongbuk Monastery, Tibet (July 2004)
I had never given Mount Everest much thought before, but that was because until this afternoon I had never met her. Now, sitting on my bed at 9:00 p.m. and viewing the 29,029-foot mountain through a cracked window pane in Tibet, I knew some small part of my life had changed forever.
I was in the guest quarters of the Rongbuk Monastery (also spelled Rongphu) — which at 16,340 feet (4,980 meters) is the highest monastery in the world — and for hours the mountain had left me happily befuddled. In the afternoon I had walked to the base camp used for all north-slope ascents of Everest. It was only about an hour away, but in a classic Himalayan illusion the mountain herself seemed much closer now. I thought of an infant who reaches for the moon because he has not yet grasped the concept of distance. But not only did I want to touch, I wanted also to wander closer and higher, for I had even lost the capacity to care about death. Not that I wasn’t aware of death, but the grandeur of Everest had demolished something of the fence that we allow death to build around us. The world had become new and beckoned to be explored in full, whatever the risk. Everest, at least for the day, had blessed me with the mind of a child.
Sign at Rongbuk Monastery on the road leading to base camp. From here it is about five miles (eight kilometers) to base camp. (July 2004)
Despite the dangers Everest holds, each and every climbing season people flock to this mountain. In his book Into Thin Air, Jon Krakauer helps us understand some of the reasons mountain climbing appeals to so many. Reflecting on what drove him to climb dangerous mountains in his youth, he writes, “Achieving the summit of a mountain was tangible, immutable, concrete. The incumbent hazards lent the activity a seriousness of purpose that was sorely missing from the rest of my life. I thrilled in the fresh perspective that came from tipping the ordinary plane of existence on end.”
For me the sight of Everest affirmed that life is to be spent, not saved. And it also suggested that the infant who reaches for the moon may have something to teach those of us who, as adults, retract our reach from all except that which we know we can touch. Be a fool and reach for me! the mountain seemed to say.
However, being a budget traveler and not a mountain climber, this was as close as I’d be getting to Mount Everest. This was also why I could approach the mountain more poetically than practically.
Once darkness had fallen, I left the window and returned to the guesthouse sitting room where earlier I had eaten dinner. Because of a centrally located stove fueled by burning yak dung, the sitting room was the only warm place around. And so almost thirty people had gathered here. (The stove gave warmth, but it also left the room dense with an acrid smoke that brought to mind the carcinogenic atmosphere of a Turkish tea house.) Five Tibetan men and a woman sat nearest the stove and were playing cards. The game occasionally required the cards to be slammed down, which they all did with great enthusiasm and noise—even the woman, who held her cards in one hand and a nursing baby in the other.
But nearest me was a Chinese tour group from Shanghai. When one of the members offered me a cup of steaming yak butter tea, a rancid drink that I knew had set some travelers to puking, I knew I had to take it. Now, finally, I’d be able to say I did something dangerous at Everest.
Note: This story is an excerpt from my unpublished book manuscript which chronicles the 14-month journey I made across Asia, from Beijing to Istanbul, in 2003 and 2004.
