The Roof of the World...

Or, at least, closer to it than I've ever been before.

Life trundles along apace in Kathmandu. Work is a harmless drudgery of proposal research and proposal writing, punctuated by flurries of deadline-motivated hyperactivity and the occasional spasm of frustration, all of which are entirely par for the course in the part of the world (i.e. the poor part). I'm tolerably content with my work; dream job it ain't, but it's worlds better than being stuck behind a desk wondering whether I'd ever get back out into the great wide world.

So, short of enlightening revelations about my job, I offer instead more photos from the high Himalayas!

A couple of hours North (and up!) from the waystation of Namche Bazaar is the minute Sherpa village of Khunde, a hive of nestled in a shallow valley in the shadow of Khumbila, a snowless peak mildly sacred to local Buddhists (among whom the Sherpas are entirely included) and thus forbidden to climbers. Khunde is a resilient community of surprisingly precise and sturdy stone houses, intermingled with scattered patches of unwatered gravel that the locals somehow coax into producing vegetables. From the village itself, there's little to see, aside from the local Stupa and Khumbila itself which, in a landscape positively crowded with its more towering sisters, isn't much to look at.



There's a hidden gem above Khunde, however, unknown even to our Sherpa Mingma and most of the villagers, and which we found solely through the assistance of a hand-drawn map provided by my trailblazing Canadian friend Craig. About 400 meters above Khunde, on a unnerving knife-edged ridge overlooking every village and valley in the region, are three memorials erected in the memory of Sir Edmund Hillary, first summitteer of Mt. Everest (along with Sherpa Tenzing Norgay), and his wife and daughter, who sadly predeceased him in a plane crash. Hillary is "our God" in the words of Mingma, and is widely revered for spending much of his post-Everest life bringing schools, medical services, and other vital social improvements (many of which bear his name) to the unspeakably remote Solukhumbu region that hosts the Everest mountain range. After his death in 2007, local Buddhist monks in the Khumbu built these traditional stone memorials in a location whose startling inaccessibility and even more impressive view fit the legend of the man. Forest fire smoke wreathed the valleys below, but the view lost none of its power.



From the memorials, there's an astonishing view of the Everest range, perhaps the best you'll find without making the two week trek to Base Camp and Kalapattar.



The distant black pyramid at the photo's center is Everest, which must be seen to be believed, and which is sacred to all the peoples of the region and has acquired more names than I can recount. For the record, here's the closest view I had of Sagarmatha, Chomolungma Goddess Mother of the World:



By Mingma's estimate, we reached 4500 metres, a kilometre up from Namche and a hair over halfway to Everest's peak. Not surprisingly, that's the highest I've ever travelled. Ye gods, what a walk it was.

More photos and tales will come, in characteristically discontinuous and scattershot fashion. With Nepali power and internet connections, this is a slow process, but I've much to show of the rest of the trek, an elephant ride, and last month's rather different sojourn to Hong Kong.