Issue link: https://bluemagazine.uberflip.com/i/24995
MAY 14, SIMIKOT The porters keep to themselves, comfortably segregated from the white tourists, and even our Sherpa guides maintain a polite distance. We have five of these venerable denizens of the mountains and sixty. porters, mostly Thakuris, who have been traveling for seventeen days with supplies to reach our trailhead. It seems like an absurd number of people to tend a group of fif teen trekkers, but I'm told we need that many to carry the kerosene; food and gear that will eventually get us as fa r as Shigatse in Tibet. There is virtually no chance of getting supplies until then, and we are required to carry all of our own fuel, as fi rewood-like oxygen-grows more and more scarce the higher we ascend. MAY 14, TULING It is logistically challenging, to say the least, dealing with the amount of waste produced by an entourage our size. Human waste, alone, is formidable. We burn our toilet paper and bury degradable refuse, but any solid inorganic material that cannot be burned wi ll be packed· out. In this respect, our group wi ll have less of an impact on the environment than most. What our porters do with their excreta remains a mystery none of us have the incl ination to con template. They do not seem to be the least bit hesitant to drop aluminum foil, plastic or paper debris all along the trail� of their beautiful countryside. Nor can they understand why we foolish Westerners stop to pick up the trash when we see it. The sight of an. environmentally correct sahib stooping to retrieve a candy wrapper that has just been insouciantly discarded gives the porters some thing to joke about as they slog our duff�ls, food and fuel up and down the steep ravine trail. Romance aside, we are an exclusive, self-contained, mobile vil lage, snaking sluggishly up the Karnali River gorge Jor the sole purpose of escorting fifteen North Americans to a remote corner of the Tibetan plateau. This will afford us the opportunity to view, and circle in relative luxury, what every Buddhist, Biin- po, Hindu and Jain considers to be the single most sacred mountain on Earth: Kailas, mythical throne of Demchog and Dorje Pangmo, a ascetic Shiva and his consort in ecstatic union, Pa . And even though we've all read the right books, we Western pilgrims really haven't a clue why thousands endure untold hardships to reach this holy mountain and perform the ritual kora, or circumambulation; or, for that mat ter, why the Sherpas and porters at our disposal trekked for seventeen twelve hour days, ca rrying back-breaking loads in their wicker baskets, to meet us in Simikot, and then walk for another week. MAY 15, KERMI Our entourage is camped in a. school yard surrounded by structu res with open stone walls and roofs of corrugated steel. We have bee� visited by half the fown as we set up camp. Natives of the upper Humla Karnali region come from Tibetan stock, a striking contrast in their dress and Buddhist traditions to the Thakuri Hindus we encountered further south in Simikot and Tu ling, yet every bit as delightfu l and curious. They are amazed and bemused by the pale-skinned Martians in high-tech Gore-Tex outfits who sleep in portable domes of rip-stop nylon, eat strange food called "gorp" out of plastic bags and shit in canvas tents.