Written February 23
(Panchase – “pahn cha say”)
Elevation: 7,500 ft
Climb from road to peak: 4,800 ft
The following story recounts the last two days of my World Race experience. It begins and ends in Pokhara, Nepal, but the 36 hours or so in between take place in the Annapurna Mountain Range, a “subrange” of the Himalayas. These two days will easily go down as two of the most memorable days on the Race.
We’ve been talking about trekking in Nepal ever since we learned about our ministry site. I mean, we’re in the HIMALAYAS. How many people can say they’ve been trekking in the HIMALAYAS? I was pumped, but honestly a little nervous. I love to hike, but don’t do it often. And I’ve never done it with a pack full of camping stuff. I love tenting now, thanks to training camp, but the mountains are cold, right? So I wasn’t sure what this whole “trekking” thing was going to look like.
Okay, so there are six of us on Team SOR11 (and I promise I am working on a blog devoted strictly to telling you all about them). Noe, our squad leader, arrived Sunday, so he was on board for the trek as well. Now, quick profile of the group. Scott, our team leader and trekking guide, is an ultra-marathon runner. He runs crazy hundred-mile races up and down mountains in the dark and 20-degree weather. Dude’s in shape. The rest of us? We’re just regular peeps who might can run a couple of miles okay and have never done much camping or trekking. This is part of what makes me feel better about this whole thing. Besides Scott, we’re all pretty much on the same fitness level, so we’ll either make it together or collapse together. Right?
So Monday morning rolls around, and we’ve got a map, some boiled eggs and PB&Js, and a general plan for spending the next two days escaping from life and enjoying the beauty of God’s creation.
Getting to the trail is no problem. We take a few busses out to where the trail begins and start walking along a paved road. We’re having a blast, and the hike is absolutely unbelievable. We walk through villages, hold baby goats at some lady’s house, see people weaving straw sleeping mats, are greeted by the locals with “Namaste!” and enjoy the spectacular views of the snow-capped mountains and the valley lined with terraced hills. It’s like hiking through a postcard. I can’t describe it any other way. So I made a video. Check it out below.
I’m feeling great at this point. Even my fears of hiking with a pack have subsided. It’s tough, but in a rise-to-the-challenge sort of way.
Pachase is the highest tip of the farthest mountain. This picture was taken near the start of the trail.
We stop for a snack break at a picturesque “campsite,” which is actually an open field with grazing cows and stone walls. Very reminiscent of Ireland. And along comes this older woman wearing a light blue punjabi dress, carrying a small backpack and a light tote bag. We haven’t met too many other hikers along the trail, but the ones we do meet actually look like they’re there to hike. This woman looks like she’s going for a day at the beach. She stops to chat, and we find out that she’s from England but that she lives in India, where she helps schools get funding, supplies, and training. She says she’s headed to Panchase, the same place we’re headed, and that she’s been told that there is a hotel two hours from where we’re standing. A hotel? This is news to us. She doesn’t stay long before continuing on her way. We follow soon after and catch up with her after a few minutes. As we’re all headed to the same place, we end up hiking with her, and she tells all kinds of stories about her travels and adventures all over the world. We learn that her name is Malati, and that she is a seasoned trekker.
It’s around 4:30 when we leave our rest area. I would say that this is the point where the fun ends and the struggle begins. We seem to be on track as far as having enough time to make it to the campsite before dark. However, we have been hiking for about five hours at this point. The trail began as a fairly level dirt and gravel path and then became a series of stone steps leading through villages and up steep hills. We’re tired, and our group begins to separate. I am struggling to keep up enough energy while stopping to wait on others. The more I stop, the harder it is to keep going. Kristen is still in conversation with Malati, who has trudged on ahead of our group, despite the fact that she is probably about 40 years older than we are. She’s taking the mountain like a rock star while 7 twenty-somethings are huffing and puffing their way up. But then again, she doesn’t have fifteen extra pounds of weight on her back.
Meanwhile, Suzi’s blisters from her ill-fitting shoes start hurting her, so to lighten her load, the guys are taking turns carrying her pack along with their own.
I end up catching up with Kristen and Malati, and we’re ahead of the rest of our group. We’re still mostly together for a while, but as time marches on, the three of us see less and less of our group as they fall behind. I’m feeling the ache in my legs and hips at this point, but it’s still doable.
The next thing I know is that it starts to get dark, and when the sun drops, so does the temperature. We’ve been told that Panchase is forty-five minutes away, so we know we’re close. It’s still just the three of us at this point – Kristen, Malati, and myself. The rest of the group is behind us, but we don’t know how far back. I start to get an unsettled feeling in my gut. We shouldn’t be separated from the group. We don’t know if they’ve already stopped for the night. It’s dark and getting colder. We should be there by now.
It is at this point that I am no longer enjoying the experience. There are several points where the trail isn’t entirely clear. There are gaps in the stone steps, and other trails seem to be going off in different directions. My body is physically exhausted. My legs ache with every step. We’ve been climbing steps for seven hours at this point. Although only a few steps are lit by my headlamp at a time, every time I looked up, there seem to be five hundred more ahead of me. And just when you think you’ve reached “the top,” the stairs turn and continue in a different direction. I’m still relatively warm because I’m still moving, but the sweat feels cold and clammy on my skin now. I’m out of breath and feeling lightheaded, either from the altitude or from lack of water, which I probably didn’t drink enough of. It’s taken us longer than the hour we were told earlier, and we still haven’t met anyone along the trail. My heart is pounding in my chest, and I am afraid for myself and for my teammates, whom we’ve completely lost contact with. Suzi was in pretty bad shape when we left her hours ago, and I don’t know how she’s going to make it up this mountain. There’s no place to camp along the trail. It’s straight up. The only thing keeping me going are my two travel partners – my teammate and a friend we’ve met along the way.
So I pray.
Lord,
I know you’re in control of this situation. I wish we were with the team right now, but I pray that we are on the right trail, and that they are not far behind us. I pray that Suzi is making it despite her feet being sore and her being tired. I pray that someone finds us and that we find the campsite soon. I give this situation to you, Lord.
Around 8 PM, we see a sign. Just ahead of us on the trail we spot a white pillar. When we reach it, we realize we are at a temple, and therefore, we’ve reached the top of Panchase. We almost cried we were so relieved.
So there we were. Kristen and I, fortunately, are tent buddies, so she has the tent. Our new British friend, of course, had nothing with her but a bed sheet and sandwich-making supplies. Several hours prior, we had invited her to tent with us, to which she politely replied that she didn’t want to burden us with an extra person, especially since she did not have a sleeping bag for herself. At this point, though, with no hotel in sight, it seemed more likely that she would be sharing a tent with us.
So we’re at the top of the mountain for about five minutes when I hear a voice behind us. Scott! He’d stayed between us and the rest of the group for a while before heading on up to meet us. He’d been hiking alone for about two hours at this point with Suzi’s pack on his shoulders in addition to his own the whole way. His headlamp was dying, too, making the trail more difficult.
Although we are significantly colder now that we’re no longer moving, we start to set up camp. The three guys were planning to share a tent, which means that Scott doesn’t have one, so now it’s looking like the 4 of us on the mountain are going to get cozy. With frozen fingers, Kristen and I set up the tent while Scott, still wearing shorts and a t-shirt – tries to get a fire going with what little dry wood he can find. Did I mention that there is snow on the ground by the temple? Malati, determined to find the hotel, decides to keep hiking down a path that leads away from the temple. When she returns, our tent is set up, but the fire is weak, though warm. Malati tells us she found a hostel just five minutes away. We decide that moving on to the hostel is the best decision, so we tear down the tent, put out the fire, and continue, leaving a note at the bottom of the temple stairs letting our teammates know where we are in case they make it that far. The trail gets very icy at this point, and it’s hard not to slip.
We find the hostel, bargain the man down to a decent price, and get to our room – a stone and dirt floor, stone walls, and a blue tarp for a ceiling. Cozy. We eat a little for dinner. Malati shares her bread and cheese. Cheese! No one in India or Nepal had cheese! It was fabulous.
I am exhausted and try to fall asleep, but it doesn’t come easily. My legs are in pain, the kind of pain I haven’t experienced since after running a marathon. My mind is still on the rest of our team, who are out there in the woods somewhere. I hope they are together, warm, and most of all, safe.
I don’t sleep hardly at all.
The next morning, we wake to the smell of smoke, as it had been wafting its way into our room all night from the hostel owner’s fire outside. Still chilly, I roll out of my sleeping bag and step outside to [hopefully] see the beautiful panoramic mountain scene we’d worked so hard to reach. Unfortunately, the clouds make the mountains impossible to see, although looking out over the tops of the clouds is quite amazing in itself. There is another Hindu temple here, and a woman is worshipping a stone statue and ringing a bell, “to let God know she is there.” It’s sad.
It’s getting late, and we have to find our team. Malati chooses to leave another way to find a village with a bus, so we pray with her and part ways. It was such a blessing to meet such an incredible woman who was willing to take on the mountain alone (although I think we all agreed that we were better off with each other that night!). We exchange e-mails and give her our blog sites. She may even be reading this blog right now!
We head back the way we came and reach the rest of our team in less than ten minutes. They had camped about two minutes away from the temple, missing our note the night before! Like us, they’re exhausted and cold. Our team members have been sick, in pain, and overall exhausted, as we are. Needless to say, we’re all ready for our climb back down.
The second day is better. We are walking down a bajillion steps instead of up them. We stick together, going no faster than the slowest member of our team. And we’re all going pretty slowly at this point anyway. Of course we make it home, safe but wiser.
What God Taught Me on the Mountain
LESSON ONE: He has gone before me and will provide for me.
There were times I wanted to give up on the trail, and I wasn’t the one in the worst shape there. I don’t even know how I made it to the top, other than with God’s help, and I was shocked that the rest of the team ended up making it [almost] as far.
The verse that went through my mind over and over again was Psalm 121: “I look up to the hills. Where does my help come from? My help comes from the Lord, the maker of heaven and earth.”
God provided over and over on this trip, for all of us. Even things that seemed small showed this.
- Malati was hiking alone in the mountains with little more than a light jacket and some food. We were able to provide her with companionship and our map.
- Because Scott carried Suzi’s pack to the top of the mountain, Suzi was separated from her stuff overnight. This meant we had an extra sleeping bag, which we let Malati borrow for the night. Fortunately, Kelly, who was with Suzi, had an an extra warm blanket she used (while cuddling up with Melanee in her bag!)
- Even in my zeal for minimalist packing, I thought to bring an extra pair of socks and an extra pair of contacts. I ended up letting Malati borrow the socks, since she was wearing sandals, and somehow I ended up losing a contact.
LESSON TWO: Live together; die alone.
On the Race, your team is your family for the year. Our two days on the mountain did much to teach us the value of that family, the value of relying on each other, and the value of communication. I am amazed at how well our “family” did. Suzi took the mountain like a rock star. She never complained, and she never gave up, despite her struggle. Melanee was amazing at helping Suzi, sticking with her the whole way, always with a positive attitude. Kristen was a champion in that she didn’t let me give up when the climb got hard. Scott was our leader, and he was able to get everyone safely up and down the mountain. Noe was like Rocky, taking Suzi’s pack on his shoulders in addition to his own to help her out.
We learned a lot about the importance of communication and looking out for each other. I would say there was a transition in our team mentality that took place on the mountain and in the days following. The Lord shows us things in our weaknesses and struggles, and we are now stronger for it, and I am thankful. Way to go, SOR11!
