Changing worlds

The bad news when we awoke was that Don was in absolutely no state to be walking anywhere other than the toilet. It seemed that the antibiotics were working but that his guts were still in spasm. It sounded familiar to me after my own experience but the last thing to do was to bung up the leak if there was still an infection inside so I advised him to finish the course of antibiotics before taking any Immodium. Of course, all of this left me with a very difficult decision to make: did I cut short my trek to stay with Don…or did I leave him behind to recover and continue as planned? In the end, I decided to leave him for three reasons.
Firstly, there was nothing more I could do for him in terms of making him feel well. Secondly, as my best friend and brother, he and I have a lot in common and I was acutely aware of the appalling kind of patient I make. Frustrated at the failings of my mortal body, I become petulant and unpleasant – particularly towards those who are looking after me. I certainly didn’t want to be on the receiving end of Don’s chagrin at his illness. Finally, knowing how much my brother loves me, I knew that once he’d recovered sufficiently, he’d begin to feel guilty about my quitting the trek on his behalf and I saw no reason to make him feel any worse.
I suppose, if I’m honest, there was a fourth (more selfish) reason: that I wanted to complete the trek and see all the sights that the remainder of the trail had to offer. However, it was with no small amount of regret that I left Don, looking washed out and weak, very much hoping to see him recovered at a happy reunion in Pokhara. After our departure he would be able to rest up in Jomsom until he was able to catch a flight back to the lakeside to complete his convalescence in more genteel surroundings. What I’d seen of Pokhara so far seemed to indicate that it would make the perfect place to recover – the sort of location you could imagine 19th Century physicians sending TB patients to ‘take the airs’. As Suriya, Michael and I trudged down the valley away from Jomsom I felt the loss of my brother keenly – all the more so for having been reunited so recently. I consoled myself with the thought that a fit, healthy Don would be much more of a pleasure to regain in six days time.
The rest of our day was marked by gradual changes in altitude and the surrounding countryside until we appeared to have travelled into a different world. We dropped from the high desert of the Upper Mustang, through wooded alpine slopes and finally into the lush, green valley of our evening destination, Ghasa. It was an extremely long and tiring day and, looking at the map later on, Michael and I weren’t surprised to discover that we’d covered the equivalent of 2½ days trekking in one arduous effort. The river went from a distant, meandering ribbon winding across the bottom of a wide valley to a raging, foaming torrent, tumbling through narrow channels strewn with house-size boulders and down constricted gorges, spanned by metal suspension bridges. At one point, with Dhauligiri behind and the brooding mass of the Annapurna Himal ahead, I turned to Michael and asked him how it felt to be crossing the deepest gorge in the world on a particularly slender and unsteady bridge. Between Dhauligiri (8176metres) and Annapurna (8091metres), the Kali Gandaki flows at an altitude of less than 1500m – the resulting 6500m difference in height often being quoted as the world’s deepest river gorge.
With my mind very much on the altitude question I happened to notice that my mammoth appetite of the preceding two days had dwindled to more human proportions…and I wondered if, like a yak, my body was perhaps better designed for higher altitudes. Certainly, after my initial difficulties acclimatizing due to the sudden change in altitude (caused by flying from Pokhara at 800m to Jomsom at 2700m), I had adapted pretty well. I knew this tentative hypothesis would be well and truly tested during the course of my Everest trek (max. altitude 5545m) two weeks hence. In the meantime, I suppose my wallet was just happy to be at a lower altitude.
The lower we descended the higher the temperature rose and, to add insult to injury, the cooling, drying breeze that had accompanied us since arriving in Jomsom dropped to an insignificant whimper as we came through dark, verdant forests, hugging the lower reaches of the mountains. Colour that had been so absent in the dry Mustang now returned with wild abandon – fields of green wheat and blossoming trees took the place of dull scrub and dusty groundcover plants. Eventually, like a sponge, this greenery attracted water and, as we stumbled down the last weary steps into Ghasa, we were welcomed by a warm steady rain that reminded us we had left the desert.