The Injured From Base Camp To Katmandu

by Dan Jones

One broken leg and one dislocated shoulder to be transported back to Katmandu as quickly as possible.  This was the next task which faced the expedition once they had got Lakpa and myself back to Base Camp.  Wilson very nobly agreed to sacrifice further climbing to take us back.  Our Sherpas, Ang Temba and Pemba Tensing would accompany us and minister to our needs.  Fortunately, some of the Tempathang Sherpas had visited Base Camp just after our accident and one of them had returned to the village to collect a party of porters and stretcher bearers.

Two days rest in the sun at Base Camp made us feel stronger and more able to travel.  On 12th May we were ready to depart.  The morning was singularly inauspicious.  Clouds were clamped down over the mountains, there had been a fresh fall of snow which made the slopes slippery, and Base Camp was cold and inhospitable.  To make matters worse, Nima Lama had been offered some rum and had made himself tipsy with it.  He became even more obstreperous than usual and tried to organise a strike of the porters.  They mercifully ignored him, and the descent was able to proceed.

The first problem was to get Lakpa down the steep slope to Pemsal Meadow.  Pack frame transport on a Sherpa’s back was used.  Lakpa had been given some Pethidine to ease the pain in his leg, and bore the descent very stoically.  I was too preoccupied with staying upright on my own feet to observe his progress in any detail.  Wilson was just behind me and I was attached to him by a short length of rope, like a small child on leading reins.  Regrets at leaving Base Camp, especially in this state, were thus fortunately tempered by other preoccupations.

At Pemsal Meadow we halted for refreshments and Lakpa was changed to his stretcher.  The stretcher team consisted of four men; one in front between the stretcher shafts, carrying most of the weight by a headband, and two behind carrying one shaft each at shoulder height; the fourth man either rested or helped the rear couple.  The journey through the woods was slow.  The fallen trees across the path now proved major obstacles and had to be hacked out of the way, or a fresh path made round them.

Kukris were wielded with amazing skill and small trees severed by a few strokes.  Lakpa, borne precariously aloft over these obstacles, remained calm and cheerful, and was very unwilling to admit to pain.

I was unable to move fast at all.  On the march, I had very httle pain in my shoulder, but my back must have been strained The weight of my arm which was transmitted to my neck by a sling, produced backache which forced me to stop and sit down every 100-200 yards.  The Tempathang Sherpas, whom we had cursed so bitterly on the way up to Base Camp, here showed the other side of their character.  They were extremely kind and thoughtful to both Lakpa and myself.  Tensing Lama, who was normally at the front of the party hacking out a path, would wait for me by any major obstacle and assist me over it.  In addition, a Sherpa attached himself to me permanently as a guide.  Nima Lama would materiahse from behind a tree, grin broadly and utter some encouraging words, before leaping elf-like on his way.

We spent our first night in a cave.  I was not very enthusiastic about this at first as it was normally used for goats, however, neither Wilson nor I caught fleas or lice.  We all crowded in, the Sherpas ht a fire and we had a warm, if rather smoky, night.  Tensing Lama and my Sherpa guide spent the evening amusing Wilson and me, as well as themselves, by writing in Tibetan.

The second day continued in much the same way; more forest, across the Rakhta Khola and on down to the Langtang Khola.  Wilson had hoped we would be able to reach Tempa­thang, but the distance was further than he had thought, and I was utterly exhausted.  Therefore, we camped the night at the river junction and spent the third day descending to Tempathang.  During the journey, I discovered a method of taking my arm weight off my neck by pulling on a length of bandage attached to the top of the sling and running down my back.  This about trebled the distance between sit downs.  Life was sweet again !

The people of Tempathang were most friendly, thrusting chang upon us, making sympathetic noises, shaking their heads and frowning at the mountains.  Some of our porters wanted to return to their families, so fresh ones were engaged.  By a httle bit of judicious manoeuvring, Wilson managed to persuade Nima Lama to stay at home, and Tensing Lama to lead the party.  As always, an argument broke out about the payment of men.  More

Sherpas wanted to accompany us than we could afford.  We discovered this after everyone had descended 500 feet to the river.  Having got this far, no one was keen on going back.  I was quite shameless and left all the bargaining to Wilson.  Ang Temba acted as interpreter and after much haggling the dispute was settled.

We had decided to return by the Nauling Lekh ridge.  Water was scarce on the ridge but the Tempathang men knew the sites of the springs.  The route would be cooler, more interesting, and would avoid carrying Lakpa across the suspension bridges.  We had first to chmb up 5,000 feet to the top of the ridge.  The lower slopes were heavily wooded and we wound upwards in the shade in a series of gentle zig-zags, the path often hidden by ferns, dead leaves or rotting wood.  The stretcher team was superb.  Lakpa must have been heavy and the going was rough; yet they kept up a steady pace, with three men at the rear; straining upwards on the steep sections, pivoting the stretcher round the front man on the corners, leaping over boulders and tree trunks, and squeezing almost into single file when the path was narrow.  Only once in the whole journey to Katmandu was the stretcher dropped, and then only from a height of two feet.  My own condition had improved greatly.  Wilson was able to rehnquish the tiresome business of shadowing me and stopping whenever I stopped.  My arm seemed to make very little difference to my ability to walk uphill and I negotiated the slopes with far less effort than I would have done on the march in.  I started using the cine-camera again.  This was quite a pantomime, by the time I had set up the tripod, located the Sherpa carrying the camera, and placed the camera on the tripod (all with one-and-a-bit hands) my picture had often gone.  By the time we had packed up, we were five minutes behind everyone else.

The next night was spent near a small farmstead perched half­way up the steep Nauling Lekh slopes.  On the following day, we wound upwards along a hard dusty path through scrub covered slopes and then into the rhododendron belt.  For half the day we climbed upwards through the pink, red and white rhododendrons which were a splendid sight.  We were still amongst them at night when we camped on the banks of a small lake.  Some enthusiastic Sherpa proceeded to decorate our tents with rhododendron blooms.

Two hours walking the following day and we reached the top of the Nauling Lekh.  The route now followed the ridge, a line of interlinked hills which gradually lost height until we dropped down to the Indrawatti.  We could move faster here; the slopes were less steep and we skirted the tops of many hills.  A few stretches were comparatively level, and on these the stretcher party tended to run.  We soon, sadly, lost sight of the white spires of the Jugal Himal for the last time.  On our first day’s march alongside the ridge we met Spenceley, and broke the melancholy news of the second accident; brief discussion of plans, collecting mail, and we moved on to our respective destinations.

There was no water by the camp that night, but we had passed a stream some fifteen to twenty minutes walk away.  Some of the Sherpas went to collect water for us.  In the evenings, Ang Temba and Pemba took the initiative.  During the day, they tended to walk by themselves, often at the rear of the party.  In the evenings they set about organising the camp, arranging the inside of our tents, lighting the fire, cooking and serving the meal.  We usually ate in the luxury of our sleeping bags in the tent, for the evenings were cold.  For me, perhaps, luxury was hardly the word.  A dislocated right shoulder and bruised left ribs makes movement above the waist difficult.  I preferred the day’s march to the evenings, and I have a feeling that Wilson did also.  What with getting through the sleeve entrance, getting undressed, getting a back rest adjusted, and getting into two sleeping bags; what with my tablets, my lozenges, my drinking water bottle, and my other kind of water bottle; what with the interminable shuffling until my arm was comfortable and the fact that by morning I usually occupied two-thirds of the tent, I don’t think I made the ideal tent companion.

I could never learn a great deal about how Lakpa fared at night.  His leg certainly seemed to be painful and he wanted fewer tablets.  His general condition was improving and the fairly extensive abrasions on his face were healing well.  I have des­cribed elsewhere the progress of his leg wound and its ‘aseptic’ Penicillin treatment.  The injections were not popular with Lakpa but proved well worth while.  Wilson’s first aid bandaging technique came in most useful at times.

We were a little surprised by the comparatively small amount of attention Ang Temba and Pemba gave to Lakpa.  Much of his care was left to the Tempathang Sherpas.  Indeed quite a strong friendship grew up between Lakpa and one of the latter.  This fellow was one of the rougher characters, a bit of a clown who used to entertain the party with amusing and often bawdy mime.  It was he who organised the stretcher party, most often took the strenuous front position on the stretcher and carried Lakpa off into the bush when necessary.  It was he who would sit with Lakpa in the evening and keep him company.  It was also he who whenever I was writing a letter would somehow manage to use mime to pull my leg about it being to a girl friend.

I covered a long distance the next day, descending off one hill and chmbing over two more.  The first was bare and windswept; we passed a completely dried up lake.  The second was thickly wooded with wild strawberries dotting the path sides and providing welcome refreshment.  We also saw our only snake — at least the Sherpas saw it — a viper and apparendy poisonous.  Finally, we descended a steep and slippery earth slope and reached Okhreni, and our march in route again.

The Sherpas had had httle difficulty in covering this great distance and Wilson and I had high hopes for even better progress on the next day when the going was all down hill.  But our Sherpas were a law unto themselves.  On the next day, the shade of every tree presented an irresistable temptation, and chang was an essential fuel for the journey.  No amount of arguing would make them change their pace.  We had now moved out of Sherpa country into that of the Newars.  The air was hotter, the land drier, the vegetation more sparse, and there were more terraces, houses and people.  On the way to the mountains the lower foothills had seemed poorly populated and primitive; now they seemed overcrowded and tainted by civilisation.  I felt sad to be leaving Sherpa country.

We reached the Indrawatti by mid-afternoon, and crossed the river at a very shallow region higher up stream.  Lakpa and I were got across without difficulty.  Wilson gave great delight to the Sherpas by crying out at the impact of sharp stones on his tender Western feet.  We followed a private band into Baman Pati.  It had been hired by a rich Nepalese pilgrim, and made us feel very poor.  We spent the night on the same small hill above the village and enjoyed a short but very violent storm, with thunder every two to three seconds.  Wilson’s enjoyment was not as great as mine because his half of the tent got much wetter.

On the following day we faced a slog up the hill which had seemed so interminable in the downwards direction during the march in.  I enjoyed the ascent more than I had the descent six weeks before.  The Sherpas again surprised us by taking the whole hih at great speed and with a minimum of rests.  We were beginning to appreciate the wisdom of leaving the planning to them.  We climbed to the top of the ridge and camped for the night overlooking the plain of Katmandu.

On the following day a Sherpa messenger was sent off early to tell Colonel Proud of our approach.  He insisted on borrowing a pair of boots for the occasion, although it is doubtful if he ever wore them.  The rest of the expedition moved down to Sankhu, and from thence along the dusty road to Katmandu.  We soon met the American Mission Hospital Ambulance.  Lakpa and I were suddenly transformed from mountaineers to patients.  What had been for me in spite of everything a most wonderful experience was over.