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  My accomplishment is in no way as significant, and I am at less than half of Hillary’s final altitude. But I am relieved. Annapurna Base Camp sits in the middle of the Annapurna range, and the view while we relax for breakfast is like nothing I have ever seen before. Some of the highest mountains in the world arch toward the heavens around us. The snow makes everything bright and beautiful. We have reached our incredible destination, and we take our time this morning letting it soak in. The view around us. The climb we’ve just completed. And the sense of accomplishment we feel. There aren’t many moments that I would describe as perfect. This is one of those moments.

  Cassie and I order hot tea and breakfast while Laxmi hands us each a chocolate bar that he’s been carrying to celebrate our final ascent. We all eat slowly, relishing the accomplishment of our bodies and, more important, our willpower. Every difficult step, every moment of exhaustion, every second of labor was absolutely worth it. We have reached ABC in winter through heavy snow. We have made it.

  However, standing at 13,500 feet, having gone through the most physically demanding experience of my life, I can’t help but think that I’m only halfway done. Now I have to get back down. We hang out at ABC for about ninety minutes, snapping pictures and laughing toward the heavens before we start down. The sun is out, and it doesn’t take much walking before we’re nice and warm. As we pass the ABC sign, I yell a primal victory scream as loud as I can and listen to it echo off the distant mountains for a long second. It feels right, and I sincerely apologize if I crushed any trekkers with an ensuing avalanche.

  I had struggled to get all the way to ABC. Now I struggle to slow down. I want to run as fast as I can toward thicker air, warmer weather, and hot showers. On the snowy trail, I fall more than a few times into a pile of fresh Himalayan snow. In the elation of the post-ABC moment, I couldn’t care less. I have made it to ABC, and I am ecstatic.

  We have lunch at MBC on our way down, allowing some time for our gear to dry in the sun. Tulasi is waiting for us at MBC, and we laugh and hug after coming down from the top. Then we put on our gear, turn our back on this tiny little camp high in the Himalayas, and keep descending. On our way up, we pushed through rain, snow, and ice. Now all of that seems to vanish. The trails are mostly clear, the sun is out, and we’re moving well, flying down the mountain at a fast but easy pace. There is a bounce in our step.

  I don’t know it yet, but I will pay dearly for what I have done to my body—the physical rigor and extreme stress I forced my system to endure. I have pushed my body to its absolute limit and beyond. For the last three or four weeks, my body had been breaking down slowly. The cramps on day one were evidence of these changes. Now I have passed the point of no return. The deterioration accelerates rapidly, and I am racing toward a physical and emotional judgment day.

  Our descent back to our starting point proves far easier. Before we reached the top, we had, in a way, envied the climbers on their way down. They had conquered the challenge of ABC, celebrated, and could now breathe a bit easier as they descended. Now we were those trekkers, and groups of hikers on their way up asked us the same questions we had asked the trekkers before us. “Did you make it to the top?” “How was the view?” “How was the weather?” “Was it hard to get to ABC?”

  The valleys that had been so hard to cross on the way up seem a little less steep and a little less difficult. The reward for reaching the top is a small town called Jhinu, another one of the guest house villages that exists specifically for trekkers. Only this one is special. Jhinu has natural hot springs nearby that are the perfect place to relax.

  It takes us two days of trekking from ABC to reach Jhinu. We sleep in, savor a lazy breakfast, and eventually make our way down to the springs. They are as amazing as I imagined. Two different pools of wonderfully hot water sit next to the frigid Modi Khola river. The river itself is rough at this point, and the Himalayan water rushing over the rocks makes for a symphony of natural noise that fills the valley.

  The hot springs melt away five days of hiking stress. We switch between the two pools—one is slightly hotter than the other—bathing in the warmth of the thermal waters. We spend three hours here. We could’ve spent three days.

  Eventually, we leave Jhinu and the hot springs and keep descending toward what I consider a reasonable altitude to sustain life, specifically mine. We’re ahead of schedule on our way down, so we only have to hike about three hours a day to finish on time. We eat long, lazy lunches and then longer, lazier dinners. We try different foods from the ubiquitous guest house menus, all of which taste almost exactly identical, no matter which town you’re in, and all of which have been approved by something called the Sanctuary Tourism Entrepreneur Committee, which apparently gives cooking classes to Nepali guest house owners, given the ubiquity of the meals. We have Western pizzas that taste surprisingly … Western. We have Mexican burritos that taste surprisingly … Nepali. It doesn’t matter. The food is great and we’re all having a blast as we make our way through the final few towns of our trek.

  On the morning of the eighth day, we reach Birethanti, one town away from where our hike had started. We take a picture of our family one more time and catch a cab to Pokhara. Our trek is over. We have made it up, and we have made it down.

  In our own silly way, we are conquerors, vanquishing the challenge of this surreal hike. Looking back at pictures, it’s almost impossible to imagine how difficult the hike was from MBC to ABC and how we made it all the way to the top. It’s one of the most incredible memories of our travels so far.

  Chapter 10

  February 4, 2014

  28°13’01.3”N 84°00’24.9”E

  Matepani Gumba, Pokhara, Nepal

  The problem with teaching English to young Buddhist monks in a hilltop monastery—and there is only one problem as far as I’m concerned—is the order in which you apply the modifiers young and Buddhist. We had assumed when we signed up for this stretch of volunteering that, above all else, our students would be monks. That is to say, we thought they would be quiet, meditative, diligent, and focused. To be fair, these stereotypes come from our assumptions about Buddhism and our preconceived notions about followers of the faith, of which we know little (and here I refer to both the faith and its followers). We believed monks would be willing students, great listeners, and eager participants in our classes. I am the teacher’s assistant, ready to sharpen a pencil or enforce discipline as needed. Cassie is the teacher.

  Our mistake is not that we were wrong about monks. We were wrong about our students. They aren’t officially monks yet; they are monks-in-training, which means that, before they are officially monks, they are young—many of them not yet ten years old. They haven’t mastered the peaceful, quiet demeanor that we normally associate with someone who has graduated to full monk and has devoted himself to a life of religious penitence and humility. Instead, they actively celebrate their abundance of adolescent energy, kicking and punching and disrupting their way through our classes in a way that reminds me a bit too much of myself, even if my elementary and middle school wardrobe involved fewer red robes and more sweatpants.

  As monks-in-training, they will have the choice, upon turning eighteen, of becoming monks and devoting their life to the monastery and the religion or leaving the monastery and living what we would consider a normal life. From what I can understand, nearly every one becomes a monk. It’s all they’ve ever known.

  Put a bunch of these kids in a beautifully colorful and completely isolated monastery on top of a hill on the outskirts of Pokhara with no female influence whatsoever, and there you have Matepani Gumba, a home for exiled Tibetan monks living in Nepal. Kids who aren’t in class scream and run amok in the exact way you’d expect from young children living in a giant dorm full of testosterone, a hormone these juveniles are just now discovering, though it is strictly forbidden to use said hormone, especially if that use is directed at a member of the opposite sex. Since the only such person within the immediate vicinity
is my wife, I come to appreciate this moratorium on the use of testosterone quite a bit.

  The students are a joy to work with, even if the classes are just a bit too long; everyone loses focus during the last few minutes. We spend the most time with our youngest students, some of whom have absolutely no understanding of the English language. My heart reaches out to these kids in particular, since I remember my first day of prekindergarten like it was yesterday. I sat in the sandbox and cried all day with my twin sister because we didn’t speak a word of English. We had recently emigrated from Israel, and I spoke only Hebrew.

  Cassie takes all of our students through the alphabet and the days of the week and the months of the year every morning, mixing in questions about the weather and the temperature. It’s awesome to watch her in her element, because it doesn’t take long to see real progress with our students. I call them our students, but they are very much her students, and everything they learn is a consequence of her instruction, not my pencil sharpening.

  There are four levels of English classes that are numbered Levels 1, 2, 4, and 6. I can’t for the life of me fathom what Buddhists have against the first two odd prime numbers, but there is no such thing as Level 3 or Level 5. And if that makes no sense, the monastery’s system of placing students in each level is completely ridiculous. They are placed in their English level based on how proficient they are at Tibetan, with the unfortunate consequence that a student who is phenomenal at English but awful at Tibetan will be in the same class as a student who has no aptitude for languages and is bad at both. That’s like placing me in a mechanical engineering class based on how well I performed in underwater basket weaving.

  Every morning, we wake up and begin the one-hour walk to Matepani Gumba. We could take a bus to a major bus park and another bus to the monastery, but we enjoy the morning and afternoon walks, since it gives us a front row seat to the daily insanity that is driving in Nepal. Far too many cars fill far too small a road, and the only thing that determines who gets to go where, as far as I can tell, is who has the loudest car horn and how vigorously he employs it.

  This is the great urban symphony that we enjoy during our walk. As we near our destination, we have one final test to overcome. Matepani Gumba sits on top of a hill, and we have to climb three hundred steps before we can officially say, “We made it.” The monastery itself is breathtaking, and we feel privileged to see it every day. It is enclosed within a bright orange wall. Much like the great facade of Petra, you don’t see it until you round the final turn through the gate. The monastery is an explosion of intense oranges and reds and greens and blues, each detail intricately painted as if to maximize the aesthetic value of the monastery. A row of columns supports the front of the building. At their base, the columns are a rich red with carved yellow stripes, but as they climb, they switch to a meticulous multicolor design that wraps around the entire building. As you go even higher, the colors switch to a green, blue, and flowered pattern on the window shutters before changing once again to red. On top of the monastery is a bright golden statue that looks like two resting deer staring at a golden wheel. That statue symbolizes the wheels of life and time, the fruits of abundance, and so much more than I understand. The walls on the inside of the building feature beautiful paintings telling the story of Buddha. A big courtyard dominates the space in front of the square monastery, and we often see prayer groups gathering here. The courtyard of the monastery provides a stunning view of the Annapurna range in the distance. On clear days—of which there are many—the snow-covered mountains fill the horizon, almost as if jostling for space in your field of vision. I look out at those mountains and remember our incredible hike, which already feels like a barely perceptible dream.

  Only once did we ever spot a Westerner at the monastery. She came in to take some pictures and was gone before we exchanged pleasantries. Matepani Gumba feels like our little secret, even if it is the most famous monastery in Pokhara.

  Rows of small dorms surround the main prayer building. Our classrooms are in the same buildings as the dorms, and we show up a few minutes early every day to set up our lessons. Above all else, our students are fun. They may have some trouble focusing, and they steal one another’s pencils and notebooks in ways that I imagine Buddha would frown upon, but they’re eager to learn and they love trying to impress Cassie. Without conducting a deeper psychoanalysis, I think they like having a woman around. When Cassie asks a question, every hand darts up and the students yell, “Miss! Miss! Miss!” since they can’t pronounce the “z” sound in “Ms! Ms! Ms!” Their willingness to volunteer has nothing to do with their knowledge of the answer, since they exhibit plenty of the former and none of the latter. They just want the teacher’s attention. When we start teaching them to name fruits using a set of flashcards, every student inevitably yells out “Cherry!” when we flip the first card, regardless of what fruit the card actually displays.

  We teach two classes in the morning, then have lunch with our students, which is always some variation of dahl bat. Dahl bat is the most common Nepali food, consisting of lentils, beans, and rice. For lunch and dinner every day, we eat dahl bat, sometimes even for breakfast. The curry flavor mixed in with the lentil soup is very palatable, even if it becomes somewhat monotonous by the eighty-seventh time we have the same meal. Our students politely bring us refills of water and second helpings of rice, and they clean our plates for us when we finish eating.

  On one particularly beautiful afternoon, the monks invite us to have some tea before our walk home. We gladly accept their hospitality, and they pour us each a cup of their brew. According to the canister, we will be drinking Tibetan salt tea. I’m always excited to try new foods and drinks, especially if they’re from a new culture or region. I eagerly take my first sip of this mysterious beverage.

  Generally, I find it incredibly impolite to vomit in front of or on a monk, but Tibetan salt tea is so horrifically awful that I weigh the pros and cons. Pros: I no longer have to have this drink in my mouth. Cons: I may be summarily kicked out of the monastery. It’s a difficult decision. The liquid in my cup—if you can call it a liquid, since it’s much thicker than normal tea—is yellow and viscous. It looks and tastes exactly like melting a stick of salted butter and serving it as a refreshment. Why on earth would you do this? I have no idea, but it’s a very popular drink among monks. Our students apparently drink it every day at tea time. Cassie takes one sip and hands me the rest of her cup. It would be impolite not to finish the drink—not as impolite as throwing up on a monk, but still undesirable enough—so I now have to consume both cups of tea, which requires a not inconsiderable amount of gastrointestinal and testicular fortitude.

  After lunch, we have one more class to teach before heading to our host family’s house.

  Krishna and Bimala’s house is a three-story concrete building in the northern part of the city. They rent out the first floor, live on the second floor, and have rooms for the volunteers on the third floor. That’s where we stay. Our room is spartan by any standards. We have two small beds in our room, so Cassie and I sleep separately every night. Our backpacks and clothing sit in two piles in the corner adjacent to the door. The bathroom is one door over, and we share it with the other volunteers.

  Bimala wakes us up every morning with a hot cup of tea or coffee. Most mornings, we are already awake because the neighbor’s rooster shrieks bloody murder at four o’clock sharp. I wish no ill will on anyone or anything, man or beast, but I come to hate that rooster with every ounce of my being, even more than the local stray dogs that host their own bona fide Wrestlemania event early every morning and twice on Thursdays. By the time we come down to the kitchen, Bimala has breakfast ready, which is either dahl bat or oatmeal. We normally don’t see Krishna until dinner, since he teaches at a local school and runs the Alliance Nepal volunteer organization. Bimala is a stay-at-home mom, a task that becomes infinitely more difficult and time-consuming without modern appliances. She cooks, cleans, and does laundry b
y hand every day, and she does it all with a perpetual smile.

  Krishna and Bimala become our second family. We have dinner with them every weeknight, where we tell them about our students and our classes. After dinner, we hang out with their two kids and their nephew in the living room, playing word games to improve their English. Their nephew’s family lives in rural Nepal, where quality schools are hard to find, so the family sent him to live with Krishna and Bimala so he could get a better education. Krishna’s dream is for his children to attend college in America, and he makes them complete their homework before they can goof off.

  We spend weekends at Lakeside, where we pay two dollars to do our laundry once a week and I splurge on my weekly shave, which sets me back three dollars. We always stay at the same hotel, paying ten dollars a night for a room.

  On our last weekend in Pokhara, we take a boat across Phewa Lake to the World Peace Stupa, a beautiful white pagoda that sits atop a mountain overlooking Pokhara and the lake. The hike up the mountain takes forty-five minutes, and I feel completely wiped out when we reach the top. A sign explaining the history of the World Peace Stupa informs us that this is one of eighty Peace Pagodas around the globe, which I find incredible, since I’ve never heard of the other seventy-nine.

  As we walk around the stupa, I confide in Cassie something that’s been on my mind lately.

  “I’m sick and tired of being sick and tired,” I tell her, choking back tears. Recently, we’ve both noticed that I’ve lost a bit of weight. My arms and legs have become rail thin, and both of our parents asked if I was on a diet the last time we Skyped with them. I’ve also been feeling weak, and it has gotten worse since our Himalayas hike. We talk about a few options—going to a doctor, calling doctors back home, visiting a hospital—but we decide the first step is to figure out how much weight I’ve lost.