Peter Habelar was the first man to summit Everest without oxygen. He did it with legendary climber, Reinhold Messner, and the night before our first attempt to fly home, we showed him how to play pool. He’s a much better mountaineer.
The next morning, after everyone else flew out of Lukla, we sat in an empty lodge, eating breakfast, awaiting our turn. Sitting next to us was Sir Edmund Hillary’s son and granddaughter.
Hillary is a local hero, not only for first summiting Everest, but for the dozens of schools and hospitals he built for the Sherpa people, after 60 plus children signed a petition, asking him to build them a school.
The “house wife” presented the granddaughter with a Sherpa gown to be worn at a ceremony later that week. Peter, the son, was taking pictures and I offered to take one of the whole family. He appreciated the offer and I snapped away.
It was my first celebrity photo shoot. Albeit on his camera.
In the Khumbu Himalaya of Nepal, prayer flags, prayer wheels, and mani walls line the paths I trek. As is the Buddhist custom, they are always passed on the left and as I encounter the wheels, I give them a spin, and for each one think of a loved one, past or present, in the winds of the Himalaya.
In Tengboche, I visit a monastery and spend an afternoon in the cold room at twelve thousand feet, open doors, monks bowed and chanting, accompanied by occasional music. I watch from the dark as streams of light silhouette the rhythmically gyrating saffron robes and the air is thick with incense and frosted breath.
It is peaceful, the chanting, and I close my eyes, sitting cross-legged on the carpets in the corner and wish I could lie down and fall asleep here; for it to never stop.