Team Chabuk
Recon Exploration - 2008
Improvise. Adapt. Overcome. We put this military saying into practice several times on this journey.
Our trip started out as usual, too much work to complete in the real world before heading off for six weeks in the Himalayas. But little did I know the end of the trip would be just as dramatic as the trip itself! A couple of chain of events occuring before our trip really made things interesting.
First, on the political side, the beloved Royal Family was killed several years ago, which has led to political instability. Second, because of a long-standing promise with India, a flood control dam broke during this past rainy season. The flood devastated many villages along the river. Besides the human death toll, it washed away major roads and caused many of the trekking trips to divert travel through neighboring India. Some of the future trekking and expedition Sirdars (local trip managers) became ill from the water or food while in India, which meant that they could not lead any October and November trips in Nepal. This led to our Sirdar Bali, with which I had been on a previous trip in 2001, and who has climbing experience, to be moved to another trekking group of 12.
Our new Sirdar is a very bright and upcoming kid (only 20 years old) that previously had worked as part of a trekking kitchen crew. This would be his first management position, and he was teamed with an older Cook who also had previous expedition experience. Since our group was small and our objective straightforward, I thought that this teaming would be to our advantage. Additionally, we would be shadowing five Aussies from the Australian National Geographic and Sirdar Dawa with whom I had been previously climbing in 1999. Their team was on a different schedule than ours, but we would be with them for the first six days--time enough for our group to work out any problems before being on our own.
