It was August and it was hot - very hot and very humid. The plan had been to go to Kalimpong for all of August and to get home in time for the Monsoon Race Season. Sadly this was the time that my mother and Desmond were considered spies and none of us could get permits.
We were all upset - my mother cried and we all felt anger at the injustice of it all. We had also been planning a big mountain party for Desla's birthday. Then we got a phone call to come to Minto Park for the party.
We went with bad grace - a party on the eighth floor of a block of flats overlooking Bhowanipur cemetery was not the same as Bloody Marys with aunties and a view of Kanchenjunga.
We arrived at base camp - Desla had taken his tents from the Annapurna trip and set them up in the living room. We were to cook on little camping gas stoves and drink Calcutta Bloody Marys. We sat in the tent and imagined the wind and snow whistling around us. Desmond told us stories of his hunt for the yeti and showed us the skin of a blue bear that he had been told was that of yeti. He told of how to escape the Yeti's clutches by turning your face in the opposite way that you were running and he told us that the yeti would kill men but take women to mate with.
As the night wore it grew hotter inside the nylon tents but no one moved - it was a night of magic and wonder and only got better when the Nepalese boys brought out the drum and guitars and we started to dance. Desla surpassing us with 'Naintala'
I don't remember going home but I dreamed of yetis and mountains and how one man could so entrance us all that we felt we had returned to our beloved mountains for one night more.
We were all upset - my mother cried and we all felt anger at the injustice of it all. We had also been planning a big mountain party for Desla's birthday. Then we got a phone call to come to Minto Park for the party.
We went with bad grace - a party on the eighth floor of a block of flats overlooking Bhowanipur cemetery was not the same as Bloody Marys with aunties and a view of Kanchenjunga.
We arrived at base camp - Desla had taken his tents from the Annapurna trip and set them up in the living room. We were to cook on little camping gas stoves and drink Calcutta Bloody Marys. We sat in the tent and imagined the wind and snow whistling around us. Desmond told us stories of his hunt for the yeti and showed us the skin of a blue bear that he had been told was that of yeti. He told of how to escape the Yeti's clutches by turning your face in the opposite way that you were running and he told us that the yeti would kill men but take women to mate with.
As the night wore it grew hotter inside the nylon tents but no one moved - it was a night of magic and wonder and only got better when the Nepalese boys brought out the drum and guitars and we started to dance. Desla surpassing us with 'Naintala'
I don't remember going home but I dreamed of yetis and mountains and how one man could so entrance us all that we felt we had returned to our beloved mountains for one night more.
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