Traveling is the fine art of balancing distrusting everyone who approaches you and trusting (almost) everyone you approach– more or less.

We’ve become good friends with Antoine and Anais, a French couple traveling for 6 months in India and Nepal and have been traveling with them since Bodhgaya.  Through some serious harassment, we convinced them to cross the border to Nepal earlier and thus began our unplanned adventure into Nepal.

Our first step was to get out of the Himalayan town of Darjeeling and come back to sea level (Siliguri), where we could catch a 40km bus to the border.  Easy, right?

Getting out of Darjeeling was extremely hard at 6am because the taxi drivers wanted to charge 3x the amount because “Siliguri is closed”.  Saying a venue is closed is a popular scheme to get travelers to go to an alternate bus, hotel, or restaurant, so the schemers can get a commission for redirecting you.  Seasoned travelers that we are, we laughed at the audacity of claiming that an entire town was closed.  So we bargained hard and got the price down to a reasonable level.

Upon arriving in Siliguri we found there were no taxis, no rickshaws, and no open restaurants.  We asked, and were dismayed to find the entire county was on strike because Gorkahaland wants to be their own state and are lobbying in government.  So we got stranded in a town with nothing to do,  nowhere to go, and miles away from a guest house.  So yes, Siliguri was indeed closed.

No amount of rupees could convince a local to drive us past the barricade– not that I wanted to, but our friends were adamant about getting out of India right now!

We approached a young man watching the developments and he responded with a curious Indian accent with a hint of British mixed in.  He was very friendly, explained the details of the strike, and led us to a bamboo shelter to wait for a few hours.  After some chit-chat, we found out he was a sherpa (a mountaineering guide) during the trekking season working for an Australian company.  This quiet unasuming man had climbed with the greats, had summitted Everest not once, but twice, and all with no supplemental oxygen.  Needless to say I pummeled him with questions for an hour.  What does it feel to be on top of the world?  What’s the view like?  How cold is it?  What’s your greatest fear?  He explained that it’s not cold, it’s fucking cold.  You can’t feel your fingers for days.  The view isn’t that great, because the view from climbs like Gokyoryi are better, and the first time he summitted he had mixed emotions over having lost a member on the way up.  Spending time with Anand was a truly remarkable experience.

After lots of questions and answers, he invited us to his house, where his mother prepared tea and food for all 4 of us stragglers.  After some time, the strike subsided, we said our goodbyes and headed over to the border on the back of a pickup truck with 20 other Nepalis/Indians.  We hope to return one day, and trek with a man who was been on top of the world and who has climbed with such greats as Tenzing Norgay’s grandson (yes, we saw the pictures!).

p.s. Tenzing Norgay was the sherpa who, along with Edmund Hillary, were the first to climb Mount Everest.  His descendants are still great names in climbing.