They think it will be a fair day for paragliding the following day. That afternoon, Sunuwar, in what he describes as “one of the best weather” for paragliding, had already done two tandem flights, and Sherpa recorded his best solo flying time of one and a half hours. [break]
But the flight from a hilltop 1600m high in Syangja doesn’t beat what the duo accomplished about eight months ago: a free flight from the highest point on earth followed by a kayaking journey to the Bay of Bengal.
Besides the warmth of the burning fire, with temperature hovering around 5 degrees Celsius, Sunuwar and Sherpa reflect on what could possibly be one of the most daring challenges against nature.
In moments of silence with frequent pauses, time travelling to the past, Sherpa, a mountaineer by profession, and Sunuwar, a paraglider and a kayaking champion, recollect their journey.
As they chronicle their adventure, with frequent intervals of sporadic laughter and Sherpa lighting one cigarette after another, it all sounds dramatic and unreal: the ascent to 8,848m, creating a world record by paragliding at 8,865m and then paddling 850 kilometers through Nepal’s rapid rivers to the Ganges in India, finally ending their adventure in the Bay of Bengal.
For someone like Sunuwar, who was born and brought up in the hills of Ramechhap in central Nepal and had never scaled such heights, it was indeed a bold move to make one of the world’s most challenging treks. But Sherpa, with 11 mountaineering expeditions, including three Everest ascents, to his credit, had taken the responsibility of Sunuwar’s success.
In return, Sunuwar had promised Sherpa, who hails from the mountainous region of Solukhumbu and doesn’t know how to swim, a safe journey via the rivers to the sea.
“Both of us were confident about our professions,” Sunuwar says. “I trusted my paragliding and water skills. He trusted his mountaineering skills.”
Nodding in approval, Sherpa says, “I trusted his skills and credibility or I wouldn’t have jumped in the first place.”
Dreaming a dream
Though Sunuwar, 28, and Sherpa, 37, grew up in different parts of the country with diverse socio-cultural background, they nurtured a similar dream that one day they would fly.
Growing up in Ramechhap, Sunuwar used umbrellas to jump off trees. So when he saw a Swiss “flying with the help of some ropes and glider” for the first time, he knew he had to do it. Though a rafting guide and a kayaker since age 15, Sunuwar chose to work part-time at Blue Sky Paragliding in Pokhara for the love of flying.
It was at this very place that Sherpa had caught sight of this five-foot-four-inch “small figured man” behind the counter. The five-foot-six-inch Sherpa had come to buy a glider after he crashed his into a tree.
An inexperienced flyer dreaming to fly atop a mountain, Sherpa had wasted a lot of time and money in 2004 in Goa, India, trying to learn, but in vain. In 2009, he took a nine-day course in Pokhara for which he paid Rs 80,000 but even that wasn’t enough.
In late 2010, Sherpa was in Pokhara trying to buy a new glider and still wanting to learn.
Upon hearing his story, Sunuwar, who was at Blue Sky Paragliding, asked Sherpa why he really wanted to fly. Sherpa replied, “I’m a climber and I want to jump from a mountain.”
And this was exactly what Sunuwar wanted too: fly from a high point. “I told him that we share the same dream,” Sunuwar says.
An uncommon and a complicated dream, it wouldn’t have been possible hadn’t the duo helped each other. As they saw each other over two months time and garnered trust, it was decided that Sherpa would help Sunuwar to get to the world’s highest point and then Sunuwar would take it from there after they jumped off the Everest.
But Sunuwar also wanted to kayak to a lower base. He was living with a dream of a journey from summit to the sea. For Sherpa, who couldn’t swim, it sounded crazy, but adventurous enough to agree promptly. It was a beginning of an adventure, a realization of a vision.
The way up
“When you see the mountains in a photograph, you wish to be there and imagine of heaven,” says Sunuwar. “But to experience that, the struggle is paramount.”
The ascent to the world’s highest peak without any real preparation wasn’t an easy feat.
After Sunuwar and Sherpa decided their expedition on the first week of February 2011, they were busy putting together the equipment, finances and whatever support they could get. However, they had yet to get permission from the Nepal Government to paraglide from Everest.
“We could have never done what we did if we had waited to hear from the government side,” says Sunuwar, of their decision to go ahead with their plan without thinking of the legal consequences that would follow.
On April 21, Sunuwar and Sherpa left Pokhara for Kathmandu. The following day they reached Lukla from where the trek to Everest begins.
For Sunuwar, adapting to such heights was a problem. At 5,500m, he fell sick for the first time. They decided to descend to Namche at 3,440m. They stayed there a few days and even tested their flight gears, especially ordered from Spain.
After acclimatizing and gaining confidence, they started their trek again. They camped at the Everest Base Camp at 5,364m and then made their way to Camp 1 (6,065m) and Camp 2 (6,500m).
“It was difficult for him at Camp 2 when we spent the first night,” Sherpa says. “I could tell from experience.”
The next day they returned to base camp and then rested for two days before making their way up.
Sherpa remembered the gusting wind at Camp 2 that started from 8 pm and continued till 9 am. He said he kept asking his partner if he was doing fine.
Turning his chair toward Sherpa, coming closer to the burning fire, Sunuwar shares his feelings of that moment.
“I had no idea whether it was 5,000m or 8,000m,” he laughs. “So I wasn’t really scared to be honest. And how would getting scared have helped us anyway?”
Overindulgent toward their mission, they overcame fear by singing and cracking jokes. Sunuwar says Sherpa made the Everest expedition pretty exciting for him. In the video they shot while climbing, Sherpa is seen singing.
“Gorkhali ko chhoro ho ma, Gorkhe mero naam,” he sings over and over again.
“I’d love to see him as a comedian,” Sunuwar says of Sherpa, who, according to him, can be characterized by his laughter and sense of humor.
But it wasn’t all fun and games. As the duo stopped at Camp 2, it seemed that the weather would deteriorate further. So they both set a target and continued regardless of obstacles.
“I vividly remember,” Sunwar says. “We started our ascent from the South Col (7,986m) at 9 pm and reached the summit at 8:15 am,” he said.
But after reaching the summit they faced a series of problems. Their oxygen cylinder was stolen, making every breath count in the thin air. While Sherpa took minimal oxygen from the cylinder, he made sure Sunuwar had enough oxygen supply.
However, on May 21, as they stood at 8,848m, Sunuwar and Sherpa forgot everything.
The view from atop is etched in Sunuwar’s mind: the magnificence of the breaking dawn and the range of other mountain peaks that resembled a “radish field.”
But he didn’t want to be consumed by the grandeur of Everest. He didn’t want anxiety to kick in.
“I thought that I was at a normal place—just a little higher where the air is little thinner,” Sunuwar sums up his thought of the moments before they took off.
With more than 4,600 flying hours and a cross-country paragliding flight to his résumé, this was the ultimate challenge for Sunuwar, more so for Sherpa. Nonetheless, it was a moment they had been waiting for.
“It was challenging—there wasn’t enough space, we had unconventional clothing, and we couldn’t talk because of the oxygen mask,” Sunuwar lists the difficulties. Sherpa, in his typical humorous style, adds: “It was indeed challenging. I had three cameras but no oxygen.”
But when Sunuwar lifted the glider and they floated in the thin air from the world’s highest point, Sherpa says all the discomforts disappeared.
Sunuwar and Sherpa took off from Everest At 8:45 am setting a new record of paragliding at 8,865m. They encircled the peak and bid goodbye to their friends standing atop the world’s highest peak, which was now below them.
Their 45 days of rigorous climb to the summit was then superseded by a 45-minute descent to 3,780m at Syangoche in the Khumbu region where they were welcomed with beer on one hand and garlands on other.
“We were so overwhelmed that we forgot all our pains,” Sherpa says. Sunuwar adds: “But this wasn’t the end.”
Following the river
The plan that started in January had gone through a harsh winter and spring. They were almost welcomed by monsoon before the daredevils started another leg of their adventure.
On June 3, with a double canoe, and paddles Sunuwar and Sherpa followed the river to the sea.
With no prior experience of paddling in the water, Sherpa, the man from the mountain, was pushed into the water in a canoe. “He [Sunuwar] said that the river won’t be as difficult as the mountain,” Sherpa says.
But he had no time to grasp the technicalities of the river or the difficulties of negotiating the rapids that would follow.
Coming from a high altitude, Sherpa also had problems adjusting to the lower lands. At the confluence of the Dudh Koshi and Sun Koshi rivers, Sherpa said, he was “suffocated by the warm temperature.”
“I couldn’t breathe,” he then says, still laughing. While Sunuwar was caught by the magnificence of the sight from Everest, Sherpa tells he was surprised on seeing how the water body widened at River Tamor.
It was there when their canoe capsized and Sunuwar was caught in a whirlpool for 30 minutes. “I thought this was the end,” Sunuwar says. In total panic, not knowing what to do, while trying to get out of the water, Sherpa hit Sunuwar’s eyes with the paddle.
“I was shivering after I was out of the water—don’t know if it was the cold or I was just too scared,” Sunuwar speaks of that day.
He then continued the story of another rapid, of another event when their canoe capsized again at Baraha Chhetra, a famous Hindu religious site in eastern Nepal. Sherpa was swept away for about 1,000m.
“Even after all that, I never thought we’d die,” he says. “We were not there to die. We were there to have some adventure.”
And the adventure continued as they crossed the Nepali side and entered the Indian territory without even realizing. When they found the first house, after paddling for hours, that they could go and ask—Nepal was already 15 kms behind.
They stayed the night in that very house. But as Sunuwar slept in silence, Sherpa was distracted by the beam of light coming through the window. Scared of the thought that it would be someone from the border control unit, he couldn’t sleep.
Next morning he found that the light came from a bulldozer at a construction site nearby.
While the two men were brave and courageous, they were fearful at the same time—a fear that their expedition wouldn’t be complete. And that happened when they were robbed.
First, they were robbed by a group of 12 men at the border of West Bengal and then at Jharkhand. They took away all their money and supplies. However, they managed to save their cameras. Two days after they crossed Calcutta, they were robbed again.
Sometimes they survived only on mangoes and bananas; at times they hardly had any water to drink. Sometimes they spent nights with dead bodies floating on boats, a tradition practiced by some along the way.
“And, oh, the insects and two-tailed birds,” Sherpa, who is not used to seeing them in the mountains, says amazed.
Despite all the challenges, navigating an unfamiliar terrain, through Nepal’s rapid river to the Ganges in India, on June 27 at 2 pm, Sunuwar and Sherpa finally made it to the Bay of Bengal.
“We realized our dream,” Sunuwar says of one of the first thoughts to cross his mind when they reached the Bay of Bengal.
“It really showed what we can do if we believe in our dreams and trust our skills,” Sherpa adds.
The Lasting Effect
They trekked to the top of the world, set a world record free flying at 8,865m, flew down to 3,780m and then paddled down to the sea.
Sunuwar and Sherpa had only been acquainted for two months when they set off with a common goal, on a 113-day of adventure from summit to sea.
The time spent on the trip, they say, is now like tattoos imprinted in their memory.
When they sit and share their stories today, months after their trip, it’s still fresh. They ask each other about the details of the trips to verify the dates, time and places. They laugh about incidences.
“Remember, when we had the bad food,” Sunuwar says. “Yes,” Sherpa replies. “We used to think of pizzas and chicken while eating bad food.”
After going through the thick and thin and having survived the odds that, on occasions, left them almost dead, Sunuwar and Sherpa share the everlasting bond of friendship.
At Sunuwar’s soon-to-be launched paragliding resort in Syangja, Sherpa comes frequently to learn paragliding. It will take him four to five years to become a professional.
It was a common dream and the love of flying that brought them together, and it’s the journey toward accomplishing their dream that bolstered their friendship.
For them, the adventure was neither a crazy act nor desperation to set a world record. They did it to test their skills and come close with nature. “Every step has been a lifelong memory,” Sherpa says.
But would they repeat anything daring and unconventional again? Sunuwar and Sherpa look at each other and laugh.
“I’ll probably go to the river for a vacation,” Sherpa says. “And I shall go to the mountains,” Sunuwar adds.
For their daring adventure, Sano Babu Sunuwar and Lakpa Tsheri Sherpa have been nominated for National Geographic’s Adventurers of the Year 2012.
You can vote for them in the National Geographic website. Voting ends January 18.
Bhandari is the UK based correspondent for The Week.
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