Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
René the job of getting it changed at the highest rate. In those days, a close relative
of the king of Nepal was the head of the Nepal treasury. Rumour suggested he
would give ten per cent more than the bank for hard currency, dollars especially.
René took a chance and headed to the office near the palace. He soon found him-
self facing a tricky situation.
The factotum of King Birendra's uncle looked at him with disgust. 'What is this?'
he shouted at René. 'This is only $1,000. I thought you had $100,000 you wanted
to change. We do not take these small amounts. It is impossible.'
René persisted with promises of much larger amounts later in the year when he
returned in winter with a big French expedition. Eventually he arrived back at the
Lhotse Hotel with the ten per cent bonus.
We still had to clear the high altitude clothing from the bond warehouse. On the
fourth day, Alex and I were repacking the specialist food we hadn't sold when René
burst in to the room with exciting news. 'The rest of the gear has arrived from
France and I have agreed the amount of the bribe. I can go back in two days to col-
lect. It is such a crazy place, you know? They just do nothing with all this stuff in
the shed, only money counts.'
Now we had a difficult decision to make. Should we all stay or should some of us
head for base camp? René still might need us and our liaison officer Mr Gupta to
put pressure on the airport staff should they up the bribe. But we were now behind
schedule and it was nearly the end of the monsoon. Our original plan had been to
reach base camp by 10 September. That gave us three weeks to acclimatise before
we tackled the face in October. October is an uncertain month in the Himalaya.
With luck, we would have a couple of weeks at the beginning of the month before
the jet stream descended and autumn storms arrived. We had already lost nearly a
week in Kathmandu.
Alex argued logically that we should split up. Time was as important now as se-
curing our high-altitude clothing. We had already considered buying used gear on
Sherpa Street. There was plenty to choose from. The Burgesses had been on the
successful Canadian Everest expedition pre-monsoon. The shops were full of down
suits, parkas and sleeping bags all marked 'Burgess' in indelible pen. It made me
laugh. It seemed the twins had managed to sequester much of the expedition's in-
ventory to flog in Kathmandu. No doubt a number of loads had gone missing on
the way out.
We decided René would wait in Kathmandu. If he failed to get the clothing from
the warehouse, he would buy all we needed on Sherpa Street by credit card and we
would sort it later. Alex and I would press on to Pokhara, hire porters and start the
seven-day walk to base camp. René could catch us up. We had one final day sorting
