I first saw Everest over my shoulder as I was digging through a side pocket in my pack on the roof of a bus in Tibet. Everest stood taller than the other peaks like a blue cuspid in a row of teeth set in the dun jaw of the horizon. I knew the shape by heart. Even at a distance it pierced me with fear. I found the Imodium and clambered back down into the bus. Allison had buried herself in the back seat under a pile of fleeces. She couldn’t even eat. No one among the dozen passengers spoke English, so I couldn’t tell how much longer till we would cross the Himalayas and arrive in Nepal, but the smile next to me revealed a gold tooth. Dorje, my seat mate, had his hair fastened up in a knot with a turquoise brooch and wore coral earrings. Sticking out of his backpack between us and tapping me with every bump in the road was the lifeless black hoof of a goat.
When we did begin the ascent, snow started as night fell. We passed one outpost of concrete shacks where another bus had spun out of control and been abandoned. Ours began to fishtail wildly in the deep drifts on the road. Then there was nothing. Only a sheer white drop covered by clouds on our right and grey rock face to the left. Allison and I held hands as the driver lit a cigarette, narrowed his eyes, and careened toward a curve on the ice-covered road with seemingly no traction. I accepted that I would die.
The bus got stuck half an hour later and a couple freed their baggage from the netting on the roof and took off on foot in the darkness. I asked Dorje frantically “How long?” through wild gestures. He flashed ten fingers and his calm smile. I looked to Allison. “Think he’s saying ten minutes?” I threw our bags off the roof as the bus reversed then lurched away back in the direction we had come, its taillights disappearing and leaving us in silent darkness.
After our first hour walking, the couple’s tracks disappeared. After two we ran out of water. After three, I noticed dirt under my footsteps and looked up. At the very top of the black sky where the silhouetted peaks ended was an almond gash of stars. After four, we saw the glow on the horizon that was the border village of Zhangmu, midway along the “Friendship Highway” from China to India.
