The Kingdom

Ajay stopped them: “Better if you wait here. Pushpa is a sgonyer-a doorkeeper. Mr. Karna is well known to these people, but they are suspicious of outsiders.”

Karna and Pushpa continued to talk for several minutes before the old man nodded and clapped Karna on both arms. Karna walked back to the Land Cruiser.

“Pushpa has given us permission to proceed. He will inform a local guide to meet us at the first caves.”

“Inform the guide how?” Remi asked. “I don’t see any-”

“By word of foot,” Karna replied.

He pointed to one of the rocky shark’s teeth atop the opposite cliff. There, a figure was standing. As they watched, Pushpa raised his arm and formed a sequence of shapes with his hand. The figure signaled back, then disappeared behind the cliff.

Karna said, “By the time we get there, all the locals will know to expect us and that we have permission.”

“In other words, no angry villagers with pitchforks.”

“Rifles,” Sam corrected.

Karna smiled reassuringly. “Neither. Shall we go?”

Leaving Tarl Gompa in their rearview mirror, they continued heading generally east, following the gorge for two miles, before emerging on a dry riverbed. A quarter mile away, across a bridge, a collection of gompa-like structures sat at the foot of another anthill cliff, this one several hundred feet high and stretching to the north and south as far as the eye could see.

Ajay guided the Land Cruiser over the river bottom to the bridge, then across. As they neared the village, the terrain changed from scree and boulders to a fine rusty brown sand. Ajay halted the vehicle beside a low stone wall on the village’s perimeter. They all climbed out into a brisk wind. Sand pelted their jackets.

“It’s got a bite to it, doesn’t it?” Karna said.

Sam and Remi, in the middle of pulling up their hoods, nodded back. Sam called over the rush, “We’re walking from here?”

“Yes. Into those.” Karna pointed toward the anthills. “Come on.” Karna led them through a gap in the wall and started down a stone-lined path. At the end of this path they found a thick hedgerow of scrub brush. He followed the hedge to the left, then through a natural pergola. They emerged in a small cobblestoned square centered around a bubbling fountain. Around the perimeter, planter boxes overflowed with red and purple flowers.

“They divert a bit of the river for irrigation, plumbing, and fountains,” Karna explained. “They love fountains.”

“It’s beautiful,” Remi said.

It took little imagination to see how Shangri-La legends began here, she thought. In the middle of some of the bleakest terrain she and Sam had ever encountered, they’d found a tiny oasis. The juxtaposition was pleasantly jarring.

Seated nearby on a wooden bench was a short middle-aged man in a plaid sweater-jacket and a baseball cap emblazoned with the Chicago Bears logo.

He raised a hand toward them and walked over. Karna and the man embraced and spoke for a bit before Karna turned to introduce Sam and Remi.

“Namaste . . . namaste,” the man said with smile.

Karna said, “This is Pushpa.” Before they could ask, Karna added, “Yes, it’s more or less the same as the man at the gompa. To us, it sounds the exactly the same; to them, the inflection makes all the difference. Pushpa will lead us to the caves. We’ll take some tea with Pushpa, and then we’ll get down to business.”

29

JOMSOM, NEPAL

Packs settled on their backs, they retraced their footsteps past the Land Cruiser, then followed Pushpa along the wall, first south, then east, around the village to the foot of the anthill cliffs.

“I suddenly feel very small,” Remi said over her shoulder to Sam.

“Very.”

Upon their first seeing the cliffs, both distance and the fantastical geology had combined to make them seem less than real, as though it were a backdrop from a science-fiction movie. Now, with Sam and Remi standing in the anthills’ shadow, they were simply awe-inspiring.

At the head of the line, Pushpa had stopped, waiting patiently until Sam and Remi finished gawking and taking pictures before setting out again. Ten more minutes of hiking brought them to a fissure in the rock that was barely taller than Sam. One by one, they slipped through the opening and onto a tu

Ever eastward the path zigzagged and spiraled until Sam and Remi had lost track of how far they’d traveled. Pushpa called a halt with a barked word. Behind them at the rear of the line Ajay said, “Now we climb.”

“How?” Remi asked. “I don’t see any handholds. And we don’t have any gear.”

“Pushpa and his friends have made a way. The sandstone here is very fragile; standard pitons and rock screws cause too much damage.”

Ahead, they could see Pushpa and Karna talking. Pushpa disappeared into an alcove on the left side of the cliff, and Karna picked his way back down the path to where Sam and Remi were standing.

“Pushpa is going up first,” he said, “followed by Ajay. Then you, Remi, followed by you, Sam. I’ll bring up the rear. The steps look daunting, but they’re quite sturdy, I assure you. Just go slow.”

Sam and Remi nodded, and then Karna and Ajay changed positions.

Ajay stood at the head of the line, neck craned backward for several minutes before he too stepped into the alcove and disappeared from view. Sam and Remi stepped forward and looked up.

“Oh, boy,” Remi murmured.

“Yep,” Sam agreed.

The steps Karna had mentioned were in fact wooden stakes that had been pounded into the limestone to form a series of staggered hand- and footholds. The ladder rose a hundred feet up a chimney-like slot before curving out of sight behind a hanging wall of rock.

They watched Ajay scramble over the rungs until they could no longer see him. Remi hesitated for only a moment, then turned to Sam, smiled, kissed him on the cheek, and offered a cheerful, “See you at the top!”

With that, she mounted the first rung and started climbing.

When she was halfway up, Karna said over Sam’s shoulder, “She’s a dynamo, that one.”

Sam smiled. “You’re preaching to the choir, Jack.”

“Much like Selma, then, right?”

“Right. Selma is . . . unique.”

Once Remi had rounded the bend, Sam started upward. Immediately he could feel the solidity of the rungs, and after a few test movements to compensate for his pack’s weight, he settled into a steady rhythm. Soon the walls of the chimney closed in around him. What little sunlight had filtered its way to the path below dimmed to twilight. Sam reached the hanging wall and paused to peek around the bend. Twenty feet away, above and to his left, the rungs ended at a horizontal wooden plank nailed to a row of stakes. At the end of this plank was a second, this one angling behind another hanging wall. Remi was standing at the junction; she gave him a wave and thumbs-up.

When Sam reached the plank, he found it not nearly as narrow as it had looked from below. He boosted himself onto the platform, found his footing, and walked toe to heel down the plank, then around the corner. Four more planks brought him to a rocky shelf and an oval-shaped cave. Inside, he found Pushpa, Ajay, and Remi seated around a Jetboil stove supporting a miniature teakettle.

The water had just started boiling when Karna slipped into the cave entrance. He sat down. “Oh, good, tea!”

Wordlessly, Pushpa dug five red enamelware mugs out of his pack, passed them out, then poured the tea. The group sat huddled together, sipping the brew and enjoying the silence. Outside, a gust of wind occasionally whistled past the entrance.

Once everyone was finished, Pushpa deftly packed away the mugs, and then they set off again, this time with their headlamps on. Once again, Pushpa was in the lead while Ajay brought up the rear.