The Supply Chain
Keeping all those Everest Base Camp trekkers fed and showered requires some major logistics. Most trekkers fly in to Lukla but their supplies come up from the road-heads at Paphlu and Jiri where it is packed onto the backs of yaks, mules and porters who hump it for days up the trail. Loads of Kerosene, LPG, flour and cooking oil all stumble and labour their way up the trail in vast quantities.
We are still two days below the main trail and so far we have seen very few trekkers but the supply chain rules our day. Major traffic jams formed in narrow sections of the trail when hundreds of mules jingled and jangled their way, unloaded down the trail and met some very pointy horned yaks going up to Namche Bazaar to be sold to a local yak driver for high altitude logistical services.
Some loads are too precious to put on a mule. For a while we fell in behind a small group of porters each carrying a massive chunk of buffalo. They too have a two or three day walk to Namche where they will supply buffalo steaks for hungry trekkers up and down the Khumbu Valley.
Our Sherpa guides take great care of us when a mule train arrives. They shunt us into little lay-bys so that we don’t all get trampled or nudged off the trail into the abyss that leads to the Dudh Kosi now 1,500m below us.
What is a shame is that the beautifully and ancient constructed trails are being bulldozed ready for the inexorable advance of the road-head up the valley. For centuries rocks have been split by hand to build elaborate trails with cobbles, flagstones, embankments and cantilevers. No effort is made to stabilise and preserve the ancient paths and the monsoon rain will turn the rich soil into a quagmire leading to erosion and land slides. But people want roads so that they too can enjoy the benefits that roads bring such as education, employment and health care. It’s just a shame that building a road in Nepal is just a bulldozing exercise.
I wonder if the roads will ever wind their way up to the gates of the Sagarmatha National Park? If that happens the mule trains will go and the meat in the Saturday morning market will arrive by refrigerated truck. We will have lost a little bit of paradise and the traffic jams won’t smell of yak dung and mule pee.
