From the Journals of Jessie and Andy Crooks and Katie Lochner
In the first entry of our shared journal, I said “it’s nice to have nothing to worry about except putting one foot in front of the other.” Five days later, my husband, Andy, sister, Katie, and I would be sprinting down unstable ground trying to escape the aftershocks of the April 25th 2015, 7.6 magnitude earthquake that rocked Nepal, killing almost 9000 people, injuring over 22,000 and destroying almost one million homes and buildings. Here is our journal from the trip.
Part 2: The Descent
Day 7
During the night, we experienced several aftershocks and rushed outside each time. The lodge we are sleeping in is little more than plywood sheets nailed together with a metal roof so we were fearful that it could collapse on top of us. Since we barely slept, we were out of bed early, packed up, and finished with breakfast by 6:45 a.m. It was time to start the somber trek down. The morning was eerie, with a thick fog all around us, like a blanket tucking us in with the grief of it all. No one spoke above a whisper. Speaking in a full voice felt too much like yesterday, and nothing is like yesterday anymore. Today is all sadness, destruction, and death.
Giri would occasionally stop someone we passed and ask for news. We learned that at least 100 people were missing from the base camp. Base camp, where we almost were, had an avalanche burying people in their tents. Our minds are spinning with what-ifs as we silently carry on.
We took a break in Tengboche, the beautiful monastery that we had visited just 3 days before was partially destroyed. We were able to call our parents at this point, and we were all grateful to connect. They had no word from us since yesterday.
For two hours we waited anxiously in Tengboche, because there were reports of more tremors. None came, so we set off again at noon. Everywhere we looked, we saw heartbreaking destruction; demolished homes and villages, and the injured or deceased being carried on stretchers. In the early afternoon, as we were winding through the rhododendron forest, with nothing to look at but the beautiful blooms, we started to feel a little more at ease. Suddenly, we heard branches snapping above us, Giri looked back and yelled “RUN.” Rocks began falling on our path. Andy was in the back and had the split-second thought to turn back and run instead of forward to avoid the rocks, which caused him to trip. As he fell, Giri looked back at him and yelled something, which got my attention and I turned to see Andy rolling on the ground. I ran back to him and we told Katie and Giri to keep going. We had no idea if the whole mountainside was about to come down all around us. Katie later said when she looked back, she saw a soccer ball-sized boulder fall in the path a couple of feet behind Andy as he fell. Luckily, it didn’t turn into a full-blown landslide, Andy got up from the fall with only a few cuts and scrapes and two broken hiking poles. He was thankful for all the burpees he did while training for the trip because he popped up pretty quickly (if he doesn’t say so himself 😉).
After recovering from the fall, we continued trekking. It was early afternoon at this point, and the hike was supposed to take about four hours from Tengboche. Due to our delays, we estimated we would get into Namache between 4:30 and 5. Around 2:00 pm, two military men stopped us and told us that for safety reasons, we must get to Namache Bazaar by 4:00. Parts of the trek down to Namache are on a treacherous section of trail, and the possibility of more tremors would make hiking that stretch very dangerous. We started running and essentially ran the remainder of the hike, most of which was on the side of a steep open mountain. We felt like at any moment the ground could disappear beneath our feet or fall on us from the sky. Parts of the trail had been demolished, leaving either gaping holes or giant rock piles we had to navigate. We were terrified. There were also huge cracks in the trail that seemed to be threatening to fall off the side of the mountain at any moment. Adrenaline and luck got us safely to Namache around 3:30 p.m. We found the entire village was set up to sleep outside, for fear of their homes collapsing on them in the night. We had no tents since we planned to stay in teahouses for the entire trek. The place we stayed in on the way up told us they were closed and not allowing guests. Giri called several others, but came up empty-handed. Giri is very good friends with the owner of one establishment and has been staying there since 1993. After much convincing, and even though they weren’t sleeping in the lodge, they agreed to let us sleep inside and fed us. We were so happy to be warm and able to change into (semi) clean clothes after an intense day. I honestly cannot imagine how we could have done this without Giri. We will be forever grateful to him.
Day 8
Last night we were awakened several times with more aftershocks. Only one was strong enough that we had to run outside, but sleep was futile. Giri’s spirits seemed higher this morning and he even cracked a joke about bringing out the jam jam at breakfast. The trail on the hike today day was much less dangerous, but we did have to cross several suspension bridges. The height and length of them on the way up made us nervous, but after hearing about them snapping from the tremors we were dreading this. There was one part of the trail where a landslide had wiped out about 50 feet of the path. With a little hesitation and a shoulder shrug from Giri saying “what choice do we have?” We started scrambling up the mountain at a 90-degree angle to get high enough where there was someplace to cross over the nonexistent path. Once we got up we sprinted across the unstable ground and found the trail again. We walked for seven hours today and finally arrived in Lukla. We are hoping for a short stay before catching a flight out and then out of Kathmandu. We are willing to fly ANYWHERE, and have already started dreaming about a couple of days on a quiet island before getting back to our favorite place….home. The biggest luxury in Lukla today was a shower that consisted of a large bucket of water heated up in the kitchen and poured down some sort of drain system to a shower head. You had a solid 1-2 minutes to soap up and rinse, and after 8 days without a shower, it felt spectacular.
Days 9 & 10
More sobering news of the devastation reaches us daily, including learning that helicopters had recovered over 150 bodies from the avalanches that hit base camp one and higher. Lukla continues to be flooded with hikers trying to get home. Each day Giri gets up early to crowd into the airport to wait in line with everyone else that is trying to get a flight. Physical fights are breaking out daily. People are desperate and scared. We sometimes hear or see a plane coming in, a few people get on and then clouds roll in and no more planes come in for the day. We have been spending our time doing a little shopping since we know we won’t have another chance. There are only 4 small shops, but we have been able to procure a few gifts for friends and family (Katie did get that knife). We also visited the local Starbucks, because, of course. The never-ending hearts game continues, the scores are over 2000 now. When Katie and I can no longer stomach Andy’s shenanigans we switch to giant double-deck games of memory. When we can no longer stand each other at all we split off to play solitaire or other individual activities. There has also been plenty of napping. Katie and Andy found a Scottish pub with a pool table and enjoyed an afternoon making friends with a rowdy and friendly group of Aussies. Jessie did more napping. Andy said it felt good to laugh again and forget about what was happening all around us. Our families are working tirelessly to find other options for us and adjusting our international flights each day so we have a return flight when we do make it to Kathmandu.
Day 11
Very bored. Finished all the books. Played all the card games. Andy is a cartoonist now. We want to go to Ruth’s Chris immediately upon return, there is no meat. We hear there might be a tremor soon, running outside will be the big excitement of the day.
Source of the tremor was unreliable and it never came. Our family is telling us the line to get into the airport in Kathmandu is a mile long, so if we do get there we should stay in the airport until we can get a flight. Giri said the smell in the city is getting unbearable and he found out that his family was robbed while sleeping outside of his ruined home. We want him to be able to get home so badly.
Tomorrow we are 11th on the waiting list for a flight. This means first people with tickets that are actually for tomorrow get to leave, then anyone with tickets from 4/25-4/30, then the waitlist starts. Our families have reached out to senators, state departments, the US Embassy, insurance companies, and travel agents looking for ways to get us out. Andy’s uncle went on the news and maybeeee slightly exaggerated our situation. There is nothing we can do but wait.
Day 12
This morning we woke up with an inkling of hope that we would get a flight. There is still a huge backlog of people trying to get out, but the numbers are starting to go down and we are moving our way up in the queue. Yesterday, a huge helicopter from India came in and the Indian nationals crowded and pushed their way to get on. It was quite the scene as you could feel the fear and panic from the people trying desperately to get home. We have been in Lukla for 5 days, the food options have been getting more and more limited. Pizzas made with ketchup as the base are one of the worst. The lodges are out of bottled water, but we luckily have our sterilization pens so can drink the tap water.
We had just ordered tea and coffee when Giri came in and pulled Andy aside to tell him (very secretively) that we could pay $165 per person and get on a flight SOON. We were willing to do just about anything to get out of here so Andy and I quickly ran to a nearby store that had previously told us we could take cash out with them using our credit cards, while Katie started packing up our things. We couldn’t let the airlines know what our tour company affiliation was, because we were on a different company’s flight, it was all very sketchy. We had to put our bags in burlap potato sacks and awkwardly carry them without any straps. With no time for breakfast, we ran to the airport bear-hugging our potato sacks. Giri couldn’t even be seen with us, and we had been 100% reliant on him up until this point. He stood off to the side to make sure everything was going smoothly as we worked our way through the chaotic and crowded tiny airport. We also saw a guy from the lodge doing flybys, so we knew there was all kinds of backend magic working to get us on the flight. Eventually, someone handed us our boarding passes, and relief mixed with an air of trepidation filled us. What a gift to be holding those golden tickets! Giri was only able to get three tickets so he couldn’t get on the flight with us. We crossed our fingers and hoped we would be able to figure out what to do when we landed in Kathmandu. And more than anything hoped that Giri would be able to get home to his family soon.
We had been hearing that there was a chance planes weren’t going to fly into Kathmandu from Lukla, and also that the Kathmandu runway was starting to crumble and they may cease flights altogether. We didn’t know where we were going to end up. Now that we don’t have Giri with us we feel very uneasy about what to do. The flight should have only been about 30 minutes, so when it went on longer we realized that we weren’t going directly to Kathmandu. What now????
We ended up flying to Biratnagar and had no idea what to do next. But as soon as we landed two other guides from our company found us. How? I do not know. Magic, I think. They whisked Andy away into town to get more cash for more plane tickets. Scam? Maybe. Sketchy? Definitely. We had no idea what was going on and no way to communicate, but knew we had to keep moving forward and get to Kathmandu and didn’t have many options. As Katie and I waited in the airport a pilot from another airline tried to tell us to get on his flight and that Andy would find us later. We declined. Can you imagine Andy coming back to the airport and we were gone!? After about an hour of nervous waiting Andy returned with the money. We tracked down some pringles and got onto a larger plane, hopefully to Kathmandu.
This time we really did go to Kathmandu. We were ecstatic to not be stuck on the mountain, and had seen plenty of flattened villages on our way down, but Kathmandu was pandemonium. We picked up our bags and waded through the airport. Again, we didn’t have a clue what we should do next. We stepped outside and someone (more magic) was there to take us to our hotel for the night. The hotel we were supposed to be staying in, where we had left our belongings that we didn’t need for the hike, had been destroyed, but the tour company was able to recover our stuff. We were delivered to our new hotel and I don’t know if I have ever been so happy. We showered, we ate french fries and onion rings, we laid in a real bed. We drank wine and we had a minute to breathe, to start absorbing what had happened and to know we were one step closer to getting home.
