Author: Christopher Natsuume

So I’ve been in Kathmandu for almost two weeks, and now it’s time to head up to the Khumbu Valley. I just finished packing everything, double checking that I am not forgetting anything important, and then taking everything out of the pack again and doing it all over again. 

As you do. 

The trip to Kathmandu has been fascinating so far. I have talked to trekking guides, high mountain guides, and porters. I’ve sat in the hills of the city and watched the spring smoke from India roll over the city while I and drank tea with guides who I have known for years, and I have met trekkers here on their first time in Nepal, eager to start their treks. I’ve interviewed people who have been guiding for a few years, and one man who started a trekking company years before I was born. And I have only started the many conversations I will be having. 

To be honest, I am overwhelmed. 

I’m obviously a bit stressed by the thought that I’ll be headed up to Everest, the highest trek I have ever been on. I’ve happily hiked and slept at 4,000+ meters, but this trek includes not only reaching Everest base camp, but also the base camp of Amadablam, a hike I have heard is even harder, as well as a hike up a pass to the Gokyo Lakes area, a walk I am told is long, hard, and high. By all accounts, I’ll lose a good deal of weight (I wish) and have a lot of headaches (what else is new). I expect the whole thing to be a good bit of work.

But that’s not really what has me overwhelmed. 

It’s the research I am doing for this book that really has me thrown for a loop. I’ve done plenty of writing in my life, but this style of writing, where I am interviewing and representing other people to the world, is very new to me. There is a responsibility to it. A responsibility to get these stories right, and to put them in a context that does them justice. It’s a heavier load than I had expected. 

And getting these stories is a lot more work than I expected as well. Because, as I have learned in the past few weeks, not everyone is as loquacious as you might want them to be. Certainly not hardened, experienced Nepali guides. I had not expected, though I really should have, that one of the greatest challenges would be breaking through the simple guileless humility that many Nepali guides have. 

And example: I was speaking to three experienced guides, Manju, Kandu, and Pema. I’ve known all of these great people for years, and have trekked with all of them from Annapurna to Kanchenjunga. After over an hour of talking to them about their lives and experiences, I asked a simple question: “Where were you when the 2015 earthquake happened?” Both Manju and Kandu were here in Kathmandu, and talked a bit about their families, or people they knew when it happened. Pema quietly added, almost as an afterthought, “Oh, I was at Camp 2 on Everest.”

Yeah. When the largest earthquake in a generation hit Nepal, he was in a tent 6,400 meters in the sky. Below him in Everest Basecamp (yes, BELOW), the largest disaster in Everest’s history unfolded as a massive avalanche from the Khumbu icefall killed over twenty climbers, guides, and porters. And he mentioned it as a quiet afterthought, patiently waiting for other people to tell their stories. When I tried getting more details from him about it, his response was more or less “Yeah. It was a bit frightening. They helicoptered me down and I helped out some. Of course I came back next year. It was my job.”

And that’s it. That’s all I could get from him on the experience. No bragging. No war stories. Just the simple facts. He honestly preferred telling me about the farm he is renting now, and how big his tomato plants were. They are waist high and doing well, if you are curious. We hiked over and took a look at them a few days later.

That’s the kind of quiet, humble, badassery I am constantly encountering here. Stories that people I know in America and Europe would have told a thousand times have to be almost dragged out of Nepalis. Because that’s how they roll. 

But I am learning so many new skills. But the experience is awesome. I’m learning not only facts and stories about trekking, mountains, and Nepal… I am learning the core skills of what I guess could be called journalism. 

I’ve learned that when you start recording, the stories get a lot less interesting. 

I’ve learned that if you repeat back what you just heard intentionally wrong, the correction is more often than not more detail rich and interesting than the original statement. 

I’ve learned that when you’ve asked too many questions, the best way to get more information is just to sit quietly, and wait. It’s uncomfortable… But sooner or later the subject of the interview will break, and tell you something interesting, just to break the silence. And those comments tend to be golden. Because they aren’t anything you’d think to ask.

I’ve learned that if you really want to talk to a guide, you go where they’re comfortable: the trail.

I’ve learned that if you want someone to talk about their life in detail, you have to open up about your own, and share some of your experiences. Because trust breeds trust.

But most of all, I have realized that I have bitten off a lot more than I expected to chew. The trek before me is imposing. The challenge of this book is… so much more. And I hope for the sake of the people who have opened up and shared their lives and experiences with me that I can do their stories justice. 

For now, it is time to rest and prepare for a long walk. Tomorrow I fly to Lukla (the most dangerous airport in the world, yay!) and start off for Everest, and a chance to speak to a whole new bunch of amazing people, from lodge owners to icefall doctors to Sherpa politicians. It should be amazing. 

Don’t worry. I’ll be taking a lot of pictures.

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So. traveling in the times of COVID-19.

To be honest, the preparations to fly into Nepal are pretty simple. If you have been fully vaccinated, you need to bring your vaccination records, and there is a simple form to fill out. No testing necessary. Show up with the form and your vaccination records, and you can get into Nepal with the same visa on arrival as always. Pretty straightforward. 

Or it would be, if I hadn’t been vaccinated in Japan. Because, of course, all of those vaccination records are in Japanese only. Who would ever need vaccination records in any other language than Japanese, right? 

So, after a good deal of internet sleuthing, I find that you can get a translation of your vaccination records from the government by mailing your records to them, and waiting about 2 business weeks. There is no option for going in person, it must be mailed. I should note, all of this information is available in Japanese only. I should also note, we managed to find this information well less than 2 business weeks from the date of travel. 

Damn.

But wait! There’s another option: There’s a special app you can install on your phone that allows you to use my My Number Card (a form of ID here in Japan) to access your vaccine records, and create a bilingual version viewable on your phone. 

It is important to note here that not everybody in Japan has a My Number card because it’s not actually required. Like many things from the government, it is politely suggested that you have one, but not required. You are, however, required to have a number – much like a social security number in the states, but completely unrelated to your government pension – but you are not necessarily required to have the card. Because that’s how the government works here. There’s a chart online in Japanese somewhere that explains all of this. In Japan, there’s always a chart. They are like religious totems for Japanese government offices that empower documents with deep ancient magic.

Luckily, I have the card.

However, life is not so simple. The ONLY way to make the card work with the special bespoke government phone app is to use the NFC Reader on the phone, a tool I have never used before in my life. I should note, the application itself does not include the ability to access the NFC reading hardware on the phone. That has to be installed separately. Oh, and the application is only available by reading a QR code on a website. There is no direct link. Because… Why would anyone want that? 

Of course not all phones have an NFC Reader. Mine does, thankfully. But it has no NFC or QR code reading applications pre installed. So I got a free reader app from the net. It immediately makes me watch a 30 second ad for a free-to-play game that involves scantily clad ladies tied up in a tower somewhere that can only be saved by solving simple math equations. There is a “X to cancel” button, but it’s too small to actually touch, so I end up inadvertently going to the Google Play site for a cartoon bondage app. 

Because that’s the world we live in now. 

Of course they could have just let me enter in My Number from the card. It’s just a number. I mean, it’s literally called “My Number.” But of course that’s not cool and future enough and some marketing agency or app development company convinced the government that it would be way better to ONLY allow entering that number from reading the number from the NFC card. And those people who don’t have a phone with the hardware to support a NFC reader… Well, they can always mail the government and wait two weeks. Because that’s more convenient than… Entering a number. 

Luckily, my phone does have the hardware, and after rubbing the card on the back of my phone for 10 minutes and thinking the reader does not work, we look up a diagram on the internet that shows exactly the placement of the unmarked sensor on my phone. Using this secret knowledge, we manage to get the phone to read the card.

Thank god we didn’t have to physically enter in a 9 digit number. 

That would have been inconvenient. 

Anyway, after sorting through all of that, the silly vaccine app read my passport through a scanning app with the camera, because again entering in my passport number is too gauche for the Japanese government. Great. now have a bilingual vaccine record on my phone. There is, of course, no way to PRINT this. So I pray my phone has a battery and isn’t stolen, and that the Nepal government accepts this when I arrive as valid proof. Will it? Who knows. 

Now, the hard part. Preparing the documents to get back into Japan after I am done in Nepal. 

For starters, you need to be fully vaccinated. Fair enough. And now I have a Japanese app that proves it. One assumes that they will accept their own government app as proof. So, that’s done. One hopes. Who knows. I should look for a chart, but I don’t have the energy.

Next, I need to see if I need to quarantine. Is there a chart for this? You bet your ass there is. It seems to indicate that because I am vaccinated, but I am returning from a “designated country”, and am a permanent resident, but am not a citizen, and am arriving at a “designated airport” I MAY have to quarantine for 3 days on arrival, but whether that is at a Government facility or in my own home is up to the whim of the immigration and quarantine officials at the time of my arrival interview. Also, whether or not I am allowed to use public transit to get to that location… also to be decided by the immigration quarantine officials at a later date. If not, I’ll have to hire a special quarantine cab, which costs a few hundred dollars to transport me… to an unknown location. So… There’s that. 

Regardless, it’s obviously time to install another app on my phone. The MySOS app. This is a tracking app that they can use to follow me around during quarantine. It also includes the Fast Track system, which, in theory, helps me get through the airport faster on arrival. Again with the QR reader. Again I get to watch an ad for a hyper casual game. This one involves throwing rings on bottles, ostensibly to win prizes from scantily clad Japanese schoolgirls. I am concerned about what I have done in my life to target these ads, but… whatever. Half dressed schoolgirls are now part of the journey to COVID safety in Japan, it seems, so I will tolerate it and move on. 

Again I fail to manage to hit the tiny “Skip” button and almost install it on my phone. 

That’s my story and I’m sticking to it. 

Of course when you open up the MySOS application there are like thirty pages worth of legal documents that you have to read through before swearing that you have read it all carefully and agree. I browsed through them, but no human could read all of that. What I did manage to read sounded super scary, but you can’t get back into the country unless you agree… So yeah. I pressed the buttons at the bottom like a good boy. This spawned another twenty or so pages of strongly worded legal agreements that on inspection all seemed to say “You’ll not hold the makers of this app liable for anything ever, so please never contact us, we had nothing to do with it!” I agreed to that, too. Because what else am I gonna do? 

The MySOS app does not use any of the fancy tech of the other app. Everything is entered manually. In many cases, twice or three times. Somewhere along the process of filling out all of the parts, it’s clear that I need to do this later, since it’s asking a lot of questions about who or what I may or may not have coughed on, or slept next to, or ran my tongue along in the future… so I stop. This will be some fun for later in Nepal. 

And now… The paperwork. There are questionnaires. There are pledges. There is, before it’s over, over 50 pages of god knows what gleaned from at least 4 different government sources on the web. Most of it reads like stereo instructions. It all sounds very threatening. And there are so many charts. Could all of this be added to the MySOS application? Sure. Was it? Dunno. Can’t get to that part of the app until I register, which requires me to know who I shared a toilet seat with or whatnot in May. So… I print it all out. Just in case. 

The most important of these is a very specific form that needs to be filled out by a doctor in Nepal before I return, clarifying that I have had my PCR test. This is the PCR test you get before the other PCR test you will get on arrival. Because… Reasons.

On the documentation surrounding the form, it is made clear that it needs to be THIS form and no other. Well, that’s not true. What they SAY is that any form containing all of the same information will be accepted, as long as it is in English and has a stamp from a doctor. But on this, I call bullshit.

I call bullshit because my friend who just arrived from Germany had a slightly differently formatted form, and was almost deported back to Germany to get a new form before someone suggested that the world still has FAX machines, and maybe they could use one. The world has email and the internet, too, but this is Japan and email scares the old people who run things. And taking away the joy of firing up a FAX machine would be cruel to them. Nothing makes a Japanese government official happy like the dulcet tones of a fax carrier signal. It’s like catnip to them. In any case, for my friend, eight hours in an immigration holding tank and a fax machine was required to overcome the wrongly formatted form. 

I printed three copies of the right one, just in case. 

Did my printer run out of ink while printing the 50+ pages of paperwork required? Yes, of course it did. Did the printer demand cyan ink, even though all of the forms were black and white, and I had plenty of black ink? Of course it did. Did I have extra cyan ink cartridges? Of course not. Did the Japanese government put big, huge, unnecessary black bars on the top of all of the pages of their documents to waste my printer ink? Of course they did. 

And so on. 

How long did finding and printing all of the documents I needed for entering Nepal take? About 15 minutes. Preparations for reentering Japan? Almost a full day. A day of extreme frustration, anger, and stress. And I am unsure if I am even done yet. Every day or so my wife finds some other website with some other requirement. Usually only in Japanese. Usually somehow contradicting something else we have read. I don’t expect this to end soon.

The message from the Japanese government was loud and clear: Fuck you. Don’t go anywhere. The world outside is unsafe and unclean. Stay here. 

It is an inauspicious start.

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So it begins.

With me fighting WordPress all morning damn day to make the world’s simplest blog site.

One might wonder: Isn’t a website for a book that’s barely started a bit premature? Actually, not really. If over 30 years in the entertainment industry has taught me anything, no matter where you are in your project, the time to start your marketing is “a couple months ago.”

I’m determined not the mistake I have made a hundred times before of jumping into a project, working on it for months/years, and then wondering… How do I sell this thing? So from the very first days of this project, we’ll will be including a potential audience, and getting them involved in this journey.

By “them” we mean you.

Yes, you.

This started with a social media call-out to friends and family.

I asked them if they would commit to supporting this endeavor. Specifically, I asked “Would you commit to supporting a $25 crowdfund, sharing this on your social media, and writing a review when it’s released?” Because as everyone knows, unless you ask… You don’t get. That’s how getting works.

The response was strong. Over sixty people committed to supporting this journey without even knowing what they are supporting beyond “Chris is writing a book, and I’m in!” For all they know we’re writing a treatise on goat dingleberries in post-communist Mongolia.

We’re not, but we could.

And at this point, they’d have to buy it, tell their friends they bought it, and tell the world of Amazon what they think about it. And if they all actually did, we’d already have more reviews than the current Lonely Planet Guide to Trekking in Nepal.

My family and friends are apparently awesome.

Seriously, sixty people may not seem like a lot, but it’s a huge milestone. If everyone comes through, that’s an enormous pile of reviews on release day, especially in the world of niche-non-fiction. Way more than some books get in the first six months. Or, ever.

So, yeah. we’re holding all of you to that. In return, we promise minimal dingleberries.

And as we continue to build, we’ll be using this site as a repository for all of the ways we’re keeping people involved with this journey, including:

• Progress updates on the writing process.
• Podcast interviews with people we talk to.
• Pictures of places we visit along the way.
• …and whatever else comes up along this journey.

All of that being said, I will be honest: I’m terrified.

This is a big new journey for us, and I’m certain we’re already getting some of it wrong… But that’s the very spirit of trekking: You’re starting a long journey, you have no idea what you’ll see, you are probably packing a bunch of the wrong stuff and forgetting a bunch of things you’ll regret, and you’re probably not even sure what path to take.

But you can’t just prepare forever. Sooner or later you have to take the first step and get started.

Well, this is that step.

Trek!

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