Word: kathmandu
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Erik, sitting in the Kathmandu international airport, waiting for the flight out of Nepal that will eventually return him to Golden, Colo., is surrounded by his teammates and the expedition's 75 pieces of luggage. Success has made the group jubilant. This airport lounge has become the mountaineering equivalent of a winning Super Bowl locker room. As they sit amid their luggage, holding Carlsberg beers, they frequently raise a toast. "Shez! Shez!" shouts a climber. That's Nepali for drink! drink! "No epics," a climber chimes in, citing what really matters: no one died...
...reality, not even journalists are that simple. Karl Taro Greenfeld, TIME Asia's deputy editor, probably thought he had a straightforward, if somewhat unusual, profiling assignment facing him when he touched down in Kathmandu, Nepal, two Fridays ago. He was there to write this week's cover story, the heroic tale of Erik Weihenmayer, a blind man who had scaled Mount Everest. But in the wee hours of Saturday morning, Greenfeld was roused in order to track down a different beast altogether--the story behind the assassinations of the King, Queen and much of the royal family of Nepal...
...this week's cover story (What have you done for us lately, Karl?), he had a new problem. In the aftermath of the massacre, Kathmandu was seething with intrigue and turmoil. A noon curfew was imposed, and maneuvering around the city became increasingly dangerous. Getting Weihenmayer's story became a little more problematic. "At one point I was walking down the street past the palace with Erik when a riot broke out," says Greenfeld. "Erik with his cane and I had to run from these angry, shaven-headed Nepali youth and the police who were chasing them...
...Erik walks through these Kathmandu streets with remarkable ease, his red-tipped cane searching out ahead of him, measuring distance, pitch and angle. You give him little hints as he goes?"There's a doorway. O.K., now a right?no, left, sorry"?and he follows, his stride confident but easily arrested when he bumps into an old lady selling shawls, and then into the wheel of a scooter. The physical confidence that he projects has to do with having an athlete's awareness of how his body moves through space. Plenty of sighted people walk through life with less poise...
...Erik, sitting in the Kathmandu international airport, waiting for the flight out of Nepal that will eventually return him to Golden, Colo., is surrounded by his teammates and the expedition's 75 pieces of luggage. Success has made the group jubilant. This airport lounge has become the mountaineering equivalent of a winning Super Bowl locker room. As they sit amid their luggage, holding Carlsberg beers, they frequently raise a toast. "Shez! Shez!" shouts a climber. That's Nepali for drink! drink! "No epics," a climber chimes in, citing what really matters: no one died...