Daisy: May 2020

Themi shows me a faded photograph of her wedding to Tshering. ‘One of the mountaineers took it and sent it to us,’ she explains. ‘Tshering had just returned from his first ascent of Everest and his pockets were full of money. And he’d bought me that armlet as my wedding present.’ She points with a crooked forefinger.

Then she brings a locked tin box out from beneath her sleeping platform and shows me the bracelet, ornately wrought in silver set with coral and turquoise.

Themi lowers her eyes, blinking in an attempt to stop the tears from falling. Her voice is low, choked with emotion as she continues, ‘Look how young we were. We had such hopes and dreams that day. The whole world seemed to be changing for us, filled with the promise of a better future for all the Sherpa people. If we’d known what lay ahead, would we ever have dared set out on that path?’

I reach over and pick up the silver armlet, easing it gently on to her wrist. Then I take her hand in mine, stroking the gnarled, unyielding stiffness of her fingers. ‘Of course you would,’ I say. ‘All that love you’ve known, for Tshering and Poppy and Pema – it’s what underpins life, isn’t it?’ I point through the window to the snow-capped mountains across the valley. ‘I think love is like Khumbila over there. It may be weathered and scoured, it may experience terrible avalanches and devastating rockfalls. But it only does so because it dares to be there in the first place. Our lives would be like trudging across a flat, featureless plain if we didn’t have the courage to climb the mountains.’

She brushes away her tears with the back of her free hand and then wraps it around mine. ‘You’re right, Daisy. And I think that’s what life has been like for you for a while, hasn’t it? But now you’ve found the courage to climb again. I hope you will remember that when you leave us. Take home with you this knowledge the mountains have given you. You still have so much love to give and you should never forget how much your family loves you. Not just your Scottish family. Your Sherpa family, too.’

A flood of conflicting emotions washes over me. I feel warmed by her words. But at the same time I’m gripped by a deep-seated, visceral longing to be back at Ardtuath with my mum and my girls. To walk together along the path up the hill behind the house. To hug them and be hugged back. To cry together for Davy. To comfort one another with our love that’s as solid as a mountain.

Up until now, I’ve felt I’ve probably made the right decision, staying put in Phortse. But then the tides of the pandemic shift again around the world. Here in Nepal, the restrictions are still in place. There are no domestic or international flights, and the official recommendation is still to remain where you are. But the news from Britain is a little more optimistic. By the end of May, there’s talk of the first, cautious lifting of the lockdown, of schools reopening and a return to the workplace for those who can’t work from home. Non-essential shops remain closed, though, and the advice is to avoid using public transport. Mum writes that, like most people, she and the girls are staying at home. I read and reread the official advice, trying to work out what it means for me. In theory now, I could get back to Scotland if I weren’t in Nepal. But the situation here remains unchanged as the country keeps its borders closed, to hold the virus at bay and protect its people. I try to make my mind like water, going with the flow, so the pendulum swing of my thoughts won’t hook me and drag my emotions back and forth. It’s not something I’ve perfected yet, but I’m working on it.

Then, out of the blue, an email arrives from the British Embassy in Kathmandu. With the cautious relaxing of restrictions in the United Kingdom, it says, an evacuation flight is being arranged for citizens still in Nepal who wish to go home. If I want to take it, I should register immediately and be in Kathmandu in three days’ time. My heart gives a lurch. I want to be on that plane and get back to see Mum and my girls. But even if I could get myself to Lukla – a two-day trek I could maybe just about do if I set off at once – there are still no internal flights from there to get me back to Kathmandu in time.

I show the email to Tashi and Dipa. ‘I think you want go home now?’ he asks. ‘Time to leave your Sherpa family and go back to Scottish one?’

‘I do,’ I say. ‘But is there any way I can make that flight?’

He beams. ‘No worry, Mrs Daisy. I speak to cousin-brother in Lukla. He helicopter pilot. Number one, best in Nepal. We make plan for you. Time to get you home.’

True to his word, as ever, by late afternoon the plan has been hatched. A helicopter is due to bring more essential supplies to Phortse the day after tomorrow. Once the food and medicines have been offloaded, I will get the return flight to Lukla and from there Tashi’s cousin-brother will fly me back to Kathmandu, since he has a supply run scheduled too.

‘What’s the cost of two helicopter flights going to be?’ I ask.

‘No cost, Mrs Daisy. You family. And these flights essential anyway, funded by government, so pilots already get paid.’

I breathe a huge sigh of relief. I’ve not spent any of my remaining rupees, but I’m very much aware that I owe Tashi and Dipa for all these weeks of food and lodging. That’ll take all the cash I have on me and more. I’m counting on the fact that once I get back to Kathmandu, I should be able to use a cash machine and take out whatever is left in my bank account, then find a way to get it to them.

The next day – my final one in Phortse – I spend with Pema and Themi, wanting to make the most of every moment I have with them. Who knows when we’ll meet again?

The early-summer rain falls steadily as I climb the hill to Themi’s little stone shack. The white rhododendron at the end of the house has lost all its flowers now and just a few bruised blooms lie scattered on the ground beneath it. But Themi has planted bright orange marigolds in a row of empty powdered milk cans beside her front door and they lift their faces to the clouds overhead, like defiant little suns. Her small vegetable patch is neatly tended, its edges overflowing with burgeoning herbs, pak choi, and the green spikes of garlic.

‘Hello?’ I call out. ‘It’s me, Daisy.’ I push aside the curtain and step into the black-walled room, where Pema comes to greet me with a smile before returning to the fire, where the pan of tea is coming to the boil.

Themi is sitting at the table and pats the bench beside her, gesturing to me to come and sit down.

‘So you are leaving tomorrow, we hear?’ she says, taking my hand. ‘It’s time for you to go home.’ I clasp her gnarled fingers between my palms. They feel fragile, like dry twigs, and I nod, suddenly unable to speak as the realisation dawns on me that I might never see her again. Over the course of this trip, I’ve lost so much, but I’ve found so much too.

Themi must be thinking something similar because she smiles at me, the deeply weathered lines of her face crinkling, and she says, ‘Every meeting holds the seeds of parting. Which reminds me ...’

She gets up and goes over to the plastic drum in the corner of the room. Her stiff hands struggle to lever open the top, so I hurry over to help her. She reaches into the depths of the container and brings out a pile of sketches. I recognise Violet’s handwriting, annotating them. She sets them to one side and rummages in the drum once again. This time she brings out a small glass jar. She holds it up to the light and squints at its label. It’s clearly not what she was looking for as she replaces it and rummages again. Over her shoulder, I see the bottom of the container is filled with many more jars, each one neatly labelled. At last, she finds the one she’s been searching for and hands it to me.

‘ Meconopsis horridula ,’ I read. The jar is tightly sealed, but the minute seeds it holds whisper softly against the glass as I turn it in my hands.

‘Violet’s legacy,’ Themi tells me, nodding towards the drum. ‘She saved these samples of all the seeds she collected, told me to keep them safe. She saw how fragile the plants could be and she knew it was important to protect them for the future, as this region opened up to the world. Take those seeds and grow them when you get home, to remind you of all you’ve found here.’

I tuck the jar into my pocket. When I can speak, I say, ‘I feel as if my heart is breaking all over again at the thought of leaving you so soon after I’ve found you.’

‘Ah, Daisy, your heart isn’t breaking in a bad way. This time it’s breaking wide open, like a seed. And when that happens, there’s the possibility of a transformation, the birth of something new.’

‘It’s just so hard to say goodbye,’ I say, still clutching her hand between mine.

‘Yes, it is.’ Her words are calm and matter-of-fact. ‘But it’s what we’re all doing in this life – coming and going, loving and losing, living and dying. In the end, we’re all just walking each other home, aren’t we? Finding our way along the paths of life, sometimes alone, sometimes in the company of others, until we find a way to let go. This is what our faith is for. Because this is where all paths eventually lead.’

She extracts her hand from mine and gently brushes away the single tear that’s running down my cheek. ‘Don’t only be sad, Daisy Didi . Be happy too. Make space for all those feelings, and know you have the space in that beautiful, broken heart of yours to contain them all. Violet used to say to me when I was feeling sad that even in the hardest times the joy is always there, like the blue sky behind the clouds. When we know that, maybe we can let the clouds drift away, letting happiness shine through again.’

Pema sets mugs of tea on the table before us and then comes to settle herself on the other side of me. We sit together for a couple of hours, talking about our families, and I show them the latest pictures Mum has sent me of Mara and Sorcha at Ardtuath, holding up their muddy hands to the camera. They’ve been resurrecting Davy’s vegetable garden, digging a new potato patch, inspired by my descriptions of the Phortse spuds and how good they taste.

‘Violet would definitely approve of her great-great-great-nieces,’ Themi says. ‘When you go home, Daisy, please will you send us pictures of the flower paintings you told us about? The ones Violet sent back from here. I’d love to see them.’

‘I will,’ I promise. ‘And I’m going to go to the Botanic Garden in Edinburgh as soon as it’s okay to do so, to try to track down more information about her. All those specimens and drawings she sent back from the expedition and afterwards, once she was living here at Phortse – they must still be there somewhere.’

‘The rain has stopped,’ says Pema, peering through the window. ‘Let’s walk down to the stupa together. Will you come with us, Granny?’

Themi shakes her head. ‘I think I’ll stay here.’ She turns to me apologetically. ‘My arthritis is always bad in the rainy seasons and today I need to rest. But I will come to the teahouse tomorrow first thing to see you before you go, Daisy. So there’s no need to say our goodbyes just yet.’

As Pema and I walk down the hill, following the line of the mani wall, we stop frequently to stop and chat with people who’ve come out to work in their fields as the sun breaks through the clouds. I’ve got to know them all now, over the weeks I’ve been here, and they’ve all heard I’ll be leaving on the supply helicopter tomorrow.

At last we reach the stupa at the foot of the village, startling a pair of danphe , which squawk indignantly before flapping off into the juniper bushes. Four pairs of all-seeing Buddha eyes watch over us as we walk clockwise around the white-domed shrine. A breeze has got up, sweeping the rainclouds from the valley and tugging at the skeins of prayer flags, scattering more of their blessings on to the wind.

‘I shall miss all this,’ I say as Pema and I stand by the wall, gazing out across the Khumbu.

She smiles. ‘It will still be here for you when you’re ready to return. All those lines on your family tree connect you to this place now.’

Practical as ever, she spots a plant growing in the shade of a birch tree with spikes of tiny white flowers and pulls a bag from the pocket of her jacket. She kneels down and carefully pinches off a handful of its bright-green heart-shaped leaves.

‘Is that a variety of Tiarella ?’ I ask.

She nods. ‘I use it to make a hot compress, which is good for my granny’s arthritis.’

I snap a photo of the plant on my phone and then we continue slowly along the lower edge of the village, spotting several more danphe and a pair of musk deer grazing peacefully where the hillside falls steeply away beneath us. I drink it all in – the breeze ruffling my hair, the smell of the damp earth, the mountains rising above us and the random xylophone notes of the yak bells in the distance.

Pema walks quietly at my side until we reach her low-built whitewashed cottage. ‘I’ll see you tomorrow morning, Daisy,’ she says, then disappears through the door curtain with her bag of leaves.

I trudge the rest of the way back to the teahouse, standing outside the lodge for a while, shading my eyes from the sun’s rays that warm the fields, letting my muddled feelings wash through me like the turquoise river flowing in the valley far below. All at once, something falls from the wall above, tapping me softly on my shoulder, nudging my wandering thoughts back to the here and now. I laugh, then stoop to pick up the dried disc of yak dung and add it to the pile beneath the porch: my one last small contribution to this extraordinary community that gave me refuge when I needed it most.

It doesn’t take long to shove my belongings back into my pack the next morning and lug it downstairs. There are a surprising number of people gathered in the dining room, filling their mugs from large thermoses of tea. Dipa has made pancakes for breakfast and sets platefuls on the tables around the edge of the room, alongside jars of honey. ‘Everyone want to say goodbye,’ she explains.

The room is filled with laughter and chatter. I know I need to make the most of this gathering. Not only does it touch me deeply that so many people have come to bid me farewell, but I also realise this will probably be the last party I’ll be at for the foreseeable future. The village has been able to form a self-contained bubble of community in this locked-down world, its natural inaccessibility making it safe to socialise and mix. Once I step beyond the wall of mountains that protects us, it will be a very different story.

Tashi checks his phone. ‘Helicopter coming,’ he says. ‘Time to get ready.’ And then an extraordinary thing happens. One by one, the people of Phortse come up to me to say goodbye, pulling katas out of their pockets and draping them round my neck. Each person clasps my hands between theirs, saying ‘ Tashi delek, Didi .’ Good luck, sister. I’m wearing so many of the silk scarves by the time they’ve finished that I can’t do up the zip of my jacket.

Sonam shoulders my pack and Tashi leads the way to the helicopter landing area, while I follow, arm in arm with Pema and Themi. Dipa and some of the others bring up the rear. We stand beside the patch of rhododendron bushes, and I say my final goodbyes, promising Pema that I’ll keep in touch and send her photographs and news from Scotland. The distant sound of the approaching helicopter signals the moment when I must take my leave of Themi. This particular goodbye is the hardest one of all, because I don’t know whether I’ll see her again.

She hugs me tightly, then holds me at arm’s length, her hazel eyes searching mine, as if she’s memorising my face. ‘Remember what I told you the first time we went to the Valley of Flowers? That Violet always used to say life is not about finding yourself – it’s about creating the person you want to be. You’ve taken the first steps, Daisy. Now keep going.’

‘I know,’ I say, laughing so that I won’t cry, as the noise of the helicopter’s motor reverberates from the mountains surrounding us and it comes into view, flying up the valley beneath us. ‘One foot in front of the other, slowly, slowly along the path.’

She smiles and pats my shoulder beneath its cushion of katas . ‘You listen to the lessons of the mountains and learn from them. That’s more than most people do.’

With a roar, the bright-red helicopter rises to hover above the helipad, and we all cover our ears and turn our faces from the flying dust as it settles gently on to the stones. The pilot motions at everyone to stay back as he unloads the supplies, putting them in a pile at the edge of the stone circle. Then he beckons to me to come forward and I shoulder my pack and walk towards him, ducking my head beneath the helicopter blades. He hands me a face mask and loads my pack into the cabin before helping me in and closing the door.

As I fasten my seat belt and put on the set of earphones he hands me, he runs through his checks. Then he raises a thumb and I nod, letting the surge of emotions flow through me. There’s fear and excitement at this, my first ride in a helicopter, alongside huge sadness at leaving my new-found Himalayan family and friends, as well as the strongest yearning to get home. I name each feeling and let it go, trying to make my mind like water as Dipa told me to, as the blades begin to spin so fast they become invisible and we lift into the air.

I press my face to the window, the paper mask covering my nose and mouth, waving goodbye to the little crowd on the ground below. And then we’re off, whisking away down the valley, and the hills close in behind us, hiding the village of Phortse from sight, enfolding it and keeping it safe. All those days of trekking , I think, and now it’s going to take just a couple of helicopter rides – each one lasting less than an hour – to get me back to my starting point . It seems much too fast, too sudden a re-entry into the real world.

Something Dipa once said, back at the beginning of my stay in Phortse, rings in my head. Journey far, but travel within . It makes sense to me now. Covering the miles to get to my destination, either by walking slowly, slowly through this landscape or by flying above it, was never really the goal. It’s the fact that I took myself out of my familiar, comfortable life and put myself in a place where none of the usual, carefully constructed props and points of reference were available to me that allowed me to be myself again. To rediscover the essence of me. It lay hidden away, just as Violet’s journals lay hidden for all those years in the cedarwood chest in the library, blanketed beneath layers of sadness and loss.

As we soar between the valley’s green walls, following the turquoise thread of the river beneath us, a sensation of deep peace settles over me. Finding Themi, getting to know her and piecing together the final parts of Violet’s story has given me a sense of purpose that’s been missing from my life for some time. I turn the red string bracelet around my wrist. It’s faded a bit now and the ends are beginning to fray, but it’s still there as a reminder that I’ve walked the way of the warrior. I’ve done things I never thought I could. I’ve stepped into the unknown, fought some inner battles, and emerged on the other side.

And I’ve begun to create something new. Or, rather, some one new: the person I want to be.