The Lion of Khum Jung

Chapter 3-3

It was two hours before Sangye finally gave the thumbs-up that the expedition team was at last clear to move out of the crowded and dingy terminal waiting area toward their gate. In the meantime, Sarah had been standing within the semi-circle of Frank’s crew at the far end of the cavernous room, sipping lukewarm coffee from a paper cup as the cacophony of multilingual conversations echoed around her.

She followed her son down a narrow stairway to their gate and waited for another twenty minutes until Frank signaled it was time. After lining up for another quick check and handing their boarding passes to an attendant, she went out onto the tarmac under a deep blue morning sky with just a whiff of cloud. As she walked toward the waiting transport bus, the wind tugged at her collar, and the smell of oil and diesel wrinkled her nose.

Ten minutes later, she boarded a revving nineteen-seat Cessna that looked like it should’ve been retired twenty years ago. After finding her seat, she buckled herself in and prepared for the forty-five-minute flight to a tiny airport in the foothills of the Himalayas.

This airport they were headed to was not just any airport, though. It was named the most dangerous airstrip in the world by just about every website. She thought about the accident that had claimed sixteen lives on the treacherous landscape before the tiny airstrip two years ago. It was not a comforting thought. She pushed it out of her mind, though, and glanced at her son sitting across the aisle from her. He had been quiet all morning, and while she didn’t think he was brooding, she knew he wasn’t happy with her decision to push on with him.

At last, she said, “Looks like we’re finally on our way. Are you excited?”

Greg shot her a half-smile. “Yeah, I am. It’s been a long road to this point.”

“It certainly has,” Sarah agreed. All morning she had been contained in her self-imposed dread of the impending expedition, but now it was raging, pushing against her chest, threatening to break free from the Teflon shield she had put around herself to prevent others from seeing the terror in her heart. She wanted to be happy for her son — no, that was a lie. She wanted to turn this whole thing around and go home. But digging in her heels now would do no good. She drew breath and forced a smile. “I’m happy for you. You’ve worked hard for this.”

He turned and looked at her hard. “Really?”

“Yes, I am,” Sarah lied, studying his naked expression of doubt. It crushed her and yet offered her a small window back to him, so she folded her needs into a dark corner of her soul and said, “Look, I might’ve been against this all along, but we’re here and so it’s all done and past. The important thing now is that you succeed.”

Greg eyed her and she could feel him assessing her capitulation. Finally, he said, “You really mean that?”

She leaned toward him and touching his arm, whispered, “Yes, I do. You know I love you very much.”

He shot her a lazy smile as the plane taxied onto the runway. “I know. Me too.” He opened his mouth to say something then looked off as the plane came to a halt. Pirouetting ninety degrees, it revved its engines and drowned out the conversations around them.

Up ahead, the pilot grabbed his microphone and called back to the flight attendant sitting in the back of the plane. “Prepare for takeoff.”

The twin-engine aircraft shuddered and suddenly they were racing down the runway and launching into the air.

Sarah peered out the window as the ground fell away. Five minutes later they were above the clouds. In the distance she saw the vast Himalayan range stretching as far as she could see.

Below lay the sprawling, congested city that crawled out to a sparse, rolling land dotted with small farms. As the city gave up and fell behind them, she saw long, winding roads going up into the hill country that was just now beginning to make an appearance.

Midway into the flight, the plane tipped its wing and bore to the left before straightening out. Fifteen minutes later, the mountains were running along beside them. Sarah was taken aback by their sheer size. Though she lived in Southern California and had traveled to Yosemite when she was a child, she was unprepared for the view passing outside her window. The mountains were indeed beautiful, but she reminded herself that the Monster lived here, too.

They followed the snow-covered range for the next ten minutes while slowly banking northward until, in the distance, an imposing dark ridge appeared. As Sarah watched it steadily rise, the plane climbed upward. But as high as they went, it didn’t seem to be enough to clear the trees below that were quickly coming into deadly clarity.

As the plane scraped their ragged tips, Sarah gripped the armrest.

“Attendant, prepare for landing,” the pilot called over the microphone. The plane banked sharply to the left and a minute later was headed toward another imposing dark ridge. Landing? Where? Sarah thought, peering out the window as the ground below fell away.

The pilot pushed forward on his stick and the plane dipped downward. Sarah leaned toward the window and tried to get a better angle of what they were headed for. But all she saw was a muted landscape looming ahead with no sign of the infamous airstrip anywhere in sight.

As the plane bounced up and down, jostling her side to side, she could almost imagine being on a rollercoaster at Venice Beach. Except this was no rollercoaster and she wasn’t a kid anymore. All she wanted was to be on the ground, preferably in one piece. She fixed her gaze on the plane’s wobbling wings as the deep blue sky dove behind the tree-lined crest beside her. The plane veered left, then dropping like a stone, shuddered.