Langtang 3
Dawn. Lama Hotel. The awesome peaks stood at ease after their watchful night. Soon to be bathed in golden sunlight, they emitted a strange warmth in the morning chill, an invitation to the wanderers who since time immemorial had been enchanted by their mystical beauty. Streams chuntered through the wilderness, working there way towards the great ocean that called them home.
Knipenbjorg didn’t give a fuck.
He farted grotesquely and wormed his way to the out house where he would take his morning shit.
“Fucking squat toilet.”
He attempted to crouch over the hole between two wooden slats that constituted a toilet in the Himalayas. Thirty feet beneath him was a steaming pile of human excrement. The stench rose to greet his nostrils.
“Holy fuck!” Knipenbjorg wretched and coughed up the remnants of last nights dal bhat and rakshi.
Slipping on the cold wet floor, Knipenbjorg lay straddled across the cubicle, writhing as a putrid mass of vomit and piss.
“Good morning, champ! How’d you sleep?”
“Fuck you, Trapp.”
Knipenbjorg was in no mood for Trapp’s camaraderie. How the fuck was he so perky the morning after guzzling two jugs of rakshi?
“I’m feeling a little woozy man, you think it’s the altitude?”
“It’s all the fucking booze you slugged last night, lets move!”
They’d been trekking for two days through forests of Chirpine and Rhododendron. Trapp had delayed them with his efforts to take a selfie with the elusive Red Panda for his Instagram followers.
“Wait here man, I think I saw one scurrying around in the bushes up there!”
“Red Panda’s look like fucking squirrels, Trapp. Why do you care? It’s only because they’re called Panda’s, if they didn’t have Panda in the name you wouldn’t give a shit!”
“Auntie Max is never going to get to see a Red Panda man, she’s dying, she’s got the big C, fuck am I supposed to do, not give my auntie her dying wish? C’mon!”
“Your auntie didn’t even know fucking Red Panda’s existed until two days ago! If you’d kept your mouth shut she could’ve died blissfully unaware of the little red rats.”
Still, they had reached 8,000 feet above sea level and were making good progress.
Knipenbjorg’s brain waves were dancing through the constellations contrived by his superiors.
Get to Kyanjin Gompa, enquire about lodgings for the boss. No fucking about. That was his MO.
His boss had recently launched an all out invasion of another sovereign nation. If things went belly up then he’d need a place to go into exile.
Trapp was great cover, an imbecile who smoothed over relations with the locals by giving astronomical tips. He was, however, acquiring a tendency to fly off the handle at altitude.
Knipenbjorg recorded a memo:
“The toilets are a fucking death trap, we can’t have Mr Putin squat shitting above a towering mountain of dung. Recommend war continues and no surrender, at least until some proper latrines have been installed throughout this region.”
