Wish I were there: Edmund Hillary's Happy House in

The Happy House, so-named by Sir Edmund Hillary

ur plane pierced the Onarrow gap between a Himalayan hillside striped with terracing and a ball of cloud, its edges stained black with rain. We were banking hard in order to pull up at a narrow strip — more ledge than runway — carved into the edge of the mountain, to arrive in one of the most precious places I know: the Happy House in Phaplu village, deep in the Solukhumbu region of northeastern Nepal. In the 15th century, the corruption, and now, migrated like the rest of the world, into these valleys, as Covid-19. But memory is tightly squeezed as the also a persuasive editor. bellows on an accordion, When I look at my old from Kham in . photographs of Chitwan They were escaping the in the country’s south, I marauding Mongols, as think of something else. well as searching for one The images smell of jungle, of the 108 hidden holy long grasses and damp valleys scattered through dawns. the Himalayas described When I look at the by Guru in the pictures of my children eighth century. near Phaplu, in a place Known as beyuls, the we nicknamed The Holy whereabouts of these Forest, we’re lying on a paradises (if they even exist cushion of golden moss. on this plane of reality) are The light is sieved by concealed by snowstorms leaves. The wind catches and mists. Finding a beyul the puttering lung-ta, is also an interior quest or prayer flags, which — an important part of a carry invisible blessings spiritual awakening in the elsewhere. Another hour Tibetan Buddhist tradition. of walking and we will be able to see the peak of I first came to Nepal when Everest and the entire rim I was 18. I still have the of the eastern Himalayas, letters I wrote weekly to as far east as the my father during the six Kanchenjunga massif. Breakfast on the terrace outside the lodge, on the morning it reopened in 2018 months I was away, each inked on thin airmail It was my French uncle paper, which I exchanged who tipped me off about for his letters from home Phaplu. He’d gone to in Scotland that I found visit an old friend, a waiting for me at a poste German film-maker, restante. It was the first Franz-Christoph Giercke, independent travel I’d ever who since 1982 had been done — a long way from living between Nepal and my childhood holidays on Germany. Giercke had the west coast of Ireland. spent two years making a documentary about a Nepal felt like another Buddhist , Trulshik universe: the cut and Rinpoche, and a Sherpa thrust of crowds, of heat festival called Mani Rimdu and colour, holy cows, — a story told in dance stark poverty, the waft of about how Buddhism was ganja, a dog-eared Lonely established in Tibet. It Planet guide, the spill and takes place each autumn glow of butter lamps, the at Chiwong monastery, drone of gyaling — reed a couple of miles north of instruments, not unlike Phaplu. oboes, used in Buddhist ceremonies — and rats My uncle described running over my toes at walking through night in some dollar-a- rhododendrons and forests night dive on Freak Street strung with lichens like in Kathmandu. silver beards, of reading by candlelight beside an Nepal endures its share open hearth he’d helped to of troubles: earthquakes, repair. He had stayed at bloody royal murders, the so-called Happy House, systemic political

One of Sophy Roberts’ sons in the woods near Phaplu In the early days, it functioned as a lodge for Everest mountaineers. It was also where Hillary used to stay; he was the one who gave it the moniker of “the Happy House”, which is the name it retains today.

else happens I feel the task Twelve days later, RP must be finished . . . I will fled as a political refugee then walk up to Khumbu with his family to New and cry a little with our York, with $10,000 and friends. What will happen a suitcase. During the then I don’t quite know. family’s absence, however, Life must go on, I suppose.” the house needed a Up until 2001, Hostellerie guardian. Giercke wagered des Sherpas, latterly that his foreignness would renamed the Hotel del protect him; he rented Rhododendrons, the national flower of Nepal Sherpa, continued to the house and vowed to function as a hotel for the look after it until peace six-month annual tourist returned. which Giercke was renting 19 1973: “Perhaps I am in Phaplu — in a copse of old-fashioned in wishing to trees, with thick stone walls see a return to the smaller, and heavy temple doors. less professional type of operation.” When I met Giercke soon after, he became one of The house, then called my closest friends. “How Hostellerie des Sherpas, extraordinary it is to was bankrolled by actually meet someone Monzino, but owned and with the courage not built by a Sherpa family only to believe in a land called the . In the of dreams but to leave early days, it functioned everything behind for it,” as a lodge for Everest writes Thomas K Shor in A mountaineers. It was also Step Away from Paradise, where Hillary used to stay; Sir Edmund Hillary with Ang Tshering Lama (far right) and other the true story of a Tibetan he was the one who gave it members of the family, in the grounds of the Happy House in the lama’s Himalayan the moniker of “the Happy mid-1990s expedition to find a beyul. House”, which is the name it retains today. The house became the season (March to May In 2017, following Nepal’s lodestar of my family’s Then tragedy struck. In and October to December) first general election visits to Nepal. It was 1975, Hillary’s wife and and otherwise as a private since the monarchy built in 1971 under the daughter were killed in house for the Lama family. was abolished and civil instruction of the Italian a plane crash leaving war ended, the house Then a violent communist mountaineer Count Guido Kathmandu for Phaplu. was handed back. With insurgency gripped Nepal, Monzino, who summited Instead of their plane, a his youngest son, Ang and in November of that Everest in 1973 on an helicopter flew into the Tshering Lama, RP did up year the Maoists swung expedition notable for the village, to break the news the 1970s plumbing and through this valley. The fine wines and hundreds of to Hillary. electricity and reopened patriarch of the Lama porters he took along. the Happy House in Writing to friends five days family, Rinzi Pasang Lama October 2018 to paying “I felt your party was so after the accident, Hillary (known by his friends as clients, as part of Ang’s strong and well organized said he felt compelled to RP), hid in the grounds new expedition company, that the final result was complete the hospital that of the Happy House as 35 Beyul Experiences. almost inevitable,” wrote his charitable trust was government officials were Sir Edmund Hillary to building next door to the killed in a single night of Monzino in a letter of May Happy House: “Whatever bloodshed. Young monks at the Chiwong monastery, a couple of miles north of Phaplu

Looking towards Everest at dawn from Ang Tshering Lama, who runs the a camping spot above Phaplu Happy House with his father The annual Mani Rimdu festival at Chiwong monastery

And now Covid-19.

“Nothing is permanent,” says made by the cheerful cook, a trek from the house to Pikey into handspun blankets, a Ang on the phone to me from vegetable broth scooped up in Peak, at an altitude of just home that seems to wrap its lockdown in Kathmandu. “You a “Sherpa spoon” of toasted over 4,000m, the weather arms around all who come to can go through hell, but that buckwheat bread. I can hear took an unseasonal turn. We stay. will also come to an end.” He the Mani Rimdu festival: the were so bone-cold we had to When it reopens, the Happy is referencing the Buddhist haunting music of the long dance to keep the children House costs $500 per Wheel of Life, which is an copper trumpets; the din of warm — 30 people waving person per day, including image decorating the Happy conch shells, announcing the their sleeping bags in the air all activities, food and House’s walls. Every inch start of the ritual; the swirling to the beat of stomping feet, drinks. To learn more about of the downstairs is painted dancers, their bodies rustling in an impromptu dance my the Himalayan Trust, the like a monastery by a Sherpa in colourful brocades. sons still mistakenly think is non-profit humanitarian master of Buddhist . an official Sherpa tradition. In Rhythms of a Himalayan organisation founded in 1960 Difficulty demands we try From far away, I imagine Village, the American writer by Sir Edmund Hillary, see to stay upbeat, to remember the candles illuminating the Hugh R. Downs describes the himalayantrust.org nothing is permanent, life roomful of demons and deities decorative fire that tips the goes on — whether we do so Follow @FTLifeArts on battling it out in the eternal hats of the dancers’ costumes, by dancing, praying, reading Twitter to find out about our fight between good and evil, how the fire represents light or travelling in the mind to a latest stories first. Listen to our sickness and health. I think of rather than combustion: place far away. podcast, Culture Call, where Ang’s father sitting at the long “Buddhism conquered Tibet by FT editors and special guests oak table and talking with uplifting, not by destroying.” Just as I did on that cold discuss life and art in the time Dr Mingmar Gyelzen, who mountain, I’m looking forward Is it that spirit of optimism I’m of coronavirus. Subscribe on still lives next door and who to returning to the Happy drawn to as I write this piece Apple, Spotify, or wherever helped set up the hospital with House — a locus of fantasy in isolation in England? When you listen. Hillary. We are eating soup and comfort, where you fall we went on a long, multi-day