There are not many things left that can physically challenge me, and I was not about to let a two-day trek up the northern mountains of Vietnam be one of them. That was the plan, anyway. What I came for is something people travel across the world to do in this part of Southeast Asia. They call it cloud hunting. You trek for days through some of the most untouched terrain on the planet, up the steep, raw hillsides of the north, until you reach a place high enough to sit above the clouds with a cup of tea and look down on a view worthy of a National Geographic cover. I had not trekked like this in over a decade. So naturally I packed every piece of gear I owned, flew into the cold, and signed up for one of the most punishing peaks in the region: Tà Xùa. Twenty-five kilometers. Two days. Nothing in front of me but the steepness of Vietnam. I wanted to say I conquered a mountain here. I had no idea what I was walking into.
We met the crew in Hanoi, everyone except the two men who would actually take us up. It was not that it worried me, but I kept wondering the whole five-hour ride out, where are they, who are these guys? I was not alone in the wondering. There were two others on this trip with me. My trekking partner was an Austrian, a skier and a CrossFit guy built like someone who beats mountains for fun, and the two of us had quietly agreed we were going to muscle our way up this thing. The third was my translator, a twenty-one-year-old born and raised in Hanoi. Out there, with two guides who spoke no English, he would turn out to be the most important man on the mountain. We rolled into Tà Xùa around eleven at night and checked into a homestay that was freezing cold. I pulled on an extra coat, an extra layer of socks, and buried myself under every cover I could find. That is how cold it was. We had to be moving by five. Breakfast was perfect, a Vietnamese omelette with pho and those little Vietnamese donuts, and because I do not drink coffee, a pot of tea I mixed myself. Honey, jasmine, green tea, the way they do it here with a kind of quiet perfection. Then we finally met our guides. Neither of them stood taller than about five foot five. We did our introductions through Google Translate, and it was just enough to get a few laughs going, just enough to understand one another and know we would be okay out there together. But I will be honest about the thought in my head. One of them had a little belly. Neither looked like they had trained a day in their life. I thought, there is no way these two are getting us up this mountain. How are you doing this out of shape? I expected a guide who looked the part. Man, was I fooled.
Then they reached over, took my gear and my partner’s gear too, and strapped all of it to their backs and their chests. Each of them carried about a hundred and fifty pounds of gear, which included the water bottles, the food that was our lunch, the emergency equipment, the medical kit, everything we would need for the two days on the mountain. They looked up at us, smiled, and asked, are you ready? We knew because my translator was translating everything for us by now. The three of us were carrying nothing but a hiking pole each. And then the mountain started, and the incline was out of this world. I thought I was in shape. Within two hours I was the one begging for a break, and the terrain was kicking my tail. There were two guides getting us up the mountain. One led from the front with a machete, hacking a path through the brush. The other stayed behind us, the caboose, keeping us moving and watching the trees for anything with teeth. The one in the back climbed the steepest grade I have ever seen with his hands in his pockets. Hands in his pockets, a hundred and fifty pounds strapped to his body, not a drop of sweat, while I peeled off the very layers I had buried myself in against the cold the night before, soaked through now that I was burning up climbing the steep face of Tà Xùa. Two hours became six before they finally stopped us at a river for lunch. The lead guide rinsed his machete in the water, sharpened it on a stone from the riverbed, built a small fire, and cooked our meal right there from what the mountain gave him: rice, an herb with a ginger bite to it, peanuts, boiled eggs, and leaves off the hillside. It was surprisingly good for something thrown together in a matter of minutes, and that meal told me everything. These men could survive out here in the wild. This was not their first rodeo.
We had to reach the homestead before nightfall, and that was not a suggestion. After dark the mountain belongs to the snakes and the wild cats and a few things you do not want to meet, so the breaks were over. We climbed hard, past tree formations I had never seen, along trails with no guardrail and nothing on either side but a very long way down. One slip and you are gone. The guides kept pushing, faster, faster. And then, from a distance, I caught sight of a green tin roof, I could not tell you how many kilometers out, but there it was, and I realized that was the homestead. When we finally reached it, I was floored. I have a background in real estate and construction, and I stood there in awe of what this man had done. The lead guide had built it himself, out of tin and timber and whatever the mountain handed him, every single piece of it by his own hands, a little home set into the side of the mountain. You could tell it had stood up here a long time, that it had weathered storm after storm. It sleeps a dozen people. It has a bathroom, a shower, and a little open-air kitchen where he cooked chestnuts, chicken, the famous Vietnamese egg omelette, and the kind of vegetables and fruit that only grow in Vietnam. These men could survive an apocalypse. Standing there, I finally understood how soldiers in the Vietnam War survived out in these jungles for months at a time. They knew exactly what everything was and exactly what to do with it. That night there was apple wine, and after about three cups I was convinced I was speaking fluent Vietnamese and they were speaking fluent English, and somehow we understood each other perfectly. There was only one light outside and three inside, all run off a generator. The stars came out like I have never seen them before, and the moon hung close enough to touch.
I woke up fully rested to a smell like popcorn, which turned out to be chestnuts, the kind that grow famously on the Tà Xùa mountain. That was breakfast, along with hard-boiled eggs, cashews, and rice. We had hiked thirteen kilometers to reach the homestead. We had three more to go, and those three were the whole reason we came. On that final stretch we passed goats picking their way up the mountainside, and ridge after ridge of peaks piled against one another, laying out the path toward where the clouds were rolling. Then we reached it, the spine of rock they call the dinosaur ridge, named for exactly what it looks like, running straight into the middle of the clouds. It is one of the highest points on Tà Xùa, and there is nothing on either side of you, no rail, no margin, a few hundred feet straight down if you misjudge a step. And then you walk into the cloud. You are inside it. You can feel it on your skin, taste it, reach out and close your hand around it. After everything it took to get up there, standing on the spine of that mountain with the clouds moving through me was a kind of quiet I will not forget.
Twenty-five kilometers in total. We had done sixteen. Nine to go, all of it down, and you would think down is the easy part. It is not. The terrain came at me in textures I did not have names for, mud to dirt to sand to rock to whatever was under that, never level, never kind, and I took my time because the steepness did not care how strong I thought I was. On the way down I tried to keep pace with the lead guide, just to say I did it once. No chance. He destroyed me, a hundred and fifty pounds of gear on his back, while I picked my way down on a stick. These men are something else. It was one of the most immersive treks I have ever done in my life, and I would do it again tomorrow now that I know what it asks of you. If you want to be humbled, to get lost, to learn a mountain, to chase the clouds and drink the best tea of your life, go. And spend the time with the people who live up there. Their whole world runs on that mountain, their water, their food, their work, all of it, and watching a way of life like that still thrive today was worth every brutal step. After two days living and climbing with those two guides, I came down with so much more respect, not just for them but for how these people live, how they survive, how they work this mountain. The mountain gives them everything they need, and they love it right back for it. It is a two-way relationship. The land hands them the views and the strength, and in return they give it care, and love, and a kind of enrichment you can feel, and they are proud to show you every bit of what it has given them. That is what I carried down off this mountain, more than the photographs, more than the clouds. That is Tà Xùa.
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