Day 103 - 12 November 2009: Mt Qomolangma Base Camp (Everest to you and me)

Today is a day of highs. We go through Pangla Pass, at over 5000m high, one of the highest roads in the world. The view from the top gives us a good view of the highest mountains in the world, though it is quite cloudy today. It is also very exposed, and the wind bites crisply, though this doesn’t prevent some souvenir sellers making this their place of work. We also visit the highest monastery in the world, the highest toilet in the world (probably?) and, of course, the base camp of the highest mountain in the world, although the clouds prevent us getting a clear view of Everest’s peak from here.

Ram Jam

Highest Temple in the World?

Highest 'restroom'?

On a low note, I am now considering leaving the truck as I am wearying of the group travel. I can’t do this in China as we are on a group visa, but am thinking about it once we get out.

Day 102 - 11 November 2009: very cold in Tingri, Tibet

taking down the tents in the morning

The truck is still not going anywhere. There are several attempts by a group, of us, including me, to push the truck while JC tries to flip it into gear, with some people still sat in the truck. Unfortunately, the one time where the whole of the group are out of the truck trying to push it, I am at the other side of the road playing guitar. People are not at all happy with me when I catch up. To be honest, I don’t care. I watched as people merely clung on to the side, as there was not enough room for people to push from behind. Also, I’ve wearied of this group mentality, where every moment seems to be subject of self-appointed judges’ evaluation.

this is a real trekker, as we are miles from any town and he was walking along the road

Tempers cool down when we get a tow from another truck to Tingri, a small town often used as a base for trekkers and climbers. We disperse as a group in Tingri for lunch, without a timetable for when we should be back. We have reconvened by 4pm, but JC is still working on the gearbox. An hour later, he has fixed it, but it’s too late to go anywhere, so we get dorm rooms is a hotel in the town, which is only a road lined with some restaurants and some food supply shops. Laurie got me a dry sealed bag of what turns out to be chicken feet. I try one but, after offering them around, the rest go in the bin.

Running water in rural Tibet is a luxury and I have yet to find any. Electricity is also scarce. I am sleeping on the floor in the hotel next to Belgian Sam, who has a snoring bottom. I have a long uncomfortable night in front of me.

Day 101 - 10 November 2009: Tibet, crapping on a yak

China insists on having only one time zone for the whole country, and we hit the road in darkness, riding along a bumpy dirt road overlooking deep valleys. Those on the valley side of the truck have some nervous moments of group gasping.

As the road gets higher though, it becomes one fit for a Top Gear (British car show) driving challenge, freshly tarmaced across long barren landscapes. We are aiming to get to the north side Everest Base Camp in the coming days. We go over Mt Wula Pass which is 5000m high, the peak point being marked by Buddhist flags.

Everest is now in site, and we stop for lunch at a small town used as a base by hikers and climbers. Laurie and I go for a walk on a road away from the town leading to who knows where to get a better look.

remnants of an old fort

In rural Tibet, living conditions are basic, with people living in cement or clay block dwellings with roof often made of yak dung and are reliant on coal (or yak dung) fired stoves for their heating. My first experience of Chinese toilets was at the border control, where they were standard unsanitary and, um, muddied squat toilets. Here, they are outhouses with holes in the ground. At the hamlet where we stop for lunch, there are three holes in the room separated only by short doorless barriers a couple of feet high. There are a number of us desperate to go and this leads a strange sort of male bonding. The holes drop down into a field which is inhabited by a yak. There is no delicate way to put this. The yak seems to have a taste for human faeces and situates itself below us. I can say that it doesn’t like toilet paper or wet wipes though.

I go into the restaurant where everybody has settled for lunch and order yak noodle soup.

While gathering back on the truck, we see some sheep being slaughtered with a knife to the throat.

We drive on, but the truck breaks down at the bottom of the road turning to Everest Base Camp. On top of this, several people are suffering from altitude sickness. We are still about 4,000m above sea level.

Escorted by Gaz and Kevin, our Chinese guide, Caroline and Rhiannon get a lift from a friendly passer-by to the hospital in Tingri. The rest of us end up bush camping where we are. The temperature drops to -15°C and I don’t get any sleep. Also, I get an upset stomach in the middle of the night. There are some small dry ravines in the landscape, so there is some shelter, although I have to be careful as I am aware that others might have used the facilities already. Nonetheless, it is the coldest toilet moment of my life.

Day 100 - 09 Novermber 2009: into Tibet

We have adventures as we approach the border trying to get the truck past trade trucks waiting to get checked by customs. It is only a narrow village road, so there is a lot of tooting and bullying cars out of the way to get to the border check.

the view from the bridge before the entering Tibet

Border controls take the expected many hours, with the Chinese checking all of our rucksacks. They are mainly concerned with literature. They are suspicious of Shay’s book ‘A Secret History’, which is only a novel set in an American university. They take off the back cover and rip out the map of China in Caroline’s ‘Lonely Planet’. This is because the map refers to Taiwan, not ‘Chinese Taipei’. Ironically, later we will find that you can buy lots of Lonely Planet’s in China, but not the one on China.

Tracy has two copies of the Kama Sutra on her which she is not sure what they will make of (one was a birthday present to her, and the other my birthday present to John). In the event, the official has a look through and sniggers when he realises what it is.

Over the border, the road is either in middle of being rebuilt or in middle of collapsing. We rise up the valley into a traffic jam caused wholly by intransigence. There is a bottle neck where only one truck can pass. The trouble is, every time a truck facing one direction lets one from the other go through the bottle neck, the one behind moved to overtake it. This happened on both sides until there were at least ten vehicles on either side of the bend. We waited for an hour before trucks behind us start to back up and we are able to reverse to let traffic through.

Further up the road to a town apparently called Dam, we stop in a hotel because the road further on is closed to entering traffic during the day. This means we have to get onto it before 8am the next day.

We are entering China on a group visa, which means we are all missing the stamp in our passport. As a group, the government have required us to have a guide to take us through China, as well as an additional guide for the Tibetan leg. This turns out to be a good job, as Tibet / China is the first place we are entering where English is not commonly spoken.

Our Chinese guide, Kevin, is in his mid-twenties and speaks very good English. He escorts us to a restaurant and orders for us as a group. Dinner is good and a nice change, the local food in Nepal not necessarily having been a highlight. I have chicken curry, hok choy and veg.

Back at the hotel, we find a cat in our room. I don’t blame it as it is very cold outside. We are now dressed in our cold weather gear.

Day 99 - 08 Novermber 2009: Borderlands, white water rafting

Scene from the campsite

I wake up urging myself to do the bungee jump. I must face down my fear I tell myself. I can’t decide, so I flip a box of matches, coins being rare in Nepal. Despite increasing the best out of quantity from one to three, then to five and then to seven, the matches still tell me no bungee.

I am glad that I went white water rafting though, as it was much more exciting than the Upper Seti one we did when we were at Pokhara. Excepting the guide, our boat crew are all UK to Ozzers, including myself and Laurie. The guide tells Laurie to keep calm as he senses she is panicky, but relative to our previous experiences she is calmer than usual. Also present is the superficially serious Irishman Shay who has taken to mocking my eccentricities, so it is satisfying to see him manage to break his oar and his lifejacket and to fall in the river three times. His flip flops seem to be magnetic though, as they come off with each over-boarding but they are rescued each time. The last fall involved all of us, as the boat near capsized as we collided with another boat that was stuck on some rocks, dumping six of us in the rapid. Only the guide and Stephen, the retired solicitor from Yorkshire, managed to stay in. The boat landed on my head and I had a few panicky seconds underneath, but we all managed to get back in. The other boat, which had actually capsized, had most of its crew floating solitarily down various points of the river. It brings home how dangerous rafting can be and we learn that someone had drowned in this river a month before. But, boy was it fun.

Tomorrow we pass into Tibet.

Day 98 - 07 November 2009: Borderlands

We meet up with truck again this morning. Most people have really enjoyed Kathmandu, but I am glad that we are now going back into the peaks and the wilderness, this time at Borderlands Resorts area near the Tibet border.

a room with a view

scenes from the truck ride

 

The truck stops for an hour or so by ‘The Last Resort’ where there is a 160m bungee jump as well as ‘the world’s highest canyon swing’. The canyon swing looks to be the more exhilarating, but I am not sure I can bring myself to do either. I tell Lu, who is booking activities for tomorrow morning, that I will do the statistically incredibly more hazardous white water rafting instead.

my camera lens couldn't capture the whole valley down to the river...

We camp a site with roofless stone shower rooms and is situated next to the Bhote Koshe river.