Tibet and Everest Base Camp
Trip Start
Apr 06, 2010
1
36
94
Trip End
Mar 01, 2011
Zhangmu, Tibet, China
Wednesday, July 14, 2010
Wednesday 14th July
We got up at 6am feeling a little less than fresh to get back on the truck at 7am. Luckerly the drive to Borderlands was fairly short and we were there by 1pm. The Borderlands camp site is set in a beautiful gorge with a huge raging river running alongside. Just up the road from the camp site is the famous 'Last Resort' where you can bungy or gorge swing 160m off a bridge. You wouldn't catch me doing either in a million years but some of our group were crazy enough to do it. We put our tents up and wandered up to it just in time to see James leap off on a gorge swing.
We spent the rest of the day relaxing / recovering from last night, had truck dinner and an early night., It was a bit bizarre to be back in a tent after spending the last few weeks in beds. I didn't have the best night's sleep which I now remember is quite normal for being in my tent – tonight this was due to the raging river being really flippin' loud and the sound of torrential rain on my tent all night! I am happy to report that only a little water entered though through the groundsheet under my mat.
Thursday 15th July
We left Borderlands and drove up the gorge along a quite scary cliff-edge road / dirt-track to the border with Tibet / China, signed out of Nepal and were expecting a long day at the border getting signed into China but we were pleasantly surprised that it only took just over two hours.
We met our two guides at the border, Pimba who is our Tibetan guide and will be with us until Lhasa and Leon who is Chinese and will be with us for the whole 6 weeks in China. Both are with us to help us get from A to B through police check-points etc.
We have all been given 'numbers' so every time we have to go through check-points or whatever whilst we're in China we will have to line up in number order which is quite funny. I am now number 7 :o) So we all lined up in number order and had our bags checked for sensitive literature (you are not allowed to bring in anything related to Tibet / Dali Lama etc) and then once more for drugs, but they weren't very thorough and we were all through quite quickly. We went to a local restaurant whilst we waited for the truck to get cleared and had our first Chinese meal. I had Thukpa (noodle soup) and others had momos, both dishes I think are actually Tibetan. We paid 15 and 10 respectively – there is around 9 Yuan to the pound so the food isn't as cheap as we'd imagined it would be here.
The border is a bridge spanning the gorge with a huge waterfall beneath which you're not really supposed to photograph but I sneaked one in!! We put our clocks forward 2hrs 15mins, I think making us now 8.5hours ahead of the UK, (don't take my word for that – I've lost track, I have no idea what day of the week it is most of the time!!) and headed away from the border at around 3ish. The drive up to Zhangmu was a series of steep hairpin bends and scary cliff-edges, and the town looks like it could just fall off the side of the mountain at any moment!!
We checked into our hotel, had a little look around town to see what strange things were available in the shops, had a buffet dinner and then an early night.
Friday 16th July
We left at 7.30am and had a fun time getting out of the town. There is just one narrow street through the town which is a series of hairpin bends so trying to drive the big orange truck around the corners with cars and vans parked all over the place was interesting. Lu had to guide around most of the corners and on one of them some of the boys had to get out and physically move a van out of the way!! Adam is a pretty good driver so he managed to manoeuvre successfully and we were on our way. Apparently the road we were on today has been full of roadworks for years (a bit of an M25 scenario) but we were very pleased to find that there were only a couple of sections still on the go. We drove on cliff-edges and round more hairpins for most of the morning and at one place most of us got out of the truck to watch Adam drive along the edge of a cliff around one of the sections of road works which made for some great pictures! The road was stunning, but also more than a little scary!!
We drove towards Everest climbing to a height of around 4900metres past the 'Welcome to Nyalam again' sign. Most people on the truck are taking Diamox, an altitude sickness preventative but even with these many people were still feeling a little 'strange'. The Diamox makes your fingers and lips tingle intermittently, added to the 'spaced out' feeling most of us had, at the welcome sign we also came across some people performing some sort of ritual involving chanting and dancing so it was all a bit surreal!
We then climbed up to 5050metres at the Lalung La Pass, where we would have been able to see Everest if it wasn't so cloudy, before driving to a town called Tingri for lunch and then on to our bush camp where it was my cook group's turn to make dinner. The bush camp was overlooked by Everest which was amazing, except for the fact that it was covered with cloud for the most part and the one time it popped it's peak out I was in the cooking area where the view was obscured by a building and I was covered in chicken – by the time I'd cleaned up and rushed over a cloud had appeared!! We cooked up sweet and sour chicken, which actually turned out pretty good, even though I do say so myself!! Fran, Claire and I slept on the truck as we needed to be up early to cook breakfast which we were delighted about when the thunder and lightening started at around 9pm! The thunder stopped after an hour or so, but the rain carried on all night. The night temperature didn't seem as bad as we were expecting. Inside the truck it was 15degrees at 11pm and 10degrees at 6am. I used my new sleeping bag for the first time and it was cozy, but I suspect it wouldn't keep its bold promise to stop my dying of hypothermia at minus 20degrees.
Saturday 17th July
We were up at 6am to cook everyone breakfast before leaving for Everest Base Camp. We drove through some stunning scenery, passing yaks along a bone-shaking dirt roads at an average speed of around 10km per hour so we finally arrived at the first base camp at around 7pm!! I think the roads had deteriorated somewhat since the itinerary had been set as we should have arrived at Rongbuk Monastery (which at 4980meters is the highest monastery in the world) for lunch at around 2.30pm and then the first base camp an hour or so afterwards!! Then we were supposed to drive back down and camp at a lower altitude.
The Tibetans call Everest 'Mount Chomolungma' which mean 'mother of the universe' or 'Goddess mother of the Earth' We took a local bus the last 15minutes to the second base camp and messed around taking daft photos and Kim organised a short 'Chomolungma line dance' in front of where Everest should have been visible. Unfortunately the clouds had other ideas and all we could see was the lower part.
We went back to the first base camp and hatched a new plan because of the delays so rather than camp a little further down and cook Lu ordered fried rice for 40 from a restaurant which we ate on the move. Some people were really feeling the effects of the altitude as we were at 5150m and had to take oxygen. We then drove back down a couple of hours finally camping in the rain at around midnight. Most people opted for sleeping on the truck, but Sarah and I put her tent up in the rain and both had a great night's sleep, well, for the 5 hours we were in it!!
