Four day trek to Mt Everst!!

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The trek of all treks

For me Tibet was always going to be about the trekking but as it turns out everything here is done by jeep and is tour-groupified to the max. And because my travel buddies were the coolest I decided to instead of going my originally planned route to stick with them for a while longer and go trekking to the beautiful Mt Qomolongma as it is known in Tibet, the highest mountain in the world! From the Tibetan side it is now actually possible to get a jeep all the way to the Rongphu monastery, about 8km away form Base Camp and then be carted up by horse. Not for us! ( I love feeling superiour- sorry! :) ) So after looking into several options we once again decided to chance not getting a permit and simply hoppped onto a direct bus to the Nepali border and got off at a little mountain town called Tingri, Mt Cho Oyu looming in the background at over 7000m. I was loving every second! Even though we'd been slightly misled about the length of the journey and we ended up arriving 14 hours and only breakfast later, it was one of the most amazing roads I've ever driven on. It's called the Friendship Highway, between Tibet and Nepal and is stunning. Again we had perfect weather conditions- and even got a cheesy rainbow to complete the fotoalbum!

Once in Tingri all we had to do was organise a horse and carriage to lug all of our stuff for us. We'd stocked up on fake North Face Gear and rented tents and bought a stove off some Frenchies earlier and of course had food for four people for four days. The Lonely Planet recommended going to the neighbouring village to find a horse to try and keep a low profile..then picture us all day, going from one horseman to the next along the one main road and bargaining like there was no tomorrow! Most of that day was spent with me surrounded by about 20 Tibetan men with huge grins and awful teeth trying to get a good price. We settled on 30 Euros for three days for the group! So much for a low profile!! In the afternoon we headed over to some hot springs also by horsecart. This time the poor horsey had to lug the four of us to the hot springs! Once there we nearly fainted at the sight of the communal 'hot spring'- the slimiest most disgusting pool I've ever seen with all kinds of things floating in it. But we decided to treat ourselves to the private pool which was nice, and had the Brazilian music blaring through the Dutchies' travel speakers making our own little pool party! All while the horseman enjoyed the communal  pool....mmmmm!

So we were all set for the trek! Only two hours late we set off in the morning, not bad for Tibetan standards and off we went. At 4900m the air was getting thinner and cooler and the nose began to run, and my spirits lifted! And the sun was scorching- not what I had expected from Tibet at all. But it's the greatest temperature range I've ever experienced I think. Daytime temperatures in the high twenties or thirties and nighttime freeezing cold. I am so happy about my 7 Euro fleece sleepingbag liner! Best ever purchase I think!

Minor catastrophes

Of course the trek could not have gone completley smoothly and we did have some funny incidents. The first one was when the horse went completley schiz for no apprent reason whatsoever and bolted, sending all of our stuff flying in all directions! Mental! And we were so lucky that it all came off literally centimetres before the river! But it was like out of a movie- bags and food and rice raining down on us! The horse could finally be calmed down and it turned out the carriage was broken. The main metal rod holding it together had come off. And the wheel was completely bent out of shape. How the carriage was able to survive any of what we did is beyond me anyway! But so our horseman sat there for a long time contemplating the situation, some locals came along and all gave their advice- in the shape of making welding buzzing noises. Not useful, as we were nowhere near a town! But in the end our dude asked us for a Euro, got some friends to come over and they started hammering away at a bit of metal with a big rock...and that apparently was that, it was all fixed and good to go! Wheel still completely bent out of shape, but apparenlty that didn't matter! Unreal!

So off we went on our journey. And the second day was pretty hardcore! We rose up to 5250m, a lot of climbing was involved and 25km day that took more than ten hours to complete. The boys were all feeling the altitude at this stage with headaches, but luckily I was spared. Of course there is shortness of breath and occasionally I'd forget so do something like stand up too quickly or even try and run, and get sompletely winded! So until now there had still been a lot of singing and banter ( I'd been allocatd the role of the donkey in Shrek!!)but it got a lot more quiet towards the end of the day! They nearly lost me at one point aswell, but half a bar of chocolate put me right and I practically ran all the way to our camp. Along the way minor catastrophe nr 2 happened tho... Dennis got run over by the cart! I have no idea how he actually managed but he was lying down for a rest and the horseman must not have seen him or something and started the cart and ran over his arm! It was pretty badly chafed and at that stage of exhaustion it drove Dennis a bit mental. Understandably. Now it's just funny tho! How is it even possible to position yourself in such a way that your arm gets run over?! Great stuff. Minor catastrophe nr 3 was that we'd decided to go with a slightly dodgy camp stove bought second-hand off some Frenchies and it slightly exploded at lunch time. So we had to throw it on the rocks and bent it some more. So that evening after the hardcore day we had to find the energy to spend another two hours trying ot get rice to a softness that was edible. We only barely managed! By the time we were eating our hard rice and raw vegetables in water the stars had come out though and it was simply beautiful. All worth it in the end! I have lost about 5 kilos on this trip tho!! Although some of the meals weren't that bad. Porridge made with river water and condensed milk with some raisins did me a power of good! :)

Mt Everest 

The last day again was slightly more relaxed, only around 20kms, and a lot more flat. It wasn't that exciting scenery wise but we could feel the pull of Mt Everst and expected to see it around every corner. We were even offered a lift for the last 5kms, and refused. Couldn't give up now!! Felt so good ;) And finally finally there it was, we arrived at Rongphu monastery and saw Mt Qomolongma in all her glory. I have to admit there were tears in my eyes...of pride and happiness and exhaustion! Amazing! And although there was a guesthouse and even a hotel we decided to find the energy to pitch our tents- in full view of the North face of 8848m of snow-covered glory ( getting slightly carried away here I know!). No-one seemed to care in the slightest, so we could poke our heads out of our tents in the morning to a perfect view! And again we were blessed with the weather. As we arrived it was slightly shrouded in clouds but as the evening wore on it got clearer and clearer and we could even see the summit glowing in gold and then pink at sunset. If there is a Patron Saint of Travellers he is certainly looking over me. A great trek made perfect by the weather and the company. After sharing tents, our last scraps of food, Tibet, Tibetan smell, each others' smell, and so many happy moments, these dudes really have become great friends! I couldn't have had a better group if I'd tried and it's going to be very sad saying goodbye. Anyways, so that evening we just took it easy and took about a million fotos. And it's so funny to see how standards change- after complaining about the Chinese toilets, it was now absolute luxury to be able to sneak into the hotel and use their Chinese style toilet. It was squat and smelly but it was tiled!!! And it had a lock, so you could have the entire toilet to yourself!! Amazing! So much more luxurious than behind a rock or even worse in Tibetan toilets that are a version of the long drop that don't involve holes or drops of any sort!!

Base Camp

The next day we decided to trek the last hour and a half to base camp and spend the night there. More for the experience than anything else really. But of course the road taken by the horses carrying up Chinese tourists on their mobile phones was too boring for us so we tried to find an alternative path up the mountain... not such a great idea it turns out, as we ended up scaling a huge slope of scree! All of this after 3 days trekking and at an altitude of over 5000m! I was not feeling the mountaineering love at that stage and actually got a weird attack of vertigo. But the boys were very sweet and we retraced our steps and went with the boring route after all!! Reaching base camp after all that was actually a bit of an anti climax. It wasn't even near the snow border! Not at this time of year anyway. But it wasn't as bad as I'd expected- it was practically deserted. Except for the obligatory stalls selling cheap jewellery! And it's made up of tents that all have names such as 'hotel california'. Quite funny. And we made it just in the nick of time- the dark clouds were pulling in, the mountain was completely covered in clouds and it started pissing it down. So all we could do was get cosy in the tent for the night...a tent that was draughty and had a hole in the roof! It was ok while the stove was on, but at night it became freezing cold. It even snowed! So we got to see fresh snow on Mt Everest! Again I blessed my ability to sleep through everything and my fleece liner, I actually had one of the best nights since starting out but the poor boys suffered!!

Anyways, we survived and the next morning actually had to get one of the dreaded horse carts to storm down the mountian because we had to catch our illegal truck ride at ten. Just managed and had time to coordinate our lies in case we were stopped with the one english speaker there was, and off we went.

What we didn't know was that this was possibly the slowest vehicle on the road and it took us 14 hours what took the jeeps 5! Also it seemed that we had to use an alternative route- maybe because of us in the truck, we don't really know, but when I say it was under construction that's an understatement! Ridiculous! How they let anything on that road is beyond me! We were shaken and rattled to the bone for the duration, often having to wait for them to make the bit of road we were about to drive on. The Chinese government is spending an absolute fortune on road construction at the moment, it was fascinating to witness. So many thousands of people- including women and girls!- are employed in the roadworks. We had a few scares on the road aswell, and I'm so thankful it hadn't been raining more. At one point we had to get out and lay stones on the muddy road for the truck to be able to get some grip and make it up the hill, and another time we actually started sliding sideways very close to the edge! But all good. We even made it though the storm. The most surrela storm I have ever seen- huge flashes of lightning in the sky that lit everything up in purple for seconds at a time!

The police checkpoints were funny aswell- one took a very long time and it seems the driver was dishing them our perfect story- that our jeep had broken down and we were forced to ride in the luggage truck, and the other was pure class. The checkpoint was a big barrier closing off the only road in town. So what we did was get out of the truck about 20m before the barrier, and walked past it. Four whites, one about 2m tall and with a blonde fro, and even the rest of us clearly not Tibetan, casually walking into restricted area.  20m past the barrier we then casually got back in to the truck!And no-one said a thing. How?!! Brilliant tho!

Phew, so finally we arrived in Shigatse happy and tired- and there were even showers for us to use!! WOW! Stupidly I got a bit carried away with the shower, washed my hair and went to bed with wet hair so am now paying for the joy with manky tonsils. But I got some antibiotics fo one Euro fifty and am felling ready for my next mission!!