It’s evening in Kathmandu and I just got a helpful phonecall from our travel guy (I guess?) to let me know that all the flights for the last two days to our Himalayan destination Lukla had been cancelled due to weather. But I shouldn’t worry, our 7:30am flight tomorrow will be ok. Whatever.
So either we’ll be on a crack of dawn flight to the hills for a 16 day hike up near Everest… or I’ll be back here slowly posting pictures. But assuming all goes well, we’ll be on the trail until the 27th with nothing but our sleeping bags, 8 layers of clothing, cup-o-noodles and thoughts of you to keep us warm.

The route from Everest to the border first followed a dusty frontier trail through rolling hills with Himalayan backdrop. Finally hitting the “Tibet/Nepal Friendship Highway”, we had road for 4 more hours before hitting a little outpost town just a couple hours off the border. The remaining road is under simultaneous con/de-struction and only open at night. Our plan was to circumvent this by sneaking in early in the morning before sunrise. It’s a good plan and we’re cruising on this one lane dirt/rock/rubble cliffside “road” by 7am.We slowly work our way through several sheep herds before sunrise (about 8:30 here) and then come across our first serious obstacle of the day, a cargo truck hanging precariously over 1000 foot drop – and blocking our passage. After a couple hours of discussion between the parties not involved, a bulldozer and backhoe work in harmony to simulateously upright and pull the truck to safety.A few more goatherds, several backhoes blocking the road and we make it to the actual border town. Unfortunately, this town is a one lane road that winds down a very steep hill. The cargo trucks waiting to cross block the single lane and makes passage to the immigration check and then across the 4 mile “no-man’s land” to Nepal an incredibly time consuming act. Nepal immigration was a snap. We were practically dragged by border guards through the throngs of Chinese and Tibetan travellers massed around the entry gate and into Nepal before we even knew it.Then there’s the 5 hour ride into Kathmandu. After a head-on bus accident, a flat tire, a couple goat herds and 4 hours we hit the thickest, grossest smog we’d ever seen. It’s like there’s a ring of soot around Kathmandu. Ugg. From there, it was an hour of horrible non-stop-honking traffic to get to the center of town and our hotel. All told, 12 long hours on the road for the day I chose to have food poisoning.

This is us at the official Everest Base Camp sign in Tibet. John and I were already feeling the onslaught of AMS so just after this picture we got carted back to the tent and slumped down for the rest of the day. Even the next morning we were dosing in and out of consciousness so we drove down post haste. It wasn’t until noon, and 7000ft lower that we started to recover.

Tibet is not an easy place to get to. It is part of China, although China requires multiple “permits” in addition to the standard Chinese visa to get aroud. Of course, you can’t get the permits anywhere other than Tibet (which you can’t get to legally without a permit), so you have to work with a travel agent or similar intermediary who will do the legwork for you. The point is that they want you to be on a guided tour at all times where your actions and interactions with Tibetans can be controlled. We followed a pretty common western tourist route from Lhasa to the foot of Everest and then on to the Nepal border and it required two or three separate permits. Apparently venturing out into the untouristed northern or eastern parts of the country is incredibly difficult.It all seems a bit pointless to me as the Chinafication of Tibet since absorption in 1957 seems utterly complete. Lhasa itself is something like 80% Chinese. The countryside is claimed as largely Tibetan, but that just means the Chinese run the shops while the Tibetans farm or sell sourvenirs to tourists. The serious pilgrims at the monasteries are entirely Tibetan, but the monks are all Chinese! Road and store signs are always written in Chinese and sometimes in Tibetan. It is sad to see a culture slowly erased, but I suppose that happens. The Chinese people who have moved here and taken over are just like any other people looking for better opportunities. It’s hard to blame anyone but a government trying to extend it’s borders. It just means if you travel to Tibet go in expecting China.

Writing postcards is fun when you find just the right one for someone. You write the note, address later when you have the address book handy and off it goes when you’re lucky enough to find a stamp and postbox.So goes it with this uncanny visage of what could be Dave’s Han forefather, a Xi’an terracotta warrior general. Quite unfortunately, I made the oh-so-simple mistake of misaddressing the card (to ourselves!) when doing that job a couple days later. Ok, no problem. It’ll just wait until we get to Lhasa and I borrow some available double-sticky-sided tape, a slice of white paper and make my new address label. I grab a good pen to ensure legibility when writing out the new address.Then -BOOM, POW, KERSPLAT-. Ever open a rollerball pen that has seen a 17,000 foot change in altitude? So now the card is covered in ink; my hand is covered in ink; my FOOT is covered in ink. There’s a bit of ink on the bed and floor where my body, shirt and pants couldn’t protect. It’s carnage and Mary and John can only look and laugh. Within the hour, I’m cleaned up and the work is finished. Denise, Dave – I don’t know if this card will survive the Chinese postal inspectors, but know that truly unreasonable efforts were put into getting it to you.

We are packed, with way too much clothes and food, on this the eve of our Everest Base Camp attempt on the Tibet side. Okay, so all we’re going to do tomorrow is sit in a car for 7hrs but that doesn’t sound nearly as exciting. Over the next few days we’ll be seeing the Tibetan mountainside, staying in villages, trying yak butter tea, gaining altitude and trying to acclimate. Our goal is to spend the night at the tents in base camp at 17,000ft with Mount Everest looming over head.

Given our earlier encounter with altitude sickness we’re trying to take every precaution to make each step a success. This is testing ground for us as next we will be making the 15 day hike on the Nepal side to their Everest Base Camp. That will be much more challenging and physically demanding.

Although I recovered from Acute Mountain Sickness, more commonly known as altitude sickness, after a day of sleeping, headaches, and throwing up… John was not so lucky. He stayed in bed for 2.5 days. Each day he was awake for maybe an hour total, coherent for much less than that. Finally on the 3rd day we threatened to have an IV shoved into him because he wasn’t keeping any food down. I know Lhasa is technically China but none of us were in a rush to try out the needle inventory here. I think that did the trick because on the next day he was able to get out of bed and, more importantly, eat.

Now we’re all back to mostly ourselves. The lower oxygen here at 11,000ft is making us out of breath just from walking around town. Another problem with the altitude is that all our shampoos, lotions, and pens are bursting but that’s much more manageable.