Tibet, Mt. Everest, I don't like your altitude

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If you have time, click on the slideshow button & just sit back & enjoy the trip.....

…..just to put you in the mood before you read the rest, here's how to recreate the 4km walk from the tents in the windswept valley that leads to Mount Everest up to the first base camp, at 5,200m elevation. Take a clothes peg, a battery-powered hair dryer & an ice pack. Clamp your nostrils half closed with the peg. Find a decent flight of stairs. First run up & down half a dozen times, (double it if you're very fit). You should then feel the way I do just standing up & walking out of the tent. Halfway across a country with no time zones the sun is still high in the sky at 6.30pm & fiercely hot through the thin air, (aim the hair dryer at the back of your head). Strap the ice pack to your forehead. (It's a bitter wind blowing through that valley from Everest). Now walk up & down the stairs 800 times. Rest whenever you find it hard to breathe, (I did).....

.....after all that the mountain peak is covered in cloud &, against my better judgement when American Dave, younger & fitter than I, suggests walking back I ruefully eye the bus but rise to the challenge. At least it's all downhill. We return to the tent to find the sensible contingent off the bus & already comfortable in the very spacious, warm tent, with milk tea, butter tea, noodles &, in Sofi's case, 2 tubes up her nose providing extra oxygen. She has that “made it” look on her face though & is still smiling. We're all pretty whacked by now, except our Tibetan guide, Namgyal. Who, despite jogging up & down, checking on the spread out group of walkers & alternately singing & smoking, doesn't miss a beat.....

…..how did we get there in the first place? Sofi started it by suggesting a trip to Tibet a few months back. It's been on the bucket list but always for “another time” She doesn't have another time as she is going back home to Argentina in August. She does a sterling job arranging the tour. The government keeps Tibet, (Xizang in Chinese), under pretty tight control so you can't just breeze in & wander around. The tour company arranges a guide & all the necessary permits.....

…..Sofi & I start from the school & get on the bus to Shanghai, uneventful apart from the little girl amusing herself, unworried by any semblance of parental control, by continuously kicking the back of Sofi's seat until she tells her to stop. Next it's my turn. The mother eventually makes a half hearted effort & the frequency of kicks is reduced.....

…..we are planning to meet Mike on the way. He's visiting a friend in Changsha, Hunan province first. Then there's American Dave, who is waiting for another friend to arrive from the USA before boarding the train to Lhasa, plus 2 others who answered Sofi's ad. to make up the numbers.....

…..Sofi's staying with friends from Argentina in Shanghai so we collect our sleeper train tickets when we arrive then go our separate ways. Notable t-shirts I spot in Shanghai include, on a young man with his girlfriend, “Dump her before Valentine's day” &, in very large letters on a girl with a typically flawless Chinese complexion, “ACNE” !.....

…..I meet Sofi at Shanghai station again in the morning & at around 9am we're off. The trip is quiet. We have sleeper bunks in different carriages, the hard sleepers, stacked in 3's on both sides of a narrow compartment with a corridor along one side just wide enough for tiny flip-down seats & only just enough room to walk through, stepping over people's legs & dodging the food trolley. The reading glasses I bought in Shanghai, because I forgot to bring them from home, are broken before we even pass Yangzhou, on the other side of the river as we head for Nanjing & beyond! …..

…...I spend time making friends with the people in my carriage, including a couple of little girls, sisters, & their parents, reading & visiting Sofi or she visiting me. It takes well over a day for the first leg of journey, Shanghai, Nanjing, Xi'an then through Lanzhou in Gansu. Lanzhou is reputedly the city with some of the worst pollution even in China (!) but as we pass through it's clear, sunny & looks very clean & modern.....

....to Xiling, capital of the huge Qinghai province. In historical times this area was part of a Tibetan empire. Despite the modern, impressive capital it's a vast & sparsely populated area of high plateau behind the Himalayas. We're welcomed at the busy station by a bevy of soldiers in camouflage gear with automatic rifles & riot shields. No riots though. It's here that we change trains & board the special high-altitude line to Lhasa, capital of Tibet. We almost don't board the train as the guard to our carriage queries the permit we need to enter Tibet. The permit is for tomorrow, the 2^nd of July, the ticket for the 1^st of July. Maybe it's as well I don't know how to say, in Chinese, “Do you think Scotty's going to beam us up to Lhasa instantly?” &, although I do know how to say, “You bloody idiot, it takes a day to get there...”, I don't. A highly irritated Sofi phones the travel agency & she finally lets us on. Our tall, thin, female reincarnation of Hitler follows us.....



…..it's while you're travelling over the bleak highlands of Qinghai, already elevated after trundling across the deserted land overnight, that you start to feel the first effects of the altitude. A slight headache, stomach not quite right, unexpectedly gasping for breath. There's oxygen available, if you need it, from small tubes hidden behind little compartments above the windows. The carriages are not pressurised to the extent of an aircraft fuselage but they do have extra oxygen pumped in. The windows are double glazed to protect occupants against UV rays which are much stronger through the thin air. My hope that the windows are clean are dashed though they could be worse & I get a few decent photos on the way.....



.....Sofi & I are in nearby hard-sleeper compartments this time. We decide to go in search of Mike who, (of course) has a soft sleeper, much further up the train. We have to negotiate increasingly wretched carriages, passing through a linear version of the inner circle of hell where passengers are seated for over a day, with luggage, bags, sacks & numerous children over whom they appear to have given up all authority. One very small boy is standing on the wet floor near the door of the squat toilet & aiming, possibly not too well, from there. Mike is safely on the other side of the purgatorial dining car, in a heavenly & very comfortable 4 berth soft sleeper with his only remaining travelling companion, a young Chinese woman who speaks some English. We pass the time quietly until Sofi makes a trip to the toilet.....



…..she returns a little distressed. All had progressed as nature intended until the cheap Chinese wall hook on which she had hung her backpack came off, depositing the bag in the squat toilet. As she snatched it out the top came off the deodorant inside the bag. We find some plastic bags & make sympathetic sounds as she sorts out the mess. Learned some new Spanish swear words.....



…..we're met at Lhasa's new railway station by our guide, Namgyal. He presents us with a traditional Tibetan white ribbon, like a scarf, & 3 tired travellers are driven to the Yak hotel. I'm sharing with another Dave, a young American teacher from Jiangdu, near Yangzhou, & his bike, which he's aiming to ride across the Tibetan plateau in Qinghai, to see how close he can get to Shanghai before his visa runs out!. He arrives on a later train with his friend, Julie, from the USA. 2 other English teachers show up having answered an on-line ad to make up the numbers, Marieke, a German architecture student who has been teaching English in Hohhot, Nei Mengol, (Inner Mongolia), & Delfina, a Polish lass teaching English in Chengdu, Sichuan. They don't seem at all put out to be on a tour with the old folks, (that's Mike & myself!). Turns out everyone gets on pretty well overall.....



…..just to see how it feels I try running up the 5 flights of stairs to the rooftop restaurant for breakfast. I get dizzy, feel spaced out then get a slight headache which is cleared by numerous cups of tea as we all admire the morning view over the mountains that surround the city.....



…..Lhasa, (“Place of the Gods”), has much to commend it after the unremitting ugliness of many Chinese city centres. It's very low-rise, hardly anything taller than 5 or 6 stories in the centre, many of them beautifully painted, & few tall apartment blocks, even on the approaches. Then there is the sky. It's blue! With beautiful, fluffy white clouds too. I know, probably no big deal to you but, when you live in eastern China..... It's by Chinese provincial capital standards, tiny, with a population under 600,000. Everything is on a more manageable scale. The Potala Palace, is the centrepiece & dominates everything else in the city.....



.....do you like yak? If so, then it's the place for you. You can buy Yak steaks, burgers, sandwiches, curry & a whole heap of other things, as well as beautifully decorated yak skulls, should you need one. Tibetan cuisine is not even close to being as varied as the Chinese but most restaurants make up for it by offering Nepali, Indian, Chinese &, in Lhasa at least, variations of western style dishes, (yak burgers again!).....



…..thought you might like to know, the Chinese word for yak is, mao niu, or “fur cow”.....



…..tourists should be with a guide at all times. Maybe not so much in Lhasa but certainly outside. In China the police presence is pretty low-key, a couple of traffic cops chatting at a junction watching e-bikes jump red lights & thread their way through the cross traffic. Here they are everywhere, in small stations around town, in big, ugly Hummeresque vehicles or, as I see in one instance, jog-marching through Jokhang square carrying rifles, (no photos!). I also hear of a guide having his licence revoked for comments made in a blog & tracked back to HIS tour. I don't think Namgyal said anything to warrant that but I guess I should be circumspect in anything I write.....



…..we visit some little tea houses in Lhasa, where you can buy butter tea, (basically yak butter in hot water, salty & not bad, believe it or not), “normal” tea or, as we do, beer. You do have to be careful as, at altitude you can get a headache after just a few light beers. Walking up one flight of stairs & even the youngsters are gasping, which is a relief to me. Tibet has a bad altitude, no getting around it. It's also strange to be using Chinese as our common language. We apologise for not being able to speak Tibetan, (actually for having to use Chinese!) but the locals all speak it & are happy to have a lingua franca to communicate with us. In a restaurant with Namgyal I ask why he lapses into Chinese for one sentence while talking to a Tibetan waitress. “We use Chinese so much, it just happens...”.....



…..the monasteries & temples,some with evocative names which I have heard, the Jokhang temple & Drepung monastery near Lhasa, & others that we visit elsewhere are notable for the numbers of Tibetans assiduously paying homage to Buddhist deities as they spin prayer wheels & stuff money, coins & notes, into every available nook & cranny. (We see a monk on one occasion, sweeping up the money). We see Tibetans prostrating themselves in a kind of horizontal circuit of stupas in the Palkhor Choede monastery. Also notable is the parlous state of the buildings, especially after the most recent destruction of the cultural revolution. We are surprised to find that many Tibetans were caught up in what appears to have been a kind of mass hysteria & some joined in the desecration of temples & monasteries & the burning of sacred texts. There are still a lot left however & apparently some are now being scanned to digital formats, much like the book of Kells in Ireland.....

....the toilets, particularly in the monasteries are remarkable. The complete absence of doors reveals a lack of sanitation & privacy on a truly monumental scale. They are a wonder to behold, briefly, but if at all possible not to use.....



…..the Potala Palace, a place that's been on my list of things to see for a long while, IS impressive. Rebuilt on the site of a previous palace in 1645, after which it became the winter residence of the Dalai Lama. It was built in stages & suffered various depredations, sections sometimes being rebuilt with stones carried up by the pious residents of Lhasa. It's dark halls & chambers are full of statues, scrolls, coloured flags around the faded timber columns in a structure steeped in a complex faith which to me is still largely impenetrable. I feel I am in some way intruding & am disturbing the rites of the Tibetans who flock to the palace & monasteries, mostly ignoring the curious but uncomprehending visitors.....



…..by night it is illuminated. Some of us go to the square, a little concerned that it might be a tasteless temporary defacing of this precious monument by a garish lighting display. It turns out to be one of the most subtle I've seen & beautifully in keeping with the iconic palace. The main entertainment though is watching Marieke, beseiged by Chinese & Tibetan families wanting to pose with her for photos. Even Delfina's long blonde hair doesn't get a look-in, ultimately to her relief as Marieke tries to hide her face & curly locks in an effort to get some peace.....



....I think Tibetan culture will slowly be eroded, not because of any impositions by the Chinese government but by the increase in affluence that comes with the economic development the Chinese are bringing to Tibet. The dusty scrolls will be replaced by the i-Phone & its Chinese clones, while movies & Weixin may take the place of visits to the temples. Many, though not all, of the locals visiting the temples & monasteries & spinning prayer wheels are old, very old. Many of the thousands that do the circuit of the Potala palace every day likewise. Still it's a very deep & deep-seated faith as witnessed by the prayer flags, thin cloth, printed with Buddhist prayers, a pious, messy riot of colour all over Tibet.....



…..after a couple of days visiting temples, monasteries & some educational & very entertaining trips to tea houses, we board a minibus for our trip to Qomolangma, or, as you probably know it, Mount Everest. It's a bum-numbing journey to Shigatse, around halfway, which takes around 10 hours, then the next day another 10 or 11 hours along roads which around Lhasa are smoothly paved highways but which degenerate the further away you travel, with frequent detours on ungraded goat-tracks around roadworks, ever increasing in number & length until the final bone-jarring 70km to the base camp, which in our bus takes hours. Forget trying to watch a movie or read a book. Also the dust from these tracks all but negates the amazingly clear air in Tibet.....



…..we are indignant about the number of police checkpoints along the way, thinking it's just a manifestation of a police state but Namgyal explains there were so many serious accidents on the roads that the police time vehicles between checkpoints &, if you arrive too early you receive a speeding ticket. An absolutely foolproof system, judging by the cars that wait a kilometre or so before the next checkpoint until their allotted time is up. We have to get out & have our passports individually checked at a couple of points.....

....the hotel at Shigatse is almost beyond my verbal capability to describe. Just walking into the foyer leavest us all gasping, not for lack of air but the sheer brilliance of the décor. It is replicated in the stairwells, corridors & rooms. For this you will just HAVE to look at the photos. Because Sofi is from Aregntina, for the first time in my life I sit up & watch a World Cup match, Argentina vs … who is it now? … Germany. After Argentina scores in the first few minutes the score is finally, at 1am in Tibet, 1-0. Zzzzzz. Sofi appreciates our solidarity but concedes it was a boring game. Again chatting with the locals in tea houses is a highlight, on a par with just staring at the amazing hotel décor.....



…..as we continue deeper into the countryside in this sparsely populated & vegetated land we pass a few small mud villages, rectangular, flat roofed houses with low walled livestock enclosures attached, sometimes yak hair tents, dusty, leather-skinned Tibetans, the occasional herd of yak or sheep but largely deserted countryside with some of the most beautiful skies I've seen. There's too much dust to open the windows during the roadworks, the air-con in the bus doesn't appear to work &, when we stop to get out we never now whether we'll roast or freeze! At higher altitudes usually the latter, though the sun is shining brightly. Every stop has an altitude marker, (the Chinese for “metre” is the same character, “mi” that means “rice”). One pass is marked at 5,248m. Marieke is mobbed, as usual.....

…..when we finally arrive at the long row of tents about 4km from the Base Camp we are surprised at their size & rather lavish interior décor. We are ensconced in the Holy Land Auspiciousness Hotle (sic!). It's around 6.30 & the sun is still high in the sky &, although we're all tired after over 10 hours on the road, (so-called), & Mike opts for a bed & sleep immediately, the rest of us are keen to see Everest. We set off up the dirt track, for which you can return to the opening paragraph!. After all that effort the summit is shrouded in cloud. It could be a very disappointing waste of time if it's cloudy in the morning.....



…..we all sleep well after a bowl of noodles with a few chewy strips of yak meat. It's cold in the morning &, for once learning from experience, we all take a shuttle bus to the Base Camp, set up by the British in 1921. It's very misty but, thankfully the sun clears the skies for an unparalleled look at the world's tallest mountain. It's sobering to realise that previously the highest mountain I've ever been on, Emei Shan in Sichuan, is 3,600m. I was a bit short of breath there. Here we're already at 5,200m & the summit of Everest is almost exactly an Emei Shan on top of where we're standing! Namgyal tells us that, from here, it normally takes about 35 to 40 weeks for most climbing teams to get to the summit & back, with continual climbing, acclimatising, going down, then back to finally make it to the top. Just climbing the steps to the viewing point is hard enough right now. But what a view. We're all pretty elated to be here with a such a perfect view & have been incredibly lucky with the weather throughout this trip.....



….. I spot a clear pool on the way back with a perfect reflection of Mount Everest. It's too much. I have to run back, (OK, trudge!), about 200m where I am rewarded with some outstanding snapshots. Dave (US) completes the trip by taking his morning ablutions in the silty, grey water, drying himself off with his tee-shirt & arriving back at the tent city topless, to the astonishment of the warmly attired Chinese tourists. Mike is a little annoyed, saying later it made us 45 minutes late leaving. Dave & I grab a couple of thick pancakes, get in the bus & it's all over, almost.....



…..Rongbuk monastery, at 5,000m the world's highest, also has a stunning view of the mountain. The building itself is in dire need of repair & is a shadow of its former self but the sky & the view of the Himalayas make it a numinous experience.....



…..on the way back we take a different route, passing the Moun Nyechen Kangsar glacier, much depleted in recent years, & the Tibetan Buddhist holy lake, Yamdrok. We tell stories & jokes on the bus, Namgyal regales us with stories of previous trips & customers good & bad. On one occasion how he went back up a high pass to check on an Indian tourist in his 70's on the trip of a lifetime, found him sitting, leaning against a rock & how he carried the dead tour member back over his shoulder.....



.....be careful what you wish for. Mike is lamenting the absence of disasters to write about as our tiring but smooth & conflict-free trip is not good material for a story. He & I are flying back to Shanghai while the others go their separate ways. There's a problem at Lhasa airport. He can't get his ticket cleared. I have to board the plane leaving him fuming & frantically calling his friend Zhu Ping, who organised the ticket. I arrive in Shanghai at 1.30pm. I discover later he gets in at between 10 & 11pm. I won't even mention the flood in his room caused by incompetent plumbers on his return from Hainan a week or so later. That's a story for another time.....

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Photos

Sofi on the Sleeper Train, Tibet
The special, high-altitude train from Xining to Lhasa

Our Group at the Potala Palace, Lhasa, Tibet
I'm behind the camera, as usual

Hotel, Shigatse, Tibet
Experienced painter & decorator required...

Hotel, Shigatse, Tibet
Beautifully done

5,248m, The road from Shigatse to Everest, Tibet
Getting high...

Comments

[Paul R]

Excellent report Mr Lambert
I worked in Lhasa for 6 or so weeks many many moons ago, and never go used to the altitude, or the yak butter tea. Cheers P