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Published: September 19th 2010
When we last wrote we had just seen the adorable pandas in Chengdu and we decided to spend our last month in China heading West. Our first stop was Songpan, a mere 12 hour bus ride away which included seeing loads of landslides and even a punch up between our driver and another driver! In Songpan we did a 3 day horse trek that invloved camping out in the wilds....seemed like a good idea at the time! On the first day Paul managed to get the only donkey and Sarah got majorly sunburnt despite using factor 40 suncream. By the third day we were both so sore from the saddles that we were walking like John Wayne and Sarah's lips had swollen up Lesley Ash style from the sunburn! (Paul tried to get some photos but they 'accidently' got deleted)
From Sonpan we traveled onto Langmusi and then Xiahe- tiny Tibetan towns surrounded by rolling green hills. In Xiahe we were lucky enough to turn up the day before a festival and saw loads of monks put on random celebrations. We ended our journey west in Xining, a relatively large city home to a great mix of Han chinese, Tibetan
and Uighur (muslins) (yet still we were the ones stared at!) By this stage we realised that we had had finally had enough of China so we headed back to Chengdu to organise our trip to Tibet.
After days of emailing and facebooking we had a trip organised with 6 others for a 9 day tour of Tibet ending in Nepal (you can only enter Tibet on an organised tour and need permits for everything!) Just before we left China we visted Emei Shan - a massive mountain south of Chengdu - and spent a few days climbing up and down the millions of steps there, avoiding the evil monkeys that literally chase you for food! (we saw one little chinese girl that recevied a massive scratch on her arm for daring to eat an apple in front of a monkey)
Our Tibet tour started in Lhasa where we spent 5 days seeing numerous temples/monastries. Our group consisted of another English couple, 2 Irishmen, a Norweigan and a Japanese girl and they were all a pretty good crack, around our age and interested in beer etc. Unfortunately we had a bit of a plum as our tour leader
- he spoke good but ridiculously fast English, didnt know ANYTHING about the sights expect for what was written on the signposts and couldnt tell the time so was always late meeting us! Oh well what do you expect from the cheapest possible tour?!
The army were everywhere in Lhasa- snipers on the roof, soliders in full arms parading down the steets - bloody Chinese not letting the locals put even a foot out of line. We even saw cameras around a monastry that was appently the chinese police keeping an eye on the tibetan monks to stop them from protesting! Lhasa was good, but the real highlights of Tibet were once we left the city. The scenery was amazing (think endless mountains, clear skys and wicked views) We saw monastry after monastry (no suprise there but a bit boring by the end!) and joined the pilgrims on their daily walks around the temples. So after Lhasa we went to Shigatse on our way to Nepal. It was a long long day tempered by going over a high pas where it had just snowed! Cue all of us acting like kids and having a big snowball fight - great
fun!
The next day was at Everest Bas Camp at a height of approx 3million meters up, at least it felt it as the air was thin and it was soo cold! The girls were all ratty and Everest was hidden behind gray clouds. Very disappointing. The next morning (after sleeping in a Ger - a masive tent with a stove and beds inside) we tried again but with the same result - no view! Then just as we were leaving, the sun came out, the clouds disappeared and we had the perfect view! It doesnt look too high so we reckon we'll have a go at climbing it next holiday.
So eventually we got to the border expectig to be in Kathmandu by lunchtime but no. The aforementioned plum of a guide had only gone and mucked up our permits (just ours, the rest of the group were ok!) According to our permit we had to leave Tibet via Lhasa on a flight to China. Obviously not our intention. The rest of the group went on to Nepal after waiting for an hour for us in no-man land between the borders while we got taken into the
customs office with our guide. It took hours but eventually a jumped up litttle chinese officer (who looked about 18) looked us up and down and gave us the nod! At last we were into a new country! We doubt we'll ever go back to China or eat sweet and sour again.....
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Dave
non-member comment
Good Times
Keep enjoying the trip guy's, watch out for the dodgy Himalayan food ( bad memories Paul ), thanks for the info, sounds an amazing trip, Enjoy!! Spurs v Arsenal tomorrow, Carling Cup, probably a good job your away, it will be no fun being an Arsenal fan tomorrow!!