Day 315 - Our 4x4 adventure begins

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Today we met with Pasang, Poo Poo (true) and the 4x4 - our guide, driver and transport until we reach Nepal in 3 weeks time. Independent travel in Tibet is not allowed, and since we cannot think of many things worse than joining some of the tour groups we have crossed paths with, we have decided to splash out and do this trip properly by hiring a Landcruiser and these 2 Tibetans. To start things off we have a 180km drive today broken up with 2 monasteries and 2 high passes.

The first monastery is probably not the best of starts, but we guess it can only get better from now on, as it is being heavily refurbished but all at the same time, so it looks like a bomb has hit the place, pathways are not complete and huge stones are in the way, you cannot visit a number of the rooms and temples as they are having work done on them. It was however a good start to what we know will be a fascinating insight into Buddhism. Making our merry way, Gemma is not so merry and we have to stop a number of times for her to get out of the car in a hurry. This does not bode well when we think it could be Altitude Sickness and the rest of the journey after today is only making our way higher and higher. Stopping for lunch we have to decide whether to carry on or stay at this point for a while for Gemma to acclimatise as we are at the lowest we will be for 15 days and it would not be easy, if Gemma’s condition worsened, to come down again. After a long walk round, some discussion and a flip of the coin we decide to carry on and then see what happens.

At 4,210m (14,000ft), the highest of today’s passes, Gemma is thankfully feeling a lot better. Maybe it was not altitude sickness, which is a great thing. Not much of a view from here though, unfortunately, due to the constant rain and snow.

Dequin, the hillside town we stop at for the night, is nothing really to shout about, although it did have a Chinese medicine shop that supplied Gemma with a dozen vials of a mysterious potion. The guesthouse was okay but there wasn’t much to do so we went out looking for food, showed the waitress some handwritten notes that are supposed to ask for a bowl of fried chicken with rice, but give up when she has no idea what we’re on about. So we return home with some Pot Noodle-like things and a realisation that these are probably going to be a substantial part of our diet for the remainder of our time in China.

One of the day’s highlights came at 10pm with the nightly showing of English language news on CCTV Channel 9 that we’d heard about. If we wanted international news, we’d come to the wrong place, but for a balanced summary of the latest goings on in China it’s hard to beat. Well, sort of. It’s really, really funny listening to the stories from the state-run broadcaster which are all of good news, and even the stories that aren’t good news like pollution focus on the resounding success of the government’s measures whilst blaming everything bad on criminals and corruption. They have a piece on mining accidents in China where they don’t mention how many accidents there have been, but instead draw attention to the fact that it has fallen by x% since some government initiative. And some babies are being taken to English lessons in Shanghai aged 6 months, if you’re interested.

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