A Walk in the Clouds

Upon arriving at EBC, we quickly dropped off our things at our yak tent and headed out for a hike to the actual base camp where the climbers set up their camp. It began to snow on our way up, and I was freezing despite wearing 6 layers on top (heavy weight thermal, technical shirt, sweater, puffy vest, down jacket, waterproof windbreaker), 2 layers on bottom, and 3 pairs of gloves and socks.



It's only a 4 km hike, but it usually takes about 2 hours due to the altitude. It's just so much harder to breathe, and everything feels like an incredible effort. Well, unless you're a yak, in which case you practically prance up the mountain with 100 lbs of rice strapped to your back.



Luckily, I acclimatized pretty well, and we managed to make it there in a little over an hour. We had to register (again!) at the police checkpoint, and then I was finally allowed at the top!



It started snowing during our hike, and the snow was coming down in earnest when I got to the top so I rushed to tie on my prayer flag before my fingers froze and I also caught a glimpse of the climbers' tents.





It had been a while since I last felt my fingers and toes so we hurried back to the tourist base camp. Of course, this is when the storm decided to break. Just my luck. Only a light mist remained, which gave a dreamy look to the landscape. It was just so beautifully ethereal, and it was hard to believe that it wasn't just some Hollywood backdrop.



Back at our yak hotel, we dashed off some postcards to send from the world's highest post box and discovered that the toilets were even worse than what we had encountered thus far. Some good advice: just go behind a yak. They're pretty docile so they don't mind much, and their large size provides ample coverage for privacy.

We hunkered down in our tent for the night and it wasn't too cold as long as they kept feeding yak dung to our fire. It got pretty smoky in there so it was difficult to breathe, and the air outside at the campsite was even worse. I would've put up with the smoke for the warmth of the fire, but they put it out when it came time to sleep. The wind sounded like there was a freaking hurricane outside, and I just prayed that I didn't need to go outside to pee in the middle of the night.

I had a rough time sleeping as I had pretty bad insomnia and a racing heart rate from the altitude. On the plus side, I was awake to see Everest at the buttcrack of dawn before anyone else was awake.



It was the coldest I've ever been in my life - and this is from a girl that survived three Michigan winters - and I rushed back to the tent to get some piping hot tea. Everyone else had gotten up, and we packed our things and were soon on our way to Zhang Mou, a trading city at the border of Nepal. Unfortunately, we had another four hours of off-roading, and we got stuck a bunch of times in particularly difficult terrain.





The drive was relatively boring, and the landscape was quite desolate except for the occasional nomad and his yaks.





The weather was mercurial, snowing one minute, raining another, but we managed to make it into Zhang Mou. The drop in elevation was amazing - all of a sudden, we started seeing trees and plants, and it went from being dry and arid to wet and humid. Unfortunately, this meant lots and lots of flies, and we fought a losing battle to keep them off our dinner. Disgusting.

Zhang Mou itself sucked. It's a soul-less trading town, and our room at the hostel was a horrific experiment in seeing how many different kinds of mold could grow in one room. We had put up with a lot of crappy conditions, but this was just beyond the pale, and we negotiated with our guide's agency to move across the street to the much cleaner hotel across the road. 

Thank goodness we would cross the border into Nepal the next day.

On the Road Again

The road to Everest Base Camp (EBC) definitely wasn't easy. We left Lhasa on Wednesday morning, and it wasn't until late afternoon on Saturday that we arrived at EBC. We were taking the southern route through the country, and our journey was hampered by constant stops to register at police checkpoints where they would check the permits for our guide and driver and our passports. God forbid that Tibetans be free to travel within their own country.

We drove all day and spent our nights in increasingly run-down hotel/ hostels in Gyantse, Shigatse and Shegar, and we learned quickly to stop expecting toilet paper or heaters or bathtubs/sinks that didn't leak gallons of water. The villages were usually tiny and looked abandoned. It's entirely possible that there were more stray dogs than people.



Since this is Tibet, we visited several temples along the way, such as the Palchoi Temple, famous for its Kumbum Stupa.



Off in the distance, we could also see the famous Gyantse fort.



We also checked out Tashilumpo Monastery, but my guidebook warned that some of the resident monks were stooges for the Chinese government and we should watch what we say. We resorted to speaking pig-latin and gibberish to each other to vent - that part was actually pretty fun. =)

Our last temple of the trip was Sakya Monastery, which is different in that it is painted black to symbolize power. There were more pilgrims than tourists for once, but we couldn't look around much as the monks were in a hurry to close up shop so they could eat lunch. I guess meditating makes you hungry.





The food we ate along the way took some getting used to, and some of us never did. B took to the yak and ordered yak sizzlers at every meal. Apparently, once you go yak, you never go back. I subsisted wholly on the cup o'noodles that I had stockpiled from the supermarket in Lhasa, and N ate just plain rice for every meal. The food hygiene definitely wasn't the best, and quite a few of the restaurants we went to had cats randomly roaming around in them.



Tibet isn't the best place to be beset by stomach troubles as the "bathrooms" leave a lot to be desired. It usually consisted of a few flimsy planks set over a pit, and I think the lowest point was when you looked down and could see stray dogs sniffing around the pile of poo. For reals. The better alternative is to go in the wild, and you'll probably have a better chance at privacy in the open air than in the communal bathrooms. And I learned never to go anywhere without my trusty roll of tp and hand sanitizer.

N was hit pretty hard by altitude sickness, along with pretty much everyone else we met, and we popped into a Chinese medical clinic to stock up on rhodiola extract (cures anorexia and internet addiction as well as altitude sickness, go figure) and cans of oxygen. I also picked up some ginger extract to snort since I had picked up a pretty bad cold in Lhasa that I just couldn't shake. Btw, that ginger extract was amazing at clearing up sinuses!

After battling the increasing cold, altitude, and tumultuous digestive tracts, we finally caught our first glimpse of Everest. We stopped for quick photo ops, and I also got to chase some goats in an attempt to stretch my legs and acclimate to the change in elevation.



It was another four hours and 70 km of off-roading before we actually reached EBC. Along the way, our car was requisitioned at one of the police checkpoints to deliver bags of rice to the officers at base camp. Not like we offered, but I got the feeling we also didn't have much of a choice.

With rice in tow, we finally arrived at our yak tent hotel (yup, you read that right), and our view of Everest made it all worth it.