Yak yak yak or...

...How we learned to stop worrying and survived Everest base camp

Back in Lhasa after 6 days in the bush, although we saw very few bushes. Here's a not very brief summary :)

Day 1 Lhasa to Shigatse
Travelled from Lhasa to the Kambala pass, at 4900 meters, with its overlooking view of the Yamdrok Tso Lake several hundred meters below. The view was spectacular. In the distance you could see part of a mountain glacier reaching 7100 meters.

The view from the mountain overlooking Yamdrok tso lake. In the distance you see the glacier

While we had hoped that the commercialisation of Tibet would not have reached outside of Lhasa, it turns out that there were peddlers trying to sell you junk here as well. It also had the same kid beggars who greeted you with one hand out and the catchy phrase: Hello money!

You could also pay 5 yuan to get a photo taken with a yak (who are really cute btw). We declined the 5 yuan offer and instead spent 2 well spent yuan pissing in a poo covered hole in the ground.

We then set out for Shigatse, which lay several hours away. Before setting out on the trip we thought we'd sleep constantly in the car, but we managed to stay awake the entire time, and really got to appreciate the surroundings as we passed by them on a really well built highway. We also began to appreciate the Tibetan pop music that was blasting from our drivers stereo. Being seriously sick of rice and naan bread, we had delicious (seriously good) yak noodles for lunch in a town consisting of no more than 10 houses.

Landed in Shigatse, and much to our surprise, the hotel we stayed at was a luxury hotel (at least compared to what else was on offer here). Some poor tibetan lady carried our 15 kilos each backpacks up 4 stairs. We got winded just walking up one without anything to carry.
Spent the afternoon at Tashilumpo monestary, which was by far the nicest monestary yet. It was really genuine. By now, we've seen so many monestaries that we can really judge what is "for real" or not (well... sorta). It had the worlds largest bronze statue, in the form of... tadaaaa... a buddha.

Feel better in shigatse, since the hotel is less dusty, and there are not as many weird smells all the time, unlike Lhasa. Shigatse is, thank god, also not as commercialized as Lhasa.

Day 2 Shigatse to Gyantse to Shigatse
Travelled early in the morning to the little town of Gyantse, some 2 hours away from Shigatse to visit yet another monestary. Kind of sick of monestaries and buddhas and stupas right now. We also visited a castle on a hill overlooking the town which looked amazing, and a museum called Pala Manor which we visited all by ourselves.

Outside the Pagoda in the Gyantse monastery (uhmm we think... too many buddhas)

Having not slept anything, and feeling quite feverish, we slept the entire way back to Shigatse. Today we really, really, felt sick.

Back in Shigatse, Joakim broke the cardinal rule of always ordering what "should" be ordered... so he ordered a yak pizza in Tibet... it was, well, disgusting. Sophie though, staying true to the rule ordered tibetan food and it was really yummy.

Needing sleep, we bought tibetan high altitude tea with Rhodiola root and took it before we went to sleep. And, seems like it worked, because we slept like babies.

Day 3 Shigatse to Tingri
Feeling better today thanks to a good nights sleep and an overdose of Rhodiola, we left shigatse early morning to head for Tingri, which is close to Mt Everest. The road was even more spectacular, and the air outside grew cooler and cooler the more we ascended until we reached the highways high point of 5250 meters. After that we descended 1000 meters until reaching Tingri.

On our way to Tingri we stopped in the town Sakya and took a look at their monestary. It was very small, but it was interesting because the monks were sitting in their assembly hall reading prayers. We also got stopped 3 times by police. One before entering Sakya, one time by secret police inside the monestary and a third time in the middle of nowhere.

Stopped in the town Lhatse for lunch, with even more yak noodles and indian food. Yumms.
Ended up in Tingri (4400 meters) late in the afternoon. The air is extremely dry and it is very cold. Despite the cold, the air is so dry that when you breath out, there comes virtually no water steam from your breath.

Sophie outside our room in Tingri... thats our Toyota in the background

The room was decent enough. Better than we expected. We evem had our own little hole... yes, it was a room in the back of our room that had a hole. To shit in. However, the hotel had no electricity, which meant you have to do number 1 and number 2 with the door open, thus erasing all personal integrity once held... also, you could not flush, and instead had to use a shovel of water to "wash" the... well... "sausisses"... away. The stench was mind numbingly strong and sophie even used perfume in a tissue to minimize the stench.

Dinner was not very good.

Sophie preparing herself for her Mt Everest summit push (she actually slept like this... for real)

Btw, Joakim started whistling together with the hungarian or bulgarian hit song of a few years ago... dont know what it is called but it is extremely annoying and has a girl singing the chorus of something like "Maja - hiiii, maja - hooo, maja ha- ha"

He swore he would commit harakiri as soon as he gets a hold of a sword.

Day 4 Tingri - Everest Base Camp - Shigatse
Alarm bell rang 4:15. Got up to see a near full moon and a star field sky. It is really really cold outside, but the view of the stars and moon was amazing. Had brekkie 4:30 which consisted of pancakes and a fried egg (they like weird combos here). It was actually pretty good.

Felt better today, at least our heads were good. Our tummies on the other hand... oh, our poor little tummies... not quite as well. Joakim wasnt even in the mood for cookies, which must have been a first.

Left Tingri at 5 in the morning to go to the scenic spot overlooking Mt. Everest and to watch the sun rise over it. Before heading to the scenic spot we had to pass a border control, since the Mt Everest national park belongs to both Tibet and Nepal (or neither). Once there we are met with a very grumpy and menacing military guy who literally threw the papers at the people before us in line. He was a little bit nicer to us, fortunately.

The sunrise over mt everest was, well, nothing spectacular. However, travelling down the road from the scenic spot, coming closer and closer to mt everest, was. Reached base camp at 9:30 after a long time on a really bad road. Mt. Everest really looks amazing as it hovers over the base camp.

View of Mt Everest from Rongbuk monastery

Again, the air is very cold, so we just walked a little bit closer for some photos and then headed back to the car. Breathing at this altitude, 5200 meters, was considerably less hard than we thought. We briefly thought about bying oxygen but that would have been a complete waste of money. Although, the air is so dry that it hurts breathing through your nose and your skin becomes really dry.

Before heading back, we travelled 15 minutes from base camp to the Rongbuk monestary which is the highest monestary in the world (5200 meters). Being nothing special, it included nuns. And, apparently they stay there all year round... burr.

View from the scenic spot overlooking the himalayas, later in the afternoon when heading back. Mt Everest is to the left and Cho Oyu (which we think is the same as K1 is to the right)

Left for Tingri and pancakes for lunch. We didnt want to stay at Rongbuk for the night because it was way to cold and it seemed generally disgusting. Because we left for Mt Everest so early, we had the option of going back to shigatse and sleep there instead of in Tingri, which we gladly did.

We are really tired of the music by now. The constant tibetan pop, backstreet boys covers and bollywood songs are getting really tiresome.

In order to pass time and get our mind of the music, we stared in awe as our guide kept falling asleep over and over, regardless of how bumpy the road was. Seriously, he was bumping around like crazy, but sound asleep all the time.

Did I mention we are sick of the music?

In general, when entering this part of the trip, there were a lot more cops and militaries on the roads.

Yaks arent just yummy, they are really cute as well... yums

Upon arriving in shigatse the streets were crowded with people. Turns out they were celebrating the 15th fullmoon, with a week long festival. Apparently very important.

Day 5 Shigatse
After a delicious brekkie containing of a dry donut thingie, sweetened hot dog bread and blue boiled egg (yums!), we went to the shigatse park and spent the morning there during the Childrens day (first day of the festival). Didnt get to see any children dancing, but got to see a big tibetan rock group perform two songs (it was not very good), and a tibetan girl band mime and dance horribly. Fun nonetheless.

Not so fun, on the other hand, was being completely stared at for 2 straigh hours by absolutely everyone. One guy was staring at Sophie, non stop with his mouth open (i dont even think he blinked... he must have been so dry afterwards... or maybe he was just blind), for a good part of an hour.

Otherwise eventless day.

Day 6 Shigatse - Lhasa - Tsupa monastery - Lhasa
Left Shigatse at 8 and headed for Lhasa. Had lunch in Lhasa and travelled to our last monastery, the Tsupa monastery, (yippie!).. the Tsupa monastery. Being at an elevation of 4300 meters we got caught in the middle of a snow storm with vertically "falling" snow. We visited the room of a prominent buddhist monk and got his prayer book slammed on our heads and shoulders... apparently this means that we will learn more and our general well being will increase.

Summary
Tibet was cool, and Mt Everest and Yamdrok Tso was spectacular, the nature was beautiful, and a visit inside the potala palace was fantastic... but I dont think we are going back any time too soon. Being here made us constantly feel like we had a hangover for six straight days, a urinal infection since we had to piss constantly, and you feel like at the end of a bad cold because your nose is just covered with snot and blood. Yums! It is also a little bit sad that lhasa has become so touristy... it really ruins a lot of the experience.

Also, what surprised us was that this is not a trip you have to do when you are young. We saw bus loads of ever flowing german senior citizens travelling around Tibet. Nationality wise, the tourist are made up of mostly germans, dutch and english/american people.

Tomorrow we leave for Shanghai... and civilization once again. We are really looking forward to that.