Nepal

Excerpt from my travel journal, September 6, 2006:

My first experience in Nepal was driving down to the border on the Friendship Highway from Tibet. Although I knew better, I held the image that Nepal was entirely mountainous like Tibet. I was completely surprised by the dramatic change in scenery and climate as we dropped off the Tibetan plateau and down towards Nepal's northern border. Immediately reminded that this is a tropical country, I sat awestruck in the back of our Land Cruiser as rough brown hills devoid of any shrubbery for the grazing goats and yaks quietly transformed into a thick and lush jungle with steep cliffs and powerful cascading waterfalls that washed the Tibetan dust off our windows. I though out loud that this is how I expected much of South America to look, but not what I thought to be a strictly Himalayan country.

By the time we had reached the border, monsoon rains pelted the windshield with heavy, unrelenting drops. Passing through customs and obtaining a visa completed, we piled into a tiny truck to drive a short distance to reach the cab we agreed to hire. The steep road downhill was full of mud and we drove quickly over the large bumps and holes with our car often bouncing high off the road and throwing us in the back around like the untethered passengers we were as if we were traveling over a flood of bowling balls. I very much enjoyed this adventurous drive, stuck in the back seat next to and as often on top of my Spanish friends. That is, however, until we got into our propper cab for the 4 hour drive south to Kathmandu and I found out that the bone-shattering bumps we endured work just as well at shattering LCD screens on digital cameras...

Driving into Kathmandu after dark on Saturday is madness. When empty, I imagine the main highwas into town would appear to have 6 lanes, 3 in each direction. However, as we drove in, I discovered bicycles, scooters, motorbikes, taxis, SUV's and buses shared the road and the presence of lanes, indeed even coherent general directions of traffic, vanished into pure exhaust-filled chaos. I'm glad I wasn't driving.

We got dropped off at an ATM to withdraw money with which to pay our driver, and then awkwardly ran through the re-energized monsoon for a few minutes to our hotel. Arriving soaked to the bone, I was led up 5 flights of stairs and offered a single room with shared bathroom for 150 rupees (2 $US). Exhausted and drenched, I layed out all my damp belongings and lay myself on the 1 inch-thick foam mattress relieved to be finished with this leg of the journey, but so far unimpressed with the capitol city.

[My impression did improve in the daylight]

The Moment

Excerpt from my travel journal, September 4, 2006

Waking up at 5200 meters will inflict a range of maladies on an unacclimated individual. Headache, sore throat, runny nose, sore muscles, nausea, foggy head and overall grumpiness I found are common. I have faith in western medicine and am at least skeptical of most wholistic remedies. However I found relief not through pills- although Im sure they helped- but from a psychological and physiological response to a natural experience...

My least favorite part about camping in snow or in the winter is having to leave the comfortable confines of my tent and sleeping bag to relieve myself in the middle of the night. (That and Dad snores). And it was no better leaving my pile of blankets to brave the bone chilling wind to relieve the gallons of tea I drank the night before at EBC. (Staying hydrated is supposed to be a GOOD thing!) And so it was again when I awoke in the morning, pulled on my cold boots, layered on my jackets and excused myself to my groggily awakening tent mates in order to run around the back of the tent in an urgent response to nature's call.

I face south and get midstream before I look up with eyes half open in the ecstacy of release. But soon my eyes are opened wide as I continue to look upward, and up, and up. My eyes follow the ridge on the horizon and my own groggy brain takes half a second to compute what it is my eyes are already aware of. They Mother has overcome her modesty, shed her shroud of clouds, and is dancing gracefully in the midmorning sun.

My next instinct is that I must share this with my companions as I realize I am the only one outside with full view of the Goddess Mother's impressive physique. Zipping up quickly, I sprint to the door of our tent, poke my head inside long enough to violently slur some sort of announcement to the others, and keep running all the way to the top of the hill. At the top I keep over and suck a few huge breaths to stabilize myself before I can even get a picture off. And for less than a minute, I am getting a private showing of the Goddess's sensual skylit pose.

Not far behind me comes Trevor and soon we are surrounded by a hoard of visitors of different nationalities who- like us- made the long journey in hopes of setting their gaze on the tallest mountain that Mother Nature could create.

The show lasts a full thirty minutes during which time I took nearly a hundred pictures of different angles and zoom. But after I had saturated my eye with every framing imaginable, I put my camera away, and sat alone on the mountain side of the hill. I allowed my eyes to relax again, and my gaze to unfocus, and for a couple minutes I breathed deeply the air of the satisfaction only felt at the realization of a dream. It is a feeling of complete inner happiness that defines a life and I am very blessed because I had felt the same peace once before.



Writing this now it is very easy to draw parallels between reclining in the sun on that hill in Tibet, basking in the warmth of the Goddess Mother's image and reclining in a chair on the sun drenched balcony of my apartment in Siena, sipping an espresso and staring out over the beauty of the rolling Tuscan countryside only a year and a half prior. Both are unforgetable moments occupied by a self-reflection revealing utter contentment with the present and symbolize the successful completion of a life goal. More than never forgetting these moments, I commit the rest of my life, as should other's there's, to the pursuit and realization of these fleeting glimpses oif a perfect world, whatever they may be.

EBC Day 2: Meeting the Mother

Excerpt from my travel journal, September 3 2006:

Late to bed, early to rise. The altitude and dry air limits me to only a few hours of weak sleep. With a sore throat and slight headache, I join the others for a quick breakfast and we hit the road, the Mother awaits.

Tibetans call the peak Qomolangma which roughly translates as "Goddess Mother of te Universe." The goddess that dwells at the mountain is one of five famous Tibetan dieties which predate Buddhism. And we were in a rush to make her acquaintance.

But our plans were quickling put on hold when Friday realized he had forgotten one of the necessary permits. Leaving us at the checkpoint in a small village [Andre the German would say "willage"], he backtracked the 10k to Shegar to fix the problem. We were immediately aware of our good fortune to be left where we were. Allowed to wander through the rural village, we take in a uniquely Tibetan lifestyle.

Hundreds of goats were corralled in pens built of mortar-less rock walls four feel high. Donkeys were tied to posts on a short leash while many dogs were free to roam the grounds. While the villagers were hard at work, they were polite enough to greet our alien faces with a smile and the Tibetan greeting "Tashi delek!" A river bed cut deeply into the terrain downhill of the village, and looking across it a half mile away I could see what appeared to be an old ruined castle.

The hour we were set free on the village was remarkably fulfilling. Far from the Chinese influence which belies Lhasa's historical and religious significance and suffocates real Tibetan culture, this town functioned independently and from what I could see was nearly fully self-sustaining.

Before long, Friday returned and we big farewell to the anthropological interests of the village and focused on the geological ones at hand.

Up about two dozen switchbacks and over another pass we arrived at the end of our journey in the car. 8 km (5 miles) from EBC the road stops at a monastery. Our foursome decides unanimously to forgo the pony-drawn carts taht most visitors take the rest of the way in favor of a nice short trek. The way is slightly uphill the whole way and is made difficult only because we are just shy of 17,000 ft above sea level, and half our group arrived in Tibet only 2 days before (thats me!).

Still, we made short wor of the hike and arrive in camp to find what appears a makeshift Main street with semi-permanent tents serving as stores, hotels and a post office lining both sides. Only a few steps down the hundred yard street and we are greeted with the same sterile English greetings as we could find in a market in Lhasa. Not surprisingly, all the Tibetans in the street were there to sell us something, old stale food, a trinket, fossil, or a berth inside a tented hotel. Tourism dependency has reached the top of the world.

Since all hotels were priced exactly the same- how COMMUNAL for these Tibetans- we chose the nicest looking interior and sat down to rest while our gracious Tibetan host tirelessly refilled our tea cups with hot water heated by burning yak dung inteh central stove.

Within the next few hours a pair of Basque cilmbers stopped for a cup tea in our tent and we asked them many questions. Even though it is late in the climbing season, they will try for the summit within the next couple weeks if the weather holds out. I should remember to find out about the results of their summit attempyt.

The sun begins to set and I am just beginning to get comfortable in our tent- bundled up with all the warm layers I brought- when Andre walks in and informs us the mountain is poking her head out of the seemingly endless clouds. Those remaining in the tent jump to and I run up the short hill just on teh mountain end of main street, quickly losing my breath and nearly passing out before I reach the prayer-flag lined top.

The setting sun casts a shimmering orange glow on the summit which is exposed while the great body of the beast remains hidden behind the cloud. At first glance it is easy to miss the golden pyramid because it floats much higher in the heavens than I expected. And for the second time in two days, my spirit was lifted to heights rivaling the massive Mother and I put to rest any worries about an disappointing adventure as I imagined this moment as the summit of our short journey. But this summit proved to be false, as again I found the next day that the true summit was actually loftier than expected.

EBC Day 1

Starting early as we had a long day ahead, we drove up to Kamba-la Pass which- when clearer than our foggy day- affords views of the magnificent many-armed Yamdrok-tso lake. Our path took us back down the pass to teh Friendship highway- which links Lhasa with Kathmandu- and on to the second largest city in Tibet, Shigatse.

We stopped for a couple hours in Shigatse to visit the impressive Tashilhunpo Monastery. It was magnificent and I loved the architecture, and religious sculpture, paintings and artefacts. I am not what I would call a spiritual person, but I felt uplifted by the aura around the stupas. After taking many pictures our time was up and Trevor, Andre and I headed back to the car because we couldn't find Justin.

At first it was nice to have a little time to buy a snack and people watch. But our driver, Friday, was getting impatient because we still had hours and hours to drive. Soon I was impatient too. I contemplated going back up to look for him again, but the calmer Irishman pointed out that, as the oldest of the foursome, Justin should be responsible enough to not need a young'un like me to look after him. But as we saw in the coming days, age is not a direct indicator of maturity or responsibility.

Arriving 45 minutes late, Justin just seemed to laugh off our unhappiness of his cavalier treatment of all of our time. Although he did apologize in a joking way, I remember him saying that if we had said we would stay 2 hours instead of only 1 hour and a half, he would have only been 15 minutes late, which would have been reasonable. Totally justified.

The rest of the 6 hours of the drive was highlighted by getting stuck stuck behind a line of cars who were themselves stuck in the mud that had formed with the combination of heavy rain and dirt road over another pass. It was very dark and I got out to help and tried to push a van through the mud. But the traffic jam was not cleared until Friday appeared with a shovel and in only a minute had the van moving forward again- a significant improvement over the sideways sliding it had done for the hour we were there.

Back on our way again, we didn't reach our night's stop at Shegar until 11:30pm- over 14 hours after we left Lhasa. Dirty and exhausted, we all shared what we ordered at the hotel restaurant and headed up to the loft for a short night's sleep.

Lhasa

Excerpt from my travel journal September 3 2006:

Waking up early in Chengdu, I took a short shuttle ride, provided by the hostel, to the airport. I meet an interesting American guy and we chat up a Dutch couple while we wait to depart for Lhasa- the capitol city of the Tibetan Autonomous Region. The flight is short and we pass over some white-capped mountains.

Upon arrival in teh city, the American, Justin, and I take a bicycle rickshaw to a budget hotel and get a couple beds in a four-bed dorm room. Minutes after we sat down to rest our altitude-sick heads (Lhasa sits at 12,000 ft above sea level) our dormmates arrive.

Trevor Murphy is a 29 year old Irish primary school teacher in London, and Andre Schaffer is 31 and lives in Dresden in eastern Germany. After the normal pleasantries and questions are exchanged, we begin talking about things to do in Lhasa and Tibet. Trevor describes an eleven-day journal out to sacred Mt. Kailash where a 3-day trek around the mountain comes in the middle of 8 days at 12 hours per day of driving in a bus on a horribly bumpy road. Im glad I have no time for this trip.

Then the Irishman casually drops in that he is trying to get a fourth person to join him and two Thai girls on a four-day trip to Mt. Everest Base Camp- known throughout the tourist agencies in Lhasa as EBC.

I had done smoe research, but frankly was a little unprepared for what to do in Tibet because of the length and size of my trip. But when he said "Everest Base Camp," my interest immediately peaked. I've read books and articles on the mountain, seen movies and even talks about people who've climbed the epic peak. But I never thought, even though I was going to be in the area, I'd ever get a chance to go to base camp and see the mountain itself.

[The way to travel to the numerous monasteries, lakes, cities and treks around Tibet is to hire a Land Cruiser and a driver from one of the multitude of agencies around Lhasa. Even solo travlers are able to do this by putting their information with an agency and then posting messages on boards at the common hotels in the area. Sometimes it takes a long time to find others who want to do the same trip that you want to do. For example, Trevor said he waited about 5 days before getting together some Israelis for the Kailash trip. I imagine many solo or paird travelers can wait a few days between every trip, and often time is wasted staying in Lhasa. This is significant when considering that on my first day in Lhasa, I was able to book a trip to EBC for the next morning. After I returned to Lhasa, I had the fortune to find a trip to the Nepal border in the same amount of time. But thats another story...]

After talking to a couple agencies in Lhasa about hiring a car and driver, Justin and Andre voiced that they also may want to go and we could make it a 5 day trip with an extra night at EBC instead of the shorter trip the Thai girls were trying to organize. We went to lunch to decide and before our food had arrived we were all committed to the journey.

The rest of the day was spent similarly to the start of my one day in Chendgu. The four of us set out in search of an ATM and after scouring the city for hours, we finally found one that worked. We payed the agency, saw the car and met our driver, whose name is Tibetan for "Friday," and we were all set for our Everest adventure...