My travel diaries
Sunday 29 April, 2007 - Shegar, Tibet
Tim is feeling a little under the weather this morning, having somehow managed to pull a muscle in his back sleeping. Having suffered this injury a couple of times before myself (though not, I'm happy to say, from sleeping) I suggest he rests up for the day and there's a good chance he will have made a full recovery by tomorrow.
The rest of us get jeeps 7km north of the Friendship Highway to the village of Shegar, where there is quite an impressive fort (Shegar Dzong) perching on a hill above it. Behind the village a steep orange rock crowned with a triangular pinnacle rises 300m. Abandoned buildings lie at regular intervals all the way up this face, and a wall climbs at a precarious angle all the way to the very top, where the remains of the fort itself stand. George Mallory's Everest reconnaissance expedition stayed here in 1921, and again in 1924, when the oxygen apparatus Sandy Irvine had modified for their summit bid was tested on the rocky slopes leading up to the fort.
Shegar is a typical mix of the old and the new that we've found commonly on our journey through Tibet. The modern Chinese buildings, most of them shops, lie along a single concrete road on the flat plain below, while older white-washed buildings climb the hillside up to a monastery about a third of the way up.
A gaggle of curious kids follow us up to the monastery, practising their English and posing for photographs, eager for us to show them their images on the LCD screens on the back of our cameras. One of them asks me my age, so I count up to 20 on my fingers. Remarkably, he believes me, though perhaps he's just being polite. I count out another 5 fingers, but this time he's not quite so polite and shakes his head vigorously. I count out 5 more, but still he shakes his head, so I continue on up to 35. Now he's looking confused. Perhaps he can't count to 35, I think to myself, wistfully.
"Older?" I ask him. "You think I'm older than 35?" I try to look angry, and it works. He nods his head, and we agree that I must be 35.
Then a boy in a green coat asks me my name. "Mark," I reply, but by the time we reach the monastery he's calling me Marie. I look hurt. "Marie: girl. Me: boy," I say, and they all start laughing at me. It's like being back at school again.
We reach the monastery and dive inside, keen to escape. A monk from somewhere in the village has seen us coming and arrives with a bunch of keys to let us in. I like this monastery, as it seems to be a little bit different from others I've seen. The entrance opens into a courtyard with a flag pole bedecked in prayer flags. A ladder at the back of the courtyard leads up to a small assembly chamber with rows of benches facing onto a table covered in lit butter lamps, tiny candles made from liquified yak butter.
The place is empty, quiet and dark, and aside from the butter lamps, tiny rooflights provide several points of eerie sunlight shining onto various features: a red triangular monk's hat, the black monastery cat sunning itself, and then Ian standing under one of the shafts of sunlight looking evil while Chris takes a photograph. A manic laugh would have completed the image. Beyond the assembly chamber, up another short ladder, is a smaller room containing dozens of yellow images of the Buddha one on top of another.
Back outside again, the kids are waiting for us and start demanding money. I'm not sure what they've done to deserve it so I walk on, but as we begin to make our way up the hillside to the ruined fort, I see the one in the dark coat bullying the one in green. I move over and step in between them, ushering the bully away. "Not Buddhist!" I shout at him, trying to echo the Buddha's message of non-violence. I'm not sure how effective this is. I try to imagine what would happen if I shouted "Not Christian!" to a group of ASBO-friendly youths back home in the UK as they trash a parked car. I guess it's rather like shouting "Not healthy!" to a fat kid as he's busy stuffing his face with a Big Mac. However, I notice the boy in the dark coat runs away down the hill, having pocketed the money which one of the others has given him, while the one in green runs up the hill, leading the way for Mark and Ian at the front.
The path zigzags up dusty slopes to a col between the pinnacle with the ruins and a gentler summit. Chris and I find ourselves on our own, with Mark, Ian and the kids vanished from view ahead of us. The path is obvious, though, and we meet up with them again at the top, where the floor of the roofless building is strewn with layer upon layer of prayer flags. Tibetan Buddhists believe the prayers inscribed on prayer flags are blown upwards by the wind into air and to the deities high above. This would make it a very noisy place up here, but to avoid offending the kids, who, after all, may be very devout, I carefully lift the prayer flags over my head and duck underneath them to avoid trampling any prayers into the earth. As we gaze out from the ruins, we can see Everest to our south, about 50 miles away, snow-capped and attracting the clouds beyond a brown landscape. To the right is its close neighbour Cho Oyu, the sixth highest mountain in the world and a more rounded summit which Mark attempted to climb last year before turning back when he became ill above 7000m. It is considered by many to be the easiest of the world's fourteen 8000m peaks to climb, and well within the capabilities of relative novices. It's a mountain I'd love to have a tilt at myself some day, though not yet.
On our way back down from the fort we pass Mic and Bunter on their way up. They've been joined by Tim, who, having sat upright against a flask of hot water for an hour, decided his back was much better, and hitched a ride into Shegar on the back of a motorbike. Some more kids are following him, and seem to like him, though I don't imagine for a minute that it's anything to do with his comical features.
We descend to the col, and then I follow the others slowly up to the second summit. We're at an altitude of around 4500m here, and to prevent the onset of altitude sickness as a result of dehydration and over-exertion, I always plod very slowly up hills when I first come to these altitudes. By the time I reach the top the others are on their way back down again. I decide to linger for a little while longer, as it's my first chance to snatch a solitary moment among this vast landscape. The village is a long way below me, flanked by brown barren mountains, with Baruntse, Everest and Cho Oyu rising high above a distant skyline. To my north, white-washed villages lie below me in a valley, with mountains stretching as far as the eye can see beyond, gentle browns, some of them topped with a light dusting of snow, but none of them like the jagged Himalayan giants to the south. The whole scene is framed by a brilliant clear blue sky, and it is silent but for the distant voices of the others in the col below me. I look across at the summit we've just climbed, a steep-sided triangle with the abandoned fort crowning its top. It's a while before I tear myself away and head back down again.
Back in the village we have an interesting lunch. Interesting in the sense of being slightly scary, that is. The dishes arrive quite slowly, so I have plenty of time to practise my chopstick technique without having to worry about the others stuffing their faces and leaving me with nothing. The first two dishes are innocuous enough; tasty, even. Then they bring a plateful of chickens' feet. Anyone who's ever eaten a chicken's foot will know that it looks exactly like a chicken's foot; there's no getting away from it. These ones even have the nails sticking out of them. I start laughing, but as I wait for someone else to make the first move I notice some of them are looking distinctly queasy. Unable to wait any longer I dive in with my chopsticks and grab the first one, tentatively biting off a toe. It's quite tasty, if a little gristly. I've no idea how you're supposed to eat a chicken's foot, so I just stick the entire claw in my mouth, bones and all, and munch away until it's all gone. No more dishes have arrived, so I have another one. Before long I notice the others are looking at me in quite a funny way. Some of them are even taking photographs, and I feel a bit like a circus freak. But the feet aren't too bad, and eventually I eat four of them, which is two whole chickensworth.
We then start pondering the next dish. What will it be? Eyeballs seem a possibility, or testicle, perhaps.
"Has anyone ever eaten an arsehole?" I ask randomly, not expecting a positive answer.
"I have," replies Mark. "I've eaten an ant's anus in Australia."
This seems unlikely, even with a pair of tweezers. I suggest to Mark that he may, in fact, have eaten the whole ant, which will of course have included its anus. But Mark is adamant.
"They were quite big ants. You pick the whole thing off a tree, but the front end is inedible, so you tear its head off and then eat its anus."
Still it sounds to me like he's eating the whole back end of the ant, but I don't press the matter. The next dish arrives and we're all relieved to discover it's ordinary slices of pork in a sauce, with nothing ball-shaped about them, thankfully. Still, it's not our best meal. Most of the dishes are fatty and salty, and together with the gristly chickens' feet, I finish it craving an apple. This is unlikely, though, as there don't seem to be many fruit trees in Tibet.
After lunch Mic suggests we buy a couple of crates of beer to have in Everest Base Camp once we've got down from the mountain. I question whether it's tempting fate a little to buy ourselves celebratory beers before we've even started the climb.
"Call them commiseratory beers then," Mic replies. "Whatever, we'll drink 'em."
He may have quite a sunny disposition, but he's definitely a true Aussie at heart.
We return to the one-horse town of New Tingri, having had a thoroughly enjoyable day, the meal aside. It's been our first real taste of the mountains we've all come to experience. Tomorrow we arrive in Base Camp.
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