My travel diaries
Tuesday 15 May, 2007 - Zhangmu, Tibet
This morning we make our escape from the mountain in jeeps. It's snowing again, and my chapped face continues to give me discomfort. I share a vehicle with Chris and Mark in what is the start of an epic day in the back of a jeep through some fairly staggering scenery.
At the end of the valley leading to Everest Base Camp, our driver takes a left into a side valley on what is presumably a "shortcut" back onto the Friendship Highway. To begin with we can't see much as the clouds darken and the snow thickens, but it's clear we're driving along little more than a dirt track through the desert. Every so often a few houses or a flock of sheep hoves into view as the jeep judders onward. As the weather clears, the view becomes clearer. One moment we're driving through the dry gravel bed of a river, then the track drops steeply and the hills around us become visible. They are brown and rounded.
Soon the view widens even more, the sky clears and the wide desert view of the Tibetan plateau spreads out before us, with blue skies and snow-capped mountains on the far horizon. Beside me in the back passenger seat, however, Mark is more concerned with checking his e-mails on his Blackberry to see if Exeter City have reached the Conference playoffs. The answer is positive, but there is even more of a cheer from Mark when he reads a message from one of his friends saying he's bought him a ticket to the playoff final against Morecambe on Sunday.
"Morecambe have a football team as well as a comedian named after them?" I enquire.
It seems a strange juxtaposition of worlds to me. Here we are driving through some of the most sweepingly awe-inspiring scenery on earth, while Mark is contemplating a soggy afternoon at Wembley watching a team of amateur footballers prancing around on the turf just four days later. He continues to talk about his weekend as though Chris and I really care, which of course, we don't. It is Exeter City versus Morecambe, after all.
We meet up with the others again at Tingri, at the far end of a wide plateau back on the Friendship Highway, where we stop for lunch. It's a place the 1921 Everest reconnaissance expedition used as one of their bases, renting an old Chinese resthouse with three courtyards which had been standing derelict because the local population believed it to be haunted.
By now the sun is strong and the others are topping up their tans outside the restaurant. I'm trying to keep my face as covered as possible now, though. I'm smearing on sun cream and moisturiser as soon as I begin to feel it go dry. I retreat inside the restaurant and wait for the others to join me. The Lhasa beers go down a treat this time, and the Chinese meal is by far the best meal we've had in over a fortnight. As dish after dish is put before us, the risk is to overeat, but my cracked face can only take so much of a pummelling.
As we're leaving the restaurant some curious mating ritual seems to be taking place between our driver and one of the waitresses. He's a bit of a dude, with his waistcoat, long slicked hair and gadgetry. She's standing a metre away from his door and eating from a bowl, holding it up to her lips as she shovels food into the side of her mouth with chopsticks. I don't know whether this is considered to be a seductive way of eating in certain parts of China. In any case, our driver is much too cool to register his interest as he puts on his driving gloves, makes a call on his hands-free phone and reverses out of the compound continuing his conversation, with no acknowledgement of the waitress. She looks disappointed, but presumably he drives this way often and takes his western tourists to the same restaurant, when the next move in the drama will be made.
The road continues across a wide plain. As the sun gets hotter I put the hood of my down jacket over my face and drift into sleep. I wake up at the next windy piss stop by the side of the road. Shortly after this our driver decides to take us offroad to cut out a long loop of highway as it contours in a big arc around a sweeping hillside. His route descends steeply in a straight line, rejoining the road at a signpost after it has concluded its curve and turned back 180 degrees.
"I bet this sign says 'no shortcuts'," Mark remarks.
We look back, expecting to see a sign full of incomprehensible Chinese symbols, and start laughing when it says 'No shortcuts', in English. This is presumably why the driver ignored it. He only speaks Chinese.
Beyond here the road starts to follow a river valley. At first the valley floor is wide and strewn with villages. All the Tibetan houses follow a standard design. Each is whitewashed and stands in its own square compound with branches tied with prayer flags at each of the four corners. The houses are generally a single storey, and the flat roofs are piled with disks of yak dung drying in the sun to be used as fuel. Yaks are amazing animals. Not only are they eaten, carry heavy loads, and have warm fur that's used to make clothing, but even their turds come in handy.
Gradually the valley narrows and there are a lot of road works delaying our passage. We drive through Nyalam, a small town on a loop of river, clinging to the side of a hill. Mark tells us that he stayed here last year while he was acclimatising for his ascent of Cho Oyu, not far from here.
Beyond Nyalam, the road becomes increasingly more striking as it descends into jungle on its way to the Nepalese border. The valley narrows into a gorge, and the road winds high above the river. As we look down the gorge, with cloud forest climbing high on either side, it's hard to believe that for much of the day we've been driving through desert, so sudden and dramatic is the change in scenery. It drags on, though. Three times we're delayed by dynamite explosions from the work teams along the way, and have to wait while the road is cleared of debris. The approaching darkness doesn't seem to stop the work, however. The delays add up to about three hours in total, and we've been driving in darkness for several hours by the time we reach the border town of Zhangmu. It's after nine o'clock in the evening, and the drive isn't over when we reach the bright lights. Zhangmu is a strange town, a single street climbing up a steep hillside in a series of zigzags amid the jungle. We descend the zigzags for what seems like an age to reach our hotel right next to the border checkpost at the very bottom of the town.
After two weeks of camping and putting on the same clothes day after day, I've been looking forward to a nice hot shower and a change of clothes, but the hotel is a dive. Nobody feels like using the shower here, and it's already late, in any case. We've had very little rest since our exhausting foray to the North Col two days ago, and an early night would seem to be a sensible idea. But we're not that sensible. We go to a restaurant across the road for a very late dinner, and then move on to a bar next door to our hotel, where the Lhasa beers continue to be drained. To our dismay, this bar doesn't close, and some of us remain in there a very long time. Ian invites two Australian girls over, and Mic ends up walking them back to their hotel. As he's sharing a room with us, Mark and I give him the room key, but when we return at 5am, we're unable to wake him. This leaves us in something of a dilemma. We're supposed to be up again at 7am and have nowhere else to sleep. There is no one at reception to help us out. Mark disappears for a moment and I consider forcing the flimsy door open, so exhausted am I, but Mark returns with a key which he has found in the lock of a random door elsewhere in one of the rambling corridors of this seedy hotel. Remarkably, it opens our door and we barge our way gratefully inside.
But Mic isn't there: only his bags and empty camp bed. We don't care at this moment in time. We collapse into the two remaining beds and sleep probably two of the soundest hours of sleep we've ever had.
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