My travel diaries
Thursday 2 August, 2007 - Subash, Xinjiang, China
At breakfast this morning Geoff tells me one of his many 'across Central Asia on a bicycle' stories, of which he appears to have an inexhaustible supply. In this one he's crossing a remote part of China with an English friend. The friend goes on ahead thinking his Chinese is good enough to be able to book a room, but when Geoff arrives, the hotel staff are quite irate.
"What is wrong with your friend?" they say. "He's been locked away in his room for three hours!"
Concerned, Geoff rushes to his friend's room to find out whether he's OK, only to find him relaxing calmly and boasting that he's managed to obtain a really good room for two nights at only $4 per night. He returns to reception to find out what the problem is.
"But your friend only booked the room for two hours," the receptionist explains. "If he's finished and the lady has now left the room, please can he kindly return the key."
Fortunately Geoff is fluent in Chinese, and is able to explain to the hotel staff that his friend did not hire a prostitute, and believed he was booking the room for two nights, not two hours.
Tashkurgan
We leave the Pamir Hotel at 8 o'clock, and stop in central Tashkurgan for additional base camp supplies, which I'm surprised to discover consists mainly of crates of lager. During my many previous expeditions to high altitude I've refrained from drinking alcohol, believing that it inhibits acclimatisation. It's fairly well understood that dehydration is one of the major causes of altitude illness. Alcohol, being a diuretic, makes you pee more easily and increases the risk of dehydration. This is the advice any high altitude expedition leader will give you. Until now, that is. David has a different theory.
"There are two schools of thought on alcohol and high altitude," he explains. "Some people prefer not to drink at all, while others don't mind having the odd beer, as long as they drink more water to counter the effects of dehydration. In my experience, there doesn't seem to be any evidence that non-beer drinkers acclimatise more quickly than beer drinkers. The only difference is the beer drinkers seem to have more fun."
It's a theory I've not heard before, but it's one I like.
Tashkurgan has the feel of a Wild West town, but with modern buildings. Wide boulevards are lined with trees, and the country around us feels big and open. There is an eclectic range of goods on offer in the supermarket. Among the food, pots, pans, umbrellas and flip-flops, I struggle to find any pens.
Lake Karakul
After half an hour of shopping we drive away again. The road climbs gradually through rolling desert hills to a high point at 4300m. Here the landscape opens out again, and we find ourselves staring down at a broad plain a few hundred metres below us, which the road winds down to. We pass a line of yurts by the side of the road and continue to Lake Karakul ( Black Lake , in the local Kirghiz language), where we're supposed to be able to get great views of Muztag Ata and Kongur from across the lake, but all we can see are a couple of patches of white snow disappearing into the clouds.
"Kongur's actually a couple of hundred metres higher than Muztag Ata," says David, "but it's a more technical ascent, first climbed by Chris Bonington's team in 1981."
"Did they dance up to the summit in a line, each holding the waist of the person in front?" I ask.
David looks at me as though I'm insane.
Although Karakul is described by many as one of the most beautiful settings in Central Asia, it's rather lost on us today as we can't see anything. We get out of the bus for a bit of a walk around, but when it starts sleeting we decide to drive away.
Subash
We return to the yurts we passed by earlier, a little community called Subash which marks the start of the short trek in to Muztag Ata base camp. It's where we will be spending tonight, and in the present cold and drizzle it doesn't seem very inviting. A yurt, also known as a ger, is a circular white tented structure used as a dwelling by nomadic communities across the Central Asian steppes. The climate can be severe in this part of the world, with hot summers and cold winters, so the yurt, being easily transportable, is an ideal home for peasant herders who can move from place to place as the seasons change. It's clear that the Chinese government hasn't entirely understood the point of them, however, for although they've provided villagers here with a brand new spanking line of them, they're made out of concrete, which doesn't make them quite so easy to take down and put back up again.
The broken mountain
We pile into one of them for tea and a bit of shelter from the miserable weather. While we are there our three Sherpa high altitude porters arrive, having flown from Kathmandu to Kashgar via Chengdu and Urumchi. We are introduced to Galjen, who seems to be their sirdar (or sherpa leader), Kaji and Leela, and we are suitably impressed and delighted to learn that all three of them have stood on the summit of Everest this year. By 3 o'clock the weather has improved greatly, and Muztag Ata is beginning to emerge from cloud from its position overlooking the village. It's a gently dome-shaped mountain with a broken architecture. A huge five hundred metre deep canyon cuts straight down the middle, dividing the mountain into two. Although the summit is still partially obscured, we can see enough of the mountain for David to be able to point out the route to us, along one edge of the canyon, up smooth snow slopes cut apart by giant crevasses we can see clearly from several miles away.
We set off to walk up a nearby hill the other side of the road, but before we've gone far a Chinese man in uniform chases after us on a motorbike. He tells us the hill we've chosen is too close to the Tadjikistan border, and points us in the direction of another one. It doesn't seem so far away, but the vast open landscape makes it look closer than it is. It takes us about an hour to walk over to it, and when we reach the top the view isn't very different. It's always nice to be higher up and looking down, however, and the wide plain below us has a bluish grey tinge to it which gives it the appearance of a sea. The hot sun beating down on the desert plain has caused Jeff to put a red and white checked tea towel on his head, which makes him look a bit silly. Kongur is a little more visible now, a very different mountain to Muztag Ata. In fact, it's more like a line of 4 or 5 mountains joined along a single jagged ridge.
We return to the yurts at about 5 o'clock. I find a quiet spot in a green meadow a little way from the village, where I lean my rucksack up against a tuft of grass and sit back and wait for the clouds to lift from the summit. I'm there for an hour and a half, and they never do lift entirely, but I'm so completely relaxed that I don't mind in the slightest; the time has passed so quickly.
Yurt etiquette
After dinner, our yurt is cleared and bedding put down for the night. I get into trouble with the formidable lady owner because I try to find my own quiet spot on the floor when she wants things done her way. Every time I put something down on the floor, she moves it. When I stand on my roll mat she tries to pull it away from under my feet. Everyone is laughing, and I decide it's easier to let her do her stuff then rearrange it after she's gone. Her husband has piled all our bags up against the wall despite my protestations. My kit bag, containing my sleeping bag, is right at the bottom of the pile, so I have to unpile it all after he has gone, too. I've now acquired a reputation as a bit of a troublemaker, a little unfairly in my view. The others, including army officers Toby and Lindsay, have meekly bedded down where she told them to, though I suppose they're used to obeying orders.
We are seven to a yurt. I'm sharing with Luigi, Geoff, Juliet, Orna, Lindsay and Toby, while Jeff and Steve have moved to an adjacent one with David, Abdullah and the three Sherpas. Three times that evening their sleep is broken by a drunken man banging on the door, demanding to be let in, and they conclude their yurt is usually the local brothel. I expect the drunken man was quite disappointed when they opened the door.Previous 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 Next
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