Hozza's Horizons

My travel diaries

Saturday 4 August, 2007 - Muztag Ata Base Camp, Xinjiang, China

A quiet day spent at Base Camp acclimatising to 4500m. There is a dirt track four-wheel drive vehicles can use all the way up here, and a police car has arrived at camp. I'm inside the tent reading my book when a Chinese girl comes to the tent and starts speaking to Geoff, who is sitting outside, in Chinese. The two of them go off together. A short while after he returns I ask him what that was all about, expecting him to look sheepish.

"She wanted to take a picture of me with a policeman," he replies nonchalantly.

"Why?" I ask.

"I'm not sure."

I start laughing. "Were you not curious?"

"Well, people always seem to ask me to do things like that. They don't see many westerners around here, and I think they like to take pictures of them when they do."

"With policemen?"

"Perhaps." Geoff seems completely unsurprised by the incident. There are dozens of westerners at Base Camp, and I wonder why the Chinese girl came all the way over to our tent, hidden behind a dry stone wall, to come and get Geoff in particular. I persist with my questioning, and he reveals that he spoke to her yesterday when we arrived in camp, and that he lived in China for 15 years and speaks fluent Chinese. This makes things a little clearer, but I'm still curious about the police car. Scottish Jeff lost his camera yesterday, and I ask Geoff if this has anything to do with it.

"Oh, yes, they found Jeff's camera, and caught the thief," he replies. "I gather he's going to be shot."

This is hard work, but I persevere.

"And what really happened?" I say.

Swiss-Nepalese tensions

"Apparently there's a Swiss group here who have accused one of their Nepalese Sherpas of stealing a rope. A fight broke out and the police were called in."

For no particular reason, I decide to accept this story as true. "A fight between the Nepalese and the Swiss?" I think of our friend Luigi. "Do you think a Swiss-Nepalese rift is going to open up at base camp? Will our Sherpas end up refusing to carry Luigi's kit up the mountain?"

This seems to me a foolish thing for the Swiss team to have done. If they're still on their way up the mountain then it's going to make their job a whole lot harder if they've annoyed their Sherpas. Without porters to carry the bulk of their equipment to the higher camps, they could find themselves carrying 30 kilos each instead of 14 or 15. In these circumstances, even with perfect weather, only the strongest team members are likely to make it.

At lunchtime in the mess tent, I share a joke with Luigi about this new development. "Whatever the rights and wrongs of the situation," I say to him, "we Brits must maintain our neutrality." I think about adding that we'd be happy to look after his gold for him while the conflict persists, but decide this would be taking the joke a little too far and think better of it.

Base camp kit inspection

After lunch we have a kit inspection. David demonstrates the walkie-talkies we'll be using to communicate between camps higher up the mountain. They seem quite straightforward.

"Do we need to give ourselves radio code names, like 'Binder', 'Wanderer' and 'Jungle'?" I ask.

"Don't be daft," David replies.

I try out a pair of snow shoes I've borrowed for conditions higher up the mountain. Although I've walked in flippers before, snow shoes are new to me and feel a bit clumsy, but I'm assured they will come into their own in a few days' time. Unfortunately there's no way I can practice using them until I actually need them. David checks us all individually to confirm we have suitable kit for the expedition. His main consideration seems to be that we have adequate gloves. Inadequate gloves have been a problem for me in the past, so this time I have six pairs of increasing thickness, including a huge pair of down mitts that match my snow shoes in unwieldiness, so I'm pronounced fit and ready.

Later in the afternoon I decide to scramble up the moraine mound behind our tents for a panoramic photo of base camp. I try to get as far as a small ridge about halfway up, but the higher I go, the more and more loose the rocks become and the steeper the slope gets, until I'm using my hands and knees and the rocks are sliding down beneath me with every movement. Eventually I realise what I'm doing is a bit silly, so I take my photograph and head back down again. It seems an awful lot steeper when I'm facing outwards, however, and I end up sliding most of the way down on my backside, dislodging loose rocks as I go. I hope that no one down below is watching me as I know I must look a bit absurd. When I get to the bottom, Steve is standing there shaking his head with a big grin on his face.

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

Message board >>

• Bookmark site with del.icio.us
• Post site to Facebook