Tibet

After travelling right through the heart of China I managed to organise a tour to Tibet, that was too expensive but I decided not to take the risk of sneaking in with no permit which is what I had heard that some people had done.

The Tibet trip started in Chengdu with a two day train journey to Lhasa. At the hostel in Chengdu I met one of my tour group, Flav from Switzerland who had been living in Bournemouth before starting his travels.

We were taken to the crowded train station and when it was time for the train to board we were all herded along like sheep, the Chinese habit is to push, but when several thousand are trying to do this it ends in chaos with nobody getting anywhere. After 1 ½ months I’d grown used to it and was using my large rucksack to knock people back who were trying to push past.

During the two days on the train the landscape changed dramatically, when we reached Lhasa we found a beautiful city surrounded on all sides by spectacular mountains. Although Lhasa was positioned in an incredibly beautiful setting, it was still sad to see the Chinese soldiers on the streets, the Chinese flag flying above the Dali Lama’s palace, Chinese fast food chains on every corner and all signs written in Chinese first and then Tibetan in small letters.

At the train station we met most of the rest of our group Phil, Emma and Jimmy from Oxford and Marcus from Sweden as well as our guide Memo and our crazy driver, the next day we met Al from Madrid who completed our tour group.

We spent the first few days in Lhasa adjusting to the altitude and visiting temples, the Dalai Lama’s palace and the debating monks who managed to get very animated as they battled to get their point across to their colleagues. We also visited the markets and ate some great food before heading to Everest and then on to the Nepal border.

As we headed towards Everest the terrain became more and more spectacular, I think it was Jimmy who said that it was like seeing every mountain range in the world all in one place. The roads however got worse and worse as did our driver who didn’t know how to drive to the conditions. At various times as we were coming down some of the passes it felt like he was going to send us plummeting of the edge of the cliff at every hair pin bend or that he’d destroy the 4WD in one of the huge potholes that he’d always manage to drive straight through.

As we got closer to the Himalayas the clouds descended and when we crossed the final pass we couldn’t see the mountain range through the thick cloud, we slept that night in the camp hoping that the next day the cloud would clear and we would get a good view of the mountains. When we got up the next morning though, the cloud and fog was even worse but as we walked up from our camp it began to clear.

When we arrived at base camp though Everest was still not fully visible although at various points we could see parts of the mountain as the clouds moved across the sky, eventually after several hours the cloud parted like a curtain on a stage and Everest appeared to a great cheer from everybody. Speaking to some Spanish climbers who had been waiting for six weeks to climb to the top said that it was the best view of the mountain since they had been there.

After several hours starring in awe at the highest point in the world, we then headed towards the Nepal border, our guide Memo had been trying to persuade us to cross that night, cutting our trip short by a day, but we had told her that we would not cross until the following day, this would ensure that once we crossed the border we would have enough time to reach Kathmandu in daylight.

The road to the border wound down the mountains following the river with waterfalls cascading down the cliffs and at some points across the road. Our driver had to stop in one of the waterfalls to cool down the brakes before they burst into flames, after 10 – 15 minutes of steam we were able to carry on to the border where we were dropped off and then walked across a bridge into Nepal.