Monday May 25, 2009 - Everest - Goddess of the Universe

Everyone is in a joyous mood this morning as we are going to see "Everest". We are mostly suffering a little in one way or another with the altitude. Bad headaches, the feeling of being "drunk", as Jack one of the guys on the trip said, and shortness of breath being the main inhibitors to our elation. We set off from the hotel around 8:30 am. The road to the first check point, about 40 nminutes, was paved, straight, quiet and easy to drive. Daphne has behaved well! The next 102 km were spent on a dirt switch back road slowly climbing through the Himalayas to Everest Base Camp. The scenery is totally desolate. The foot hills so far as we can see are bare, stony, and vertical-sided. The skies should be blue, but they are not! They are grey, and, in the distance you can see the mist hovering. We stopped on Youla pass (5100 meters) at the entrance to the Qo'molangma. It was snowing, a light drizzly rain-snow. There wasn't much to see as it was so misty and I felt a bitter chill of disappointment. We passed two Chinese guys on bicycles, I am assuming mountain bikes since as Sarah says: "We are on a bloody big mountain!" What a feat! The climbs are massive but there are some some declines too, all on this switch back road, literally a series of alternating "U"s joined together. After one bend we saw below us a small Tibetan community "Wolong Hamlet", with about 30 houses. It was set alongside a dry stony river bed. Nonetheless, the fields and terraces were "bright" leaf green, ad made a welcome contrast against the muddy yellow/brown of the hillsides. When we eventually passed through the community we could see the women in the fields working along with their little pony carts. The women wear a really warm long black skirt, with a pretty coloured blouse and an apron. Most have ski jackets or some other warm jacket on top of that. Some of them have wonderful silver buckles to hold everything to gether and little trinkets hang from these buckles. On their feet, they wore the regular Tibetan shoes. We stopped for lunch at Tashi Dzom. We went Chinese and had vegetable fried rice ... again! It was delicious and tons of hot green tea which really warmed us up as we were already freezing cold. The local public toilet was an interesting experience. Use your imagination....and I'll leave it at that. We settled down to the drive on the bumpy road and it started to snow, and the fog and clouds closed in around us. Next stop was the famous Rongbuk Monastery at 5100 meters or 17000 feet.This lies at the foot of the Rongbuk Glacier which we could't see. It is the highest monastery in the world. The original monastery which housed 300 monks and nuns was destroyed in the Cultural Revolution. This was a new one we were visiting, and there are now only 32 monks and nuns. The decoration is always rich in colour, interesting in design, and tells many stoires about the Buddhist faith. The monastery is only 5 minutes drive from the New Base Camp where we checked out the "hotels" - tents with fireplaces which hold about 5 people. We are trying to decide whether to stay here or at the monastery in a hostel, but in my mind there is no decision. It has to be here! The atmosphere is alive, despite the snow, cold, and fog. The hotels are built in a big square with vendors taking up a row on the inside of the "hotels". I counted 21 down one side, so lets say about 10 across the top which would make a total of 62 tents holding 5 people each. We chose to stay in the Xut Yu Zhu Feng Zang Can, Tel: 13889022089! The tent is arranged with long Tibetan couches on 3 sides with a fire in the middle burning yak dung. The fourth wall is lined with items for sale such as coffe, pepsi, beer, red bull, cigarettes, and other sundries.There is a door but most of the day its been open an covered wtih a rug. There is a tent adjoining this one to the back of it which houses a family of 3 and this is where the cooking takes place. The loos are outside in a cabin towards the river at the back of all the tents. After arriving we took short walks around and tried to keep warm and lift our spirits. Its probably in the 5 - 0 C range and fully snowing a blizzard. We had Tibetan noodles for dinner and a pot of sweet tea. It's very milky black tea made with yak milk ad sugar - its delicious and we've drunk gallons of it. The beds were made up head to head on the couches with about 4 thick covers and a woolen blanket and a pillow. We also got our silk sleep bags, and sleeping bags. I put mine on top of their covers and uder the blanket and was toasty warm all night in my Mummy bag. The night wasn't exactly peaceful; we had a group of irrate visitors who stormed in turning on the lights and held a heated discussion before leaving - we were speculating they were demanding money for something!; some one's cell phone kept going off; and the baby woke up crying a few times. I woke up one time to feel my heart thumping really hard but steady, so I tried some of the yoga tecniques for breathing and lowering your blood rate. Ray sat up most of the night as it was just more comfortable on his breathing, and in the morning we all woke up with splitting headaches. However, after drinking some water and eating the headaches started to subside and we generally felt better.