So after defrosting from our night in the hotel in Shegar (unheated), we set out for Everest (about 4-5 hours off-road in the Land Cruiser). The pics in the slideshow below are all from that day and the following days back to Nepal. I think they look better in Picasa if you click on the slideshow.
The first few pics are from a mountain pass we drove up to first. On a clear day (not sure how many of those there are each year) you can see 4 of Tibet's 8,000 meter peaks (that's over 26,000 feet). On the day we were there, we could kinda, sorta see one through the clouds. So we were not optimistic as we continued on.
But then the clouds broke as we got closer. It's pretty amazing to see it for the first time. From there we continued on up to Rombuk which is the location of another monastery, a kind of tent city where we spent the night and the end of the road for tourist vehicles (altitude is a little over 17,000 feet). From Rombuk, we hiked (taking the shuttle bus did not seem right) up to Everest Base Camp. By the time we got up there, the mountain had completely clouded over (thus the pics of us standing in front of a white screen).
Base Camp was also where I had my run-in with the Chinese Army. All the way up to Everest, you go though a number of checkpoints where your guide (and you have to have one) is required to show your permits at passports. There is a final checkpoint at the entrance to base camp. Well on the way back down, they check your camera to see if you took any "inappropriate" pics. I had taken a pic back down the valley and happened to catch the checkpoint tent and the Chinese flag. Apparently that was verboten as he made me delete it. I told our guide "we're in China right?" They check stuff pretty close when you leave Tibet as well, though we did not have any problems there.
In any event, we headed back down to our tent/hotel (the Mont-Blanc in the pics) and basically hung out. It was not that cold up there, but the wind was howling down the valley. In our tent was another couple from Michigan who we had seen multiple times over the prior days, so we chatted with them until the mountain cleared back up and were able to get some more good pics.
For sleeping that night, they provide you a bunch of comforters that you can sleep on and under on the benches. It was comfortable and warm enough, but the blankets were so heavy it was hard to move. It was us, the couple from Michigan, the hostess lady and a few Tibetan guides. The Tibetan guides rolled in pretty late that night as there was quite a party going on next door. We could barely move due to the altitude and cold and they were partying like they were at the beach or something.
The next morning, we headed off for the border with Nepal. I got smacked with a bit of altitude sickness overnight (headache and slight nausea), so I was happy to head down. Just like the drive up, the drive down was stunning - grasslands and moonlike areas, lots of contrasts. It was also the craziest off-roading I've ever done - lots of getting tossed back and forth, literally crawling over rocks. There's a reason they use the Land Cruisers over there.
Then we spent a lovely day and a half on the border with Nepal. We elected to skip spending the night in New Tingri (it seemed hellish, even by western Tibetan standards), so we had some extra time on the border. The border is really beautiful - a really deep, very green and lush canyon between the two countries... very different than the rest of Tibet.
The border is also where we found out about the general strike and chaos in Nepal and Kathmandu, specifically. Without getting into too much detail, a group of former Maoist rebels that are now a political group were enforcing a general strike to close all stores and keep all cars off of the streets.
Most of the drive from the border to the city was fine, but when we got close to Kathmandu we had to go through a series of checkpoints manned by the Maoists with sticks and cricket bats. Fortunately, they had no beef with Americans or tourists and they know how valuable tourists are to Nepal, so the let us pass. But when we got into Kathmandu, we went through one checkpoint with several hundred people crowding around the car to confirm we were tourists. And that was probably the oddest part - there were no cars on the street in a city that is normally gridlocked with people honking their horns. But there were thousands of people just walking around so that our car had to part them to get down the road. Very eery.
But we made it to our hotel (the very nice Hotel Shanker if you find yourself in Kathmandu) which is set back from a main street and surrounded by a very high wall. Having nothing else to do (we were advised not to leave the hotel) and having already rearranged our flights to leave a day early, we went to the pool to have a drink. While sitting outside, there was a massive protest (several thousand people).
It seemed a very American way to endure the political turmoil taking place outside our walled hotel - sitting by the pool having a drink.
