the most incredible travel day ever! Chris' account

ok. here goes but bare with this internet connection and we'll see what i can articulate at this moment in time. mike has also written his account....like the gospels, his will no doubt be very lively and mine full of odd details

 

we woke up at 6:30AM on Tuesday morning to make our way down to the Shigatse bus station where we had stopped by the day before to check on getting a bus to Tingri and onto the border of Nepal. Didn't seem like it would be a problem. The air was very chilly and even though it was passed 7 when we were walking, it could have been the emptiness of the middle of the night due to the fact that Tibet is on the same time as the rest of china but is thousands of kms away. the night/morning sky was that silver blue as the sun was thinking about rising.

 

at the bus station the man shook his head when we asked about a ticket and then the bus driver did as well. so mike and jason pulled out the serious chinese and explained that we had been to the police station the day before and he assured us we didn't need a permit if we weren't going to Everest Base Camp (that's right, we WERE that close and didn't go, but you don't want to get me started and we got incredible views as it was) and straight to Nepal but they were not having it...wouldn't say panic, because we weren't on a tight time frame but more just annoyance and confusion and the lines of communication and the complete ambiguity and uncertain situation that Tibet is in a constant of flux when it comes to foreign independent travelers. It is NOT unsafe but no one really knows what is going on, so it seems but luckily we had chinese speakers in our midst ( rock stars!) and so while Lucy and I waited in our of our favorite internet gaming haunts, they ran around trying to get the police to give us some sort of notary that we could travel by bus. 2.5 hours later, and sure the thought drifted through my mind of mike being dragged out of some heated conversation into a Tibetan holding facility ( very brief thought) and Lucy and I being on the internet in Shigatse the rest of our days but not long after that thought, they were back and told us the office hadn't even opened and so we (clinging to what the police told us the day before) hired a taxi to take us the 4 hour drive to New Tingri ( the last city before the turn off to Everest Base Camp) which was as far as he said he was allowed to take us according to China's policy but really we found out it was because his little car would have self destructed on the road we would have to traverse.

That ride was pretty uneventful but the landscape was incredible with more of the stark mountains, red earth, and sand dunes, but blue blue sky. Desolate areas for sure. He stopped the car once and disappeared behind a mound to relief himself and perhaps make some sort of dealings in a shady room in another little town...hey, whatever you have to do right? It seemed that most of the people where these turquoise studs with a bit of coral that hangs from beind the ear...as a side note, I really like them and once when mike needed to go he was directed to the toilet which was just a plot of land across from the school. Most of the drive was along a very new and flash highway that was nearly deserted with the occassional check point that our driver needed to show his ID but I will admit I always held my breath just because the farther we got, the less i wanted to get someone who made us take the very long trip back to Llasa but it was fine and friendly.

 

When we arrived at our destination, there was pretty much nothing there except a few little shops and the Snowman GuestHouse and the Chengdu Restaurant and a rope across the road with a police man. Totally felt like a deserted dusty wild west town. Because Mike is cool, he just rocked up to the policeman and told him we wanted to go to Zhangmu (the border town to Nepal) and the police smiled and said he would ask around so he left his rope post (letting several cards go by :) and we tried to convince our driver to take us the rest of the way but thats when he told us with a cute little hand motion that his car would fall apart (little did we know...) and that's when Mike came out from a convieniet store and and a late 80s white jeep cherokee with a "ski patrol" insignia on the side pulled up beside us and this was going to be our bessie, our vessle to the border. We hadn't been waiting for more than 10 minutes when we had a ride and were back on the road. We had originally arranged Mr. Driver Man (what we now fondly refer to him as) to take us to a city quite close but the cop at the rope thought he was taking us all the way to the border and handed him money to buy him his favorite soup but Mr. Driver Man told him that we didn't want to go that far but being in that car, we just wanted to all the way so we paid the money to go all the way which was a lot more because he told us the road was a bit rough, ha! We were off.

Ten minutes later we made it to THE checkpoint. The elusive one that all the foreigners in Tibet seem to be talking about and the first policeman asked us for our permit and I felt a waft of anxiety (that dang permit) but Mr. Driver Man was actually "the" man and 10 minutes later we were back on the road and as we weren't going to Base Camp, it was just a quick check. Not long after, we were passing the turn off to Base Camp and we all felt fine, despite the fact that pretty much everyone we talked to said we HAD to at least try and get in but we didn't come to go and in my very humble opinion the experience we had i would NEVER give up to go on an organized tour to Base Camp. Yes, it is true that due to the recent activities with protests and Bush meeting the Dalai Lama that Tibet had been forced into a position of defense and permits were stopped if wanting to see some monestaries, sights, and base camp so there was a buzz of confusion everywhere foreigners hung out and most people felt they had to join a tour and if you wanted to go to the base camp you really did but it was all buzz and we wanted to find out for ourselves (not trying to defy just purely wanting first hand information) so that's why we went to that monestary on our own and took public buses and tried to get a permit in Shigatse which is when we saw that there was actually no way to go to Base camp without a permit so why join a tour?  On our own we went so there weren't many foreigners doing it that way and we even went further to get some shop owner to drive us and it wouldn't have been as easy without some chinese speaking.

anywho...passing the road to Base Camp we soon came to an opening a there she was, Everest peaking out and very magestic and holy hell I never thought I would be THAT close so I felt pretty special even though she was just peaking out in the distance. Why I call Everest she? Only a woman could be that majestic...bu dum dum chi. The town of Tingri, "Home of a wicked view of Everest" was another dusty wild west town with lots of people milling around in colourful headscarves. I mean think if your hometown had that view. And as we passed through town Mr. Driver Superhero Man told us that this is where the road was going to get a bit rough and yeah, it got a bit washboardy and dusty, dusty for sure! I became addicted with looking behind us as the view of everest just got better and clearer...so cool. It was amazing to look to the right and see these arrid golden hills and to the left and see the Himalayas. There would be villages dotted in the distnance but besides the dust of the road our our Ski Patrol Jeep, that was pretty much it until...we hear a clank and we pulled over to the side of the road and stopped.

I waited for Mike to report and the steering arm had completely come off the left front wheel but that is all I will say about that and maybe Mike's account will say more. But that is very bad so we all got out of the jeep into some beautiful sunsetting golden light on the meandering river with frigid water and watch as our Driver Superhero took off the wheel and totally pulled a McGyver...a quick fix but a fix none the less. We also took this pause to notice how awesome our hair looked being dusted for the past hour and it would remain that way until we got to Nepal yesterday. I got an idea of what Mike will look like with grey hair...not too bad :)

On the road again and just a few minutes later we were pulling over into a place that said

" The Ritz, guesthouse and restuarant" our our MDSH (Mr. Driver Superhero) was asking if anyone could fix cars. We all got out and waited as some skinny leather-face man rigged up his welding machine and put on his sunglasses and started welding away at the steering arm. Again, maybe Mike will say more about this but as this was happening Lucy and I were falling in love with one of the local Dustball kids ( totally covered in dust so their eyes really stood out white) who just sorted of hung around but wasn't begging or anything. He was wearing a back pack so I thought he was waiting for a bus but he was just waiting for...anything. He had the most hopeful sort of eyes so I went to the jeep to see if I could find anything and I got my hands on one of these individually wrapped bread rolls we had called, "Europe Bread"  but when I turned around he was right behind me with eager eyes. I gave him the roll and I have never seen such a light pass through someones face and his smile was gold. real gold and my heart broke as he literally skipped away with his little roll. what a cutie! Soon our car was all welding together costing a wopping 1.50US and Europe Bread Boy was back, I gave him another bread and saw that same light but this time tied to take a picture. We waved, he smiled and waved back and the next part of the trip was only going to get more incredible...more on that later....read on for Mike and Jason's accounts.

 

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