So back in Lhasa city after 9 days of traveling on the landcruiser. It was such an incredible trip, can't believe how much ground we covered! I can't remember what I wrote in the last blog so from memory, we went to the following cities on days 5 to 9: Sakya, Shagar, Rombuk and then back to Shigatse.
So the highlight was definitely getting to Mt.Everest! Seeing the peak was amazing, I must have taken at least 50 photos of the peak alone, from all different angles and vantage points. We were so exceptionally lucky that it was a clear day when we got there, apparently during this season it's common to have cloudy days so another lucky mountain viewing day for us! (Fuji being the other one).
The altitude at 5220m nearly did me in though. I developed a throbbing headache walking the 2 hours to base camp, when I made it I just collapsed at the Everest tea house, drinking copious amounts of tea. It's hard to describe how I had to keep figuratively pinching myself each time I saw the mountain, this is the highest mountain in the world...who knew I would see it?!
We stayed there for a couple of hours, the others walked the extra hour or so to the glacier, I made it halfway, thought I would pass out so walked back to base camp. From base camp we had to all walk back to the town of Rombuk where our driver was waiting for us. How lucky for me that our driver realised that something may well have been wrong when we didn't arrive at our designated time and decided to bribe the local police official (PSB) and drive through the barricade. He met us halfway and sure enough, Mark and I were both feeling sick. Our driver was the best, definitely going above and beyond the call of driver duty.
So on our drive back to Shagar to our hotel, we happened upon an accident. Our driver stopped the car and I asked the ppl milling about what was happening. The landcruiser in front of us had broken its axle, hit the gutter (not a real gutter considering we were driving on mountainous terrain) and had rolled over 3 times. One more roll and it would have gone over. The windscreen was smashed up and had bloodstains all over it. Luckily no-one was badly injured, just the driver and the female passenger was hurt. The others in the car were standing around while Tenzin, our driver, went to work on the engine. Fiona and I bandaged the driver up, I issued my miracle drug, Ibuprofen, and our driver tied the damaged axle up with some rope. It was a pretty basic rescue mission. The driver had a sprained arm, was bleeding from his other arm, and yet he still wanted to drive his landcruiser the 4 hours back to the town. It was a slow and tortuous journey for all involved since the landcruiser had no windscreen and one of the headlights had busted. Our driver tried to light the way along the dark mountain passages whenever he could, the bunged up landcruiser kept breaking down along the way. We finally got back to town about 11pm, 5 hours longer than we had anticipated. It was certainly a drama-filled day!
Back in Lhasa city now, staying here for another 4 days and then flying on to Mongolia for another jeep journey around Mongolia. It's been a pretty incredible holiday so far but anticipating we will be back in Japan a LOT earlier than we expected given that we have covered quite a bit of ground here in Lhasa.
10:46pm, Sat Aug 27, 2004. Lhasa City, Tibet.
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