The search for the inner I

This post comes a bit earlier than originally anticipated, partly due to the fact that my impressions of Tibet are still very strong, and partly due to the strike in Kathmandu, opposing the Kings measures in Nepal, which forces us to stay in the city for a few days longer, not good to travel when demonstrations are planned, especially since there have been pretty fierce retaliations by the King's military before.


One for the engineering nerd in me... solar power: tea kettle heater!

The last 15 days i have spent on a semi-guided tour around Tibet and into Nepal, following the friendship highway.... Semi-guided mainly due to the fact that China is milking the Tibet Cow as much as it can, and only guided tours through Tibet are allowed, with many permits which are cheap for our standards, but still too expensive compared to the previous travel budget we had.....
After Wulumuqi we flew to Chengdu and organised a trip which would take us to Lhasa by plane, spending 6 days acclimatizing to the altitude change (3700 meters over sea level, or appx. 12000 feet...) then travelling onwards with guide and driver in a Toyota landcruiser to Nepal.

Roger standing in front of the potala palace....

Once arrived in Lhasa we did acclimatize for 6 days really, we spent the first four days walking around the beautiful old town (the part the Chinese did not spoil with their architecture), hang out in cafes drinking yak butter tea (which 99% of all non-tibetans despise but I somehow really like, call me an oddball), writing postcards and doing a little bit of trekking gear shopping, to be used in Nepal on our 20 day trek.... During this time not much else happened, so after the second day my hyperactive nature kicked in and I had to climb some mountains, as Manfred was not silly enough to join me i walked up two 4000+ meter mountaintops, and spent some time reading books between the prayer flags which span most tibetan mountains... really nice...

No words necessary....

After the 4th day we started by visiting the Worlds most famous monastery, the Potala Palace in Lahsa where 12 of the 14 Dalai Lamas are buried in beautiful stupas which are covered by up to 200 kg of gold per stupa, and decorated with immensley beautiful jewelry. The potala palace is gigantic, once had roomed 7000 monks before the cultural revolution, before the Dalai Lama had to flee to India. After visiting the palace, we visited 3 more great monestaries in Tibet, all with a guide that is active buddhist and that gave us a good insight into the buddhist tradition and way of living...

After the 6th day we rose early and started our 4WD trip to Kathmandu, which would last 7 days... we first passed 3 mountainpasses of which 2 were over 5000 meters (16.500 feet), and rested on a beautiful mountain lake, admiring the tibetan landscape.... After three days visiting further monasteries along the way we went onwards towards Rongbuk monastery (worlds highest monastery at 5000 meters) and the Mount Everest basecamp, just 5 miles up the road....

Scary driving manuevers got us there, not before getting stuck a few times...

Tibetan prayer flags.. always an inspiration
Unfortunately, I did get my deserved ratio of Travellers Diarreha that almost everyone gets here and there when travelling in 3rd world countries... but getting it at 5000m elevation with temperatures ranging from freezing to lets not go there.... this was no walk in the park.

Mount Everest and a Yak in the way...

Let me quickly tell you about bathrooms in

Tibet (really just citing the average out there)....
-Imagine the worst squat toilet at train stations you have EVER seen in france or italy..
-Multiply by 10
-Remove the top of the building, add freezing temperatures and high winds...
-Reduce the wall height to 60 cm (with surrounding buildings much higher so everyone can watch the foreigner suffer)
-Remove all doors
-Add smell to that equation
-Much, MUCH smell
I do have a tendency to exaggerate but not on this one, trust me...


Anyhow, no complaints here, that belongs to it as much as actually being able to SEE mount everest when you have to go Nr.2, YEEEHAAW!!

To round up that trip, we did get to the everest base camp without a cloud in-sight, it was beautiful really, very cold but amazing.... sleeping at 5200 meters above sea level does not allow you to sleep much (I think i slept most of us with no more than 3 hours that night), so we descended the next day to "only" 4200 meters, where sleep came easier....

Now i am in Kathmandu, about to leave for a 20 day trek around the Annapurna mountain range, a trek of pretty epic proportions, 200-220 miles, about 10000 meters of elevation changes, and which will take us up to 5416 meters at highest altitude.... bring it on!