The curse of Tibet

Yes, another police check please

What a fortnight. Tough and challenging yet so rewarding. Whatever could have gone wrong in Tibet did go wrong but we persevered and I now found myself in Kathmandu with the hardest part of the trip behind us. This update contains a lot of pictures, I just couldn't bring myself to not include them all. Our fortnight started leaving the city of Golmud, the beginning of the most scenic and most challenging section to build of the railway that goes up to Lhasa. Just a few hours after leaving we drove into a blizzard and came to a halt at a bridge where a truck has lost control and found itself precariously hanging over the edge. Another truck had tried to drive around on a dirt road and got itself bogged leaving no way around. About 3-4 hours later a digger and some determined truckers got the bogged truck out and we made our way through.

Our police escort for this section of the trip

The truck that was blocking the road

and the other truck that got bogged trying to go around

Both bogged trucks + our truck + the Lhasa train in the background

Truckers and the digger pulling at the same time 

Finally getting through

This part of the trip was by far the hardest and most demanding. The hold-up with the truck above left us running late and along with the slow roads a long way from Lhasa. Will our driver did an epic shift and drove us until 2am to catch up on lost time. The camps that we did along here were bordering on 0° overnight and we were constantly at an average altitude of 4000m, camping consecutively at 4700m and 4800m. Police checks were every 100km or so and they enforced a 50km p/h speed limit between checkpoints making the going all the more slow. We tackled the highest pass and the highest place I've ever been when we crossed the Tanggula pass at 5231m. A lot of people were beginning to get sick including myself and spirits were fairly low.

One of the many prayer flags erected atop the high pass's

The scenery was stunning and worth the hard work

James and Mel

Tanggula pass

Part of the Qinghai-Tibet railway

We eventually reached Lhasa cold and weary but soon after a hot shower and a good sleep we were all in a good mood again. This did not last long however when we found out that the road to Everest base camp was closed as it was being re-surfaced. It was to be the highlight of our time in Tibet and so we started looking at alternatives. In the meantime we had the chance to visit some monastery's in the capital. We visited Jokhang temple in the morning which was very busy with pilgrims paying their respect and some of the group went to the Potala Palace, the former residence of the Dalai Lama which dominates the skyline.

Pilgrims praying outside Jokhang Temple

Jokhang Temple

Potala Palace

All clean and refreshed we left Lhasa for our final string of bush camps. The road up to the Kamba-la pass was fantastic and the views on both sides were stunning as you can see below. A little further along the road we got some happy snaps of the Nojin Kangtsang glacier which is slowly retreating back up the mountain due to global warming.

One side of the Kamba-la pass

Yamdrok-tso Lake

and the view from the top

Nojin Kangtsang glacier

An old fort atop the hill in Gyangze

We made it to Tingri where some of the group had organised for a private 4wd to take them up to Everest base camp on an secondary road that we could not get the truck up. The price was bordering on extortionate however so I decided not to join and would do a scenic flight out of Kathmandu instead. Once they returned we made the descent down from the Tibetan plateau that we had been freezing ourselves on for the last week, down towards Nepal. The drive from a small town called Nyalam where we had lunch to the border town of Kodari is quite simply the most stunning drive I have ever been on. The pictures here do not do it justice. We squeezed our truck through the queue of trucks that lined the skinny road and got to the border 30 minutes after they had closed. A night sleeping on the truck was enforced but a nearby bar made it bearable. We crossed the border the next morning and made our way to Borderlands, a camp site with showers and huts in the hills before Kathmandu. At a lower altitude and with warmer humid weather spirits were back up and some of us partook in bungee jumping and canyon swinging, even the oldies.

The descent from the Tibetan plateau

Zhangmuzhen, the Chinese border town

The friendship bridge, joining Tibet and Nepal
 

 

A bolder that slid down into our campsite before we got there and crushed a hut

My 3rd bungee for the trip



12km down the road was the obstacle that had been causing us many sleepless nights. Before I even joined the trip a massive landslide occurred in a village along the only road between Tibet and Nepal. The entire village was buried, the river below blocked and up to 400 people were killed. We had been getting constant updates along the way as to when and if the road would be reopened. Due to a dispute between the government and a landowner the government had not repaired it or built a new road. The truckers who all depend on the road for business between Nepal and China had actually pooled their money, got in some diggers and graders and built a new road through the landslide which was finished less than a week before we arrived. Being at the end of the wet season the road was a mud bath, tight hairpin bends and very steep inclines. We were warned that our 12m truck would not make it, that only 9m trucks had been successful so far. Determined to get the truck through our driver Will decided to chance it and we made our way down.

We arrived in the afternoon only to find out that today the traffic was driving south to north, towards Tibet. Tomorrow traffic would be allowed to go in our direction. After a bit of negotiation we jumped the queue to the front and actually managed to get up the first section and around a tight bend only to be blocked by a bus and the first few drops of rain for the evening. We spent the night sleeping on the truck again tucked away on the edge of a cliff. During the night it poured and turned what was a reasonably dry mud road into a hellhole. We started up at 5:30 and made it 100m until we got to the hardest section of the road, an uphill tight hairpin bend that had been churned up overnight by trucks coming down in the rain. It took 2-3 hours of digging, sand matting and pushing and it was finally the use of a tractor that made all the difference, pulling us up a section that the truck just could not get up by herself. We then joined another queue of trucks waiting for some roadwork to be finished before we got off the mountain around lunch time but with the huge line of trucks it wasn't until well into the afternoon that we cleared the mess and drove south to Kathmandu.

The tractor pulling us up the hardest part



Getting very close to the edge

A view of where the village used to stand

Mud, mud, mud

4 nights in Kathmandu has been a welcome relief. Most of the camping for the trip is behind us with the rest to be mostly in hotels, hostels and guesthouses. The trip end point has also been changed now due to all of our delays and it has been agreed we will finish in Bali instead of Sydney on the 21st of December. My body must have realised this is the case and has crashed with fever, leaving me bedridden for the past 2 days. Fortunately I managed to hop on an Everest scenic flight before then, seeing the mighty Sagarmāthā rising above the clouds. It was a short flight but I'm very happy I got to see it in the end

The drive into Kathmandu

The roof of the world

Mt Everest in all its glory

 

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