CHINA - TIBET - EVEREST 2000

Mt. Everest
aka Qomolangma basecamp which Helen and I reached in November of 2000 half way through our China trip remains the all time highlight of our travels. Perhaps to some this is merely a freak geological formation. To me it is a living breathing creature which to date has killed over 190 climbers trying to conquer its summit. This picture is from our window at the Rhongpu guest house.

Recently, there has been an explosion of climbers causing it to become congested and ironically more dangerous as climbers must now wait for slower climbers to get out of the way. Last week there was a report of a climber who had summitted, but on his way down less than 1,000 feet from the summit, he hit a snag and was in trouble. At least 40 climbers walked past him on their way up, but none would give up their climb to rescue him.

This has made me rethink any desire to summit myself. I knew that if I tried, I would probably die. Climbing within a pack of climbers would be like a sled dog who view never changes. However, this recent event proves that I would be seeing nothing but assholes both literally and figuratively.

On our way out, we stopped by in Tingri for a cup of tea. As we chatted, an old man reached into his bag a pulled out some old fossils of sea creatures. Having shown him only enough interest to appear courteous, he disappointingly put them away. Then it hit me like a lightning bolt... these fossils took millions of years to rise from sea level to this altitude.

The Potala Palace is generally the place most people recognize when they think of Lhasa, Tibet. We ran in to many a Tibetan pilgrim eager to push us out of they way so that they could be first to crawl under a table which would somehow enrichen them. Somehow we felt that the religion of Buddhism as practiced by these pilgrims has somewhat lost its original meaning.

As of July 1, 2006 a train runs from Shanghai to Lhasa. I love train travel. When I took the Golmud to Lhasa 33 hour bus ride with Helen back in 2000, I had heard that the track building over the Himalayas was technically impossible.

The Silk Road was a journey I had wanted to take since the early 1980's. Back then the journey was by bus to Kashgar just a few miles from the Afghanistan border. I had heard from an Austrailian girl named Mandy that they had the best ice cream in Kashgar. That was a good enough reason for me to go there.

The Chinese kept insisting that we fly. We kept on insisting we take the trains. Taking a train through the Gobi where we sleded on giant dunes, meeting the Uighers and walking into the local markets was something the a tour (AMEX Tour to Kashgar $10,000 plus per person) was not going to permit.