April 30th - May 8th, 2011 - Lhasa, Tibet - Mount Everest Base Camp, Tibet
This was an incredible, once in a lifetime trip. Again, I was travelling with work colleagues/friends and we began planning this trip months in advance, what with visa regulations and requirements. One of my companions was my best friend at my school in China and the other was a colleague who worked at one of our sister schools that we'd hung out with a few times and who we got along well with. My best friend's boyfriend would also join us but he would meet us in Lhasa, while the rest of us hopped on board the train in Shanghai that would take us to Lhasa...in 47 hours and 40 minutes.
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| Map of train to Tibet |
We were prepared for the trip with lots of snacks, books, laptops, iPods and chargers to keep 'em juiced. On the train ride, we'd gradually acclimatize to the altitude as we climbed higher and higher and closer and closer to Lhasa. On the train, we'd reach a maximum elevation of 5,072m. Equipped in our soft top sleeper cabin, were oxygen tanks which released oxygen into the train gradually but you could control how much intake you would get by opening or closing the vent, like with air-conditioning in a car, I guess. While my best friend and I were adjusting well, our other mate began to experience fatigue and headaches as soon as we started to climb...not a good sign.
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| Information on monitor in train |
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| Self-explanatory |
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| This is a before shot of the bathroom - it got pretty nasty as you can imagine! Not a very friendly toilet for many, either! :P |
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| Our sleeping car and one sick lady! |
The train ride itself was pretty incredible. Within an hour or two, we'd see completely different landscape, especially on the second day as we entered Tibet. Once in Lhasa, we were greeted by our tour guide (it' pretty strictly regimented there), given a khatak - white scarf given to visitors by Tibetans to indicate their pure heart (I still carry mine in my travel backpack) - and then taken to our first hotel.
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| Tibetan landscape featuring a couple of yaks! :) |
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| Most amazing blue skies and some mountains... |
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| And then this big lake, the biggest in China, was absolutely beautiful! |
The next day involved sightseeing and shopping in Lhasa, before heading off to the Himalayas and eventually Mt. Everest Base Camp in the coming days. Lhasa was amazing, but the first thing I noticed was the awkward Chinese presence in the area...soldiers marching around in unison...it was kind of freaky at first and seemed completely unnecessary. I had wished that I had seen the city before Chinese domination, but then again that'd be pretty hard, seeing as the Chinese built the railway I had just arrived on. Aside from that, Lhasa was amazing. Potala Palace, Jokhang Temple, Barkhor Street, Drepung Monastery and Sera Monastery were all sights in or around Lhasa and all must-see experiences if you find yourself in Tibet. As I write this, I realize I should probably dedicate a whole post to how amazing Tibet is; despite the 'bad' experience I had here, it was such an amazing place and the trip was incredible. Tibet remains the place where I found the people to be the friendliest, to have the best smiles and the most amazing culture, as it still seems pretty far removed from Western Civilization. I hope that doesn't change!
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| Potala Palace |
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| One of my fave pics :) |
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| Barkhor Street...lots of people walk around the Jokhang Temple (just in the background) with these prayer wheels. |
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| Jokhang Temple |
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| Monks preparing tea at Drepung Monastery |
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| Prayer time in Drepung Monastery |
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| My new friends :) |
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| Watching these guys take part in the famous Monk debate at Sera Monastery |
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| Prayer wheels at Sera Monastery |
After our full first day in Lhasa, our travel companion/my roommate was really taking a turn for the worst; she wasn't acclimatizing well and was feeling the effects of altitude sickness. She excluded herself from the monastery visits on day two, as they involved lots of stairs, and instead visited an orphanage with blind children...I have to say, kudos to her for doing this! I guess it was also an amazing experience! But, after a day in Lhasa, she was already relying on oxygen cans to help her breathe from time to time, as she was struggling. Lhasa is at 3,650m...where we were going was 5,150m with one higher ascent than that en route. I remember her mentioning that she said she wished she could help out at the orphanage some more, I suggested once that she do that, but she insisted she'd carry on with the travel itinerary...and higher and higher in altitude.
Our next place of stay on our journey was Shigatse, a city situated at 3,840m above sea level, and it was here that my travel roomie really started to have a hard time. She was nauseous, fatigued, had diarrhea and at this point, began taking Diamox for altitude sickness. Her oxygen intake from the oxygen cans became more frequent and now she had severe pains in her right hand. Things were not looking good, yet she still wanted to try to move on more the next day as we would have been arriving at Everest Base Camp. On one hand, I can understand that you don't want to miss the opportunity to stand facing the world's highest mountain - it is pretty darn special! But, at the same time, to push your body further and further when it's trying to give you signs to stop, isn't really the smartest idea. Before the trip, I was nervous about altitude sickness never having been very high up, so we had Diamox on hand, just in case. I was going to the gym to ensure I was in good shape before the trip, though I was also told your physical state of health can have no effect on you chances of getting altitude sickness. Luckily, I was fine for the entirety of the trip, and only experienced a slight headache and racing heart overnight at Base Camp.
So, we headed off to Base Camp on the morning of May 5th with a lunch stop in a small town called Tingri, 4,300m. It was here that our mate could go no further. She couldn't breathe. She was in a bad way. One of our two guides stayed behind with her, which was risky seeing as we had several Chinese check-points left to go through (basically Chinese authorities flexing their muscles and severely inconveniencing travellers with roadside checks where we had to get off the bus with our passports and sometimes even have our bags searched!). Also, a few more people in our tour group of about 14, began to experience symptoms of altitude sickness - headache, nausea and they were using the oxygen cans - well what was left of them. I felt a bit guilty leaving my roomie behind, but there would have been nothing I could do, I spent a lot of money to be there, I wasn't sick at all, I'd probably never get the chance to go back there AND I wanted to be with my best friend, who was beginning to experience some symptoms now. She did have her boyfriend, the French mountain goat, but does this make me a bad person? I don't think so...
So, I continued on. Seeing Mount Everest and the final six hour drive through the Himalayas and all that it entailed was just incredible; there's not much I would trade for it, nor would I trade any of my travel experiences for anything. Of course, I was worried about our fallen friend but all I could do was hope she was okay.
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| Yamdrok-Tso, one of Tibet's four holy lakes |
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| Gyatso Pass, 5,248m and a lot of prayer flags :) |
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| Our first glimpse of the Himalayas and Mt. Everest...and some crazy switchback road action! |
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| Guess which one is which?! |
We slept in tents owned by Tibetans at the Base Camp and had meals inside of our tents shortly after arrival. There was a big fire stove in the middle of the tent (I guess a cross between a tent and a yurt) but at bedtime, it was put out to prevent carbon monoxide poisoning (I guessed?). It's cold at 5,150m and the solution was a yak skin blanket. I didn't sleep that night as all I could hear was my heart beating in my ear at, it seems, 100km/hr and my best friend throwing up from a combo of food poisoning at lunch and altitude sickness. The blanket was also so heavy that I felt I couldn't breathe right when it was on me but I was too cold to not have it on me! I ended up seeking refuge in the bathroom about 150m away from the tent and visited there 4 times during the night (just to be able to walk around) and even called my boyfriend for comforting advice - probably not the cheapest phone call! Before you start picturing luxurious heated bathrooms, these 'bathrooms' consisted of a wood hut with two holes cut out in the floor to squat and do your business without any privacy. The benefit of being there was that everyone else was probably too cold to leave their huts so I was the only one out there - I guess it just felt good to stand up and move around.
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| Home for the night at 5,150m |
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| Where I slept...or tried to :) |
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| I know, gross...but it was dark... |
The next day, we took a bus (because we weren't allowed to walk - we were told there were wolves, which was a lie as I'd have seen them on my bathroom trips, I'm sure :P) to the pedestrian only access point of base camp. We all went through a security hut one by one, had our bags searched, passports checked then we waited outside for the rest of the group. Once everyone was done, we were told to get on the bus. What?! We were not happy but we were told Base Camp was closed. No reason why but there were a lot of angry people. What could we do? We're foreigners in a foreign country who just got deprived of the chance to step on the beginning trek of one of the most infamous climbs in the world. We later found out, as we were stopped and completely searched en route back to Lhasa, that someone had gone into the base of the trek with their country's flag and waved it around. This was seen as very offensive and apparently reason enough to disallow anyone else from entering for the coming weeks. Great. So we left later in the day, deprived of this experience...but at least with a good story.
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| And there it is - Mt. Everest! The highest point on this earth at 8,848m..and the closest I'll ever get! |
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| View of Mt. Everest from Rongbu Monastery - the highest monastery in the world, obviously. |
Once we reached Tingri again, we stopped for a bite and picked up my sick travel roomie. She was really, really ill by now - she couldn't talk, had cushions full of oxygen that were constantly in or very close to her mouth. She was coughing now, a very congested cough, and in a lot of pain. She also had a doctor come visit her there who told her she had a 'lung infection' and gave her some kind of medicine. We helped her onto the bus where she sat motionless and colourless with an oxygen pillow and a blanket. Along the way, we stopped to have a bathroom break (just on the road - boys on the right side of the bus, girls on the left) and our friend had to go. Since she couldn't really walk, we helped her off the bus, two of us held a blanket and the guide held her hand as she tried to pop a squat next to the bus. I'm sure it was a humiliating experience for her, obviously extremely scary too, but it was something my close friend and I never thought we'd do, not having known her very well. We got her back on the bus and finally to Shigatse. It was there when she realized she needed more than just the guide to take care of her; while we were gone to dinner (she obviously had no appetite), she was taken to the Shigatse hospital for the night.
The next day, my friend and I had the bus take us to the hospital to pick up our mate before heading on back to Lhasa. She was hooked up to an oxygen machine, in a hospital bed and still looking pretty bad. At this point, she was still considering (and wanting) to take the tour bus back to Lhasa with an oxygen tank. I found this pretty irresponsible. That would make me feel somewhat liable for her health as well as the guides on the trip - not really fair! Finally, the decision was made to transport her back to Lhasa (the whole 8.5 hours) by ambulance. The bus would still be stopping at a base where the Tibetans fought off the English from invading via India and this was something I was interested in seeing, but I thought I'd make up for leaving her behind when we went to Everest and I took the ambulance back to Lhasa with her. Well, what a trip this was.
The ambulance had it's full speed on for as much of the way as it could, but, it was an old piece of shit ambulance from the early 90s so going fast wasn't exactly fast. It. Was. Awful. There were Jeeps, Land Cruisers and other SUVs passing us left right and center; I couldn't believe it really. We also had to stop for my friend to relieve herself and since she was in such pain, couldn't move or breathe, it took the doctor (who was with us), the guide and myself to get her down from the ambulance to pee on the roadside. I also got to go empty and rinse the bed pan. Once back in Lhasa, she was taken to the army hospital. I waited until my other friend (and her boyfriend and the rest of the tour crew) arrived to pick me up later that night...there was some really bad traffic with road construction which was the only benefit of having the ambulance to bypass it!
We spent our last day in Lhasa running around getting things for our mate because the hospital provided nothing. It was a scary, scary place...and having a white girl in there, was like a tourist attraction. Initially, I was annoyed at the whole situation, despite her being very, very ill, because I had to give up some of my trip because she was too stubborn to just stay back and listen to her body. She could have prevented her condition from worsening by staying in Lhasa...it put a big stress and responsibility on us that I felt was unfair - especially since I should have been the younger, naive one! She was nearly 40 and me in my late 20s - why did I have to even suggest she stay behind as she should have done this herself anyway! As it turned out, she was in such a bad state that she was unable to fly back to mainland China with us and we had no option to stay with her with the visa situation we were in - we had to get out! So, we left her in Lhasa at the hospital with the tour guide (who was an amazing woman) and she was airlifted to Chengdu a few days later. She had pulmonary edema, a life-threatening illness and the worst thing you can have happen to you when you've got altitude sickness. I resented her even more because I thought, what if she would have died?! That day in the ambulance, I had to communicate with her family on the phone about what was happening and that was also pretty unpleasant and scary - we weren't that close, they didn't know who I was...it was just a nightmare! I felt she brought a lot of this upon herself and she ignored the advice I sheepishly gave her...I shouldn't have had to advise her at all, surely your body's warning signs would be enough to tell you to stop!
Both my best friend and I didn't see her again after that trip and we no longer keep in touch. I had deleted her from Facebook (but then re-added her) because she made a comment about really fit people dying from pulmonary edema or getting really sick, even though they were really fit. This lady was very overweight and before the trip, I remember talking about making an effort to get in better shape. She was going to try to walk more and prepare her body for the trip, while my best friend and I were going to the gym. Well, trip time came and she made no effort to get into any decent physical shape, as she said would, and up until this point, she struggled to even walk around her own city. My best friend was worried about her before the trip and questioned her decision to be coming in the first place, being in her physical condition, but it was a cultural experience she couldn't pass up - I get that! In the ambulance that day, I made a comment to her that I hoped this situation would encourage her to be a healthier person as I thought this was a pretty fair warning (Hi! You're on your death bed!) and she agreed. I'm not sure if she ever did.
So, the scary part of all of this? Almost having a travel companion die on you. No joke, her coughing on that last day, in that ambulance, is still clear in my mind. She was sick. She was really, really sick. What would you do? We had even signed waivers for the train and the trip saying no one but ourselves was liable for our death which freaked me out but we all signed it. The thought of almost having to accept responsibility for all of that, and the way that her lack of commitment to her own health and wellbeing nearly ruined an amazing, once-in-a-lifetime trip, was extremely aggravating, as selfish as that sounds. But in the end, you're responsible for yourself, your life. Don't be an idiot about it and I'd hope I'd never put that stress on anyone near or around me, ever! Scar-y!
