Day 4 on the Friendship Highway (written by Pan-Pan)

Me (Pan-Pan) again! So we were in Sakya in the morning and circumabulated the monastery there. It is strongly Mongol-influenced and so looks different from anything else we’d seen – thick grey walls with white stripes down the sides. We opted not to go in though because we’d already seen so many monasteries and didn’t want to pay the 55 RMB (about 8 CDN) per person to go in. Honestly, I think we’ve seen about 50 temples/monasteries/nunneries by now! I was glad to get out of Sakya because there’s nothing to do there, and it’s so ridiculously dusty.

We traveled for the full day to reach Mount Everest. Most of the ride was smooth, and even ascending 1000 m in 20 km of road wasn’t as bad as we thought. Everest Base Camp is an interesting tent city. There were no expeditions going on at the time, so there were no actual climber tents. All the tents were for tourists who come to stay there. It was pretty cold while we were there so we bundled up as best as we could. James bought a yak wool hat which was really cool and only cost 20 RMB. We decided to walk 4km to the actual Mount Everest base camp where climbers would stay, and the walk was sooooo hard! Because the altitude was 5200 m, there was very little oxygen and after climbing a small mountain, we all had to stop and rest, huffing and puffing and drinking lots of water. The walk was interesting because we saw some Tibetan gophers, and of course, tons of yaks. When we finally got to the official base camp, the clouds cleared up for just long enough for us to snap a few great pictures (which we’ll put up as soon as we can, either on this blog or on my photo blog). There was a Chinese police station with a sign that said “Mount Everest Police Station” which we wanted to take a picture of, but they wouldn’t let us! Its so weird. The actual Base Camp sign disappointingly doesn’t even say “Everest”, it just says Mt. Qomolangma, which is the Chinese name for Everest. The walk back was so great and light because we were going downhill and with the wind this time.

We were served some basic Tibetan food in our tent, which by this time we were really tired of! Tibetan food is just a lot of yak, noodles, and fried rice. None of us had much of an appetite, there’s only so much yak and noodles we can eat before we’d rather just go hungry. Our tent was designed in a basic Tibetan way – lots of reds, blues, greens, and whites, representing the four elements. They lit a fire, and soon our tent was the hub of activity as all the guides and drivers and some tourists from other vans came in. James and I had a game of chess too, which has been keeping our minds stimulated on this trip. I won, which is rare, since J is much better than me usually! We went to bed at around midnight, and soon the night was still and the air was chilly as the fire slowly died. I woke up in the middle of the night absolutely frozen to the bone even under two full winter quilts and had to put on my pants and long shirts and socks just to stay warm.

When we woke up in the morning, I looked outside and felt as if we had been transported to another world. There, right outside our door, was our tent city covered with a foot of snow and a blizzard happily blasting everything! I couldn’t believe how snowy and cold everything was! I’m sure James will write about this, but it blew us away how within the next 8 hours of leaving Everest, we would travel through 3 different biomes – snow, desert, and tropics! Altitude is more of an influence on climate than I had ever really though possible!