Day 5 on the Friendship Highway (written by Pan-Pan and James)

This was another long day of travelling, with some interesting high-lights. Of course, waking up to a snow-storm was crazy. Good thing I had my attractive new yak-wool hat to keep me warm. Anyhow, it was only useful for about 20 km down the mountain, after which point it began to get hot and dusty again (weird).

We stopped at a shit-hole of a town called Old Tingri, a series of ugly, dirty buildings along a dirt strip with almost nothing good to say about it except that it was our last stop before the border town, Zhangmu. We had lunch here and then set off for Zhangmu.

Halfway there we encountered an obstacle: the road was closed for a few hours because of "construction". Tommy, one of companions who speaks Mandarin, tried to convince the guard that it was an emergency, and then offered a bribe, but nothing could happen to let us go through. So we set out walking the 14 kilometres.

The walk along the road was pretty and good enough, were it not so long and so, so dusty. We tried numerous times to hitch-hike with passing gravel trucks until we were finally picked up by one who we offered 20 RMB. The four of us crowded into the tiny cab, sitting on each others laps and generally in a LOT of discomfort! But we were all laughing so hard. The high-light of this day, for me (James) was when we turned a corner along the high mountain road and almost ran into one of these weird Tibetan tractor-rickshaw things. They look like rickshaws with giant lawnmowner engines in front, with handle bars like a motorcycle. The poor guy couldn't keep control of the thing, and he had a look of genuine fear on his face as he tried to reign in this beast of a machine that seemed intent on going wherever it wanted (even right off the cliff, if not into our gravel truck!). Four of his construction companions had to actually restrain the possessed machine by holding it back, while the front wheels spun wildly above the ground! We all just laughed our asses off! We joked that if the machine went flying off the cliff, the People's Republic would make him pay to replace it. Poor guy!

The rest of the ride to Zhangmu was similarly filled with lots of laughter. Tommy is deathly afraid of heights, and the Zhangmu river gorge is one of the highest (most magnificent and beautiful) roads in the world--albeit calling it a road is sometimes generous. At one terrifying point, he was heard to remark "Golly gee Molly Poppers!" These Americans say weird and wonderful things! The road was often quite treacherous. We also were held up for an hour or so at one point on the road where a landslide of rocks made the road impassable. We had to wait with several other jeeps while a giant construction machine cleared it. While waiting, I saw huge flocks of bats flying amidst the clouds in the valley below--just beautiful.

(this part written by Pan-Pan because of J’s finger-aching issues again J)

The bordertown of Zhangmu (between Nepal and Tibet) is one dirty, hectic, crazy town (as all bordertowns have the reputation of being. We got there pretty late and had a very late dinner with the other two boys. They had some really interesting stories from their travels (they had started in Moscow, worked their way to Kazakhstan, through Xinjiang and finally to Tibet), and we also discussed some politics and philosophy. The four of us decided to go out for some drinks, and this is where the craziness started. We saw some stairs leading down to a bar, lined with red lanterns. When we got to the bottom of the stairs, we turned the corner and came upon the sketchiest, dirtiest bar we’d ever seen. The only people in it were about 20 girls sitting around eating watermelon or lone-ily dancing on the dirty dance floor. Needless to say, it was obviously a bar where men could, ahem, buy the company of ladies. We felt very very awkward, especially me because it was a weird place for a girl to walk into! We all left hastily and laughed at the ridiculousness of the situation. In fact, we couldn’t find one legitimate bar in the whole town, and ended up going back to our hotel and chatting in the American boys’ rooms until late.

The next day, we woke up late and started our trip to Nepal! The border crossing was relatively hassle-free although the Chinese officials seemed more diligent and checked us many times, while the Nepalese officials barely seemed to care that we were entering. In fact, little Nepalese children kept scuttling back and forth between the borders carefreely! We rented a car for 2000 rupees (about 40 CDN) for the 4 hour ride through the mountains to Kathmandu, and this is where we are now, in beautiful, vibrant Thamel region of Kathmandu, where we are staying at the cleanest, nicest, prettiest hotel we’ve seen in a LONG time – the Kathmandu Guest House. Nepalese people are generally very nice, but bartering can be a lengthy and heart-wrenching process. The food is DELICIOUS (such a change from Tibetan fare), and there are just endless interesting streets to explore and exotic souvenirs to buy. We both bought Tibetan thangkas (hand-painted scrolls), which are real works of art – J’s is about 4 feet by 3 feet for 6000 rupees and mine is a bit smaller for 3200 rupees. We can’t wait for you guys to see them!