18/6/97

SNOW! I was disappointed to see cloud cover Everest, but it was a little magical all the same. Shy and I make a snap decision to walk out immediately; perhaps we'll catch Ross. Besides, who is going to drive up here if this continues? The Germans also decide to leave, but despite our quick pace down the valley there's no chance of us catching them! As we reach the fork as the Everest valley meets the main one a Landcruiser speeds past, filled with good-looking girls. Sod's law again!

We make rapid progress down the valley to Chosang where we spend half an hour having butter tea with the teachers in the school before pressing on down to Passum, where the local kids guide us to the Passumpah Teahouse (actually has the sign in English). The owner has a pitted and swollen face that suggests an intimate acquaintance with leprosy, but he's a good cook and chapatis and sweet tea make me very happy. Shy, who has just spent a month in Nepal, is even happier! As there's no one else here; not even Ross sadly. Hopefully he's a little further ahead, but his absence leaves us with the rooftop room with brilliant views of the Himalayas. Pity about the toilet being across the street; neither of us could reach that far!

View from the top of the Passumpah Teahouse, looking back towards the Himalayas	Xixabigma from the highway between Tingri and Nyalam (picture by Vik!)

19/6/97

Up for a breakfast of watery noodles which we both fail to finish. It's quite expensive here at about 60Y each, but last night made it worth it. Unfortunately, as we walk towards Peruche, the noodles start to have an effect on me that I could do without. I stop for tea at the village, but as we walk out up towards Holum I start suffering diarrhoea, and the episodes repeat themselves once every kilometre. Shy shows no ill effects at all, but he is a truly mad bastard who loves to eat tsampa! I try immodium, but this is laughably ineffective; the tablets are out the other end within ten minutes. Eventually, after 10k of fertilizing the local hillsides, I crawl into Holum, and Shy gets us somewhere to stay; in a small Tibetan house with a young man and his mother.

I start on anti-bacterial antibiotics, but make the mistake of washing down the first tablet with some warm water. It washes out again almost immediately after I make a dash for the rooftop toilet! The next tablet is taken with a sip of cold water, and I decide not to drink anything for a few hours. I may dehydrate, but it'll be worse if I have the shits as well. While lying down, I can see the locals going about their business; eating tsampa for dinner and churning yak butter in a large brass-bound cylinder for a quarter of an hour at a time. I reflect that my sense of timing is appalling; getting food poisoning at 4600m just before our highest pass must be the worst of my luck in the last three months! Shy promises me a stock cube or two tomorrow morning if I'm able, but giving one to the son of the family proved a little problematic as he stuffed it straight in his mouth before we could demonstrate that they were supposed to be added to hot water. He enjoys them both ways, apparently!

Didn't get much sleep, but a couple of hours after taking my second antibiotic pill, I start to drink my home brewed anti dehydration fluid. By midnight I'm throwing it down, and I then start on the plain water with no ill effects as yet. It then occurs to me that it's just as well I'm not on erythromycin, as it may be incompatible with my anti-bacterial pills. Aren't I lucky then.

20/6/97

The stove is started early at about seven, and I feel much better though tired. I manage some soup, then we're off. The first two hours of the ascent go well and I maintain a good pace. As we hit 5000m however, I start slowing down something terrible with the lungs giving me grief. Shy, who has been trailing me up to now, passes me with ease. Remember the tortoise and the hare? I should have! Eventually I reach the top of the pass and resolve to get a lift down to the road if humanly possible. Just to rub it in, the first of eight Landcruisers appear going in the opposite direction! After about 200m of descent, a Landcruiser approaches us going in our direction. It slows; then speeds past with the Brit/Chinese couple in the back shouting "surprise!". I contented myself thinking of the time a year from now when I'd come across them on a deserted back road in the pouring rain. I'd slow; then repeat their performance!

Thankfully, a few hundred metres on I got a lift! A trio of Japanese stopped, driven by a driver I recognized from a couple of weeks back. Shy decided that he wanted to walk down to the road on his own at this stage, so I thanked him for seeing me over the pass and confirmed our trilateral arrangement to meet in Kathmandu before speeding down to the road at several multiples of the speed I had been travelling previously. I was down on the Friendship Highway by two, where I donated my loose change to my benefactors, and stood at the side of the road adopting my now familiar hitching pose, which was immediately abandoned for a ditch as a police jeep hove into view! The very next vehicle was a truck, which screeched to a halt on the dirt road. The driver was Nepali, and he was very happy to take me to Zhangmu for 150Y.

The driver and his mate are both Nepali, though the mate was born in Lhasa which presumably makes him some sort of exile. They already have another passenger, a Chinese man of about thirty who runs a shop in Zhangmu, and we have a stilted conversation until we reach Tingri again and stop for a break. While the others drink butter tea, I pop over the road and get myself some Jian Libao to keep me going for the time being. I'm followed by the driver's mate who walks off into town. An hour later, we get back in the truck minus the mate, and drive to the western end of town, where the driver hoots several times. A minute later the mate appears from a large house doing up his belt, with a couple of women putting on his jacket. So that's where he's been!

It's strange, but either the British Empire still retains some magical influence here or some other factor applies to persuade lorry drivers here to drive on the left unless forced otherwise. I'd seen it elsewhere in Tibet, but not really noticed it, perhaps because most truck drivers, maniacs they may be comparison to back home, drive in such a suicidal fashion as my present one. We'll be driving on the left until there's a hundred metres in it, then swerve with impressive skill to avoid the oncoming vehicle. Anything going in the same direction is fair game too; we put a bus in the ditch as we squeezed by at 60 km/h.

One hundred kilometres on from Tingri we hit two 5000m passes in quick succession, followed by the sight of a huge snow-capped "table top" mountain that must have been the 8000m peak Xixabangma. Sadly, at this stage I had two frames of film left and thought I should save them- possibly a mistake. We then started a 100k long descent.

It started with a series of shortcuts across the hairpin bends as we descend, then we were on a long straightish road down to an Army checkpoint, which delayed us very little, then it was on to Nyalam. You have to cross a ravine to get to the town, and there's a PSB checkpoint on the other side. I took my cue from the driver and marched in with the rest of them into the building, where we handed over our passports. The policeman gave me a baleful look, but handed back my passport without comment, and we were off again.

From Nyalam the valley we travel in narrows, and the road becomes something carved out of the side of a cliff. Also, the terrain rapidly changes from high altitude desert to lush monsoon jungle as we descend through the clouds. This part of the road is called the "Descent into Hell", and you can see why! The road has about a metre spare to the right before a long drop, and there's barely room to move on the left. Our driver bounced his way along this track in way that seemed to guarantee we'd drop off the side at any moment, but thankfully we didn't join the lorries that do apparently fall off; about one a month was the figure I had heard mentioned. There must be some sort of time window system in operation, because I saw no traffic coming the other way- just as well, really!

After a 1000m drop, we arrived at the PSB checkpoint outside Zhangmu where I had an unpleasant surprise. The officer there spoke extremely good English, and demanded to know where my Alien Travel Permit was. I decided to see if a brazen lie would work, and told him that I had been fined 200Y at Lhatse for not having one, but the receipt was a group one that someone else had. He accepted my explanation without comment, which rather surprised me as I thought that he would ask me where was this group I was supposed to be with! Anyway, by now it was 8-30 pm and the light was fading fast, so the lorry driver dropped me off. I finally found somewhere that would serve me my last Tibetan momos, then got a room in a truckers hotel for the night.

Descent into Hell (picture by Vik)	Zhangmu from the back of a truck

21/6/97

I'm somewhat misinformed about the location of the bank. My obsolete LP guide showed it next to the police checkpoint at the top of town, so I was there at 10 am to change my money over, along with a crowd of locals who were waiting in a queue outside. From what I could see, the bank manager was in bed fully clothed! At this time I was rather short of patience, so I stormed in through the open door and told him I wanted to change some money. He just turned over and mumbled "meiyou" in whisky speech, so I dragged him out of bed and stood him up, whereupon he explained that the other bank changed money. I left him as the beaming locals came in!

If there's one way of describing Zhangmu, it would be mud. The road through the town is a dirt one, and despite the best efforts of disconsolate PLA soldiers tipping rough grade gravel on the top, the ruts are fairly impressive. As you descend along the switch backs the buildings become smarter, and I was halfway down when a voice said "hello"; it was the Chinese bloke I had had a lift with. He ran a small electronics shop, and we had a beer together, but was definitely time for me to go if I wanted to get to Kathmandu by nightfall. I found the bank- hopefully the last white-tiled monstrosity I would see for a while- cashed in my RMB for dollars and went to the border post, on the way getting some rupees from a trader. The border police kept me a mere five minutes, then gaily cancelled my visa and let me go on my way; they must have been keen to get rid of me.

After the checkpoint it's about 10k to the actual border at Friendship Bridge, and I'd hardly walked ten metres before a truck driver offered me a lift for a dollar or so. I then settled down in the back with a Chinese trader, sitting on one of his boxes of Huaghe beer. In a couple of minutes we were joined by a Sherpa woman and her daughter who had just come back from visiting their relatives in Xegar, and we went slowly down the road for a couple of kilometres until we hit some roadwork's. They seemed likely to stop us for several hours, so we joined the trail of people going down the footpaths that served as shortcuts down the valley. Finally, we were at the bridge, and despite a strange temptation to linger, I stepped into Nepal.

Everyone here is very keen on selling you things, everything from tickets to Kathmandu to orange juice, and I was so overwhelmed at getting an immediate ticket I forgot to register at customs; after all, I already had a visa. Once I stepped on the bus, a chorus of voices shouted hello, and I saw some Americans I had last seen in Lhasa. They had got here by hitching from Lhasa direct, with nary a hitch except when they were all arrested and slung out of Gyantse; all credit to them.

The journey to Kathmandu took about five hours, interspersed with two meal stops and regular police checkpoints, the reason for which was a little obscure as we hadn't actually been checked at the border! The road had been built by the Chinese and was by the standards of an average PLA road, extremely good. Presumably, when the invasion forces ride to Kathmandu they don't want to waste time! We got to Thamel about 6 pm, and I followed the others in. Room prices were very cheap, and the plethora of things like faxes, email, book and outdoor shops stunned you. I then made a phone call to the guy who was going to put me up while I was here; Dr Piggott of the WHO. I was extremely lucky in this, as my younger brother Ivo was one of his son's friends. I was surprised when he said that he'd be along in twenty minutes though; the traffic here was such that you'd expect him to be an hour. However, a Land Rover turned up at the appointed time and I was driven to Sanepa in no time; this being the weekend, the traffic outside Thamel was light. Dr Piggott was alone in his house at the moment, with his sons at school or university and his wife in Switzerland, so we talked about a few things before I went to bed.

22/6/97

It appears that early breakfasts are the rule here, and as a bonus they're held on the roof. Dr Piggott pointed out various areas and some of the local mountains. The monsoon was about to start, but for the time being the air was fairly clear. Later, he took me off to various of Kathmandu's cultural sites and to the major Lamaist temple. Sadly, as the day went on I found it harder to pay attention; I was feeling ill again. By the evening I was once more esconsced in the toilets, though these were considerably more comfortable than the roadside on a mountain pass. I suppose this could be called an appropriate introduction to the Indian sub-continent, but that would be very cynical!

23-24/6/97

Spent these two days lying down watching videos, running to the toilet when the mood grabbed me. Not the best way to see the city, but there was little alternative. I also got an explanation why Thamel was so frantically competitive; Dr Piggott called it the "photo lab disease". When the first local opened a photo lab in Kathmandu, he made a lot of money. Everyone else saw this, and regardless of the actual demand for these services, they all went out and bought photo labs of their own. Now no-one makes money! I thought of those thirteen garages I saw inside two kilometres near Xian; way more than was needed. Perhaps someone needs to go to business school. The locals here all drive on the left too, which partly explains why Tibet is so left-minded, but it was suggested that the origin of this could be religious; if you drive on the left you're always passing people in a clockwise direction, which is an angle I should have thought of. The checkpoints on the road to Kathmandu were declared a health hazard; I couldn't understand why! It turns out they're there to verify that the driver has obeyed the speed limit, which seems like a bit of a waste of money to me, but it turns out that many of the drivers drive just as fast but occupy their now "spare" time by visiting what must be practically "drive-thru" prostitutes, thereby spreading VD!

25/6/97

OK today, so I'm off to explore Kathmandu after paying for the plane ticket. Given that I had so little time, I'm mainly going to see Thamel, which has a bewildering array of shops etc. The street traders are very persistent; one began by offering me me a carved elephant. I wasn't keen, so he wanted to know if I wanted to "change money". When I said no to that too, he offered me pot, which I also declined. It might have been interesting to see what he might have come up with next; probably women. Surprisingly, the number of bars here is limited, with the best probably being Tom and Jerry's which has an Aussie flavour with all the Victoria Bitter beer mats. Sadly, they only sell Tuborg or San Miguel, who appear to have the whole market sewn up here. Frozen yoghurt is another staple, and very nice it is too.

On the way back to Sanepa, I went off to see a local procession that I had been told was within two miles of where I was staying. I got completely lost in the dark, and got caught by the monsoon, which really is equivalent to standing in the shower with all your clothes on. In this fashion I explored the city's back streets, where I learnt that the Nepalese share a certain characteristic with the Irish; they're so keen on being friendly they'll tell you where you need to go even if they don't know themselves! Finally I made it back, looking like I'd spent the evening in the bath.

26/6/97

This was the last day in Kathmandu, and the second to last day before I got home. In the evening I was to meet Shy and Ross provided they made it here at the Everest Steakhouse, but in the meantime I intended to get very merry in anticipation of paying off my debts in the months ahead; not a pleasant prospect. Fate provided me with two drinking partners in Shawn and Abullah. The former was a South African my age who had just got a divorce from his American wife, who was a diplomat considerably older than he was. The latter was a Quatari diplomat in Bangladesh who was having a rest of sorts here; Bangladesh not exactly being somewhere you could relax. The afternoon passed in reminisces until I remembered that I was to meet Shy and Ross shortly.

I was a little late to the Everest Steakhouse, as my formerly keen navigational instincts had atrophied somewhat, but I was very glad to see Ross safe and sound. He had trekked out and then got a lift to the border just in time, while Shy had got here the day after me. From here we all split; Shy goes to Thailand while Ross is off to the States. We then did our best to eat the huge steaks that were placed before us, with limited success. In the end we just drank to happy travels and went on our way.

Kathmandu from Sanepa	The Everest Steakhouse; me, Shy and Ross

27/6/97

Up very early to get to the airport at 7 am, where I have another reason to be grateful to Dr Piggott. I'd assumed that I didn't need to get it stamped on entrance to the country, but the talk was that I was going to have the Foreign Affairs ministry to get this sorted out. Thankfully, Dr Piggott's diplomatic passport got the whole mess sorted with a small fine. I was lucky on two counts; my mother would never have forgiven me for missing her fiftieth birthday party on the 28th!

The flight started as the usual long haul dreary affair. However, after changing planes in Qatar I was sat next to a Bhutanese civil engineer who explained that he was to undertake a two week training course in transport planning in... Swindon. It seemed that having travelled so far away from the place to see distant lands and their people, they were all now rushing to go to the place I was trying to forget. Anyone who can make sense of that one will go nuts!

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© Rupert Fiennes 1998