Started the slow journey to Base Camp. Seven days I’m told, this is so we have time to acclimatise.
Before I go on, though let me go back to 4am this morning, sitting in the lobby of the hotel waiting for Tshering to arrive at 4.10am…I forgot about Nepali ‘time’, when he said 4.10 he meant 4.40am. We then joined the group that we are traveling with to Base Camp. I was told that they were British, well out of the nine, one of them is British, a teacher from Birmingham. The others are a mixture of Swedish, Georgian, Jordanian and Spanish….guess what the common language is…..English, thank goodness as I don’t speak any of the above (typical Englishman)!
The journey so far, I described to Richard as ‘interesting’ he wasn’t overly keen on that word calling it a ‘weasel’ word. What I should have said was that it was a journey full of bumps, lumps, horns and driving on any side of the road, normally as close to the edge of the precipitous 1000 foot drop that the driver could get!
We arrived at the Nepal/Chinese border at 10.40am it is now 13.40 and still no sign of us getting across the bridge into Tibet. Back I think to Nepali time, hopefully, though, sometime today! Apparently it’s the first day of the new climbing season, so there are a number of Everest expeditions as well as ourselves waiting to cross over.
Lori you asked for plenty of photographs, unfortunately at Base Camp I will be restricted to a Satellite up link and photographs could be a problem. But, you can be rest assured that there will be just a ‘few’ photographs uploaded to Flickr on my return.
I’m told that the roads in Tibet are far better than the Nepali roads, if not I think the travel sickness will spread from the poor unfortunate Jordanian this morning! I’ll keep my fingers crossed.
Good to hear from you, fingers crossed for you then!!! X
Sent from my iPad
Praying for your safety and for you to have an amazing adventure!!!
Aha! Good! An update.
The joys of SMS communication. It has its place, but it wasn’t your use of ‘interesting’ which I was unhappy with. Funnily enough, another friend has just posted something on FB about the use of the word ‘issues’.. No one has a straightforward ‘problem’.
i took your use of the word ‘interesting’ to be entirely accurate. Coy, with a wink, typical British use of irony. The failure of communication was on my part in trying to say that I knew what you meant. It is often a ‘weasel’ word, used to avoid saying what the person really means. I understood what you meant. It was indeed an interesting journey, but not in a totally positive sense.
Ok?
Only 30 minutes latitude on the time? By my experience of most parts of the world that’s fairly prompt. I’m still waiting for the Minister of Education for Riyadh to turn up ‘tomorrow at 7’. That was more than a decade ago!
And the mis-description of the group is all too typical too. Yes, I seem to be in maximum cynic mode this morning.
Indeed English (largely American really) is the Lingua Franca, and i’m not sure how those without a working knowledge make it around the world. It has changed a lot over the last decade, and I reckon there is not too much Arabic spoken in China!
A wee rant!
Looking forward to further reports. I think you will find the ‘better’ roads helps you to define the meaning of the world ‘relative’. Let’s see, hey?
I was surprised that base camp is as high as I think you mentioned. Am I right 5,600 ish? That explains the 7 days very easily to my mind. When will you actually being making your own way, off the bus and walking?
What’s the MO (Mission Objective?).
Keep smiling buddy! If nothing else it confuses the hell out of them. Usually helps oil the wheels a little too!
Advanced Base Camp, which is where we’ll spend most of our time is at 5,700 metres. We start the actual walking from The Chinese Base Camp which is two days walk from ABC.