Leaving north face

Manoj wanted to get an early start on the trip back to Katmandu so we were up at six and off by eight in the morning. It was our coldest morning yet, spurred by the once again clear sky and the elevation of over 17,000 feet here at base camp. Carol got a laugh when we were waiting for breakfast and she remarked that the moisture on my beard had frozen and formed ice crystals. Odd, I didn’t think it was that funny, I was just cold.
We all stood around, stomped our feet for movement to our toes, and waited for the breakfast call. I’m all “Porriaged” out, and am looking forward to the different set of meals that awaits us in the next few days.
We got off and headed back to our “Hub” village of Tassi Dzom. Every time I see the name, it’s spelled differently, but by the time we get there, it’s still the same little village we’ve passed through on our way to or from somewhere. We had lunch, then waited outside for the drivers to finish their meal. We have always had meals prepared by our cooks and we eat it in one of the restaurants, while the drivers all eat the local food. Manoj is very cautious, even at this stage, about what and where we eat. The group health is the key to any trek. Anybody getting really sick can severely affect the group.
We watch the kids harass the little puppies, the people coming into the village in their horse carts, and watch those who just sit around and watch us watch them I can’t figure out what there is for people to do which supports this central meeting of roads from three different directions. There is little arable land in the area. There definitely isn’t any industry or business that would support a town. It’s just here. Maybe the location is enough. We certainly seem to cross paths with the town often enough. This is our third time here.
Back on the road again, we passed rock field after rock field, and can’t help being continually amazed at the harshness of the land. I’ve written about it before, but it just shows how continually astounded I am at the fact that somehow these hardy, resilient people make a living where it seemingly is impossible.
If we stop the vehicle for potty breaks, children appear out of nowhere to come and look at the strangers. Where do they live? There are no villages, tents, encampments or other signs of residence. They are just there!! They just appear to be as natural a part of the land as the billions of rocks we see in any direction of the landscape.
We passed a Western woman in the back of a horse cart. Her bicycle beside her, we figured that she had mechanical problems and had to get help in the way of transport. But she’s 50 miles from anywhere. Where can she go? How far can this driver take her, and then what? We all talked about it on our next stop. We have no answers, just the same questions. Sort of an analogy for the entire desolate area we’re a part of ourselves at the moment.
We drove over more passes, always on rough, bone-jarring “roads” If it’s this difficult for our bodies, I can only imagine what the vehicles must be going through as the continual “bottoming-out” of shocks and springs takes its toll. But like the Tibetans themselves, the vehicles just keep on going. Manoj is happy that we have the older Toyota Land Cruisers rather than the new ones. Many of the other groups we see have sleek vehicles, but Manoj’s reasoning is that the boys know how to repair the old ones, and everybody is confused by the new ones, so our 1967 vehicles just keep on ticking.
We stopped for a short break to wait for the other vehicle. Our driver takes a back seat to no one. He always passes everything and has them eat our dust rather than vice versa. While we were waiting, true to form, three boys appear from somewhere. They looked like they were 6-8 years old, and Carol and I couldn’t believe when they were asked their age they were 11 and 13. They are so small. A horse cart pulled up and a man offered barley beer to everybody, but we all passed. General curiosity is not as strong as the fact that we’re on our way back to “Civilization” and nobody wants to get sick at this point. It’s a silly argument, because we would be worse off if we got ill earlier in the trip, but near the end, everybody gets more cautious.
There was a road sign about 10 feet off the ground pointing to “Everest Base Camp” in on direction, and to our Cross roads Tassi Dzom in the other direction. We looked off in the direction that the arrows point, and there’s nothing. No roads, no markers, nothing. Just two rough tracks through the nothingness and you are supposed to head in that general direction. I don’t know how the drivers know what their doing, but they haven’t missed anything yet. The height of the sign off the ground tells me that the snow level must be really significant in the winter.
We had 5 hours of zigzagging up and down the mountains, broken only by the question from our driver to Manoj: “Short cut?” Manoj would survey the situation and usually answers in the affirmative. We then have a REALLY bumpy and fast descent.
We finally arrived at the spot where we were supposed to camp for the night, but the truck with the tents, food, and all the camp equipment wasn’t there. We waited for a half an hour and the five of us decided that since it was only 2:00 in the afternoon that we’d rather push on and arrive at the border of Tibet and Nepal late that evening rather than just sit around the middle of nowhere only to get up early the next day and arrive at the border again in the middle of the day with nothing to do or any options for activities.
We approached Manoj and he was amenable to the idea. The truck was finally located. The boys had gone to the town nearby. It was another 5-hour drive to the border, but it meant that we’d have an extra day in Katmandu. We’d get there in two days of travel rather than three.
We got some more spectacular views of the Himalayas’ previously unseen sides. At one point we had a vista of more than 100 miles of peak after peak after peak. Truly magnificent. Have I used that word before? They were off in the distance since we had made an end run around them. This time they were in Nepal and we could all see where we were headed.
Then we began a “Plunge” down an incredible gorge heading for Zwangmuu, the border town. Water crashed down from all sides as it rushed down from the mountains starting its trip to the Bay of Bengal. It fell in mostly straight descents down the mountain making spectacular waterfalls, and finally reached the surging, roaring river that had cut the gorge in the first place. We stopped for a moment at the “Free car wash,” a place where a water fall fell directly onto the road. They had paved that section so that it wouldn’t wash away. Smart move, since it was a 500 foot drop down to the river. The water pounded the top of the car, and the driver inched ahead slowly until he was satisfied that the entire car was washed and then went off. So now we have a very clean car, which is wet, heading down a dusty road. It was fun to go through the car wash, but of course, three minutes later the car is worse off, because now the dust is really caked on.
Anyway, the canyon was amazingly beautiful. I couldn’t believe how fast the river dropped away from us. Tibet is known for its incredible gorges. Carol bought me a book about the search for Shangri-La. They explored a multitude of gorges to try to find the legendary spot. Researchers couldn’t understand how the rivers could descend as rapidly as they do. The theory being that there must be some Angel Falls types of waterfalls in the gorges because it was not conceived possible that the rivers could drop that fast. Well, they do.
We’d be dropping precipitously on our road, get closer to the actual river, then the next time we saw it, it was hundreds of feet below us again. This went on and on for two hours, until we finally got to our border town. We all agreed that just like the mountains, neither words nor photos would do justice to the Tibetan gorges.
There was a real sense of time warp for us as well. We had just spent the last ten days walking, crawling, and climbing over rock and ice. A little greenery could be found when we descended into the valleys before climbing again, but it was so desolate! Now we headed down the very narrow gorge. Since we were now below the tree line, the sides of the gorge were entirely covered with trees and bushes. It really warmed the spirit to know that the desolation was behind us.
Zwangmuu is one of the most bizarre and exotic scenes any of us had ever seen. The town is built upon the side of the steep gorge, and is about three miles “long.” The road switchbacks over and over again as it snakes way down to reach the actual border. The road is very narrow, and has buildings on both sides of the street. It is literally a one street town, because there is no possibility that there could be any side streets. The road is very narrow and since it is the principal border crossing between the two countries, the street is totally filled with parked trucks waiting to cross the border which, true to this part of the world, is only open for limited times each day.
There were thousands of trucks all vying for parking spaces. While they backed up and jockeyed for space, all other traffic had to stop. Horns blew, people shouted, everybody on the street had ideas on how to solve the traffic jam and we just inched our way through: the cars coming up the hill, the pedestrians walking both directions, and all other forms and manner of transportation trying to go to or from somewhere on this one-way road with two way traffic .
It took us over a half an hour to go the three miles, and when we finally got to our hotel, we found it was full, since we had arrived a day early. Jimmy found us one across the street, which certainly fulfilled the promise in our daily guide of “basic” hotel. But we didn’t care, we’d done two days of traveling in one day, we had a room, a bed, showers (albeit three floors up from the rooms) and room where we could stand up instead of being in a cold tent sleeping in bags.
Being a border town it had everything a person could want and more so. Dave brought Pringles, I bought a Snickers, Carol got some peanuts, Kathleen got a Mars bar, and Dave got a Lhasa beer. Everybody had a Coke with a meal which they chose from an actual menu. Everybody was a very happy ex-camper. We’d been counting down the nights that we still had to camp, and it was a real treat to beat the last night.
We dropped from two more nights in the tent to zero in a flash, and all the angst that went along with the arduous camping aspect washed away with the dirt as we got to our long awaited shower, not to mention the cold beer.
I said that the town had everything, proven by conversation at breakfast the following morning as Dave and Kathleen, who had gone for a walk after dinner, described the obviously available pleasures of the night they had seen. Communist puritanical idealism obviously takes a back seat to practical human nature fueled by people willing to use or exploit it, depending upon your viewpoint.
But we were only one day from Katmandu, and we eagerly awaited the morning and the end of the long, but spectacular, odyssey.
On the Nepal/Tibet Border,
Carol and Jim