Tingri To Zhangmu...It's all downhill from here...

June 12, 2012

Well, we made it through the cold and windy night in Tingri at the beautiful Snow Leopard Guest House. We forgot to share two more aspects of the room we had for the night that we thought were unique...first, there was a small access door in the wall of the shower right above the faucet that fluttered all night as the wind blew through our room, and then there was the drain in the tub through which you could see daylight...interesting...

We're up early this morning because we plan to catch a view of sunrise on the Himalayas from a hill just a few kilometers from our guest house. It was a chilly night, and it is pretty cold this morning too. We climb into just about every layer of clothing we have with us, and head over to the dining room. Our sherpas (who are fantastic, if I haven't already mentioned that...) are up earlier than we are fixing coffee for us before we depart to catch sunrise.

We wind our way out of Tingri and up onto a hill that rises several hundred feet above the town, and we don't have to wait too long before the sun begins to illuminate the craggy, snow-capped peaks of the Himalayas...

Our drivers and Nyima are enjoying the early morning views too!

Here's our group all bundled up but having a great time watching the mountains begin to glow in the first rays of sunrise...

Mount Everest is clear in the distance...it actually was less photogenic than other mountains because it has less snow on it...we are happy to have this view, but it still feels like a poor alternative to our canceled visit to base camp.

After 20 minutes at the lookout, some of the group are getting a little cold...so they start dancing around to try to get warm...

Steve, our tour leader, with Mount Everest off to the left...

It was a beautiful morning (even if it was freezing cold) to be watching sunrise, and we still feel fortunate to be able to stand here in Tibet viewing these magnificent mountains...

Oh Ted, this looks like an ad from a camera magazine...

Speaking of cameras, as you have seen in earlier posts, Ted has a few little cameras and lenses with him on this trip, nothing fancy, just your basic telescope-sized HD cameras...We, on the other hand, have our little point-and-shoot camera that clips on our belt. We knew that someday it would come down to this...a camera duel...draw!

Michael conceded that he had lost this round..."It was my own fault, I brought a knife to a gunfight..."

We returned to the guest house for breakfast and to let our fingers and toes warm up, then we packed up and headed out of town...this time on foot. We decided to walk down the one street that runs through Tingri and enjoy the beautiful morning...our last morning at high altitude. We pass the sign marking the road to the hill where we took our pictures this morning, and then Michael and Ted lead the pack out of town...

Tingri is just waking up, the dogs and livestock are beginning to stir, the restaurant is not serving breakfast, and the one guy who does iron work in town is already hard at it...

One last look over our shoulders at Mount Everest and our morning overlook, and the other mountains, and we look forward to our last day in Tibet.

Today we will be making our way to Zhangmou, a small town nearly at the Tibet-Nepal border. To get there, we will have to cross a few more passes. And from the time we leave the last pass, to the time we reach Zhangmou, we will drop 10,000 feet in elevation...we can't wait to breathe that oxygen-rich air and see if our altitude training for the past few weeks has given us any superhuman strengths...

After leaving Tingri, we drive along the valley floor and see nomad sheep herders who have set up camp in a more fertile place where their sheep and goats can more easily find something to graze on.

We're surprised to see salt flats...way up here at over 13,000 feet! But these are naturally occurring and in days gone by the locals gathered the salt and took it to China and Nepal to trade.

There are ruins here and there on the landscape, what's left of previous buildings built out of mud bricks. You'll notice the rows of trees in front of the ruins..well, we've noticed throughout our time in Tibet that the Chinese are making a concerted effort to plant trees along the roadways to prevent wind erosion and sand drifting across the highways. We are not sure what sort of tree actually grows in this arid, high-altitude environment, but even if 50% die, they have planted enough to make sure there is a windbreak. While this sounds like a reasonable enough project, we find out from our guide that the planting of these trees is not really a state project...they are mandatory "voluntary" projects done by the locals. In this area we are astounded by the scope of the effort...the trees go on as far as the eye can see...

And again we share the road with sheep and goats...

After about an hour or more of driving, we come to a split in the highway, our road leads to the Nepal border, and the other leads off into the northwest to a holy mountain called Shishapangma. Now, we know our friend will love this photo...he is the person who first told us of Shishapangma...Fletcher, here it is!

When we pulled over at the fork in the highway we were greeted by this gentleman...we have no idea where he came from, he just suddenly showed up. Look at this guy, he's a shepherd whose flock was off in the valley below. And check out those goggles, our group thinks he may have stumbled upon a dead climber and took possession of these, and judging from the style of the goggles we believe they may be from George Mallory!

Back on the road, we are treated to more frequent and striking views of the Himalayas. Nearly every major peak in the Himalaya range sits squarely on the border shared by Nepal and Tibet, so the closer we get to the border the more of these mountains we see...

At long last we reach the second pass of the day, and while it is not the highest of the two we have traversed, it affords us an amazing panorama of these spectacular mountains...you might want to zoom in on this photos and get the full 180 degree effect of the panorama...

We stop and get out to take in the last great view of these majestic mountains that we will have on this trip. Our tour guide, Steve, has a plan...he gives us each a string of prayer flags, and we begin to tie all of our individual strings into one long series of prayer flags.

While we were stringing our flags so that they would flutter in the Himalayan breezes, this gentleman in the orange jacket stepped forward to help...and did he help! He showed us how it's done, Tibetan style! He took the end or our long string of prayer flags and proceeded to shimmy up the pole to anchor our flags high up in the wind...then he went on the next pole and did the same, he had obviously done this a time or two before..

After our flags are secured and are flapping mightily in the clear Tibetan wind, we pause to take one last look around. From here it is all downhill...truly, all downhill...

C'mon, people, Patty's ready to ride!

And down we go, into the steep valleys that lead us to lower altitudes and ever closer to Nepal. We pass the occasional town clustered along the highway, and we wonder what it must be like to live here in the winter.

Not long after we start making our descent we catch up to our sherpas who have found one of the few level places alongside the road where we can stop for lunch. So we simply pull over, stop and climb to it, leaving our vehicles stopped in the downhill lane of traffic...

Now, a little explanation about this next photo...you need to understand little bit about Dick, our resident botanist. Dick has been talking for more than a week about the extraordinary nature of this descent...how we will be dropping down through five distinct zones of plants, and how there are really no other places where you can see all of the plant changes in such a short distance. Now that you have that explanation, it should not surprise any of us that Dick went running around the hillside with his camera while we were stopped for lunch...not sure what he sees here, must be small but important...!

After lunch we continue to make our way down from the Tibetan Plateau, often through twisting switchbacks and tunnels. We are struck by all the vegetation...this is more green plant life than we have seen in total during our two weeks in Tibet.

Given the fact that Dick is pressed up against the window of the Land Cruiser trying to identify plants, and because we really have not had much activity so far today, Steve suggests that we get out and walk a bit...sounds like a great plan. This is a particularly winding portion of the road that leads down into Zhangmou, and it is cut into the side of the mountain...sometimes way into the side of the mountain...here, Patty has found a spot of shade under an outcropping that almost covers both lanes!

The long trip is beginning to wear on our friend Ted...he seemed so intrepid and hearty earlier in the trip, but now look at him...poor guy. We think it's the cumulative effect of dragging 40 pounds of cameras around with him all of the time...Hang in there Ted, we're almost there!

To save Ted and to get our day of travel done, we climb back into our Land Cruisers and finish our drive into Zhangmou. We check in to our hotel and get settled. Our lodging for the night is a "lodge" which means it is better than the guest house in Tingri, but not as nice as a hotel. And we were about to find out that the beds we thought were so hard in previous hotels were soft by comparison to what we will sleep on tonight...think box spring...

Check out this bathroom...no shower curtain so water tends to go everywhere...the good news is that this place has hot water! And get this...electricity too! We're movin' on up!

Zhangmou needs a little explanation...it is basically an unattractive cluster of buildings stuck to a steep hillside, with a waterfall or two racing down between buildings, and the main street is a series of switchbacks clogged with parked cars and trucks coming and going. The reason Zhangmou exists is the transfer of goods between Nepal and Tibet...trucks loaded with goods going either direction stop here to load and unload...so the town is made up of small convenience stores, massage establishments, cheap hotels, and low-end restaurants. Now that we've sold you on Zhangmou, let's take a short walk through town...and we mean short...we walked about 10 minutes downhill till we hit the immigration checkpoint, then we headed back up the hill to our hotel.

Not that we're cynical at all, but we got a little suspicious whe we saw so many brand new Chinese flags (complete with fold creases) hanging out in front of nearly every shop...and a construction scaffold across the street from our lodge was completed the evening while we were there, and in the morning there were brand spankin' new Chinese flags hanging on it...maybe a Chinese dignitary was coming for a visit...?

This made us chuckle...this is the Foreign Affairs Office of Nyalam, and the ladies staffing the office are clustered around a card table playing Mahjong...oh, the stressful life of a Chinese bureaucrat...

We have our last dinner cooked by our sherpas, we're gonna miss these guys, they have always provided us with great meals, far better than we would have found in Sakye or Tingri or Zhangmou...and of course, there is alot of good humor as we share our last dinner in Tibet...

We head to bed, even though Steve thinks there might be a good place for a foot massage...and we look forward to the next chapter in our journey, Nepal, where we will have two extra days to see Kathmandu...good night Tibet, and thank you for your warmth and hospitality, your culture and mysticism, and your many, many monasteries...