Day 9 - Aug 17, 2007 Friday

 Tingri 定日- Mt. Everest Base Camp 珠峰大本營

(click the hyperlink for the respective photo album)

As we had to started our journey to Mt Everest Base Camp which was a 4 hour drive away, we had to wake up early.  As I said, the electricity was self-generated, there was no light nor hot water in the morning.  The hotel knocked on our door at 7am giving us a candle!

The road was super bumpy!  The photo shows the best part of it, the rest were all muddy and rocky!  Sitting on the back, I was like riding a bad roller-coaster, head & buttock got bumped a thousand times. 

It was all worth it!  By the time we got to Rongbuk Monastery 絨布寺, the highest temple in the world (at 4,980M), there was about 15-minute where the Mt. Everest, i.e. Mt. Qomolangma 珠穆朗瑪峰 (8848M), revealed!  Other cars passed by and said that they were there at the base camp for 5 days and it had been too cloudy and they were unable to wait for the highest mountain in the world revealed!  We were so lucky.

The Mt. Everest is the dominant peak of Himalayas, the northern brae in Tingri County of Tibet and the southern in the Nepal. The area has 4 peaks above 8,000 m. (26,247 ft.) and 38 peaks above 7,000 m. (22,965 ft.), hence the laudatory title 'the Third Pole of the Earth'.

After arriving the 'base' of the 'base camp', we took horse carts to further go up a little bit.  It took almost an hour to go up the mountain by horses.  It was a funny ride. 

We finally arrived to the Base Camp but there was nothing there except a military person to register all visitors.

We walked around and most of the areas on the base camp were restricted.  To go further, you have to apply for a special license to climb the mountain. 

This was the notice, if you can understand it:

We left the base camp at around 2:30pm.  By 5:30pm, we stopped to have dinner (and we did not have 'formal' lunch that day).  The food was delicious (maybe we were hungry) and one thing I have not mentioned yet. 

Ronald has been doing a lot of charity thing to provide schooling to the poor kids in Chinese remote villages.  He brought a lot of pencils, pens & a lot of sweets to give out to the children there.  If you have ever traveled to poor areas, you know that usually the kids will surround tourist cars.  Some of them are curious and some of them know that they can possibly get something from the tourists.  Giving out money is not good at all and thus Ronald has been giving out useful things to the kids instead.  This was the 9th day of our journey and thus he decided to give out all of the things he had brought over, which attracted a large crowd of kids running from everywhere to the door step of the restaurant!

We finished dinner at around 7:30pm (yes the photo above was taken at 7pm and the sky was still very bright) and went back to the hotel to rest.

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