Tanya_5


 * //__DIARY ENTRY FIVE__//**

It takes us 4 hours travelling on an awful road to travel the 100km from Shegar to Base Camp (5200m). The road demands our driver’s constant attention and is absolutely terrifying in sections. The view however, makes up for the length of the journey. We can see a huge sweep of the Himalayan range including peaks over 8000m such as Makalu, Lhotse, Everest, Gyachung and Cho Oyu. Our first sight of Everest is breathtaking and leaves one absolutely speechless, all of the demands of the road and boring, sometimes terrifying hours of travel make perfect sense as we finally pull into base camp. Everest shines like a goddess in the late evening sun as we prepare to spend the night in the Rongphu Monastery guesthouse.

We leave Base Camp and travel to Tingri, which takes about 5 hours on the bumpy and dusty roads. We stop for lunch and travel another 5 hours to reach Zhangmu. This is a very pleasing view as we approach on the Himalaya’s south side. We drive through the valley and we are greeted by various shades of green from the trees and bushes, our ears are filled with the singing of waterfalls, and the moisture in the air makes me fresh from head to toe. Zhangmu is a bustling border town, which has a fascinating mix of population, buildings, and stores and after the quiet solitude of the Everest region; this is a welcome change of tune. We spend the night in Zhangmu before heading back the way we came. I have had a fantastic time during my travels and have met some varied and wonderful people, although communicating with people from different cultures who speak different languages we seemed to muddle through mostly by using hand gestures and mime, whilst at times this was a little frustrating it was also great fun, some of the things people came up with to get their points across was hilarious.