The ninth day began with a booming sound that echoed throughout the entire hotel. “Boom, boom, boom…” It was the sound of my professor knocking on the door and telling us to get ourselves out of bed. Oh yes, our professor was our wake up call that morning. How odd is that.
We all got up rather quickly, considering we were so incredibly excited to hike up Mount Everest. And although it looked a little overcast at first, it slowly started clearing as we were eating our delicious peanut butter covered waffles, so we grew even more eager. Some of the members of our group didn’t even eat anything… they just began the long trek up there. I wasn’t really that hungry, but I ate a lot, knowing it was going to take a bit more energy than usual to get up this trail.
It was beautiful by the time we started our hikes, so we got a bunch of pictures of Everest before the clouds took over again.
Now, I’ve gone hiking before. Not hardcore hiking, but I’ve had a 30 pound pack on my back and hiked parts of the White Mountains in NH more than a handful of times. So I’m a bit accustomed to pacing myself and going up a trail at a decent rate. I don’t know if you’ve ever read Into Thin Air, a book that covers several different groups’ attempts at Mount Everest, but it really does not emphasize enough how thin the air is even on the trail to base camp. Or how impossible it is to breathe. My goodness.
Our drivers brought us down a little ways to where there were a bunch of tents set up by the side of the road—tents which offered “hotel space” as well as different trinkets to help a tourist remember his or her time there. We walked from this point on. At first it was a nice little jaunt, I was hauling, going even faster than the small horses that were giving people rides up to base camp in small buggies. Even so, I had to stop for some photo opportunities.
In this picture, you can see one of the buggies I am referring to.
But once the trail started to incline just the slightest bit, I honestly could not breathe. I couldn’t help but notice the empty bottles of oxygen people had discarded (even at this point!) by the side of the trail. It was vicious, but I told myself that I had to climb up to base camp or not go there at all. I refused (it’s an Ainsworth stubbornness thing) to take the buggy up. So though it took me a while, and I was out of breath quite a bit, I eventually found a rather slow but workable pace that brought me the rest of the way up without having to stop at all. Being an English major who loves kids, I couldn’t help but appreciate the moral of the story about the race between the tortoise and the hare when I finally reached base camp.
Here’s a picture of Kate and I right before we reached basecamp.
And then I was there!!!! It took about an hour all together to hike up. It was sooo cold, but so fabulous. Breathtaking, really. I could never have prepared myself for it. No one could have—a lot of us discussed this matter later that evening over dinner. Honestly, it was nothing like I thought it would be, but phenomenal, nonetheless. It honestly did not look like an actual, real thing… it looked more like something one would create on a green screen or something. I just stared at it for the longest time.
And here's me on top of the world! (Ok. So I was only at the highest point of base camp. Close enough, or should I say, the closest I'll probably ever get.)
After drinking in Mount Everest’s majesty, I spent a good half an hour collecting rocks and such for friends back home and at GMC. (I honestly can’t wait to finally distribute them all). After that period of time, however, I knew that I had to start heading back because we had a lot of driving ahead of us that day. So I slowly made my way back (it was much easier going down than up), collecting rocks all along the way. I ended up getting six different rocks on the way back that look like hearts, so I’ve been giving them to the people who have really been my solid “rocks” in my life thus far. It’s been a neat experience, plus I feel like I am showing people how much I truly appreciate them by doing so.
When I finally returned to my vehicle, I was very surprised to discover that while our group was hiking, our driver had purchased bracelets for everyone in the vehicle. I guess he picked them each out for us based on what he had noticed about us—mine is black and green, my two favorite colors! And the shape was interesting too—I really feel that for not being able to actually talk to us, he knew us fairly well by the end of the trip.
Then off we went! We packed up the vehicles quickly at the hotel, had a warm goodbye from the entire staff there, as we were the only guests they had had in a while, and continued our journeys through Tibet. Before we left, we gave one last wave goodbye to the majesty that is Mount Everest.
We had to retrace our steps for a little while—had to go back through the crazy rivers and dangerous dirt mountain passes. We stopped, as we did the day before, by this river for lunch. And I got a sweet picture of Bud.
We also had to pass back through the Chinese security check-point, that I’m fairly sure I failed to mention in my last entry.
If you’ve kept up with these entries, you would have noted that during one of our trips to a monastery, our tour guide Tenmpa was gone getting us a permit to go to Mount Everest. Evidently, this was not only a permit to visit Mount Everest, but also one to enter what the Chinese government aptly calls “The Western Frontier,” which Mount Everest is in. You have to get permission one day in advance from the government to cross into this part of Tibet. The government then sends a list of names to the checkpoint, where the Chinese guards check your passport to make sure you are who you claim. It was all a little 1984, especially since Jim mentioned that Tenmpa was having a difficult time obtaining the permit, and actually had to be interrogated for a short period of time. I guess there was this live broadcast back in April held at the Mount Everest base camp, during which some Western college kids got on camera with huge signs that said “Free Tibet.” As a result, Jim literally had to beg the government to allow our group to get into Tibet… aka… he almost had to cancel the trip altogether because of the ruckus this live broadcast created. It freaked me out a little bit, I’m not going to lie. But everything went well overall. And we honestly didn’t have any trouble from any of the guards there. They were just as nice to us as anyone else at the checkpoint, although they did particularly emphasize that we weren’t allowed to take pictures of the actual checkpoint. This, too, freaked me out a bit, but it is a different country, with a different type of government and different types of rules…
So we traveled just as far as we did the day before, only a little bit more, as we traveled to Sakya hotel. We arrived at the hotel pretty late, so we postponed our visit to the monastery there until the next day. Instead, a group of college girls (myself included—there were five of us altogether, but only four at this particular gathering) all pooled into one room and spent the night chatting and watching some Chinese concert. It was actually a lot of fun. It was also a little weird because we were doing such normal things in such a not so normal environment. We ended up crashing pretty early (long car rides really tire one out…) and that was that.