www.kowp.com.au

The first thing I wanted to rejoice about is the time difference. Given that China has rulings over Tibet, they have enforced that Tibet must use their time zones, so it’s 2:15 hours faster than Nepal and has no correlation to the sun. Now that I’m at Basecamp, it’s back to Nepal time, which is nice.

By now, I should start mentioning the “Crazy Italian” man who has earnt himself a reputation, and is clocking up stories again this year. He looks around 60 years old but appears in quite fit condition. Jamie met him last year and had to confront him for being unprepared. He was seen approaching the North Col (7000m) with a little day pack, no Sherpa guide, no food and no tent with a plan to borrow food and share someone’s tent with him. He was then caught stealing food, and let me tell you, doing this, at 7000m is definitely not on. Think about it, if you had been busting your ass all day to get your food to 7000m only to find someone had stolen it, you could imagine the reaction.

So this year he is on the team with the Swiss guy who fell down the stairs and had to turn back toKathmanduleaving the Crazy Italian no car to get to the next village about 3 hours drive away.

So he asked to come in our car (for me.. I didn’t care, I don’t know this guy from a bar of soap, but for Jamie, this was a no go) As it turned out there was no other possible way for him to get to the next village without coming with us. He sat in the middle seat in the back and didn’t say one single syllable.! We were in and out of the car taking photos, he just sat in there.

Then on the way to basecamp he was a little more organised, got up early and asked everyone if he could bum a lift there. (keeping in mind it’s a 5 hour drive and these cars cost us $1.50USD per km! a massive saving for him) The only spot he could get was in the back of a land cruiser with all the luggage. Within 1 hour he had the car stopped and was vomiting all over the place. These roads are pretty rough. Poor dude!

Today, we got up early, packed our bags, had breakfast at the hotel before boarding the 4x4s once again and headed out across the plains towards Chomolungma. It’s a relatively flat drive, although we climbed 750m today (the reason we stayed at Tingri the 2 nights, is to acclimatise). All the driving prior to this has been on “black top” (concrete/bitumen) roads, but today was across dirt aswell as crossing a few ice lakes.

We came across a little town that is a little further down from the north side Base Camp called Rhombuk, which is as far as non-expedition vehicles can take you. So if you wanted to come and see this north side, there is a little shuttle bus that could bring you up otherwise you’d have to walk.

So, we arrived at Basecamp where we were met by the Sherpa team who have been here for the last 48 hours (they don’t need to acclimatise like we do, so they just came straight up here).

Now I’ve gotta say. I am impressed. Everything here is done! These guys have been busy. They had our personal tents up, the large dining tent up, a storage tent, a cooking tent, the toilet tent and the shower tent. Our dining tent has the table prepared with a whole range of condiments, electricity (which is solar powered and feeds into batteries) for our laptops or whatever we need charged and a gas heater under the table. Compared to the dingey hotels we had been staying at, this place was the Ritz! The food they brought out for lunch was damn good too, potato wedges, sandwiches and baked beans.