Happy camper!

After leaving Zhangmu we headed for more remote parts of China. We left in the evening because as I described in the last entry (I think), they do roadworks during the day and only open the roads at night. We spent a night in a simple and cold hotel in the middle of nowhere. I was sharing a room with Maeve, and just as we had snuggled up in bed our tourleader Tamara came and knocked on the door telling us we had to move because the hotel was fully booked. So there was nothing else to do than to get some clothes on, pack all our stuff and move up to Matt, Jack and Johns room. Didn't sleep all that well, as I was woken up in the middle of the night by someone throwing up outside our room, and later early in the morning by Indians singing...

After that we drove to a small village where we were to camp for a couple of nights. It was in the middle of a valley, and the wind was constantly blowing. Time to unpack thermals and down-jackets! We felt the altitude quite well, I was alright, but a couple of the others had massive headaches. We also felt it when we were doing stuff, just putting up the tent left me completly out of breath! We went for a walk through the village, and got to visit a local family to see how they lived. Very basic housing, but one room was turned into a combined bedroom/shrine, and the kitchen had a TV! We were also supposed to go see some caves and a monastery but they were both closed.

To get us acclimatized we had to go up to the highest altitude we were going to and then come back down, so at about 10.30 pm we set off to the first high-pass. It was about 2,5 hours drive, so we didn't se much when we got there. It was strange being at 5050 meters! The body doesn't really know what you're up to. I felt quite light-headed and one of the others actually threw up a couple of times. We stayed there for an hour before we turned back. The next day we had a long sleep-in and just sat around in the truck playing cards. Our truck is called Daphne, and she has a bad habit of breaking down quite often! Our driver, Ian, and Tamara did some work on her during the day and we took her for a test-drive afterwards, and of course she broke down. It turned out that the whole gearbox needed replacement, so Ian took her off to the nearest town in hope of finding a mechanic at 7.30 pm on a Saturday night... So, new plan! The other truck (there are two groups of us driving paralell for a few weeks) drove off to the next place after dinner, and was going to try to make it back before 6 am so we could make the roadwork-block which shut at 7. If not, we were going to get some local transport. So we all went to bed with our alarms set at 04.45 so we had time to pack up the tents and stuff. Just as we had gotten dressed and packed up our sleepingbag Tamara came along and said Daphne was almost fixed, but wouldn't make it in time for 7 am, and the other truck didn't stand a chance to come back in time, so we were to leave that night instead. Right. Pee-stop and stargazing before we unpacked our sleepingbag and got our pyjamas back on. Just as we were about to snuggle up Tamara came back and said Daphne was fixed and on the way! So quickly quickly, packed up and had dry cornflakes for breakfast before we finally set off.

It was a long day of driving! But the views were so amazing! We went back over the 5050 meter pass, the Lablungla. The nearby mountains were brown, and the Himalayas were streched out in the background with snowy caps. At the very top of the pass there were loads of prayer-flags, and the sky was so blue it looked unreal.

After a couple of break-downs and a nice lunch-stop we finally reached the town of Old Tingri at about 8 pm. The hotel was the nicest one we'd had so far, they even had sit-down toilets and hot showers! A nice change from not having looked in a mirror or had a wash for the last few days.