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Alpine
Ascents International Cho-Oyu Cybercast, Tibet
(26,906ft/8,201m)
Dispatch
Three: 9/9/01 4:20pm, Nalaam, Tibet
Hi
everybody it's Todd, we're in Nalaam right now at
11,500. We've been here, this will be our
second night. It's been great, everybody's
in great health and is doing well. Nalaam is
a great village, it's kind of interesting because
you know you go from Nepal which is very kind of
Hindu, Buddhist, and then you climb up a mountain,
as soon as we cross the border and climb up 2,000
feet up a cliff we are living in the world of
China and the influence it has on Tibet.
Zhangmu
is a great town, we ended up spending an
extra day there, because they had no jeeps
to drive us, they seem to be a little
short on supplies here right now.
but we had a great time, it was good for
us to spend another day at 7,000 feet and
we enjoyed Zhangmu. And the next
morning we took a mini-bus at 6am, and
drove up a very very narrow road,
overhanging just chopped out of the side
of the cliff so the waterfalls go over the
top of the car and it was an amazing
drive, we did a lot of it in the dark, and
the last half hour or so in the sunlight,
and drove to Nalaam. And Nalaam is a
great little village, it has grown a lot
in the last five years. When I first
came here in 1989, there was one house
that was kind of a run-down shack, and
five or six years ago there were a few
more buildings and now we get hot showers
and reasonable accommodations, it's great
for the middle of nowhere. The town
has grown a lot , and it seems like trade
has increased a lot between China, Tibet
and Nepal, so it's been quite busy and fun
too. Looks like there will be
several teams on Cho-Oyu, so we'll see how
busy that will be be when we're there.
Everyone's
good here, everyone's very, very healthy,
we did a hike up to 13 and a half thousand
feet today, and everybody did great, and
we all feel good and we just had showers
and we're going to have dinner here
shortly. We'll be heading off
tomorrow for Tingri which will probably
take us 5 to 6 hours, we'll actually go
over a pass which is just at 17,000 feet
and then drop back down to 14,000 in
Tingri. We're looking forward to
that, we'll see how much Tingri's changed
in the last few years.
Still
a lot of Tibetan houses here, even though
the Chinese have built it up quite a bit,
it's good to see, at least on the surface
that the Chinese are letting the Tibetans
live their own lives and do things that
they used to do, somewhat. We saw a few
monks when we visited a monastery today, a
small one in town, but it was quite nice,
and a lot of Tibetan people feel great at
least. to be happy to be growing their
food and their yaks, I guess because there
is a lot of wealth here that you know
everyone is prospering and I think
everybody is getting on fairly well
together, at least on the surface.
We
were going to go visit a public school
today, and it was not possible, they
turned us down at the last moment, we made
arrangements yesterday, and they just said
politically it was not appropriate for us
to do that, so we did not. So again,
we still deal with the politics of China
in Tibet. It is beautiful here
though, and I can't tell you how good it
feels that we're able to have hot showers
and everyone is very very healthy so we've
got a high outlook and everybody's psyched
to head off to Tingri tomorrow. The best
to all of you from Nalaam.
