Dan Mazur's Kangchenjunga Spring 2002

Dispatch March 7th, 2002: We had an enjoyable morning of sightseeing around Shigatse, and visited the Tashilumpo Monastery, Tibet's "Largest" with 700 monks (although it used to have 5000). Jon Otto called from Lhasa, saying the truck going from Lhasa to basecamp was late due to licensing problems. I felt this was good, as it would give us more time for sightseeing . We left Shigatse around twelve and drove on a very bumpy road which was under construction, to the beautiful city of gyantse (at 3700 meters) which has a large walled fortress on a huge cliff in the center of town. It was a beautiful sunny day, and we stopped for lunch. Some Tibetan nomads played a local guitar-like instrument, and we gave them some change. We reached basecamp at 6:00 at night, in beautiful sunshine after a long winding drive up the Gyantse-Lhasa highway. Our basecamp is located in the Kara La at 4900 meters. The temperature was -5 degrees centigrade as we sat down to dinner in the large basecamp tent that Jon Otto had set up for us. We got all of our basecamp sleeping tents organized (1 per member), and went to bed.

Thank you very much. Cheers for now. Yours
Sincerely, Daniel Mazur from http://www.SummitClimb.com

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