Road Trip Day 3: Lhatse to Basum via Shegar

Day 3 was a remarkable day because we spent much of the day in view of the mighty, the massive, the “Oh my word is that HUGE” Mount Everest, otherwise known as Qomolangma (pronounced Cho-mo-LONG-ma as far as I can hear). No less impressive were the 8000 plus meter Cho Oyu to the right of the highway and Lhotse and Makalu to the left of our view. The Great Himalayas are truly great. Our first and every view of it took my breath away. Since we were now constantly above 4000 meters (higher than everything in the entire country of Japan!), that was both a figurative phrase and literal reality. It is truly the biggest thing ever. We were very content to just sit in the car, bouncing over the truly awful gravel “road” (actually the Friendship Highway connecting Lhasa to Nepal but surely not a road in any developed sense of the term), stopping every few moments to either “picture” or “pee”- helpfully the two English words our driver completely understood.

During the day we passed over 5000 meters twice, the first marked with a massive sign as the entrance to the Qomolangma National Preserve and the second being our last barrier between us and the mountain (which really doesn’t do it justice… it is such a monster!) and we watched it all afternoon. We passed a couple of checkpoints where we had to show our newly purchased permits to enter the nature preserve and our passports.


We’d intended to sleep in the tiny village of Tashi Dzom (4600 meters) but when we arrived, after WAY too many hours on the gravel highway Dawa convinced us to go 10k further to the city of Basum. Basum is as far as private vehicles are allowed, and tourists, climbers, etc. must pay for a seat on a bus to Rongphu Monastery. We decided to see if we could get a room there so that we could get on a bus for Everest first thing in the morning. This was a lot more confusing than we expected.

The first place our driver brought us too was nothing more than someone’s home. The owner spoke no English and Michael and I were thoroughly underwhelmed by the “bedroom”. I had also developed the beginnings of a headache- there was a squiggly line everywhere I looked and the ibuprofen I’d downed immediately wasn’t working yet. I deferred to him. He became convinced that we were not actually in Basum yet and that if we went further down the road we might find the guesthouse listed in the L.P. He kept repeating “Basum Pembah Guesthouse” slowly and clearly hoping someone might get it and point us in the correct direction. They showed us the other “guesthouse” which was identical to the first place and finally he demanded we drive to “Big Basum” because he (I should say “we”) was convinced we were in “little Basum”, even though the owner of the first place we’d seen corrected him that we were already in “Big Basum”. This was exactly as funny as it sounds and even with my headache, I couldn’t help laughing.

Dawa basically through up his hands and we piled back into the Land Cruiser in search of the “real” guesthouse. What we found was what I call The Snowman from Hell (I think the name was really only “The Snowman”), a dark, cold, bare, and empty hotel-ish place whose owners also ran the buses for Everest. It was basically our only option and they knew it so they totally took advantage of us- ripping us off for the beds in a cold (wet carpet and concrete walls) and poorly lit (one awful fluorescent lightbulb) room. We grumbled for the rest of the day (Michael, unconvinced we’d found Basum kept asking the poor English speaking representative of the pathetic staff if we weren’t actually in any of the other villages mentioned in the guide. One by one the guy shook his head and repeated that yes, we were really in Basum. I gave Michael hell for this later, but it was really frustrating and confusing at the time. And we were so tired!).

There were NO heaters at the place, the bathrooms were even worse than in Lhatse (for your benefit, I will NOT describe them) and there was absolutely nothing to do and nowhere else to go. We were in bed before ten, depressed about our awful accommodations but excited to head for Base Camp the next day. The fact that the staff stayed up all night drinking and partying in the very-next-room *almost* didn’t bother us.