Road Trip Day 4: To Base Camp or Bust!

Okay, so the plan for the day was this: Wake up and take the first bus to Rongphu Monastery (4980 meters- the highest monastery in the world!) then slowly hike our way the final 8k and 200 meters to Everest Base Camp. If it was nice, we felt all right, and didn’t think we’d either freeze to death or keel over due to the altitude, we would spend the night in one of the tents. We left plenty early so we still had the option to sleep at the monastery guesthouse or to take the bus back down and get out of dodge if we wanted to.

This is how it played out: We woke up late, but it didn’t really matter because we were the only ones who had stayed in our little dump of a hotel and the hung-over drivers were even slower getting going than us. After waiting around for almost an hour, the three of us and three guys from California (who’d arrived while we were waiting) finally purchased our 80 yuan round trip tickets. My funny eye squiggle was back and I quickly downed more advil hoping that would solve the problem. I hadn’t hardly slept at all and realized too late that I’d been looking right into the intense morning sun without my sunglasses. Feeling less than confident in myself, I squeezed into the “bus” (a Dodge Ram van that had certainly seen much happier days) and we tumbled off for the monastery. It was an awful hour-long ride. The van hadn’t even half the shocks of our cushy Land Cruiser and I had managed to sit on the side of the van with the sun. Hannah lent me her wide-brimmed hat and I just focused on the scenery hoping my head wouldn’t implode. Even more disappointingly… it was cloudy. We were only “sort of” sure which mountain was Everest until we stopped.


The van stopped outside what we assumed was the monastery. We were instantly freezing cold and the monastery looked absolutely dead so we forgot our plan to get some tea before hiking. The American guys went off in search for the horse carts to the top and Hannah and Michael started moving before we could even talk about our plan… they were shivering it was so cold. I’d been distracted talking to a Japanese couple that had come running down the road with no gloves or socks! They’d spent the night at Base Camp, but I was totally convinced by their utter lack of preparation (or common sense) that they were even slightly sane. I would have talked to them longer but my Swedish friends were getting further and further up the road so I ran off to catch up.

And then stopped dead. My lungs just wouldn’t cooperate. I was instantly dizzy and felt like my lungs had frozen. With a wave at the Swedish two-some I decided it would be smarter to go my own pace, which turned out to be, by necessity, slow motion. I really had no problem with that and the Hannah and Michael would stop and wait for me every couple of minutes. We tried to take it easy but it wasn’t easy at all, especially when those American *(^%%$s passed us in their individual horse driven wagons. We took pictures of them and the mountain and then broke out our emergency morale boosting Snickers. That’s when I noticed that my eyes were getting all funny again. Everything I looked at was kind of blurry like I was drunk. When I bent down to get into my bag and then stood back up the hills twisted and swirled in front of me. This was added to the dizziness and shortness of breath that I’d already decided I could deal with. I wasn’t feeling well. I took a bite of the Snickers and thought about my situation. Before I really thought at all, I realized that my tongue, roof of my mouth, and fingers of my left hand were numb. I couldn’t taste the chocolate at all. My mind was made up for me- there was obviously no way I could continue. Before I even had a chance to get disappointed, I stuffed the half eaten Snickers into my pocket, pulled my gloves back on, explained the problem to my friends and did a U-turn down the trail. Though the Swedes had offered to walk me back down I told them to keep going and to meet me back down at Basum, I would be fine.

Then I made myself turn around and start walking. I was quickly more than a little scared about my condition and my predicament. I knew I needed to get down from the mountain as soon as I could but I had no idea if there would be a van at the monastery or what I would do if I couldn’t make it back. I briefly looked around for another horse cart but there was nothing and no one around. One step after another, forcing myself to go slow while I wanted to sprint, I inhaled and exhaled my way back to the monastery. It sucked. I was terrified and I prayed to God that I’d make it back before something awful happened.

Fortunately, I did. I walked up to the monastery and sat down on a boulder near an empty van. Some peasants walked up to me and I pointed at the van while asking (begging!), “Basum?”. The woman, using my watch and her gestures, indicated that the van wasn’t leaving until 12:00 (it was only 10:30am), but another closer to the monastery would leave at 11:00. After she left I was sighted by a five-year old begger. I rolled my eyes, if ever- this- was not the time to have to deal with beggars. She was, however, relentless. In a really surreal dizzying exchange, I was soon joking with her as she tried to sell me her necklace and/or her filthy baby brother. As much as I didn’t have the energy to deal with her, it took me over ten minutes to be able to pull myself up off the rock and into the refuge of the monastery.

There I waited with an American couple for the van to leave. It was an incredibly anticlimactic and disappointing ride down. I felt better- my eyes were all right but I’d been left with a whopping headache. The rest of the day; from about noon until after 7pm, I spent waiting back at our bleak little guesthouse for Hannah and Michael. It was definitely the lowest point of my trip. There was really nothing I could do about it –obviously I had to go back- but I spent the day wondering if I had taken it slower at first, if I had taken a horse cart, if we’d stopped for tea like we’d planned… and on and on.


I was thrilled when Hannah and Michael returned and we got out of the Snowman for a lovely little guesthouse (identical to the ones we’d snubbed the previous evening) in Tashi Dzom for the night. They were exhausted and I was disappointed, so after a delicious home-cooked meal we all crashed in our cute little mud-walled, candle-lit room.