North Face of Mount Everest - Tibet

Cho Oyu (8201m or 26,906 ft asl) from the Friendship Highway in Tibet

I was up most of the night … partly due to the cold … and partly due to the altitude! Nyalam in Tibet is ‘only’ about 3800 metres above sea level but that’s still pretty high (12,500 feet). Altitude sickness can affect anyone regardless of their fitness level. The key to avoid it … is to move to higher altitudes gradually – like what you do when you trek (walk) in high mountain ranges like the Himalayas where day by day you  move up a bit & down a bit.

One of the dangers of doing an overland journey from Nepal to Lhasa is that you must cross a number of 5000+ metre passes (the highest is 5,260m or 17,250 feet asl) and you stay at about 400 metres asl for much of the journey. To put these altitudes into perspective 5620m (or 17,250 feet) is  2000 feet higher than the tallest mountain in British Columbia (and for my friends to the south, that is about 3000 feet higher than Mount Ranier in Washington and Mount Shasta  in California).

Tibetan prayer flags at the summit of our first 5000m + pass

And because we are driving … going up in altitude very rapidly … I was certainly feeling it! I can remember suffering from altitude sickness (minor) on two occasions… once in Europe at Zermatt in Switzerland and the other in the mountains of Peru – on both occasions I went up too fast and was fine once I went down in elevation.

Despite the shortness of breath, minor headache and general ‘feeling crummy’ I was doing okay and was stunned by the scenery. For much of one day we were able to view many 8000+ metre peaks including Makalu, Cho Oyu and the grand-daddy of them all … Mount Everest!

Each high pass was decorated with Tibetan prayer flags (of 5 main colours) that say a prayer with each gust of wind. What a treat to see again (I remember seeing them when trekking in the Annapurna and Everest regions on the Nepal side of the border years ago).

Vehicle access also has other impacts … one of which has to do with ‘visitor experience’. There was a recent article in a Kathmandu newspaper about the reaction of locals vs international travelers to the construction of a road in a traditional trekking area. The locals were excited to finally have road access to their villages … whereas the reaction from some international trekkers was that the roadway detracted from their ‘tourist experience’. They wanted the ‘traditional Nepal trekking experience’ and did not like having vehicles passing them as they walked the mountain trails. I can understand viewpoints on both sides of the coin.