The Adventures of Laura Drumm

Dear Friends and Family,

Well, as it has been over a week and approximately 1000 kilometers since my last opportunity to post to this blog. Therefore, I trust that you will be unsurprised to read that I've been on the move. Quite naturally, you may (or, truly, may not) like to inquire, where in the world is she now?

Well, I'll tell you. But, as a warning, you may need to dig out an atlas to follow my answer. My latest journey began with a 12 hour Nepali mini-bus from Kathmandu to Lumbini. Followed by a more fractured trip that began with an another mini-bus, then tuk-tuk, and then I went on foot (over the border into India), and lastly a 2-hour taxi ride which ended in the city of Gorakhpur. The next evening, I caught an Indian Railways sleeper train (sleep not necessarily included) from Gorakhpur that arrived the following afternoon in Delhi. Lastly, a few days ago, I climbed aboard another train and then caught a taxi to where I've now settled: 2 kilometers from a Northern section of the Ganges River, just outside of a town in India called Rishikesh. I'm in Rishikesh for a month, where I plan to study yoga and eat Indian food. Two tasks that I embrace, I must say, with equal enthusiasm.

But I left you all thousands of kilometers back at near the flanks of Mount Everest so...

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Sunrises in Tibet are lovely, as, indeed, sunrises around the world usually are. Tibetan sunrises make the western hills glow gold and cast the eastern hills into the deepest shadows. Tibetan sunrises are also pleasantly accessible for a woman who prefers to open her eyes nearer to 8 am than 6 am thanks to a Chinese government mandate which requires the country operate within a single time zone. As the US and China near -comparable in total area, this would be like Washington DC mandating that Anchorage operate within its same time zone. Personally, I cannot approve of the high-handedness within this mandate and yet, I enjoyed the result: sunrises just shy of 8 am.

We had barely left the town of Shegar and the sun was not yet lighting the hills when we were halted at our first checkpoint. All 3 of us - my guide, our driver and me - had our paperwork thoroughly examined by the Chinese police before we were allowed to continued on our way. The road from Shegar was no longer paved and as we drove up through a mountain pass that morning, we bounced and skidded and even fishtailed in the gravel. The drive should've been scary but it was not. Our driver's skill was evident. And the view at the top of the pass was incredible: the hills pulled aside and between them rested a low blanket of clouds with the peak of Everest touching the sky behind them. Mount Everest was both majestic and unmistakable; it became very evident to me how some people could equate mountains with gods.

We continued to spit dust as we descended down the pass. We crossed through another two police checkpoints.

"Are they looking for me?" I asked.

"Nah," briefly reassured my guide.

But that didn't actually reassure me. We spent near 20 minutes at the next checkpoint, and during that time, the young, stern-faced military police officers spent a lot of time examining my passport and permit and making phone calls. I sat in the car and worried; despite having nothing to hide, these examinations were nerve-wracking. We also stopped in two hamlets that morning, the adults were raking hay into stacks while their children would race full tilt towards our SUV, crowding around the car and calling to me, "Halloh, halloh, lady." Or pointing to their mouths, pleading with their eyes, and cupping their hands to await money. I hated the begging - which I later read has no stigma in Tibetan culture - those children that morning seemed to have put aside dignity in hopes of candy or a Chinese yuan that other foreigners had taught them to ask for but that they didn't necessarily need. It hurt to refuse their pleas, but neither would I give them money.

Our last checkpoint stopped us at a famous Everest Kodak moment. The police examined our paperwork while I stared out the window at the Rongbuk Monastery, a low, remote monastery crowned by a gold-tipped stupa. Later, in Kathmandu, I realized that many a postcard photographer has positioned him or herself behind the monastery and photographed the stupa with Mount Everest in the background. I bought a postcard of this particular angle on Everest but felt that my experience far outweighed missing a single, if famous, picturesque moment.

Although I tried not to show it, you could've knocked me over with a feather when we pulled up to that night's Everest 3-star hotel. Neither the itinerary nor my guide warned me that in the Everest Base Camp, hotels were actually large, woolen rectangular tents with chimneys thrusting from their roofs. Upon our arrival, I parted a heavy curtain, stepped onto a bright red carpet, and tried not to blink at the sight of wooden benches covered with thick woolen rugs and piled with thick comforters that surrounded the tent's perimeter. An iron stove, faithfully tended by a kind Tibetan lady proprietress, turned out to be the life of the place: they spent the entire day heating kettle after kettle of water to boiling. I walked to a corner bench well away from the door, set my backpack down, and immediately the proprietress poured me a glass of jasmine tea. She then picked up a colorful thermos and poured steaming cups of yak butter tea for our driver while my guide informed me that we'd be spending the night there.

"Ok?" he asked me more than some-what rhetorically.

Sure it was ok by me. I had just finished Jon Kraukauer's Into Thin Air and from that expected that the base camp would lack amenities. I had never camped in a tent that large, nor that plush and I had packed a flashlight that would do very well for visiting the outhouse. But I did wish that someone had warned me to savor the morning's hot shower.

The North-side Mount Everest Base Camp was actually 4 kilometers from where we stayed. We stayed in a u-shaped cluster of hotels - sorry, I mean tents - facing Mount Everest, between the monastery and the actual base camp. Our camp was relatively isolated from the weather by lively, jagged hills and decorated with thousands of years of avalanche debris. There wasn't much to do within the camp itself, I wasn't permitted to walk beyond its perimeter, and so I nested our tent's corner and caught up on my journal while my guide, our driver, the hotel proprietress's husband (not to mention various other Tibetan guides and drivers) drifted in and out, smoking and playing cards. Sometimes I myself drifted out into the chilly afternoon: to gape at the mountain, to explore the camp, to visit the outhouse - but most of the time, I quietly resided in my own English-language filled world sipping on jasmine tea, listening to the slap of cards against the table. Black birds with vivid yellow beaks flew above the valley, white dust from the dried river bed turned to clouds in the stiff winds. All the while, Everest remained a breath-taking sight. I quickly ran out of appropriate adjectives. Sunset partially pinkened the mountain and night quickly descended upon the camp. Our proprietress served me a plate of Tibetan rice and I ate it with wooden chopsticks, illuminated by a single florescent bulb powered by a car battery. Eventually, my eyes resumed their worrying problem with focusing and so I sat and listened and sometimes participated in the Tibetan socializing... all men, all curious (a female, alone?), and all perfectly friendly.

When it came time for bed, fully clothed, I shimmied into my REI sleeping bag liner (purchased in anticipation of unhygienic beds) and my guide tucked two comforters around me, gently tucking them around my feet and behind my back as if I were a toddler. Indeed, I felt just like a toddler when, just after I had been comfortably settled and put my head down on two teddy bear pillows, I wriggled out of my bed to use the outhouse one final time. Once re-settled, I blocked my ears with my iPod's headphones, turned my back to the light bulb and fell asleep to strangely vivid dreams about people at Perkins Coie... my former workplace in Seattle. I awoke several times throughout the night but it wasn't until morning that I could see that while the hotel proprietress and her family had not slept in our tent but my guide, our driver and two of their friends had settled under their own comforters on the benches. But propriety had been observed in giving me an entire bench wall to myself. During the night, the fire had burned out and my leftover jasmine tea turned to ice.

The sunrise at Everest was lovely but not brilliant. My guide and I walked 4 kilometers, often having to stop while I caught my rasping breath, to the "real" base camp. Bored Chinese guards examined our paperwork before waving us to a short hill strewn with prayer flags. We climbed to the summit of the hill and there, spread before us, was Mount Everest. We sat for a few minutes, just to enjoy. The sky was a compelling blue and completely devoid of clouds... and Everest was as you might expect: gorgeous, majestic, breath-taking.

BUT it wasn't amazingly tall. You see, if one comes from a land ruled by a 14,410 foot towering mountain (Mt. Rainier) and if one has already reached an elevation of 17,090 feet, then the tallest mountain in the world appears to be a mere 11,939 feet. And yet, a visit to Mount Everest can only be rated as wondrous.

A group of Chinese tourists joined us on the hill but appeared to be more excited about me, an American tourist with "blond" hair, than the world's highest peak. With my permission, each person put his or her arm around me and posed for pictures - without the mountain - before bidding us cheery farewells as my guide and I began our walk back to the hotel.

We broke camp at noon and had driven approximately 1 kilometer past the Rongbuk monastery when the SUV broke down. Without any sign of alarm or even annoyance, our driver and my guide matter-of-factly climbed out and rounded to the back of Land Cruiser in order to extract a box of tools, unwrap several engine parts, and set to work. I remained in my backseat, took in an amusing NPR podcast, and used the "ladies room" (an outcrop of rocks just below where the gentlemen could see me) several times. It took another driver and guide stopping to provide aid as well as our hotel roprietress's husband and friend delivering a fresh car battery (I suspect that ours died testing early repairs), and we were on our way.

I cannot think that a car break down, especially in a remote region such as Tibet is ever a good thing, but 2 kilometers after getting started, I was very glad that I had had so much time to utilize my primitive ladies room or fear may have very well had me peeing in my pants.

No joke.

But the landscape continued to enchant me. The hills turned ochre, green and brown-gold, smooth, rough... they were constant only in their changefulness. Some resembled the sort-of cliffs bordering rough seas while others bore smoothness of eons. We saw few people that day but memorably, I caught a glimpse of a man with a dark face and lean build, red tassel wrapped amongst the braids on his head, driving 6 saddled yaks with a long stick. Reluctant to loose sight of him, I turned to the back window and the man and his yaks became Platonic shadows with green hills parted around them, as if the hills were dusty green velvet stage curtains, while snow-covered Himilayas brightened the horizon.

The beauty of the ride would've been sublime - except for the road. Driving away from Everest, we veered onto an unmarked dirty track, crossing a river valley and beyond. The road was sometimes gravel, sometimes gravel and rocks, sometimes large rocks with streams of water pouring through them. Many times I lost sight of the road altogether and several times I considered interrupting our progress so that I could take a picture for you all that I would titled "Where is the bloody road???"

Over bumps, skidding through gravel, we could've been stars in an ultimate Toyota SUV commercial but I felt like I was sitting on a trampoline. The SUV would hit a bump and I'd go flying from my bench seat - feeling as if my bones were being flung to the ceiling and then I'd drop back and all my bones would crash against each other. The bouncing, however, was not the worst part of the ride. We kept coming to narrow bits of road, cut from cliffs, barely wide enough for our car, with a 100 foot drop to the river below. And the road felt as if it inclined downwards, towards the river. I slid to the hill-side of the car for balance - and to escape the sight of the river. Our driver had already proved himself stellar but I was terrified.

Arriving in the frontier town of Tingli at somewhere around 6 pm was a relief despite the fact that it required the use of an enamel basin for washing my face and utilizing a truly disgusting outhouse. I sipped on jasmine tea as children parted the curtains of the street-side hotel restaurant to beg for money and an elderly man serenaded us by playing a tin coffee can strung with strings. Truly amazing sounds came from his instrument - which had pegs for tuning the strings and an arched bow. Next door, a family was tossing bowls of whitewash upon their house while others painted the trim with inexact colored paint and brushes.

The next day's drive was more palatable that the previous day's, but still had its moments. We continued away from the village of Tingli on a dirt road but were regularly forced off the road in order to skirt bridge construction sites. We drove around a lot of construction sites but the most notable required 10 minutes off-roading through hills of dirt on the right-side of the site before our driver seemingly forced to concede to wait until backhoes had completed their next stage of work and might let us pass. However, our driver clenched a lit cigarette between his teeth and went for a stroll near the hills on the left side of the site. When he came back, he honked until he had rearranged several trucks and we could escape our parking spot. Our driver then drove into a ditch, spun the wheels and spit gravel, but then manged to find enough purchase in order to drive up and onto a brush and rock covered hill. Tipped to almost 30 degrees and speechless (both with morbid fascination and admiration), I flattened myself in the seat while my guide grinned from outside the car before joining us on the other side of the construction.

The scenery widened to the either side of us and soon we were driving straight up towards more snow-capped Himalayas. Eventually we were forced to halt in a line of SUVs and cars - all captives of construction on the "Friendship Highway" that would open for traffic sometime that evening. There was a village where one could pass some time eating lunch and making friends and so of course, I did both. But as evening approached, it became downright cold in the village and so I returned to our parked SUV to await the rest of our drive.

After sunset, somewhere near 15 minutes before 8 pm, the road opened. Our driver tossed his cigarette, gripped the wheel and followed the path of the SUV in front of us. At first the highway was paved but quickly we ran into tight turns and bouncy holes. If I had been scared before, now I was beyond terrorised. It was very dark. There were no street lights. The road sharply twisted and turned... there were slides... In the dark, I glimpsed impressive cliffs and beautiful waterfalls but the road felt undefined with sketchy bridges, piles of rocks and backhoes and shovels and concrete molds and shiny guardrails - or worse - no guardrails at all. Sometimes, I'd peer out the side of the truck and see flames flickering in the distance: migrant road workers taking their dinners in tents. The dark below was fathomless and I imagined us helplessly slipping down into it; our driver sang with his music while my guide warily watched the road. I clutched the door handle - if that handle had been a human hand, I would've broken it. The 30 kilometer driver exceeded an hour... but we eventually and safely arrived into a city built into switchbacks. The city streets were lined with lorry trucks waiting their turn to cross the border and little convenience stores, waiting to feed snacks to the lorry truck drivers. My tension eased amongst my first shower in days. It may seem over-dramatic, but during the hour or so previous, all the beauty of the days before had vanished from my mind's eye... and at that moment, logically or illogically, I was simply relieved to be alive.

Love,
Laura