Dawa and his effin' wife

I forget whether I mentioned that Dawa had brought his wife along for the journey. We picked her up at another place where we'd stopped for momos. The bathrooms in this town we so bad shit extended all the way to the outside entrance. I should've taken a picture. Shit all over the floor. Apparently, Dawa's wife's cousin or sister was having a baby right on the border.

Nobody slept well at Everest and I woke up feeling pretty shitty. Combination of altitude sickness and a hangover and some weird feeling in my stomach. Dawa took us down to Everest Base Camp. We decided we didn't want to walk 2 hours from the monastery on a road very much accesible by car. It was freezing cold don't forget.

We decided we would trek around the base of Mt. Everest for a couple hours. We got there and the wind was howling away. It was blowing so hard in my face that I could hardly breathe. The girls turned back in less than 10 minutes, an iced-over stream was enough to make the tropical island girls (French Mauritian girls). Originally they had planned to do several days of trekking around the base. We all had a good laugh about that in retrospect. I trudged (is that the word?) for another hour or so. I had images of myself collapsing and needing to be carried back. Hangover trekking at altitude in strong winds is hard. So I kept going until I thought I'd get a nice clean view of Everest. Just around one more bend I kept saying. Anyways it became one bend to many and I turned back. As luck would have it, it really was only one more bend and then it became a nice little valley protected from the wind. Damn!

I walked back to jeep and stopped several times. I could've had nice little naps on the jagged stones. I laid down on several actually. There was virtually no vegetation at Everest. All I could see was rock and snow. Completely barren and lots of wind. It really isn't a place that humans are meant to go. By meant, I mean adapted to go.

So now we come to a key moment in the trip. One we have decided to immortalize in a t-shirt. We drove out of Everest base camp. Scott and Sam had been looking for it all over the place in the valley (we'd actually stopped the jeep there, some lady told us it was a 30 minute walk, I guess she had no clue). We'd been driving for maybe an hour and then Dawa stopped the jeep. He went to the back of the jeep and got some water. He came back and we kept driving. Maybe 20 minutes later he stops again. He gets out and goes around to the back. He's out there for maybe 5 minutes and Sam decides to see what's up. He opens the door and the back passenger side tire is completely flat. Rim touching the ground flat.

The girls decide that while he is changing the tire, they'll go for a walk and then we can pick them up along the road when we get moving again. Us 3 guys, decide to just sit and wait. Dawa slowly gets the jack out and then changes the tire. After putting the spare on, he decides there's a problem. The spare is flat, too! He never lowered the vehicle but decided him pushing on the tire was test enough.

He and his wife have some snacks since we're going to wait for a passing vehicle to help. The girls return aware that the odds of them being picked up by us were getting smaller and smaller. Eventually, Dawa decides to go. He and his wife grab some things and walk back down the road from where we came. All he tells us is to stay at with the car. We have no idea when he'll return. The 5 of us hang out in the car for a long freaking time and then I leave to go to the bathroom.

I come back and off in the distance we see 2 people walking along a path. Maybe we're saved. Scott notices what the 2 are wearing and yells "It's Dawa and his fucking wife." They'd been gone for 2 hours and we now walking along some parallel road in the opposite direction. What the hell!

Later, we see 2 more people off in the distance. Who are these people? We wonder who they are for the longest time and then see a giant herd of goats following them. We get worried as these 2 approach the vehicle. We were all in some weird state of paranoia by this stage. They come and peek into the windows. Tibetans aren't the cleanest of people and nor do they have the best of oral hygiene either as we discover. Sam decides they are safe and shows them what's wrong with the jeep. They'd approached from the left side. Then these 2 decide to hang around a bit, peering into the jeep and all. I don't think these 2 had had many opportunities with tourists or white people before. Then before they leave the offer us the chance to buy a goat so we could eat it. We decide not to.

Then we're alone again in the jeep. We decide to go through all the compartments to see if there's anything useful to survival. A few of us were sure we'd be spending the night in this jeep freezing to death right on the Tibetan plateau. Nice views of mountains but between them the land is absolutely flat. We find several items of note. First some unidentified green substance in little baggies. It isn't marijuana but that's really all we know. Next we find the vehicle registration. The vehicle we were told was a 1998 Toyota Landcruiser when we had been sure it was no later than a '93 was actually a '92. Then we find Dawa's ID. He's not 29 as he had claimed but 34. No wait, we find another set of ID and he is 29. Who is this guy? Why does he have 2 IDs with his photo with different birthdates.

We begin to wonder who our driver is. We question why he stopped for water. Did he puncture the tire on purpose? Is he going to let us freeze to death overnight? What was he doing when he headed off for 2 hours only to re-emerge in the distance somewhere else? Why had no cars past in the 3 hours we had been there? Why did Dawa not tell us where he was going? Should we have bought a goat?

We decided the next time a shepherd went by that we would indeed buy a goat. A few more hours past. We were still in the jeep. Then off in the distance, along the parallel road, which was paved (why weren't we on the paved road?) we saw two vehicles approaching from the direction Dawa had gone. We needed to save ourselves. Dine, Sam, and I raced to catch them before they had driven by. This other road was several hundred metres away. We didn't think we'd catch them. Dine used her big red scarf and waved it furiously in the air. They actually stopped and we went to them. They were Chinese tourists and didn't understand what we were saying. From what we could work out with signs, they had seen our driver, understood we had a flat tire, and motioned that they'd be coming around to our vehicle. We went back to our 4x4 which looked so tiny off in the distance along some dirt path that couldn't be seen from the main road. The Chinese never came.

Then maybe an hour later, we see another group of vehicles. This time Vanessa and Scott run to stop them. They reach them and out of one of the vehicles, Dawa emerges with a new tire. The jeeps had several empty seats as far as we could tell and she'd been making due in the back with all our bags piled up around her. We figured his wife must be at the next village. Dawa takes awhile to cross this field with a giant tire over his back. Just as he reaches the vehicle, a mysterious cart being pulled by a donkey arrives on the dirt road. Who do we see sitting in the cart but Dawa's wife? Why did she arrive by donkey and Dawa by jeep? It really made no sense.

With our fears of a driver who'd just left us to die in the middle of nowhere subsided, we were on our way again. Dawa had very strange driving habits. If the road was good, flat, and straight he would drive maybe 40km per hour. In the middle of nowhere, driving on what was barely even a path going over all kinds of bumps and through water, he would drive about 60km. No sense. Eventually the sun set and we were driving through these hills and over passes in the pitch blackness. We still didn't know if we would actually make it to Tingri and we had more images of us sleeping in the 4x4. Then at last Dawa pointed at some lights in the distance and said "Tingri." Then he would turn and the lights wouldn't be in front of us and we would worry. I was getting pretty restless in the end. I needed to get out of the jeep or something terrible might happen.

Finally, after about 10 hours (3 hours for other groups) we got to Tingri. We tried to find a guesthouse which we had read had hot showers. It had been about 4-5 days since our last one. Lonely Planet had lied to us. They only had hot showers in the summer. We spent another night in an unheated room. We had more momos. I had 2 bowls since Dine had just become really unwell and needed to go right to bed. I was starving. We decided we didn't need to stop at the guesthouse for lunch since Tingri wasn't that far away. Despite all our plans to post really bad things about Dawa and the Snowland Hotel where we had hired our car and driver, we never followed through. They really do have you on those one-way journeys.