September 12, 2009 – Day 261 – Tibet

Woke up smelling like a smoked yak. Compliments of the incompetent woman who can only seem to produce smoke instead of fire and her endless piles of unwashed yak scented blankets. Every time the fire would start to get going she would douse it with a health heep of sheep shit until we finally had to tell her to stop and just let it be. It was better to be cold than to die of smoke inhalation.

Everest in the Morning, Tibet

Today’s scheduled lunch stop was in a place called Old Tingri. We were supposed to spend the night there and go to the border tomorrow but, due to some irritating circumstances surrounding our guide, it was decided that we would carry on to the border town and spend the night there. Old Tingri is literally the worst place either of us has ever been. Words can describe it but not to the fullest and most accurate extent that seeing and being there would convey. Why on earth the tour companies choose this place to stop in, even just for lunch, is an absolute mystery (although we have a theory). Stray dogs are everywhere eating from the massive piles of garbage all over the town, lying in the road, beside the road, in front of shop fronts, or roaming the town which is essentially a single road maybe a kilometer in length.

Beautiful Old Tingri

A view down main street

The trash, dead dogs, and raw sewage in the ditches along either side of the road bakes and rots beneath the bright sun and produces a smell rivaling the bathrooms Lin has encountered in the recent days. But the trash is not contained in just these roadside ditches. It is strewn and piled and actively discarded in the road, along the fronts of stores, shops, restaurants, piled into corners where buildings meet, thrown into the stream at the edge of the town. It is everywhere and in unbelievable quantities.

We believe that Old Tingri serves only as a way to hasten tour groups to the border. The border is only about a 6 hour drive from Everest so there is no real need to stop for the night after 2 or 3 hours. It seems to simply stand as a way for the guides and drivers to get a paid day off. They give you the option of spending the entire afternoon and the night in this shit hole of a town (with “nice views,” they like to say) or they will take you on to the border (dumping you off a day early). So you pay for the driver and guide for 8 days but really only receive 7 days and at a rate of US$80 per day– that is a serious amount of money! Saben eyed up the scam pretty fast and was getting on our driver’s case about it. When he pushed him on why we would stay here in the first place he said that “we shouldn’t stay here, we should go to the border” and refused to say why we would ever stay here. When we asked him how far it was to the border he said it was 4 hours, we were pissed about them stealing a day from us and told him we would like to spend the night in Old Tingri and head for the border tomorrow. He said we could do this but we would be driving all day tomorrow because it would take us 8 hours to get to the border. When we pointed out the obvious time discrepancy between today and tomorrow he simply said that it was better for us to go to the border today.

After  only 4 hours, we arrived at the border town. Actually we were almost there when we were stopped indefinitely for road construction. We got out and walked around, watched the herds of goats being driven down the mountain (how did they ever get through the construction?) and even had coffee—compliments of our travel mates—beneath a waterfall going over top of the road.

Goats coming down the mountain

Word came around that the construction would carry on another hour or two and none of us wanted to hang around in the mean time. Our guide told us we were only about 10 minutes from town and we decided to just walk down and have the driver bring the bags when he came through the construction. So down we went through, over, and around some minorly perilous mountain road construction. The 10 minutes turned into a full hour by the time we actually reached the very bottom edge of the border town and our lodging for the night. It was another 2 hours and well after dark that our driver appeared with our bags (and shower supplies we all so desperately needed!) and only then could we go find some dinner, luckily not cooked by the mean bad cook at our EBC tent hotel. We celebrated a fun week and our last night together with a few beers and some brief visits to what turned out to be seedy working establishments recommended by our guide.

So although we had really enjoyed seeing Tibet, we had not enjoyed the guide and driver for a multitude of reasons. The biggest reasons being that our guide was a liar and the driver was a maniac. Each day our jeep would always be the last to leave and, through furious rates of speed and an unhealthy amount of skidding and squealing around narrow mountain curves, we would always be the first ones to the next sight. But since there are rigidly enforced rules that come with wanting to visit the highly contested region of Tibet, we had no choice but to deal with whoever and whatever the tour company decided to give us. Tomorrow bright and early, we will immerse ourselves in a whole different world, Nepal.

A quick note, we had a great time in Tibet! And although we did not enjoy the services of our driver or guide, we in no way blame Sim’s Cozy Guesthouse (whom we booked the tour through). They have been nothing short of fantastic and simply sell the tours offered by companies in Tibet. Furthermore we were warned by Sim’s that several people had complained about this company in the past but since they were the cheaper option we decided to take the risk. If you want to go to Tibet, book your package through Sim’s. If you want to really enjoy yourself and don’t mind sacrificing a little dough, pay for the better company. (As of this writing we have notified Sim’s of the problems and unsafe handling of our tour and they have been extremely pleasant. I have been told that Sim himself has been in contact with the tour company in question demanding answers. They have even been kind enough to offer a partial refund for the lost 8th day of the tour. This is a true testament to what a stand up and honest company they are)