She shrugged. “I don’t even remember the last page of what I read in my book.”
“Geez, I hope that’s not true.” I looked at her sternly.
“Ammon has a photographic memory,” Mom explained, as if it must be obvious to everyone.
“Not quite, but close enough,” Ammon said before he continued his mini-lesson. “A lot of tourists branch off to go to the North Base Camp on the Tibetan side, because it offers the closest road access to Everest. Everest is called Sagarmatha in Nepali and Chomolungma in Tibetan.”
“Everest is in Nepal though, right?” I asked.
“Actually, what a lot of people don’t realize is that the border between Nepal and China literally goes right down the middle of its summit point. That makes it not just the highest mountain, but also the highest border area in the world.”
“That’s cool,” Mom said. Bree looked thoughtful. “So then, if you climb to the peak, you’d technically be standing illegally in one of the countries.”
“I guess so, but it seems like a pretty hard way to sneak into a country,” Ammon said.
It was so distant on the horizon when we first saw it that it looked tiny, but I was still overwhelmed when I first glimpsed it. I never could have envisioned myself bumping down a gravel road in Tibet and laying eyes on Mount Everest.
The rare villages we encountered along the main highway from Lhasa to Nepal seemed to be nothing more than piled stones, mud brick walls, and neatly stacked cow dung. The same white walls, rusty red roofs, and black window frames we’d seen at the Potala Palace were evident on these homes, as well. I lost myself in the authenticity of one of the smaller villages as I wandered down the ragged dirt alleyways. A few chickens and the tiniest baby yak I’d ever seen were just roaming about. I felt a genuine cultural atmosphere here among the worn prayer flags that were thought to bless the countryside, their colours and holy scripts flapping in the wind.
The villagers were friendly and curious. The women all braided their hair, wore basic jewellery, and wrapped ornamental rope around the crowns of their heads. They dressed in heavy woollen skirts and vests for warmth. Children with dirty, rosy faces wore bright smiles as they ran freely about with the earth caught between their bare toes.
“Do they boil water over fires fuelled by dried cow droppings to bathe? It’s way too cold up here to have cold bucket showers. Then again, maybe they don’t shower at all. From the way they look, that possibility doesn’t seem too farfetched,” I said, but no one had an answer for me, so I was left to wonder where on earth they found electricity or water for bathing, or even enough food, for that matter.
While we were visiting the settlements, we three girls looked for opportunities to take refuge behind a poop-patted, white-stucco shack to have a quick pee before the kids found us again. I always made sure on travel days to wear my sweat pants, which didn’t have a zipper or buttons, so I could swiftly squat, wipe, and pull up.
Once we were on the road again, we climbed quite a bit higher, till we reached a large overhead sign draped with colourful prayer flags. It said we were now at five thousand, two hundred and sixty metres (17,257 ft), indicating that we’d reached Gyatso La, the highest pass on the Friendship Highway. The Swiss bunch got out to celebrate their highest-ever smoke, proving just how invincible their lungs actually were.
“Any cigarette company would be proud to have you guys make a commercial for them,” Ammon told them.
“I don’t know how they can do that,” Mom said, never having taken a puff in her life.
“Neither do I. I already feel like I’ve been hit by a truck,” Ammon agreed.
I shivered. “It’s so flipping cold and windy up here, too. I don’t quite feel like I’m ‘on top of the world’ at all.”
“No?” Ammon asked. “We practically are, though.”
The scenery wasn’t the type I’d typically have considered beautiful – tropical palm trees or lush forests with green grass – but it was certainly magical. It hadn’t taken long for the land to open up and for us to truly feel the magnitude of the place. Behind layers of brown hills, snow-capped mountains sprang up like icy fortresses. Powerful snow giants exhaled breaths of light snow from their peaks.
We’d traversed the three major overpasses and reached altitudes of over five thousand metres (16,400 ft) before finally starting our descent to the border. As soon as the nose of our Land Cruiser pointed downward, it was as if we’d stepped into a game of Jumanji. Everything was transformed. Wet, succulent green jumped out at us as we quickly dropped over two thousand metres (6,561 ft) in the space of only thirty kilometres (18.5 mi). Western China and Tibet had been so grey and windswept that it felt like we were living in an old black-and-white movie. But now stones turned into blades of grass, then into small bushes before they finally let loose and burst into a thriving jungle that dripped with life. Waterfalls poured from the cliffs onto the roads and onto some of the bridges that crossed the deep river gorges. The bubbling white rapids splashing over the huge boulders below made me incredibly thirsty. I was too exhausted to get overly excited, but my mind was actively processing this incredible change.
“It’s sorta like, instead of going up to heaven, we went down to heaven,” Bree said, her face glued to the window.
“This is just the start of an incredible four thousand, six hundred metre drop (15,090 ft). In only a hundred and fifty kilometres (93 mi), this road winds down from the Tibetan plateaus to the fertile rice fields of Nepal,” Ammon pointed out.
“Just think, we’re going to have to walk all the way back up to this altitude,” Mom said, transfixed at the thought.
“And then some,” Ammon said. My body felt the physical changes in the atmosphere as the air thickened. I spent a good portion of the descent analyzing my breathing: inhaling made my lungs feel like an empty balloon being filled. The heaviness of the air returning to them somehow rejuvenated me. The temperature quickly increased, and the extreme amount of moisture in the air made the loose strands from my braid spring up in curls around my ears. It was an incredibly unique experience.
“It’s hard to believe such a dramatic contrast can exist.” Mom was as captivated as the rest of us.
The driver stopped beneath one of the larger waterfalls gushing down the granite cliff onto the road. Simply driving back and forth through the waterfall provided a much-needed rinse from the effects of the dusty washboard roads we’d driven over.
“I guess this is what they call a mountain car wash?” I jumped to the side as water gushed in the cracked window. “And of course, nobody cares if the car gets mouldy or soaked, or even if we’re drowning in the backseat.” You really just had to laugh.
After two days of driving on the worst road of the entire trip, we were suddenly just arbitrarily kicked out onto the mountainside and told that we had to walk the rest of the way. In spite of our insistence that they drive us, the driver kept pointing frantically down the steep road, implying that we needed to follow it to the border. Even as Ammon and the guys tried to reason with him, he was up on the roof untying the luggage and dropping it down in a pile. Both drivers shouted in an antsy tone, trying to make us understand the risk they had already taken. They just couldn’t go any further. This was as far as our ride went.
Ammon handed the driver the rest of the agreed-upon money, which included the last few Chinese yuan we had left. He had, of course, planned that all out precisely in advance so as not to leave the country with an instantly unusable currency. The driver then made a hasty, five-point turn on the narrow road, stopping trucks and buses to do it, and headed back up the mountain to his Tibetan village.
“I suppose after all the hassle it took to actually find drivers to bring us here, it’s not really all that surprising that they’re afraid to go all the way,” Ammon said, looking down at our pile of baggage. There was a lot more traffic on this side of the mountain, and we could sense the border must be close from the number of large, heavily loaded vehicles headed in
the same direction.
I was grateful that it was downhill, but that didn’t prevent my feet from eventually splitting open. I’d always had terribly dry, cracked feet, and the weight of the bag and the drastic changes in weather conditions made them worse. It wasn’t too long before I felt the wet goo of blood pooling in my sandal. Unable to stop or even get a good look at the back of my heel with my bag strapped on, I just kept walking. What choice did I have? Sitting on my butt and crying about it certainly wasn’t going to miraculously glue my skin back. I decided not to stop to take care of the situation and slow the group down. I had more than enough oxygen in my lungs now but, unfortunately, I didn’t feel its positive effects on my aching limbs.
After half-an-hour’s walk, we reached the Tibetan border town of Zhangmu. The houses seemed to be stacked right on top of each other here, fighting to share a thin slice of the cliffside. Once we’d reached the end of the road going through Zhangmu, we found the Chinese customs office. I couldn’t help but worry about the undeniable fact that we were hoping to leave through official channels despite having snuck into the autonomous region illegally. I was sure they were at least going to ask to see permits.
I felt the pulse stop in my neck when the officials started harassing Sebastian, asking to see proof of his Tibetan permit. He fabricated, on behalf of all of us, a story that we had been part of a much bigger tour group that we had split off from, and that the company had our permits. Satisfied with this answer to why we could not provide any documents, the guard approved the Swiss guys’ exit and then continued to process us through. What a relief!
While we finished up at the border, Sebastian was already busy negotiating the ten-kilometre ride through no-man’s land to Nepal’s customs. Like everywhere else, the drivers pushed to get us in their vehicle before any negotiations took place.
A driver was busy waving an open palm showing “five” fingers to Sebastian, who confirmed that he meant five hundred rupees, which would be a reasonable price, given the current exchange rate of sixty Nepalese rupees to a dollar. The driver nodded emphatically and then proceeded to grab our bags as he waved for us to hop into his Land Cruiser.
“I don’t think he’s even listening to him,” I said.
Sebastian was firm and said, “No, we aren’t going anywhere with you before we know the price.” There was no common language, but his tone of voice and body language as he clutched his bag was clear enough. We weren’t going to get ripped off again. “It’s five hundred for the whole vehicle,” he repeated, signalling the entire car and saying again, “Five hundred.” Nodding his head vigorously again, the driver insisted we come.
“Are you sure about the price?” Ammon asked as we loaded our things.
“Yeah, yeah. I triple checked. It’s about a dollar each,” Sebastian said. With that, the boys helped pile the luggage onto the roof and tie it down, while we weary girls climbed in to take our seats.
Halfway between the borders, the driver began nodding, “American. American.”
“No, Canadian. From Canada,” Mom said, smiling at him in the rear-view mirror.
“No, no, no. Dollar. Dollar,” he said, leaving us a bit puzzled.
But Ammon was quick to respond with a strong, loud, “No way!” He turned to the Swiss guys and said in an exasperated tone, “He’s trying to change the price on us.”
“Are you serious?” Sebastian leaned forward, trying to clarify the issue as politely as possible. “Five hundred rupees for the whole car.”
Waving a finger at us in the rear-view mirror, he said, “No, no. Five-teen dollar American. Each.” He suddenly spoke much better English than we’d heard up until this point.
“Unbelievable,” Ammon said, sitting back. “There’s no way this can be right. When you consider that the minimum monthly wage here is about eight thousand rupees, even five hundred would be good income for a fifteen-minute drive. He wants seventy-two hundred rupees. That’s about a hundred and twenty American dollars. That’s like earning a whole month’s wages in fifteen minutes. Does he think we’re movie stars?”
“How’s that even possible?” I asked.
“He’s bloody whacked,” Ammon said, making sure the cabbie heard him. At this point Adrian was steaming and turning purple with rage which made quite an impressive contrast to his European blond hair. Though I hadn’t known them long, I could clearly see they had reached their breaking point.
“I just want to get the hell out of this country,” Sebastian said, the protruding vein in his forehead matching Ammon’s. “No. We made an agreement. Either drive on for five hundred rupees, as we agreed, or take us back.” The guys in our group began yelling and pointing to tell the driver to take us back up the mountain we’d just come down. He’d be stupid to return us to where we’d started at the border and receive no payment rather than to accept the normal fee he’d initially promised us. We were stopped halfway along a ten-kilometre stretch (6 mi) of petrifying switchbacks. He was totally outnumbered, eight to one, and there were no back alleys around to facilitate intimidation on this one direct transit street through no-man’s-land. He had little choice but to proceed, so he hit the gas as he wiped perspiration from his neck with a sopping rag that had probably once been white. I alternated between watching the sweat pouring from his brow in the mirror and the incredible view below. It was utterly magnificent and teeming with all kinds of life, but it was a very long way down, and I was all too aware of the high cliff and of how awkwardly we were piled in the jeep. There’d be little chance of escape if anything were to happen.
“Geez, it looks like he’s about to drive us all off the cliff.” I tried to take a light tone, but there was nothing funny about it. I was dead serious, as evidenced by the involuntary clenching of both my teeth and my butt. He was taking wide turns and swinging us around wildly each time he came uncomfortably close to the edge. Whenever he did, I leaned my weight inward to the safety of the mountain. That wouldn’t make any difference, of course, except to give me something to do. My mind flashed back to the way we’d skidded on the gravel on our way to Osh in Kyrgyzstan with the psychotic drug dealing driver, and I began to pray. Oh geez, please don’t let this go wrong. Please be with us and bless this car so we get there safely. After our last near-death mountain experience, I wasn’t too keen to go on yet another death-defying ride.
“So, if we died in no-man’s land, it would kind of be like dying nowhere,” I said. “Do you think people are allowed to be buried in no-man’s land? Or what if we flew off the cliff, and down there is actually Nepal, would we be in Nepal or not? Because we never did officially get stamped in.”
“Well, we weren’t officially in Tibet either, so where have we been this whole time?” Bree asked.
“True. So how many people do you think have actually died in no-man’s-land?”
“Why do you always have to talk so much?” Ammon asked.
“I think she just likes to hear herself talk,” Mom said, for probably the thousandth time so far on this trip alone. But talking helps sometimes when you feel powerless to do anything else.
We finally reached the bottom, where the road met the Friendship Bridge. This was our stop, and we’d all arrived in one piece. Hallelujah! But what awaited us presented yet another challenge. I nearly panicked as what felt like hundreds of people’s hands slapped the windows around us. Their brown faces peered in to look at us as if we were animals in the zoo. I feared they might actually rip us apart, and suddenly being stuck with the madman driver felt like only our second-worst option.
These people had absolutely no sense of personal space or boundaries. This kind of behaviour was very far from anything my upbringing had prepared me for. A crowd this big, this loud, and this close and smothering couldn’t be anything but part of an all-out riot, and I feared they were out to get us. People were standing up on the tires and the bumper trying to reach our baggage. Although it was fastened down, the ropes were now slapping against the car windows as the ropes hol
ding it to the roof unravelled. Fearful that our stuff would be passed off to accomplices and disappear into this sea of piranhas, Mom urged the boys to step out quickly.
“Watch yourselves,” Ammon warned as he opened the door to brave the inevitable. Bree, Mom, and I followed suit, leaping out and disappearing into the crowd. The backpacks were already unloaded, but surprisingly, we saw that some of them were plunked down next to the wheel of the truck, while others were already perched on the heads of young boys who clearly had no intention of running off. They offered to porter our bags the sixty-four metres (210 ft) across the bridge to the Nepalese side for one American dollar to earn some money.
This wasn’t a riot, and nobody was out to steal anything from us. Hands were still waving and people were shouting, but now they appeared to be inviting. How is it possible that I had actually felt scared just moments ago? They were touching us, but not grabbing or scratching, and I couldn’t help but notice their brilliantly white smiles, even in that chaos.
There were mostly men, but I spotted a few girls standing around observing, and their smiles were endearing. They were shy and withdrawn, but very curious. We hadn’t even officially crossed the border and it was very clear we’d left China and Tibet behind.
We crossed the Friendship Bridge fully loaded and on foot, mesmerized by the tall green sides of the deep gorge. White-water rapids rushed below us, but the sound of nature was covered by the commotion of honking horns, air brakes, and shouting.
“Look. There’s the Nepalese flag. That’s a good sign,” Ammon said, pointing at the blue and red flag on the other side of the bridge. “Did you know that Nepal’s is the only non-quadrilateral national flag in the world? And the Swiss flag, of course, is one of only two that are square instead of rectangular,” he said, nodding toward our four friends.
“What’s the other square one?” Bree asked, and Ammon was more than happy to see her showing genuine interest and answered, “The Vatican.”
Huge guns seemed to be pointed at us constantly, but the guards on this side of the border were smiling and waving, unlike the stone-faced Chinese officials we’d been dealing with. As I showed the Nepal visa in my passport to the customs official and waited for my coveted stamp, he told Sebastian, “You shouldn’t smoke. It’s not good for your health.” I hoped this meant the habit wasn’t as omnipresent in Nepal as it had been in China. I was immediately impressed by all the English I was hearing, too, and happy to think that I just might be understood here.
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