China, we'd been building up to this for weeks - Everest was our first port of call and then we'd head south through Tiger Leaping Gorge, Lijiang and Dali, not forgetting Lhasa.
A huge country, you wouldn't believe it until you got there - distances are measured in days not hours, the timezones are crazy as the whole place runs on Beijing time and the scenery was stunning. It took a few days to drive to the genearl area of Everest, another day trying to find someone to guide us and then success - leaving at 4am we piled into ancient taliwagons for the most bone-jarring ride of our lives with no heaters, chainsmoking drivers and chinese covers of the worst 80's songs at full blast on the stereo. several hours later we arrived at the monastery where we would start trekking. As we were at 5,400m people were coming down with altitude sickness, everyone was short of breath (Nick, however continued to smoke on the way up!) and muscles were aching from the start. My goodness it was worth it though, the sun was rising burning off the mist and we saw it so close you could almost reach out and touch it - the highest mountain on earth and we were there at basecamp! a quick strip down to the Beamish Mary Inn T-Shirts for photo's (Graham, we'd best get a free drink out of that!) and getting shouted at by the army for posing in front of their APC's. We can't describe how amazing this was - ok, we didn't climb to the summit or anything but just base camp was enough.
A couple of days bushcamping in the most amazing countryside before heading to Lhasa. Now this was a shock, we were expecting a medieval city with the Potala palace at it's heart - what we got was an incredible Chinese city that catered for every whim, Christine even found an Avon shop! One of our friends who is a trance DJ managed to play a set at a local club to great acclaim, we drank brilliant coffee and generally enjoyed ourselves wandering around and getting confused stares from the locals as they couldn't understand how Christine didn't speak mandarin and was married to a white bloke!
Our time in Lhasa was too short but we had a lot of ground to cover to make it to Tiger Leaping Gorge. We arrived there in a major rainstorm and many of the trails were washed out but we were assured by a crazy Australian woman that the next day would be fine, all the same, we decided to kick back and relax for a few days with the low trails while other brave souls headed up the high trails. They had a great time and got great photos but came back muddy and exhausted.
As we said earlier, China is huge so it was several days driving before we reached our next destination, Lijiang.
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