Tibet is nicknamed the "Roof of the World" because it is such a huge area at higher altitude than anywhere else in the world, much of it a rolling plateau at 14,000 to 17,000 feet with higher mountain ranges. The only other place that comes close in altitude is the Andean Altiplano in South America. Entering Tibet from Nepal involves a very rapid gain in elevation from 1,400 meters (4,500 feet) in the Kathmandu Valley and not much higher at the border to 4,500 meters (almost 15,000 feet) in 24 hours. That's something similar to going from Denver to the top of the highest Fourteener in Colorado in a day and staying at the top for days afterwards.

Thus, the traveling the route in our direction required some precautions against altitude sickness, such as spending extra time on the plateau before heading even higher to Everest Base Camp and possibly descending to lower altitude temporarily for those who show serious signs of the condition . I wasn’t too concerned for myself since I had spent days at very high elevation on my two treks in Nepal on the previous two months without much of an issue but started taking Diamox again once we got to Zhangmu as a precaution. Diamox reduces the risk of altitude sickness by speeding up heart rate and breathing, contributing to greater oxygen uptake, rather than simply relieving symptoms of altitude sickness like Ibuprofen. I found some strange side effects each time I took it. It led me to grater urination, especially on the first day I started taking it. The other was that I seemed to keep dribbling after I felt like I had finished urinating.

I am unsure if Diamox contributes to vivid dreams in the same way as the anti-malaria drug Lariam (which I took in West Africa but had an alternative med for in India) but I did have a very memorable dream one night in Tingri while taking it. I dreamt that I was wandering around a town that seemed very much like Pokhara in Nepal where I had spent a full week not very long before. I kept going to restaurants and bars and ordering food and drinks, but the prices of things seemed absolutely random; some things that should have been cheap were very expensive while other items that should have had similar prices cost widely varying amounts. I studied it and studied the menus and finally broke the code – the prices of food and drinks were directly related to the number of points they were worth in Scrabble . I determined that Mai Tai had a very low Scrabble point value so went around from bar to bar drinking Mai Tais and not spending much money. That’s such a Warren The Economist dream! The weird thing is that I never play Scrabble and am not sure where in my subconscious lies the knowledge that the letters M and T have rather low point values in the game. Anyway, Diamox-induced or not, it was a very pleasing dream, and I woke up feeling happy and very well rested.   

Once we cleared immigration and customs on the Chinese side of the border we met our Chinese and Tibetan guides, named Jason and something like Tsu- wan, respectively. Yes, to travel in Tibet you need two helpers. Entering wasn’t without incident, though, as the customs official confiscated one of my fellow traveler’s copy of “Lonely Planet: China”. The boss returned it to him before we left the building, though. The Chinese are very suspicious of how Taiwan and Tibet are depicted in western publications. Guidebook publishers respond by sidestepping the political issues they might otherwise include (so they can sell books that will be useful in travel in China) . The knee-jerk reaction of customs grunts who can’t read English is just to confiscate any books that have to do with China or mention Tibet.

From the border post the road zig-zagged up the super steep mountainside in switchbacks to Zhangmu at almost 7,000 feet in elevation. There are two really good things I can say about roads in China. First, after often inadequate roads in India and appallingly maintained ones in Nepal, the roads in China are generally well maintained and paved. With the exception of our detour to Everest Base Camp, all roads we would travel on in Tibet and the rest of China were paved with the exception of a few construction sites. Second, in China they drive on the right side of the road. I had to get used to that again after five months in South Asian countries where they drive on the wrong, ummm, I mean left, side of the road. In India it doesn’t really matter; cars just go wherever there’s open space in a chaotic free-for-all .

 Zhangmu seemed to be a mostly ethnic Chinese town. It’s situated on the side of a gorge so steep that it seems to have only one main road through it that snakes back and forth upwards. The switchbacks are connected to each other by steep stairways. We had a dinner of good Chinese food, multiple dishes served banquet style on a Lazy Susan with individual bowls of rice. The beer in China is watery but cheap and the wine is too sweet but also cheap. I now remember how much I love the food in China, even if I have to struggle getting it to my mouth with chopsticks. Breakfast was even better – steamed buns stuffed with barbecued pork with soy and chili sauces for dipping. Why can’t we eat such tasty food for breakfast in Western countries?

We had a late start because the guides had to attend to some bureaucratic formalities that morning. China is all on one time zone, so at points as far west as Tibet and Xinjiang it gets both light and dark very late in terms of clock times we’re used to . Jason promised us a good market and a wide variety of food available at the market, so I and the other members of my cook group eagerly discussed options for dinner and breakfast and lunch since it would be our turn to make camp meals. It turned out that Jason had no idea what he was talking about because he had never been to Tibet before, and the food available in the market in one of the most far-flung parts of China was poor both in quality and variety. We’d have to make do with the crap we could find.

The road from the Nepalese border all the way to Lhasa is known in China as the Friendship Highway. From Zhangmu it heads north and climbs spectacularly ever higher up the side of the canyon in curves and switchbacks until it reaches the Tibetan Plateau on the leeward side of the high Himalayan peaks. So as I also found on my treks, it counterintuitively becomes ever drier rather than greener (as in the American West) as you rise in elevation. Once the road leveled out onto the Plateau around 14,000 feet, we were pretty much in a bleak desert but with glaciated Himalayan peaks to our south and west .

Tsuwan picked a campsite in a bleak river plain that seemed to function as some kind of a quarry. The quarry workers were very curious about us and crowded around as we set up camp for the night and started cooking. The wind blowing up the valley was so fierce through the afternoon I decided it wasn’t worth the effort to set up my tent until about sunset. I don’t know for a fact if this was our coldest camping night, but it felt like it to me. It felt as though I hardly slept, and it was all made worse when I got back to my tent after taking a pee and had the fright of finding the friendly beggar puppy around ur campsite all evening on my sleeping bag. And then I had to get up before dawn to boil water for tea and start making scrambled eggs. Do you know how cold it is to crack eggs for 20 people in below freezing temperatures?

The drive took us over two bleak passes at 5,050 and 5,150 meters (about 17,000 feet) from which several 8,000 meter peaks along the Nepalese border were visible. It was then down to an equally arid valley with several settlements and some farmland being plowed traditionally by farmers with yak and horse-pulled plows. We stayed in a hotel in a small settlement named Tingri where the side road to Everest Base Camp begins. Some people on the tour were showing symptoms of altitude sickness, so we’d have to stay there for a second night before heading higher to Everest. There was virtually nothing to do in Tingri, but there was a small hot springs about ten miles out of town that made for a pleasant afternoon trip.