Mt. Kailash - Manasarovar Sojourn - 2

The 23rd of August 2010 was largely spent lazing around the hotel while some members of the group were assigned to undergo the Inner Engineering Program. We were given instructions of what we were to do in preparation for the trip from Katmandu to Tibet that was to commence at 6:00 A.M. on the 24th of August. We were supplied with down jackets and duffle bags. We were to leave a large part of our clothes behind at the hotel and repack only essential clothes in the duffle bag that was to accompany us on the journey henceforth. Hence we packed in our thermal underwears besides a generous supply of inner wear and banians, sweater, gloves, woollen caps, socks, towels and a generous supply of chocolate bars for our energy requirements during treks, steel vacuum flask, water bottle, torchlight, sunscreen creams, sun goggles emergency medications and so on. We were put on a dosage of Diamox - a sulfa drug that helps prevent altitude sickness. This tablet, unfortunately is a diuretic and makes one wake up many times during the night for urination. This also caused a mild purging during the initial days. We were advised to consume at least 3 liters of water and advised a physical exercise which involved stretching out our arms and very slowly turning clockwise on our legs for 12 rounds. We were to maintain all theses directions diligently over the next few days of journey to Kailash.

We left Katmandu by bus at 6:10 a.m. and traveled towards the Nepal-Tibet border. The bus initially reaches the Sun-Kosi river and later heads up the valley carved out by the Bhote-Kosi River. The Bhote-Kosi River has very steep valley walls and has a lush vegetation.  The sky was quite cloudy as we headed up the valley and there was a slight incessant drizzle.

The valley heads up-river to a town called Kodari which is the final border town before one enters Tibet. In the neighborhood of Kodari is the famous Tatopani hot spring. We lunched at Kodari, having arrived there 12:45 p.m. Further, this is the place where you can convert Indian currency to Yuans (Chinese currency) and the exchange rate we were offered was Rs.7.50/Yuan.

Post-lunch, we headed towards the friendship bridge which forms the border between Nepal and Tibet (China) and we crossed over the border towards the Chinese immigration office. We did not encounter much problems in immigration as we were cleared of our passage to Tibet.

(left:Friendship Bridge; Above:Chinese Immigration)

Back at Katmandu we were asked to make teams of four members to be accommodated in Toyota Land Cruisers and our team consisted of Mr. Balamurugan (an engineer working for an Australian MNC at Bangalore), Mr. Ramesh Perumal (an officer of the Reserve Bank of India at Chennai), Mr.Mahesh Acharya ( a software professional at Bangalore) and myself.

We were assigned a Tibetan driver by the name of Pasang who was of a rather jolly temperament who enjoyed moments of dance and song. He could understand no other language other than Tibetan and that was rather unfortunate as we couldn't gain much information from him about the local places, river names, cultural aspects and so on. He had a fine collection of Tibetan music that he jauntily played as he drove through the rugged terrain. He seemed to be of an amiable type who was quite popular with other drivers.
(Left: Pasang with his Toyota Land Cruiser)

From the Chinese Immigration Office at the Friendship Bridge we drove over to Zhangmu that perhaps lies at a distance of 8 to 10 km and this Tibetan town is visible from the Nepali Town Kodari. (See photo on right)


 (Right: Zhangmu in Tibet as seen from Kodari in Nepal)