I feel a little frustrated to say the least. We had 3 days of acclimatising in Lhasa, but it seems that it wasn't enough for me (Richard). On the morning that we were due to start riding, I started to feel nauseous. Then on the first night into the ride at the foot of the Kampa-La pass, I woke up early, short of breath. By the time we'd climbed the pass to an altitude of 4000m, my breathing was becoming more difficult. Den and I decided to head back down to where I last felt comfortable and await the guide and truck to advise on the best course of action as I was clearly feeling the effects of the altitude.
The guide recommended that we should use the truck to go over the pass and make camp in the next valley. I assumed he knew what he was talking about. In fact the next valley over the pass was at over 4300m. As we looked for a camp site, I started to feel seriously unwell. Den asked the guide what should be done, he recommended that we head to Shigatze, at 3800m. Where I should be okay. Unfortunately, this involved two very high mountain passes.
We bundled into a passing truck and head up the first pass, Den, me and my accompanying oxygen cylinder. We climb to 4700m and the truck stopped with a puncture. We are both in a state of panic as I've started to get pins and needles all over my body, and am feeling very disorientated at this point. There's no other cars passing on the road at this time of night to take us to a safer altitude, so we are reliant on the truck team to change the wheel quickly.
It's not for another 4 hours that we descend again below 4000m, and on reaching Shigatze at gone 1am we are very grateful for a comfy hotel bed. Unfortunately the relief was only temporary.
In the morning I was very short of breath and we head off to the local hospital. A quick hook up to an oxygen tank and I'm starting to feel better again. They also ran some ECG's to make sure that there was nothing wrong with my heart, but the machines were so old that the output really didn't look much good... so more stress there then. Anyhow, their advice was that I should return to Lhasa and fly to Kathmandu as quickly as possible.
The next morning, having stocked up on oxygen cylinders, this time with a very fetching tube that you can insert into your nose, we boarded the bus back to Lhasa. We assumed this would head down the central (i.e. low level) friendship highway, but instead it went back the way we came, over 3 high altitude passes.
My flight to Kathmandu was uneventful, except the Chinese border guards wanted to know why I wasn't on my designated tour. But Comrade, I have been very ill, now just let me on the damn plane!!!
On landing I was taken straight to an ex-pat clinic, given a proper EKG and some blood tests. Told there was nothing wrong with my heart and that the diagnosis was Acute Mountain Sickness. Basically, we made the wrong decision in going over the pass and that I should have initially returned to Lhasa to acclimatise further. Spending days subjecting myself to too high altitudes without proper acclimatisation meant that it was no longer a case of just descending to a lower altitude to alleviate the symptoms. Now I would have a few days to a week of a tight chest and shortness of breath to remember the experience by. Lovely.
Den, meanwhile, remained in Tibet to return to Shigatze to collect our bike and equipment from the group and then to head to the Nepalese border where I would meet her.
So two days after landing I got into a land-cruiser and set off for the border, 4 hours away. As we were leaving the city limits, the driver got a call to warn of landslides on the road after heavy rains.
We got to within 12kms of the border before we were stopped by an impassable landslide, so I stayed the night at a resort a few Kms further back towards Kathmandu. It rained heavily all night.
In the morning we drove back to the landslide and I set out on foot across the offending landslide and 3 or 4 subsequent slides, before hitching a lift for the last 5 miles to the border in a dukes of hazard orange 20 year old battered Toyota Corolla.
Once Den was safely into Nepal, we cycled back downhill on the tandem, pushing over and through the landslides back to where the driver had parked up, and stowed the bike and packs in the car.
A bit further down the hillside, the road had mostly collapsed, having fallen away into the river to the right. We guided the Jeep through this obstacle only to be stopped around the next corner by a massive landslide. We spoke to some people coming the other way. There were 6 or 7 more that had happened during the night, and had still to be cleared.
After talking about it, and with rain still falling, we didn't fancy getting trapped on the road, away from medical attention for a few days (still worried that there could be something more serious wrong with me), by landslides. We loaded up the tandem and set off across the mud and inched our way back towards Kathmandu, but it was slow going. Sometimes weaving around boulders, fording knee high water rushing across the remains of the road and one point ankle deep in thick gloopy mud. Crossing some of the slides we would have to time our break to avoid the still falling rocks.
On one, particularly recent slide, a hornets nest had been disturbed. There were hundreds of them buzzing around, and some of the little blighter's decided it was clearly my fault and decided to attack. Valiantly, I made a run for it, leaving Den to deal with hauling 100kg fully loaded tandem over a mudslide between rocks that were still falling to the ground from the hillside above.
We got to 45kms from the border by tea time. Checked into a small roadside guest house, in need of a nice shower and a nice bed. Unfortunately, while in the shower I lost my footing, slipped and landed on my side against the sharp edge of a tiled step. I thought my ribs had broken. This, I thought as I lay on the floor, was not a good week.
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