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October
31, 1999
Hello this
is Earle Lowe for the Around The World 1999 team with the journal entry
for Sunday October 31st. Today is our last day in China traveling from
Rongbuk to Jangmu on the border of China and Nepal. Our last day in China
started with myself and Nick Baggarly feeling a little bit better but
still not fully recovered from our stomach problems.
Today we
needed to go over the same pass that we went over the day before to
return to the main road. Again the weather was beautiful with more clear
skies and terrific views of Mt Everest. Because myself and Nick weren't
feeling well we turned the driving duties of Alaska over to Jeff. His
first major driving test, as we were going over some very rough roads and
very high passes. And Jeff did great in his driving. So all of us now
have had pretty signifigant driving time behind the land rovers on very
difficult days. We didn't spend too much time at the top of the pass
because we had a long and dusty day ahead of us. So we took brief
pictures and more good bye looks at Mt Everest and we went on our way.
A large
portion of our day was traveling over decent dirt roads but there were
tremendous amount of dust. We will all be glad to arrive at some paved
roads. But that would not be on this day.
We had one
more large pass, the Lung La pass, to go over before starting the very
long rapid descent toward Kathmandu. We were definitely looking forward
to leaving the high plains of Tibet behind. Although we were hoping to
catch more amazing views of the Himalayas. As we began our ascent up the
final pass, the landscape changed to a winter playground. Snow was
everywhere creating a very narrow one lane route up the road. There were
several very muddy sections where the high clearance and 4x4 capabilities
of the trucks were used. Several times we needed to backtrack several
meters to allow large trucks to pass. At one point on the trip we saw
goat and sheep herders leading their flocks over the high pass. We didn't
know where they were going but there sure didn't seem to be any food
around where we were because everything was covered under quite a lot of
snow. There was lots of snow, so we weren't too sure where these people
were taking their flocks but we presume somewhere over the pass.
Also on the
way we passed several cyclists on a cycle tour of the area. I certainly
don't envy those people cycling up or down the snowy road. We crossed
through our first mountain tunnel after the pass. Although the tunnel was
ordinary what was in the tunnel was not. Inside was a herd of goats and
sheep, a different herd then what we had seen before, with their herders
settling in for the night. A nice dry place to camp for sure. The herders
had started their cooking fires directly underneath a no smoking sign. A
curious juxtaposition. On this day we did have some horrendous roads
during our long descent. Hercules was still without rear shocks lost a
couple of days before on even worst roads traveling to Rongbuk. But Todd
managed to drive it superbly. We were originally scheduled to spend the
night at Nagqu at an altitude of 10K feet. But our guides recommended
that we continue to the border town of Jangmu. However, we should not
have followed their advice, as we drove down a remarkable valley mostly
at night, thereby missing a lot of tremendous views.
On this day
driving we lost about 10,000 feet in elevation in totum. The top of the
pass at Rongbuk which was over 17,000 ft to the border of Jangmu which
was at an altitude of around 7,000 ft. Again this is Earle Lowe for Around
the World 1999 signing off.
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