Nyalam

Finally we started doing stuff resembling mountaineering! Today we went on a short trekking which will be beneficiary for our acclimatization. We climbed “Nyalam Ri”, namely “Nyalam Mountain”, the 4400 m-high mountain rising just beneath Nyalam. The day brightens here only at 8:00. That’s why our climbing plan was actualized at a bit different time than we’re used to. We started off in a quite cold weather, afterwards we ascended in a quite sunny and nice weather. Dawa Sherpa climbed with us too and colored our day with his interesting stories. The different traditions of Tibetian and Nepalese people amazed us yet again. The people of hereabouts view life and death utterly differently than we do. Very unpretentious, concrete, too realistic and as much as that, abstract, spiritual and individualistic...

Today besides, we learned that our climb has a brand new and nice dimension. According to the Tibetian calender each year is determined by an animal, during the year, the course of events is set by the characteristics of that animal. 2006 is the “dog” year, the sherpas think that it will be a positive and lucky year, this year. They think that the dog with fire coming out of its mouth in the ‘Petrol Ofisi’ logo is an indication of that. Apparently, this year by these PO stickers we’ll be regarded as sacred by whole Tibet!

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Photo Gallery :: April 3, 2006 

Nyalam
We started to ascend. Today we arrived at Nyalam town which is at 3750 meters. We’re ascending but by the skills of jeeps! Here we’re staying at a very cute hotel. A building mostly made of wood  that is painted and decorated in chinese style. A place for people who’ve come to the mountains rather than for local tourists. Our rooms are tiny, out of sheer luck the girls have nice rooms with a fine view! The rest of the team are staying at a bit darker rooms. Luck! The food is still great, we are eating at tables and with methods completely in line with Chinese traditions and methods. The food comes to the middle of the table, they are put on the turning part of the table, we are taking our bowls rotating this platform. Our food sessions are a big event, almost none of us can eat all of these delicious foods! Some can’t catch the speed and hold the plate; some starve because they can’t catch the rice grains with the sticks; some try to follow the traditional order and take each sort one by one and thus can’t eat anything else than rice and finally some end up hungry out of the effort to put the chaos in an order! Yet we are very happy about the food. At the hotel except us there is a quite crowdy international expedition group. All of them watch us in astonishment, sometimes we ask ourselves whether we are a too active team.
Tomorrow we’re here too, we’ll have a short trekking. In the meanwhile we learned about a new progress, Ahmet Cemal Saydam will be sending us the weather forecast. It’s a really important support on our side.

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Photo Gallery :: April 2, 2006 

Today finally we are in Tibet! In one day we both changed the country and, at once, moved to a 5-hour time difference by two steps. We are a bit further away from home.
We set off very early in the morning. We came to the Nepal-China border bridge in 5 and a half hours by bus. We got off the bus and emptied all of the luggage. We crossed the border walking. On the other side, in Tibet, this time we moved to other vehicles and went to Zangmu town. All this took us several hours. The places we went through throughout the day were breathtaking. We moved through a deep valley, beside a river, green and steep slopes. Zangmu is a border town, a small cute place. We are staying at a clean but old and neglected hotel. The food is plentiful and tasty, for only one meal we eat all sorts of Chinese food. The gist we are in high spirits!

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Photo Gallery :: April 1, 2006

Today is our last day at Katmandu. At 9 am, we, the whole team and our Sherpa friends, joined the Lama blessing. The Lama blessing is a tradition that all expeditors attend before they go to the mountains. Prayer flags to be taken to the mountain are brought to the Lama. Besides, the team members take their scarfs called ‘kata’ with them. Lama blesses all of them and and makes good wishes and luck prayers. We gave Lama our ‘kata’s one by one,  and he wished us luck hanging the ‘kata’s around our neck. In addition, plait strings in  green, yellow, and red colors were hung around our neck. We went to the monastery after Lama, and even though shortly, we saw a ritual of Buddhist monks. It was really impressive. Thus our climb was blessed. We had t-shirts made with our names and Buddhist lucky eye figures on it for our whole Sherpa team and ourselves. As of now we are an even larger team together with them...

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Photo Gallery :: March 31, 2006