Saturday, April 15. 2006
14th/15th April: Adventure ride to the Himalayan Hamsters & Nyalam
Saturday, April 15. 2006
Our group is so big, we will have to split up and stay in 2 separate hotels, but we al eat at the Snowland Restaurant. The food is great, Chinese food as it should be, and Kama, the waitress works like crazy to serve all the different groups at the same time.
After lunch we go out for a quick hike to acclimatize a bit, Kevin stays in Nyalam for some shooting. Thomas is doing great and together with Milan we go up from 3700 to 4050 quickly and easily.
The views from the narrow ridge are nice and Thomas has little practical problems yet with the altitude. His vision is slowly deteriorating; he cannot read the small fonts anymore at this time, but he is happy with the current situation, it is still better than expected. Fortunately the ‘Himalayan Hamster’ Thomas encounters in the toilet is so big, it would have been spotted by Stevie Wonder wearing sunglasses 
Meanwhile our Basecamp crew reported heavy winds, apparently some expditions already lost tents. Our camp is placed perfectly, so we were fine, just the (wooden!) toilet seems to have lifted off for a while...
15th April: Hiking around Nyalam
After a reasonable night (the Hamsters only bothered the bottom floors of our guesthouse) we went for another hike, this time Kevin was filming. We started off with Thomas, Vince (Bousselaire) & Slate (Stern) and slowly went up the hill. We made good time, within 2 hours we had ascended over 600m and though the wind was quite strong, the views more than made up for it, even Xixabangma briefly poked her head through the clouds.
Thomas noticed on the downhill that the dreaded blurring started; he could not clearly see the ground as there was little contrast and he had to slow down. We can only guess at this point how this will progress, but so far we were very pleased with reaching 4350m without serious problems.
Now we are draining Nyalam’s power supply by charging 4 laptops and many camera’s and other gear from a single lightbulb socket. Imagine 4 grown up (?) men, in a dusty room of 2.5 x 2.5 m, each working on his laptop, while smelling not completely fresh anymore.. Time to get this out to you, our faithful fans, hope you enjoy it 
All the best from a chilly but wonderful Tibet, Thomas, Kevin, Milan & Harry
Here are some more impressions from Nyalam:
Great to read your trip reports. Glad you all made it safely into Tibet/China.
The road trip reminds of our trip to the Annapurna trek starting point in 1998. Too bad Nepal is in such a mess right now. Hope the king will allow democratic reforms soon. Did you all see any of the trouble in Kathmandu?
One comment: I seem to recall that when we did our trek, we were supposed to touch the prayer wheels only with our left hand (the "clean one"), but maybe my memory doesn't serve me right.....
Well, take good care and be careful! We have one little life.....
All the best, from Alexandria, VA, USA
(Reply)
thanks for your post; are your friends following us again as well? Yes, KTM is a mess and getting worse. Really a problem for all the nice people there...
All the Tibetans use their right hand as they have to go around on the left side. And in most cultures, the left hand is not pure. Anyway, we just trying to get some higher support
We will take care, life is too nice to waste!
All the best,
Harry
(Reply)
Alles ok daar, hier wel we hebben net pasen gevierd in de regen, dus helaas geen paasvuur.We kijken nu naar paul de leeuw op t.v. dat is wel even wat anders dan bergen beklimmen. Succes we blijven je volgen en wat een fantastische foto´s ik sla ze allemaal op. Toytoytoy.Kan ik eigenlijk wel in het nederlands met je mailen zoniet dan hoor ik het graag mijn engels is natuurlijk niks, dat van jou gaat top.
Groetjes Petra(Richard en Dylan)
