Everest Base camp to Old Tingri and Zangmu

We did not sleep well due to the altitude of 17,000 feet, and had to get up and go outside in the cold to answer nature's call four times. Leslie's headache worsened so that by 4:30AM she was throwing up and showing signs of loss of strength and coordination. We gave her the two oxygen containers we had with us, but no improvement was apparent, so before 7AM I woke the guide in the dark and we cleared our stuff into the Landcruiser and started down to Old Tingri about 900 meters lower, where we were scheduled to sleep next. The road was very rough and remote and took over three hours, meeting only one jeep on the way, with Leslie nauseous and weak. We took her in to a simple restaurant in Old Tingri town, where she managed to swallow and keep down the Dexamethasone pills that we had brought from Thailand in case one of us got altitude sickness. She lay down on the bench in the restaurant and after an hour felt better enough to continue the journey.

We decided that there was no reason to stay in Old Tingri at roughly 14,000 feet when we could reach the border town of of Zangmu at about 8,000 feet elevation with a much more comfortable hotel in only about three hours of pavement driving. Crossing two more major high passes en route, the road then descended down steep mountain valleys with lush green vegetation and hundreds of cascading waterfalls, with occasional military checkpoints.

Zangmu is a bustling border town dominated by trucks bringing stuff from China up to the border, transiting to a Nepali vehicle which will take the goods to India, and similar traffic going the other way, with thousands of vehicles involved. We found a decent hotel with a quiet room on the ground floor, important since Leslie was not in condition yet for climbing stairs. One problem we noted was the absence of electricity, but they said it would come on at 7:30PM, which it did. Leslie started feeling better after getting a second dose of the Dexamethasone, and we also started her on anti diarrhea medicine, and went to bed early.
Sent from my iPad