Over highest Passes
After leaving Sakya in the early afternoon, we drove back to the friendship highway, and now started heading south towards our target, Mt. Everest.
The highest pass on the friendship highway between Lhasa and Kathmandu: Gyatso La, 5248m. In fact, we already had a very first glimpse of Mt. Everest while driving down the pass, but it was still so distant that I omitted a corresponding photo here.
The town of Shelkar (New Tingri), a fairly new Chinese town which has the main purpose of being the starting point of many treks and mountaineering excursions to the main Himalaya range.
I hiked half-way up a nearby hill to have this view upon Shelkar.
The view across the valley of Shelkar. Clearly visible is the friendship highway, and in the background the Shisha Pangma (8027m), the smallest of the 14 mountains in the world that are more than 8000m in altitude.
We stayed overnight in Shelkar, with the plan to leave the next morning at 7am to drive up a pass and see the sunrise from there (In Tibet, the sun rises very late, as complete China uses Beijing time, despite the fact that we are now more than 3000km west of Beijing). However, even though we had agreed with our driver and guide on this early start, none of them showed up the next morning. When we knocked on their hotel room, they were already ready to go, but showed no motivation to actually move. In the end, we started with about 45 minutes delay, and of course missed the sunset. We were especially angry about the behavior of our driver and guide, as it is well-known that in this area fog starts rising up from the valleys shortly after sunrise. So, when we arrived at Pang La pass (5150m), probably the only place in the world accessible by car from which you can see 5 mountains with an altitude of more than 8000m, everything was covered in fog. Professional photographers there told us that just 20 minutes earlier, when the fog was still down in the valleys, the sight must have been magnificent. In fact, this occasion marked the point after which we, the Isreali couple and me, were basically 'at war' with the driver and guide.
So we spent quite a while on Pang La pass to wait for the fog to dissappear again. And then, one by one, all the majestic mountains appeared in front of us. This was really amazing, beside the fact that it was extremely windy and cold on the pass - and our driver and guide were annoying us and urging us to leave all the time.
So there it was, the target of the Tibet trip: Qomolangma Feng (8848m), more commonly referred to as Mt. Everest, the highest mountain in the world.
Among giants: The fifth highest mountain in the world, Makalu, the fourth highest, Lhotse, and the number one, Mt. Everest
And, further to the right, we could also see the sixth highest mountain in the world: Cho Oyu (8201m)
In fact one of my favorite images from this holiday: A professional photographer trying to capture the very first glimpse of Makalu as the fog dissolves
The view in the other direction from Pang La pass. I still couldn't find out the name of the mountain in the background, in fact a mountain we could see many times during our trip, but which is not mentioned on any map. According to Google Earth, it must be approx. 6400m. I assume it must be yet unnamed, and decide to name it Mt. St. Patrick.
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