Mt Everest 17,060 ft

I am writing this in a small chinese restaurant in Tibet on the border. I have been freezing my tail off at base camp (literally now that I think about it since I had to pee outside in a hole in temperatures reaching well below zero and high winds).

At Mt. Everest, I spent two nights in Rongphu monastery, the highest Monastery in the world. The windows were broken out and there was no toilet. I slept in 6 layers of clothes and 5 jackets and wore it all during the days too. The only place to find any warmth was the teahouse so it was usually packed with climbers and guides. I spent much of my time huddled around the stove in the center of the room watching tibetan women stoke the fire with buckets full of dried yak dung. As the fire roared we all shared sweet milk tea (alas!) and one guy passed around a dried yak leg with a nine inch dagger to carve the meat off with.

We left Everest this morning, and although it is only maybe 60 miles

to the border, it took us 10 hours. The first half of the trip we did some pretty extreme cliffhanger four wheeling across the barren Tibetan plateau. The terrain was unbelievable. I am convinced this is what it w

ould be like to go off roading on the moon except with some pretty high peaks. You can just feel that you are on the 'rooftop of the world.'

We eventually made it to the "Friendship highway" You gotta love the Chinese and the way they name things. It's the ultimate propaganda. Friendship Highway. Because we are all such good friends...that's why we took over your country and built this lovely highway... We stopped for food in a small town where of course I wandered off again. I found Duncan a fuzzy hat, nothing super amazing but the only one I had found so far. I've seen lots of men wearing them, but never saw them for sale. I considered buying one off of some random Tibetan guy, but then I remembered their bathing habits. I've been told that the men typically only bathe once a year. There is a special day set aside during the spring but a lot of men will just skip it unless something really important is coming up like their wedding.

Tibetans have really coarse, thick black hair which gets a little unruly after a year or so of no baths, To control it they rub yak butter in it. That is the point that occurred to me when I decided against buying Duncan a used fuzzy hat. Anyway, after making my purchase from a muslim Tibetan I found a pretty scraggly looking guy and pulled him off the street for a photo session. He laughed but I just tugged on his sleeve and pointed over to a shady wall, signaling to his friend to come as well. Sometimes acting like a deranged foreigner is the best tool I have. Before I knew it nine or ten people were lining up for their photos. Then I grabbed another guy and put my camera around his neck for a group photo with all of us. It was blurry because I forgot to set it on auto focus for him but I still like it. After thanking everyone I happily, cheerfully rode along the friendship highway toward the border. Out of the blue my 23

year old guide, Kalsong, turned to me with the sweetest smile and said, "you always make me happy." Aww, that kinda melted me. All of my guides have literally been the sweetest most pure hearted humans I have ever met. He has pretty bad acne and one day he just came to me pointing at his face and said "What is this?" I said "acne" He said "why I have? Because something I eat? Do I have disease?" I explained to him that he will grow out of it, no diseases, just wash your face often, etc.. He leaned back, took a deep sigh of relief and said "Then I will get girlfriend." He sends a lot of his money back to his village which is a 2 day bus ride from Lhasa. He says he really misses his mom. He also asked me to send him an email. He put his hand on his heart, looked me straight in the eye and said "no really, I want this most in the world."

Around 2:00 we got to the border. Rewind. We got to the Friendship bridge, 2 kilometers from the border town. That's when all traffic was halted for four hours. Turns out what they meant by friendship bridge, is that everyone parks their car and hangs out for four hours while chinese immigrants slowly build the bridge with a shovel and hammer.

In fact they do this so often that the Chinese actually have a concession stand tent right there in the middle of the Himalayas just for all of our friendly gatherings. It was actually kind of fun. I took some pix, hung out with Kalsong and Cowboy, and for the first time peed under a semi truck. Cowboy is my nickname for our driver. He looks like a cowboy and I could never remember his name. He doesn't speak a word of english but sings english loves songs perfectly. The great thing is he answers to Cowboy now. All the guides hang out at base camp and run into each other throughout the trip so they've all heard me call him that plus I think he's pretty proud of it.

Dreaming of burgers...