A Tibetan Farewell
Tibet, it seems, was not letting me away that easily. Oh no, it had one more little "cultural experience" to share with me. A little warning about this blog before you read on: it contains scenes that some readers may find disturbing. For those of you who are squeamish skip to the end. For the rest of you sick puppies (ie. the majority of you) go make yourself a coffee and get comfortable.
We escape from the back of the crowded truck like two refugees clambering from a sinking boat onto the unwelcoming shores of Australia. We find ourselves back in Tingri, which I described before as something like a mud-brick slum in the middle of a treeless wasteland. Much to my dissapointment, things have not improved in the three days we've been roaming the Tibetan plateau, lost and hungry.
We get some desperately needed food, ordering two meals each. We try to slow our eating, knowing that to feast after a fast is never a good idea. It is, however, a pathetic attempt. We practically burry our faces in our plates and hoe into the food like pigs at a trough.We are disgustingly dirty and the staff give us strange looks.
It's four in the afternoon by the time we roll out of the restaurant. The Nepalese border is some 150km south, but in Tibet this is considered "down the road". Despite being exausted and dirty we decide to try and hitch then and there. We just want out of Tibet (and China for that matter) as quickly as possible.
We spend an hour on the road in the sun but it is too late in the day for jeeps to be coming through. We are willing to do the back of a truck but even these have stopped running. In the end we give up and leave it till the morning. We hike back into Tingri town and check into our old, shitty hotel room.
We pass out in our beds, both still fully clothed. There is no running water in this place and we haven't showered since leaving Shigatse some four days before. Given the activities we've been involved in since then - hitching on tractors, sleeping under steam rollers, getting spewed on in trucks, etc - you can imagine the fine state both our clothes and our bodies are in.
It's sometime around midnight when I wake with a certain and urgent need to use the shitters. I grab the bog role and torch and hurry out into the darkness. The outdoor dunny is a concrete cell with no doors, built over a dug out hole and it's some thirty meters walk in the dark to reach it. It's a piercingly cold night and I shiver violently as I squat over the slightly too wide hole in the cement. Tingri is about 4,400 meters above sea level, and at this altitude even the act of squatting and shitting is an effort.
I know when I'm done that I'm not really done, that I am in fact in for a long night. If nothing else this trip has made me an expert in the ways of the human digestive system. I head back to bed to try and get what little sleep I can before my next appointment.
It's less than an hour later. The walk out to the shitter has me panting for breath and my head is spinning, I stumble in the dark. When I return to bed some fifteen minutes later I am practically hyperventilating to try and catch my breath. I am shivering violently but I feel like I am on fire. As the sweat swokes my shirt I realise I'm coming down with a fever.
The toilet runs become routine. Almost like clockwork, on the hour every hour, I crawl out of bed stumble out to the dunny, assume the position, do what I need to do and stumble back to bed, dizzy, shivering, sweating. Glover alternates between being sympathetic and laughing - he's had his turn at this game before and knows the score. There's little he can do (or at least that I want him to do) to help me anyway.
I sleep little between "expeditions". I lie awake shivering and panting in my bed. With each journey I become more and more unsure on my feat. I am weak and dizzy. Apart from the loss of goods from my body and the lack of sleep, I also have to deal with the harsh cold and the thin air. The last few days of not eating and exposure to the elements have not left me at my healthiest either.
It's the 5 am run where things go wrong. Horribly wrong. I'm crouching over the concrete, bog roll in hand, shivering and breathing hard. My head is swimming. Suddenly the world goes black as I brieflly pass out. I fall forward in the squat position and smack my head against the wall, coming to just in time for the pain to register. At the same time, my bowels jetison their load. I spray shit over the entire dunny, in the process dropping my bog roll down the hole.
All of this in itself is not a huge problem. I haven't sprayed myself and I'm certainly not the first person to go off target in a Tibetan dunny (in fact the Tibetans seem to feel this is the way a dunny should be used). There's more bog roll in the room too. I stand up and pull on my trousers. I'm still groggy and confused and the act of standing itself takes my breath away again. I pass out once more, falling forward again but this time on my feet. Again I come to just in time for the pain of slamming my head against the wall to register.
Miraculously I've managed to keep my footing and have avoided falling down the shitter hole to a certain and horrible death. Unmiraculously my bowels have once again acted in my minds absence. The only problem this time is that I've just pulled on my pants. I've shit myself.
I stumble back to the room. I turn on the light and Glover wakes up. The conversation goes a little something like this:
Daniel: I've got a little situation I might need a hand here with mate.
Glover: Huh? What? Turn off the bloody light.
Daniel: Mate, I've just passed out in the dunny and shit myself.
Glover: You what?
Daniel: I've shit myself.
Glover: You fucking what?
Daniel: I've shit myself.
Glover: You've shit yourself?
Daniel: Yea, I've shit myself.
Glover: Right. You've shit yourself.
Daniel: Reckon you could find me the spare bog roll, and poor us a bowl of water.
Glover: Hang on. You mean you've like really shit yourself.
Daniel: Yea mate, I've really shit myself.
Eventually he gets the supplies and then buries his head under his pillow, either crying or laughing (or both) while I clean myself up. As I mentioned before, there is no running water in this town. I make do with one of the bowls they provide and the last of our drinking water. It's really not what I would like in this situation. Something more along the lines of a bottle of disinfectant and a blast from a fire hose would be more my preference.
The jocks are jetisoned out the door and I pull on the last of my clean clothes. As decent as I can possible be, given the circumstances, I fall back into bed and pass out. I manage to sleep a couple of hours and wake up around eight.
I feel like crap. The fever has died down a little with the few hours sleep but my stomach is still churning. I'm not hanging around however. The sooner I get away from this God forsaken hell-hole the better. There's little chance for recovery at this altitude and with this town's level of hygiene. Besides, once they see what I've done to the dunny they're not letting me stay another night anyway.
I pop a couple of immodium tablets. It's the only way I am going to make it through this ride. A few minutes later I need to shit again (it takes about half an hour for the immodium to take effect). Gingerly I enter the dunny. My handiwork is evident and it's hard not to be impressed with the way I have destroyed this little cement cell. I manage to perch over the hole and do what I need to do. Only now, in the clear light of day, I discover something. I am in fact shitting a fair amount of blood.
Although this explains a few things, like why I passed out for instance, it has me more than a little worried. No man likes to look down after the morning's work only to discover a redish hue where none should be. A little research in the "Health" section of the Lonely Planet identifies the symptons as a case of Dysentry (shitting blood, fever, etc). Up until this point it's a disease I had heard about in relation to army life and trenches. I guess that minus a few bullets, the past few days haven't been too far off that.
There's nothing I can do really. The best option is still to get to Nepal, and Kathmandu as soon as possible. The illness is serious if untreated, but not an immediate threat. The Planet does recommend against taking immodium however. A little too late for that advice.
It takes till midday to find a ride. While Glover flags down passing vehicles, I lie in the shade of a building by the side of the road, occasionally groaning. The wait is hot and dusty and when an empty, air-condition Toyota Landcruiser pulls up I am ready to offer them Glover's first born child for a lift (at this point in time I'm pretty sure children are no longer an option for me).
It's the most comfortable vehicle we have travelled in while in China. It has leg room, comfy seats even suspension. The drivers are two Chinese guys, working the tour group scene. Say what you will about the Chinese but they know what a customer is and they treat us well. All this luxury is just enough for me to survive the trip without shitting, spewing or dieing.
With every meter that we near Nepal, and flee Tibet, things improve. The sceneray changes from empty, lifeless mountains to lush, green foliage. We travel in a deep valley and waterfalls cascade down the edge on both sides. Some of them fall so far that the water turns to mist before hitting the ground. The altitude drops quickly and by the time we reach the border town of Zhangmu we are down to around 2,500 meters. The air is full and tasty, rich with the flavours of wild plants and spices. I take in great gulps of it tasting the moist humidity.
Zhangmu sits on the Tibetan side of the border, perched along the cliff face. It is a town unlike any we've seen in China. It is filled with tall, solid buildings with an attractive style that we later come to know as Nepalese. Trees and bushes surround it, crowding it with colour and life. As we drive through the town we find medical facilities, a bank, internet and restaurants selling Nepalese and Indian food. We are in paradise.
We find a hotel and the staff speak English. They are easily the friendliest people we have met in China. They are of course Nepalese. We get a room with clean, comfortable beds and soft white pillows. There is a shower here with excellent water pressure. I head straight for it. It's not hot but in this humid climate it doesn't need to be. I am clean. I no longer have shit on myself, whether real or just imagined.
After showering we find a medical center. It's primitive but the guy here is no stranger to Dysentry and supplies me with enough anti-biotics to get rid of my little parting present from Tibet. After that there's food. Surprisingly, I manage to eat a full meal and it's good. Damn good. I am fast developing a love affair with the friendly, green kingdom just a short walk below me and across "Friendship Bridge".
We spend the night in Zhangmu however, it's too late in the day to be crossing borders. It's our last night in Tibet and our last night in China. We've had many experiences in our month here some of them good some of them bad (obviously the more recent ones have been filed as "unsatisfactory"). The people have been a huge dissapointment but the landscape has made up for it. More than a few of the hardships have been our own doing but more than few have not.
Whatever has been is behind us now. Now we are onto Nepal, a new journey is beginning and it's beginning well.
We escape from the back of the crowded truck like two refugees clambering from a sinking boat onto the unwelcoming shores of Australia. We find ourselves back in Tingri, which I described before as something like a mud-brick slum in the middle of a treeless wasteland. Much to my dissapointment, things have not improved in the three days we've been roaming the Tibetan plateau, lost and hungry.
We get some desperately needed food, ordering two meals each. We try to slow our eating, knowing that to feast after a fast is never a good idea. It is, however, a pathetic attempt. We practically burry our faces in our plates and hoe into the food like pigs at a trough.We are disgustingly dirty and the staff give us strange looks.
It's four in the afternoon by the time we roll out of the restaurant. The Nepalese border is some 150km south, but in Tibet this is considered "down the road". Despite being exausted and dirty we decide to try and hitch then and there. We just want out of Tibet (and China for that matter) as quickly as possible.
We spend an hour on the road in the sun but it is too late in the day for jeeps to be coming through. We are willing to do the back of a truck but even these have stopped running. In the end we give up and leave it till the morning. We hike back into Tingri town and check into our old, shitty hotel room.
We pass out in our beds, both still fully clothed. There is no running water in this place and we haven't showered since leaving Shigatse some four days before. Given the activities we've been involved in since then - hitching on tractors, sleeping under steam rollers, getting spewed on in trucks, etc - you can imagine the fine state both our clothes and our bodies are in.
It's sometime around midnight when I wake with a certain and urgent need to use the shitters. I grab the bog role and torch and hurry out into the darkness. The outdoor dunny is a concrete cell with no doors, built over a dug out hole and it's some thirty meters walk in the dark to reach it. It's a piercingly cold night and I shiver violently as I squat over the slightly too wide hole in the cement. Tingri is about 4,400 meters above sea level, and at this altitude even the act of squatting and shitting is an effort.
I know when I'm done that I'm not really done, that I am in fact in for a long night. If nothing else this trip has made me an expert in the ways of the human digestive system. I head back to bed to try and get what little sleep I can before my next appointment.
It's less than an hour later. The walk out to the shitter has me panting for breath and my head is spinning, I stumble in the dark. When I return to bed some fifteen minutes later I am practically hyperventilating to try and catch my breath. I am shivering violently but I feel like I am on fire. As the sweat swokes my shirt I realise I'm coming down with a fever.
The toilet runs become routine. Almost like clockwork, on the hour every hour, I crawl out of bed stumble out to the dunny, assume the position, do what I need to do and stumble back to bed, dizzy, shivering, sweating. Glover alternates between being sympathetic and laughing - he's had his turn at this game before and knows the score. There's little he can do (or at least that I want him to do) to help me anyway.
I sleep little between "expeditions". I lie awake shivering and panting in my bed. With each journey I become more and more unsure on my feat. I am weak and dizzy. Apart from the loss of goods from my body and the lack of sleep, I also have to deal with the harsh cold and the thin air. The last few days of not eating and exposure to the elements have not left me at my healthiest either.
It's the 5 am run where things go wrong. Horribly wrong. I'm crouching over the concrete, bog roll in hand, shivering and breathing hard. My head is swimming. Suddenly the world goes black as I brieflly pass out. I fall forward in the squat position and smack my head against the wall, coming to just in time for the pain to register. At the same time, my bowels jetison their load. I spray shit over the entire dunny, in the process dropping my bog roll down the hole.
All of this in itself is not a huge problem. I haven't sprayed myself and I'm certainly not the first person to go off target in a Tibetan dunny (in fact the Tibetans seem to feel this is the way a dunny should be used). There's more bog roll in the room too. I stand up and pull on my trousers. I'm still groggy and confused and the act of standing itself takes my breath away again. I pass out once more, falling forward again but this time on my feet. Again I come to just in time for the pain of slamming my head against the wall to register.
Miraculously I've managed to keep my footing and have avoided falling down the shitter hole to a certain and horrible death. Unmiraculously my bowels have once again acted in my minds absence. The only problem this time is that I've just pulled on my pants. I've shit myself.
I stumble back to the room. I turn on the light and Glover wakes up. The conversation goes a little something like this:
Daniel: I've got a little situation I might need a hand here with mate.
Glover: Huh? What? Turn off the bloody light.
Daniel: Mate, I've just passed out in the dunny and shit myself.
Glover: You what?
Daniel: I've shit myself.
Glover: You fucking what?
Daniel: I've shit myself.
Glover: You've shit yourself?
Daniel: Yea, I've shit myself.
Glover: Right. You've shit yourself.
Daniel: Reckon you could find me the spare bog roll, and poor us a bowl of water.
Glover: Hang on. You mean you've like really shit yourself.
Daniel: Yea mate, I've really shit myself.
Eventually he gets the supplies and then buries his head under his pillow, either crying or laughing (or both) while I clean myself up. As I mentioned before, there is no running water in this town. I make do with one of the bowls they provide and the last of our drinking water. It's really not what I would like in this situation. Something more along the lines of a bottle of disinfectant and a blast from a fire hose would be more my preference.
The jocks are jetisoned out the door and I pull on the last of my clean clothes. As decent as I can possible be, given the circumstances, I fall back into bed and pass out. I manage to sleep a couple of hours and wake up around eight.
I feel like crap. The fever has died down a little with the few hours sleep but my stomach is still churning. I'm not hanging around however. The sooner I get away from this God forsaken hell-hole the better. There's little chance for recovery at this altitude and with this town's level of hygiene. Besides, once they see what I've done to the dunny they're not letting me stay another night anyway.
I pop a couple of immodium tablets. It's the only way I am going to make it through this ride. A few minutes later I need to shit again (it takes about half an hour for the immodium to take effect). Gingerly I enter the dunny. My handiwork is evident and it's hard not to be impressed with the way I have destroyed this little cement cell. I manage to perch over the hole and do what I need to do. Only now, in the clear light of day, I discover something. I am in fact shitting a fair amount of blood.
Although this explains a few things, like why I passed out for instance, it has me more than a little worried. No man likes to look down after the morning's work only to discover a redish hue where none should be. A little research in the "Health" section of the Lonely Planet identifies the symptons as a case of Dysentry (shitting blood, fever, etc). Up until this point it's a disease I had heard about in relation to army life and trenches. I guess that minus a few bullets, the past few days haven't been too far off that.
There's nothing I can do really. The best option is still to get to Nepal, and Kathmandu as soon as possible. The illness is serious if untreated, but not an immediate threat. The Planet does recommend against taking immodium however. A little too late for that advice.
It takes till midday to find a ride. While Glover flags down passing vehicles, I lie in the shade of a building by the side of the road, occasionally groaning. The wait is hot and dusty and when an empty, air-condition Toyota Landcruiser pulls up I am ready to offer them Glover's first born child for a lift (at this point in time I'm pretty sure children are no longer an option for me).
It's the most comfortable vehicle we have travelled in while in China. It has leg room, comfy seats even suspension. The drivers are two Chinese guys, working the tour group scene. Say what you will about the Chinese but they know what a customer is and they treat us well. All this luxury is just enough for me to survive the trip without shitting, spewing or dieing.
With every meter that we near Nepal, and flee Tibet, things improve. The sceneray changes from empty, lifeless mountains to lush, green foliage. We travel in a deep valley and waterfalls cascade down the edge on both sides. Some of them fall so far that the water turns to mist before hitting the ground. The altitude drops quickly and by the time we reach the border town of Zhangmu we are down to around 2,500 meters. The air is full and tasty, rich with the flavours of wild plants and spices. I take in great gulps of it tasting the moist humidity.
Zhangmu sits on the Tibetan side of the border, perched along the cliff face. It is a town unlike any we've seen in China. It is filled with tall, solid buildings with an attractive style that we later come to know as Nepalese. Trees and bushes surround it, crowding it with colour and life. As we drive through the town we find medical facilities, a bank, internet and restaurants selling Nepalese and Indian food. We are in paradise.
We find a hotel and the staff speak English. They are easily the friendliest people we have met in China. They are of course Nepalese. We get a room with clean, comfortable beds and soft white pillows. There is a shower here with excellent water pressure. I head straight for it. It's not hot but in this humid climate it doesn't need to be. I am clean. I no longer have shit on myself, whether real or just imagined.
After showering we find a medical center. It's primitive but the guy here is no stranger to Dysentry and supplies me with enough anti-biotics to get rid of my little parting present from Tibet. After that there's food. Surprisingly, I manage to eat a full meal and it's good. Damn good. I am fast developing a love affair with the friendly, green kingdom just a short walk below me and across "Friendship Bridge".
We spend the night in Zhangmu however, it's too late in the day to be crossing borders. It's our last night in Tibet and our last night in China. We've had many experiences in our month here some of them good some of them bad (obviously the more recent ones have been filed as "unsatisfactory"). The people have been a huge dissapointment but the landscape has made up for it. More than a few of the hardships have been our own doing but more than few have not.
Whatever has been is behind us now. Now we are onto Nepal, a new journey is beginning and it's beginning well.
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