I'm on Top of the World!

Dear Fam and Friends,

I wasn't expecting to be writting again this soon but I'm currently stuck as the result of a road block for construction for 6 hours in the Himalayan Mountain range pass between Everest and the Nepal border. Luckily the little crap village I am in has internet, not fast but it works and the keyboards are a little whack!

I have to first appoligize for not throwing any pictures up but I have yet to find a fast enough internet connection to upload pictures. This entry will be short as the town after Lhasa and the town we stayed at last night after we left Mt. Everest were pretty crap and nothing really happened. So on to the most amazing two days of my life!

The scenery leading up to Everest was partly cloudy but mostly all blue sky and the mountains and plains were insanely vast and breath taking. When we reached the high pass, 16,500 ft., before the switchback roads to Everest we all got out to take pictures and you could definately feel the intense feeling of breathing the thinnest air in the world while standing on land mass. Walking up the short hill to snap a photo of the prayer flags with the mountains amidst in the backdrop I was completely out of breath and struggling to breath, pretty nuts. After leaving the pass we got to the first lookout of Everest, goosebumps definately struck me not from being cold but exactly the opposit, we were in pants and a t-shirt at 16,800 ft. looking at the tallest point in the entire world with only a couple clouds in the sky around the peak! The final drive to the mountain was a series of many switch backs up an insanely bumpy road surrounded by mountains that looked like recent lava erotion, yet is millions of years old! There was no snow except for the snow on Mt. Everest and the surrounding Himalayans, which I didn't expect to see. Arriving at the Monestary just 8 km's from base camp we all were completely blown away as there wasn't one cloud in the sky and the weather would continue until today! That night we all celebrated our amazing experience of seeing Everest, usually somewhat visible in the good season about 2 out of every 7 days, with some beer! We met a cool French girl living in Beijing and another guy from Scotland who'd been traveling for 3 years! We went on a walk that night and I've never seen so many stars and Mt. Everest had a glow to it that I'll never forget! We found a cave to hang out in and talked story for awhile until the wind started to pick up and we called it a night.

The next day we woke up at 7am and packed a light pack and began our hike of the 8 km to basecamp. The camp got moved I guess because about 2 weeks ago some American students stood up with a sign that said "Free Tibet" and posted it on youtube.com and you can only imagin how the Chinese government loved that! The hike was freezing bitter cold as the sun had not rissen yet and the terrain reminded me of walkin on the moon, pretty cool. Arriving after 2 hours of walking and breathing heavily from the thin air we were greated with a cloudless sleeping mountain that towered the rest of the world! As the sun began to creep over the westardly mountain pass the shadows became vast and we got some great pictures, I beleive there were two full moons at the mountain too! Actually right after snapping our last picture, the sun roared over the mountain as intense as ever and finally provided a little warmth as our fingers were nearly frost bitten! It was all worth it and to have such a rare two days of no clouds and a deep blue sky reflecting off the tallest peak in the world is quite an incredible experience. To give you an idea, we met some Irish guys in Lhasa two days earlier who had been two weeks ago and didn't see Mt. Everest the whole time! Anyway, sorry to make a short story long but what an amazing journey to reach Everest and one I'll surely not forget. Oh ya, I bargained with a local Tibetan and we got a donkey ride back from basecamp haha!

We are all really stoked to get down from high altitude and breath like normal human beings which should happen in a day! Right now I am in a littler village in the Himalays about a couple hours from the border of Tibet and Nepal. We are stuck at a road block until later tonight and then we're on our way to the border where we are crashing in yet another scummy guest house but no worries cuz I am on top of the world right now, literally, haha!