Living at 4900m

Sunday 06.09.09

It's our third night at Chinese Base Camp (CBC) and in truth this is our first 'home' of the expedition - reason being that - even though we left our real homes more than 9 days ago- we've stayed in so many places, most of which we hardly bothered to take our stuff out from their travel bags. (Dubai-Kathmandu-Khodare- Zhangmu (tibet) - Myalam (tibet) - Tingri (Tibet))

It's a nice little spot this - CBC - set up along the road to the real base camp, adjacent to a small river which provides background noise for those altitude-related sleepless nights. It's essentially a yak depot (a stampede by a couple of runaway yaks resulted in my getting a fright as they got tangled with the tent ropes while I was passing time in the tent!) and there's a chinese military base set up the hill above us - the consequence of which means that we have to walk for a good half-hour at the start of our daily acclamatisation treks so as to not seem that we are spying on their camp. Moreover we can only use our sat phones discreetly and from our tents.

We've set up our solar panels to recharge our batteries - which come in different voltages, sizes and shapes (Greg's nightmare) and our expedition also has a portable hot shower - a luxury I only got to know about today (i've been using a basin and wet wipes until now). But a shower is only nice during a hot day, not when it's cold and raining (sometimes snowing).

It all seems so natural that it feels like we're out for a weekend camping at Ghajn Tuffieha. But the fact of the matter is that we are sleeping at an elevation of 4950m - which translated in layman's terms means that we're having breakfast, lunch, dinner, a shower, toilet, etc. at an elevation that is higher than the summit of Mt. Blanc !

However, - apart from the odd sleepless night- it honestly doesn't feel that way . The only reminder that we're at altitude is that useful (sometimes irritating) little oxygen saturation meter which in the best of days tells us that the oxygen in our blood is around 85% - a good 13% down from what it was reading when we were in Malta. Early morning readings hover around the 70% mark (the body breathes less during sleep - which is efficient but induces headaches(my theory). Pulse rate as I write this blog under my sweet pink quilt with teddy bears (curtosy of my loving colleages) is 90 - which normally relates to moderately fast walking in malta.

This is actually the first time in our mountaineering experiences that we've slept for more than 3 nights at an elevation higher than 4300m - my (and Greg's) similar experience being our 4 nights at Aconcagua base camp (4300m) in January 2008. We've slept at altitudes of 5500m or so, but only for single nights.

All in all, it seems that we're getting accustomed to the altitude (and the consequences arising thereof) and we're coping well - my formula is to drink lots, take a paracetamol at night and another in the morning and keep healthy. The paracetamol thing is based on my belief that it induces sleep - Greg says it does no such thing - so it may ell be a psychological thing.

We have resisted the use of Diamox - a pill that delays the incidence of altitude-related sicknesses and discomforts - as we'd rather that we'd go through the undesirable yet necessary process of acclimatisation naturally i.e. without artificial assistance . I'll save Diamox for a later day. Hopefully I may not get to use it at all.