Tour pamphlet says Everest Base Camp but its like a cheat kinda. Unlike Nepal side where one need to hike to the base camp, the China side could be driven all the way to the base camp or at least very very close to the base camp.
A view point 8km from the actual hikers base camp to be exzact.
It was a near 400km journey today to Everest Base Camp but we all started to realized that its called something else in China. Mt. Qomolangma National Nature Reserve which is actually the Tibetan name for Mt. Everest.
1st stop was a man made tourist attraction, a 5000km marker of the national road G318. Quick stop and go with a picture taken it was then to the second stop Gyatsola pass at 5220m but for some reason due to the flatness of the climb, I could not tell it was so high other than the cold bite.
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| 5000km Marker of Route G318 |
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| Explanation Board of Qomolangma National Reserve (aka Mt. Everest) |
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| Gyatsola Pass at 5220m Altitude |
We reach the ticketing office for Everest Base Camp just after lunch, started the final climb up to Kya Wu Lha Pass Viewing Platform of Mt. Qomolangma which was 5198m.
It was a little hard trying to find the right mountain peak of Mt. Qomolangma among the many snow capped peak mountains within the cloudy weather.
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| Kya Wu Lha Pass Viewing Platform .... Cloudy and waiting for clear skies |
Camping Chair came out and although we still had another one hours to travel to the hotel after the pass, I decided to just hang around and wait for blue skies.
It was a long wait which eventually most of the other tour participant left while still cloudy. All that was left was three teams, Lush, Donkey & myself which we all sat around making tea in the cold chatting away waiting for the clouds to pass.
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| Team Lush, Team Donkey & Team Bragge awaiting blue skies at Kya Wu Lha Pass |
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| Mt. Qomolangma aka Mt. Everest |
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| Bragge & Me with Mt. Qomolangma in the background |
Slowly near sunset, we could see the clouds starting to blow away to reveal blue skies. All previous guesses of which one was Mt. Qomolangma was actually wrong. It was hidden in the clouds and it was beautiful. With the clear sky, it was very obvious which one was Mt. Everest.
Sun was setting so we all started the journey down to the little village at Tingri County for the night. Tomorrow would be the actual visit to the Mt. Qomolangma base camp tourist viewing platform where we would get to see Mt. Qomolangma more up-close but without the panoramic view of the other mountain range.
Traveled on: May 2024
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