Had we gone to Tibet as planned on 7 March it would have been disastrous. We’d have arrived in Kashgar in Xinjiang Province around the 10th, spent a few days sorting gear and supplies before leaving for the western border of Tibet around the 14th for a 5 day 4WD trip.
As many of you would know, on 17th March 2008 (the 49th anniversary of the Tibetan Uprising of 1959) riots erupted in the Tibetan capital of Lhasa and the Chinese military moved in. The government closed Tibet to all foreigners immediately. So we’d have been en route to Tibet when we’d have been well and truly stopped in our tracks, forced to return to Kashgar with no place to go (certainly not the place we wanted to go!).
So in many ways the refusal to issue our permits by the Chinese Government a couple of weeks earlier was a blessing in disguise. It would truly have been a wasted and very expensive journey and an incredibly frustrating experience. I guess we are left wondering whether the reasons we were given for the refusal were perhaps a smokescreen. That perhaps the Chinese had intelligence that something was brewing in Tibet and they wanted to ensure as many foreigners as possible were kept out of the region. We will never know.
The second bit of luck was that the 4 of us did go on a wonderful ‘consolation’ trip to ski in the Indian Himalaya. Huw had done many ski trips there in the 80’s and 90’s but had not skied there for 10 years. For Grant, Gary and Dave it was a first time. Huw put together a route plan for an area new to him; in the Kinnaur and Garwhal regions in the eastern end of the Indian Himalaya.
We skied some fantastic terrain in varied weather including over some challenging high passes such as the Rupin and the Bali. We also skied up a rather nice 6400m peak along the way. The trip was an opportunity for us to spend some time together, to test some equipment and basically to enjoy some good times in great mountains. It was also a reminder, if one was needed, as to how tough our expedition for Tibet was going to be – the need for full acclimatization, the altitude and the temperatures.
Check here for a few photos from India. Keep your eyes open for some magazine features on the India trip in the coming months.
So what of our Skiing the Roof of the World expedition? Realistically there is nothing we can do until we see how things in Tibet play out politically up to and over the period of the Beijing Olympics in August/Sept when the world’s eyes are on China. We are also aware that March 17th 2009 is the 50th anniversary of the Tibetan Uprising. We can only wait and see whether 2009 is our year or 2010 works better.