Goodbye Calypso
Monday, August 02, 2010
Sunday 1st August
Well where do we begin.....after being told we cannot proceed past Nyingchi before the 30th due to the road being washed away, there was more heavy rain on the 29th resulting in a bridge collapsing-along with our plans. The government wouldn't give us other permits to drive any other road but the one that was blocked, the security police were telling us to get out of Tibet as our Tibetan permits were about to expire so we were kinda stuck between a rock and a hard place.
It became apparent that we couldn't proceed any further east out of Tibet as planned and to get round the floods it would be around a 2-3 week detour. Thus Plan B was formulated to get back to Lhasa to renew our Tibet permits and reroute to Nepal. Woohoo! No such luck though as once we arrived in Lhasa we were advised it takes Mr Chinese Man at least 2 weeks to stamp the extension forms, so team Odyssey were back to square one.
Most of the group are now getting frustrated by how simple tasks take so long in China, one minute you are told everything is ok by the police/government and then told conflicting information around 2 minutes later. God knows how anyone survives here without having a copious amount of alcohol at hand, which is such a shame as the country is beautiful its just the Chinese government control pretty much everything!
Plan C has now been kicked into action and tomorrow morning we shall fly from Lhasa to Chengdu which means we can finally get out of Tibet plus we even get to catch up with our Panda friends at the Panda sanctuary. Then we shall jump on an overnight train to Kunming and the trip shall continue as planned. Inevitably though this means losing the truck so Pete is taking the truck to Kathmandu to send her back to the UK which is a real shame as we have all became quite attached to Calypso as she has been our home for the last 4 months. Don't worry though as Pete shall be catching up with as soon as possible once the endless paperwork is sorted.
Anyway the show must go on and the weather shall always be the weather and unfortunately Calypso doesn't float or fly, so we gave her all a good send off to clear the bar stock and food last night. We shall miss her!
Well where do we begin.....after being told we cannot proceed past Nyingchi before the 30th due to the road being washed away, there was more heavy rain on the 29th resulting in a bridge collapsing-along with our plans. The government wouldn't give us other permits to drive any other road but the one that was blocked, the security police were telling us to get out of Tibet as our Tibetan permits were about to expire so we were kinda stuck between a rock and a hard place.
It became apparent that we couldn't proceed any further east out of Tibet as planned and to get round the floods it would be around a 2-3 week detour. Thus Plan B was formulated to get back to Lhasa to renew our Tibet permits and reroute to Nepal. Woohoo! No such luck though as once we arrived in Lhasa we were advised it takes Mr Chinese Man at least 2 weeks to stamp the extension forms, so team Odyssey were back to square one.
Most of the group are now getting frustrated by how simple tasks take so long in China, one minute you are told everything is ok by the police/government and then told conflicting information around 2 minutes later. God knows how anyone survives here without having a copious amount of alcohol at hand, which is such a shame as the country is beautiful its just the Chinese government control pretty much everything!
Plan C has now been kicked into action and tomorrow morning we shall fly from Lhasa to Chengdu which means we can finally get out of Tibet plus we even get to catch up with our Panda friends at the Panda sanctuary. Then we shall jump on an overnight train to Kunming and the trip shall continue as planned. Inevitably though this means losing the truck so Pete is taking the truck to Kathmandu to send her back to the UK which is a real shame as we have all became quite attached to Calypso as she has been our home for the last 4 months. Don't worry though as Pete shall be catching up with as soon as possible once the endless paperwork is sorted.
Anyway the show must go on and the weather shall always be the weather and unfortunately Calypso doesn't float or fly, so we gave her all a good send off to clear the bar stock and food last night. We shall miss her!
Blue line shows our intended route after Everest and the red line details our new route
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