The Hotel on the Roof of the World - five years in Tibet by Alec le Sueur

Author:Alec le Sueur [Sueur, Alec le]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Summersdale Publishers Ltd
Published: 2013-01-08T23:00:00+00:00

THE MISS TIBET FIASCO

Virtually the only guests checking-in to the hotel by mid-November were the last groups of mountaineers returning from the Himalayas. Everest, or Chomolongma as the Tibetans refer to the world’s highest mountain, was the most popular peak but we also had groups who had been on Cho Oyu, Shishapangma and the Japanese favourite: Namche Barwa. At 25,446 feet (7,756 m) Namche Barwa was the highest unclimbed mountain in the world and the Japanese kept throwing themselves at it, determined to score a ‘first’. The death toll was high, but to their great credit – if you happen to think it credit-worthy to risk your life for the sake of standing on top of a large piece of windswept rock and ice – they did eventually succeed.

The ‘Cowboys’ were the last team of the season to arrive back from Everest: sixteen Americans, bearded, sunburnt, exhausted and filthy – but all alive. None had made it to the summit but all were in good spirits. They had every right to be. Climbing Everest depends on an equal amount of phenomenal skill and luck, and this season even the most skilful teams had been defeated by bad luck. Each team told their own version of being stuck a few hundred metres from the summit waiting for a ‘window’ to appear in the blizzards which constantly sweep around the peak.

Curiously, the distance they reached from the summit diminishes in direct proportion to the length of time spent in the hotel bar, the number of Tsing Tao beers consumed and the chances of scoring with easily impressed tourists.

The ‘windows’ on Everest never came that season and each team had to return to Base Camp without having planted their flag or taken the triumphant ‘here I am standing at 29,028 feet’ photo. Tragically there had been two fatalities. It was usual for the majority of mountaineers to return untriumphant but after this season the gap in numbers between those making it to the top and those remaining dead on the mountain grew smaller.

The teams arriving back in the hotel headed first for the showers and then for the bar. Some tried it the other way around and we had to tactfully explain to them that they should experiment with soap and hot water before entering any of the public areas of the hotel. Not all the guests appreciated the smell of ripe mountaineer. Then there was the other odour particular to mountaineers and trekkers – the smell of burning yak dung, gained from happy evenings sitting around a yak dung fire. They thought they could wash it out of their clothes but even the Holiday Inn Lhasa laundry, which could reduce a perfectly good garment to shreds of unrecognisable fibre, could never remove the smell of burnt yak dung.

Once safely back in the hotel bar, the mountaineers played guitars, drank the hotel out of proprietary brands of liquor and partied late into the night. They were a fun crowd. The hotel became alive again and the corridors buzzed with stories of mankind’s battle with the forces of nature.

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