| Visiting the bright lights of 'Yak Town' |
| Local culture |
| By Candice Martin on 5/30/2007 4:00 PM |
Mark and I decided to head off on a mini expedition of our own. Base Camp is slowly turning into a ghost town as the last of the expeditions leave. Our Lithuanian friends have incredibly decided to eschew the comforts of Everest Base Camp for a trip to the Maldives. So before we transform ourselves into complete misanthropists, grow beards, crawl into cliff-top caves and shudder at the thought of any other human contact we thought we’d make a quick trip to ‘Yak Town’, Base Camp's nearest metropolis.
We heard much mention of this legendary outpost and so we donned our backpacks and trudged for an hour along the rocky terrain. The grand metropolis consisted of a cluster of tents aka ‘hotels’ all boasting fine rooms, food and good times. We passed ‘Disneyland’, ‘Hotel de Calfornia’ and many other grandiose sounding establishments. Finally we were enticed into one with the promise of a refreshing glass of jasmine tea. The ‘hotel’ consisted of one tented room with padded seating on all sides and quite an impressive stove in the centre. Unfortunately our luck was out as there was nothing cookin’ during our visit and so we missed the rare experience of grub cooked using yak dung fuel.
We wandered up and down the street and struck a bargain with a couple of the yak herders flogging various items and then hopped onto one of the brightly coloured horse drawn carts. I started belting out ‘Surrey with the fringe on top’ with newly invented lyrics until Mark and I agreed that we both more or less knew the words to ‘Jingle Bells’. The weather closed in on our return to BC, we piled on the layers and took refuge in the ‘pleasure dome’ until nightfall.
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