In the background, I could hear announcements of other flights to Lhasa, Tibet as well. There's an average of 16 flights to Tibet a day and from what I've gathered, the tickets are premium-priced due to high tourism demand. True enough, there was a interesting mix of passenger load aboard my flight - Caucasians with enormous bagpacks, Japanese with their sophiscated cameras, China Tour Groups from other provinces easily identified from the large no. of pple wearing bright yellow tour-agent caps, adventurous North Indians, sparse groups of Asian community like us. There was even a CCTV crew group boarding our flight! Air China is the most expensive airline to fly to Tibet, however, it is the safest and most experienced airline.

Yes, by 0710hrs, people started queueing up even before the announcements. This seems to be the trend in China Airports i realised. Cutting queue is prevalent too.

0735h - Entered Gate B9. Flight CA 4401; Airbus 330-200 aircraft. B-6072

Generally, it was a much bigger plane with a 2-4-2 seat configuration. The walls are white, the LCD Screens were large. Its pretty amazing to see the PRC people bringing in packets of food like KFC, boxes of fruits, and the poor aircrew have to persuade passengers to settle down quickly. No pillows, no blankets. Many were requesting "Can I have blankets?", "Do u have pillows??". The poor air stewardess have to cope with a huge demand as the moment one had a blanket, many others requested them as well, so she had to take a big bag filled with pillows and started distributing. Come to think of it, i thought it was the norm to have a pillow on the seat in the first place. Anway, sweets were offered before the flight took off.

0811h - Flight CA 4401 finally takes off, after a shaky journey on the taxiway. The inflight screen was showing the panoramic view of foggy Chengdu environment. It somehow rained when we took off, so the screen was very blurred with all the rainwater splattering on the lens. Very soon...bbbzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.......the screwn went black and the LCD Screen was retracted back and shut. Lol. Seriously, Chengdu looks very gloomy in the misty and rainy weather, however the moment we went above the clouds, it was all sunny & bright, with no signs of dark clouds! As usual, the captain announced in fluent English that there will be a late plane arrival at 1020h instead of 0950h due to late departure.

0845h - Breakfast was served! Corn Porridge, Szechuan preserved vegetable, spicy vegetable, cubes of rockmelon, and very sweet beverages. Hmm...this is defintely my 1st time having porridge in the air. The kind of inflight programmes is totally foreign, 1st it was "Just for Laughs" then "Garfield Movie", in addition to the Olympic 2008 ads and the patriotism ads.

And for the welcoming tea of the flight, its the Tibetan Yak Butter Tea! A stewardess was holding a porcelain china teapot with a stack of cups enquiring who would like to try (more like dare to try) =p. The tea...is defintely not a highlight of a trip to Tibet. Made from yak butter mixed with salt, milk, soda, tea leaves and hot water all churned up in a wooden tube. Its taste is like a cross between brewed old socks and sump oil.

^ Snow-capped Mountains of Himalayas

^ Lhasa Gongkar Airport Runway (LXA), Tibet

Our flight CA 4401 finally arrived at Lhasa Gongkar Airport at 1007hrs. The airport was modern and spanking new. As you can see, the airport is situated in a valley with mountains of height 5000m & above surrounding it. The tourism board has definitely done alot improvements considering we don't even need to take a stairs down the plane like many rural places i've experienced...One of the highest airport in the world, Lhasa Gongkar Airport ~3700m above sea level

The moment we alighted from the plane, there were hundreds of passengers awaiting to board our plane back to Chengdu. As expected, Cacuasians take up a significant number of the race that I saw.

The moment I alighted the plane, my main concern was the symptoms of altitude mountain sickness (AMS) as all travel advisories have placed huge emphasis on this aspect. It is a pathological condition that is caused by acute exposure to low air pressure (usually outdoors on high altitudes).

Generally, different people have different susceptibilities to altitude sickness. For some otherwise healthy people Acute mountain sickness (AMS) can begin to appear at around 2000 meters (6,500 feet) above sea level such as at many mountain ski resorts. AMS is the most frequent type of altitude sickness encountered. Symptoms often manifest themselves 6 to 10 hours after ascent and generally subside in 1 to 2 days, but they occasionally develop into the more serious conditions. Symptoms are described as headache with fatigue, stomach sickness, dizziness, and sleep disturbance as additional possible symptoms. Exertion aggravates the symptoms.

High altitude pulmonary edema (HAPE) and cerebral edema (HACE) are the most ominous of these symptoms, while acute mountain sickness, retinal haemorrhages, and peripheral edema are the less severe forms of the disease. The rate of ascent, the altitude attained, the amount of physical activity at high altitude, as well as individual susceptibility, are contributing factors to the incidence and severity of high-altitude illness.

Symptoms of life-threatening conditions resulting from extreme altitude sickness include:
pulmonary edema (fluid in the lungs) - persistent dry cough, fever and shortness of breath even when resting
cerebral edema (swelling of the brain) - headache that does not respond to analgesics, unsteady walking, increasing vomiting and gradual loss of consciousness.

Hence, altitude acclimatisation is very crucial in high altitude areas. Once above approximately 3,000 metres (10,000 feet), most climbers and high altitude trekkers follow the "golden rule" - climb high, sleep low. The general rule of thumb is to not ascend more than 300 metres (1,000 feet) per day to sleep. That is, one can climb from 3,000 (10,000 feet) to 4,500 metres (15,000 feet) in one day, but one should then descend back to 3,300 metres (11,000 feet) to sleep. This process cannot safely be rushed, and this explains why climbers need to spend days (or even weeks at times) acclimatising before attempting to climb a high peak.

Of course as you can see, most of us just boarded the plane at around 500m (Chengdu), and flew straight to Lhasa at 3700m, thats a 3200m rise in altitude within 2h! Humans will defintely need time to acclimatise to such conditions. At higher altitudes, oxygen level is only 60-70% of what you are breathing at ground level. That's why some people recommend taking the Tibetan Plateau Train Service from Qinghai as it ascends at a slower rate and symptoms wont be as bad as this.

The moment I was at the baggage belt collection area, I felt a tinge of coldness & numbness between my skull & cerebrum. It was like cold icy water streaming across the sulcus of the brain, paralysing it and causing a headache. Thank goodness it lasted a minute or so unlike another passenger who kept bleeding nose due to low pressure. I have heard of places like Kathmandu, Nepal (1335m) have O2 cylinders ubiquitously sold at many places, but this is so unlike here!
We were shortly greeted by our Tibetan tour guide and driver (both Sichuan people)..haha...not native Tibetan. A "hata" was given to us, its actually a white silky Tibetan cloth hung over our necks as a form of welcome. As this is a solely a private trip, we had the whole van to ourselves. Most of the time, I realized the tour guide often communicated with the driver in Sichuan Dialect which was totally foreign to us.

Tibet is a plateau region in Central Asia and the indigenous home to the Tibetans. With an average elevation of 4,900m (16,000 ft), it is the highest region on Earth and is commonly referred to as the "Roof of the World." Lhasa is the traditional capital of Tibet and the capital of the Tibet Autonomous Region of the PRC. The city is the traditional seat of the Dalai Lama and the Potala and Norbulingka palaces and in Tibetan Buddhism is regarded as the holiest centre in Tibet. The city is home to about 255,000 inhabitants and, at an altitude of approximately 3,650 m (11,975 ft), is one of the highest cities in the world. Lhasa literally means "place of the gods", although ancient Tibetan documents and inscriptions demonstrate that the place was first called Rasa, which means "courtyard place" or "goat place".
It was a totally sunny day in Lhasa the moment we landed, a huge contrast as compared to light snow on the morning (as claimed by the guide). Weather is totally unpredictable here. Oh, due to the low pressure, if you do have any tubes of lotion or liquid, there will be like an "explosion" of the contents the moment you open the tube/bottle.

With a new highway and a new 2.4km tunnel dugged through the mountains, the journey to Lhasa city is now reduced 50% to 1hr. The scenery is just mountains & mountains, grasslands, fast flowing water with melting ice, wild birds flying around. It is indeed the earth's highest ecosystem and the source of Asia's greatest rivers! In fact, the Tibetan pleteau is one of the most isolated regions in the world and 4 of the world's 10 highest mountains straddle Tibet's southern border with Nepal.

^ Rows of greenhouses to grow vegetables

We took roughly an hour to reach Lhasa City. It is amazingly clean city with proper paved roads and nice lamp-posts along the road. There is even lanes for bicycles, typical of a China city. Lunch was at Tibet Bianfang hotel. We were really the 1st guest to enter as the lights were all still off and the staff was half-dozing. Lol. However, the dish was cooked rapidly and we were served 7 dishes of non-spicy food. Thank goodness it isnt Tibetan or Sichuan flavour as it is not too my liking. So far, this seems like one of the best welcoming dish I ever had. Real Tibetan food is like for survival, not pleasure.

Basic Tibetan meal is tsampa, a kind of dough made with roasted-barley flour and yak butter, mixed with tea or beer. Otherwise, rural places of Tibet is limited to greasy momos and thugpa. Momos are small dumplings filled with meat/+veg while thugpa is a noodle soup with meat/+veg..worse still, its the yaksha (yak meat) or dried yak cheese. For the 1st half-hr, it is like having a small oily rock in your mouth, but eventually starts to soften up and tast like old, dried yak cheese. Yucks!

The symptoms of AMS has started for some people, like my parents who didnt had appetite already and a thai tourist who started vomiting profusely. The Thai tour co-ordinator was trying to be hip, wearing one thin layer of shirt, thinking he macho...until one Tibetan person warned him to wear thicker as he can catch cold very easily.

Meanwhile, it started raining outside. Weather is really unpredictable. It turned out to be gloomy but the temperature (8C) wasnt cold enough to solidify it into snow. However, it is clearly visible that the mountains surrounding us is already experiencing another snowfall again. From the streets, I could observe that a typical Tibetan has very red cheeks, dark skin tone (oevr-exposure of sunlight UVB rays due to high altitude). After navigating a few routes & crossing Lhasa river (kyi-chu), we finally arrived Xianzu Island Holiday Village Hotel. It is indeed situated on a island itself. Our accomodation for that few nights...

^ Lavishly decorated hotel lobby

^ Reception Counter

As you can see, its just a 3 storey hotel, full of privacy, with great Tibetan architecture

A standard room all to myself...note that the walls have Tibetan motifs

Back gate of the resort - ~5500m high mountains

Generally, the entrance of the hotel has a huge wooden door and a connecting garden with basic playground facilities. The lobby is like some monastery. Due to the low-peak season, there is hardly anyone in the vicinity. It feels like a ghost town. Got room 8104.

Now this is the beginning of many problems & glitches: The carpet seems drenched or perhaps its condensation. The toilet bowl flush doesnt seem to work, one must press very hard to get it activating. There's even a sign that warns people from throwing tea leaves & garbage into the toilet bowl as it will be choked. The bath tub seems very clean, maybe hardly anyone bathes in Tibet (all 1st day arrivals to Tibet shouldnt bathe as you can get cold easily = get hospitalised or airlifted; its fatal). Oh, the door latch was also broken...by me...its too loose and there seems to be some great friction hindering the opening the door. The TV reception is B-A-D. My 51 PRC channels cant work properly...then halfway while I was inspecting...bzzzz....power shutdown. Total shutdown. No warm air! Very soon, my room temperature declined to 10C.

Oh goodness, the telephone is faulty as well...after taking a long time searching for staff, the assistant manager came over and said they'll restore the energy supply and started rectifying all the faults. Imagine a guy in blazer fixing the toilet bowl. Whoa!

Soon, the symptoms of AMS is starting to appear on me...yeah, after 8 hrs upon arrival...I had all kinds of unwellness like a pregnant woman. Felt like vomiting, had a headache, giddyness, breathing difficulty, chest pain...its so bad that I feel like ripping my head off. Theres no warm air, so I had to cuddle myself despite the blankets being insufficient. We 'rested' until 1900h before leaving for dinner. Somehow, the sunset seems very late. It feels like 4pm at 7pm.

Dinner was at a restaurant next to Potala Palace. It was horrible. Looks like its a fusion of Tibetan & Chinese food. Wintermelon soup w/ unknown bony meat, szechuan spicy food, harden rice. Only the tea was good. My m2 who ran to catch her cap that flown away felt very nauseous and breathless. Seriously, I think i felt that my age was 4 times than I was. Climbing a few steps was tedious and breathless. Giddyness is very common. Dinner was not pleasant.

Returned to hotel shortly after, had a chat with the Chinese doctor, who was supposedly to be on 24hr standby (his bed was there) and he gave us a few old advice heard from the others & guide books as well.

I probably woke up a few times in the middle of the night due to breathlessness. Other than that, the sleep wasnt that peaceful at all. The night was pretty cold as well. 3 blankets and it seens insufficient. It was snowing heavily in the mountains le....

In the background, I could hear announcements of other flights to Lhasa, Tibet as well. There's an average of 16 flights to Tibet a day and from what I've gathered, the tickets are premium-priced due to high tourism demand. True enough, there was a interesting mix of passenger load aboard my flight - Caucasians with enormous bagpacks, Japanese with their sophiscated cameras, China Tour Groups from other provinces easily identified from the large no. of pple wearing bright yellow tour-agent caps, adventurous North Indians, sparse groups of Asian community like us. There was even a CCTV crew group boarding our flight! Air China is the most expensive airline to fly to Tibet, however, it is the safest and most experienced airline.

Yes, by 0710hrs, people started queueing up even before the announcements. This seems to be the trend in China Airports i realised. Cutting queue is prevalent too.

0735h - Entered Gate B9. Flight CA 4401; Airbus 330-200 aircraft. B-6072

Generally, it was a much bigger plane with a 2-4-2 seat configuration. The walls are white, the LCD Screens were large. Its pretty amazing to see the PRC people bringing in packets of food like KFC, boxes of fruits, and the poor aircrew have to persuade passengers to settle down quickly. No pillows, no blankets. Many were requesting "Can I have blankets?", "Do u have pillows??". The poor air stewardess have to cope with a huge demand as the moment one had a blanket, many others requested them as well, so she had to take a big bag filled with pillows and started distributing. Come to think of it, i thought it was the norm to have a pillow on the seat in the first place. Anway, sweets were offered before the flight took off.

0811h - Flight CA 4401 finally takes off, after a shaky journey on the taxiway. The inflight screen was showing the panoramic view of foggy Chengdu environment. It somehow rained when we took off, so the screen was very blurred with all the rainwater splattering on the lens. Very soon...bbbzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.......the screwn went black and the LCD Screen was retracted back and shut. Lol. Seriously, Chengdu looks very gloomy in the misty and rainy weather, however the moment we went above the clouds, it was all sunny & bright, with no signs of dark clouds! As usual, the captain announced in fluent English that there will be a late plane arrival at 1020h instead of 0950h due to late departure.

0845h - Breakfast was served! Corn Porridge, Szechuan preserved vegetable, spicy vegetable, cubes of rockmelon, and very sweet beverages. Hmm...this is defintely my 1st time having porridge in the air. The kind of inflight programmes is totally foreign, 1st it was "Just for Laughs" then "Garfield Movie", in addition to the Olympic 2008 ads and the patriotism ads.

And for the welcoming tea of the flight, its the Tibetan Yak Butter Tea! A stewardess was holding a porcelain china teapot with a stack of cups enquiring who would like to try (more like dare to try) =p. The tea...is defintely not a highlight of a trip to Tibet. Made from yak butter mixed with salt, milk, soda, tea leaves and hot water all churned up in a wooden tube. Its taste is like a cross between brewed old socks and sump oil.

^ Snow-capped Mountains of Himalayas

^ Lhasa Gongkar Airport Runway (LXA), Tibet

Our flight CA 4401 finally arrived at Lhasa Gongkar Airport at 1007hrs. The airport was modern and spanking new. As you can see, the airport is situated in a valley with mountains of height 5000m & above surrounding it. The tourism board has definitely done alot improvements considering we don't even need to take a stairs down the plane like many rural places i've experienced...One of the highest airport in the world, Lhasa Gongkar Airport ~3700m above sea level

The moment we alighted from the plane, there were hundreds of passengers awaiting to board our plane back to Chengdu. As expected, Cacuasians take up a significant number of the race that I saw.

The moment I alighted the plane, my main concern was the symptoms of altitude mountain sickness (AMS) as all travel advisories have placed huge emphasis on this aspect. It is a pathological condition that is caused by acute exposure to low air pressure (usually outdoors on high altitudes).

Generally, different people have different susceptibilities to altitude sickness. For some otherwise healthy people Acute mountain sickness (AMS) can begin to appear at around 2000 meters (6,500 feet) above sea level such as at many mountain ski resorts. AMS is the most frequent type of altitude sickness encountered. Symptoms often manifest themselves 6 to 10 hours after ascent and generally subside in 1 to 2 days, but they occasionally develop into the more serious conditions. Symptoms are described as headache with fatigue, stomach sickness, dizziness, and sleep disturbance as additional possible symptoms. Exertion aggravates the symptoms.

High altitude pulmonary edema (HAPE) and cerebral edema (HACE) are the most ominous of these symptoms, while acute mountain sickness, retinal haemorrhages, and peripheral edema are the less severe forms of the disease. The rate of ascent, the altitude attained, the amount of physical activity at high altitude, as well as individual susceptibility, are contributing factors to the incidence and severity of high-altitude illness.

Symptoms of life-threatening conditions resulting from extreme altitude sickness include:
pulmonary edema (fluid in the lungs) - persistent dry cough, fever and shortness of breath even when resting
cerebral edema (swelling of the brain) - headache that does not respond to analgesics, unsteady walking, increasing vomiting and gradual loss of consciousness.

Hence, altitude acclimatisation is very crucial in high altitude areas. Once above approximately 3,000 metres (10,000 feet), most climbers and high altitude trekkers follow the "golden rule" - climb high, sleep low. The general rule of thumb is to not ascend more than 300 metres (1,000 feet) per day to sleep. That is, one can climb from 3,000 (10,000 feet) to 4,500 metres (15,000 feet) in one day, but one should then descend back to 3,300 metres (11,000 feet) to sleep. This process cannot safely be rushed, and this explains why climbers need to spend days (or even weeks at times) acclimatising before attempting to climb a high peak.

Of course as you can see, most of us just boarded the plane at around 500m (Chengdu), and flew straight to Lhasa at 3700m, thats a 3200m rise in altitude within 2h! Humans will defintely need time to acclimatise to such conditions. At higher altitudes, oxygen level is only 60-70% of what you are breathing at ground level. That's why some people recommend taking the Tibetan Plateau Train Service from Qinghai as it ascends at a slower rate and symptoms wont be as bad as this.

The moment I was at the baggage belt collection area, I felt a tinge of coldness & numbness between my skull & cerebrum. It was like cold icy water streaming across the sulcus of the brain, paralysing it and causing a headache. Thank goodness it lasted a minute or so unlike another passenger who kept bleeding nose due to low pressure. I have heard of places like Kathmandu, Nepal (1335m) have O2 cylinders ubiquitously sold at many places, but this is so unlike here!
We were shortly greeted by our Tibetan tour guide and driver (both Sichuan people)..haha...not native Tibetan. A "hata" was given to us, its actually a white silky Tibetan cloth hung over our necks as a form of welcome. As this is a solely a private trip, we had the whole van to ourselves. Most of the time, I realized the tour guide often communicated with the driver in Sichuan Dialect which was totally foreign to us.

Tibet is a plateau region in Central Asia and the indigenous home to the Tibetans. With an average elevation of 4,900m (16,000 ft), it is the highest region on Earth and is commonly referred to as the "Roof of the World." Lhasa is the traditional capital of Tibet and the capital of the Tibet Autonomous Region of the PRC. The city is the traditional seat of the Dalai Lama and the Potala and Norbulingka palaces and in Tibetan Buddhism is regarded as the holiest centre in Tibet. The city is home to about 255,000 inhabitants and, at an altitude of approximately 3,650 m (11,975 ft), is one of the highest cities in the world. Lhasa literally means "place of the gods", although ancient Tibetan documents and inscriptions demonstrate that the place was first called Rasa, which means "courtyard place" or "goat place".
It was a totally sunny day in Lhasa the moment we landed, a huge contrast as compared to light snow on the morning (as claimed by the guide). Weather is totally unpredictable here. Oh, due to the low pressure, if you do have any tubes of lotion or liquid, there will be like an "explosion" of the contents the moment you open the tube/bottle.

With a new highway and a new 2.4km tunnel dugged through the mountains, the journey to Lhasa city is now reduced 50% to 1hr. The scenery is just mountains & mountains, grasslands, fast flowing water with melting ice, wild birds flying around. It is indeed the earth's highest ecosystem and the source of Asia's greatest rivers! In fact, the Tibetan pleteau is one of the most isolated regions in the world and 4 of the world's 10 highest mountains straddle Tibet's southern border with Nepal.

^ Rows of greenhouses to grow vegetables

We took roughly an hour to reach Lhasa City. It is amazingly clean city with proper paved roads and nice lamp-posts along the road. There is even lanes for bicycles, typical of a China city. Lunch was at Tibet Bianfang hotel. We were really the 1st guest to enter as the lights were all still off and the staff was half-dozing. Lol. However, the dish was cooked rapidly and we were served 7 dishes of non-spicy food. Thank goodness it isnt Tibetan or Sichuan flavour as it is not too my liking. So far, this seems like one of the best welcoming dish I ever had. Real Tibetan food is like for survival, not pleasure.

Basic Tibetan meal is tsampa, a kind of dough made with roasted-barley flour and yak butter, mixed with tea or beer. Otherwise, rural places of Tibet is limited to greasy momos and thugpa. Momos are small dumplings filled with meat/+veg while thugpa is a noodle soup with meat/+veg..worse still, its the yaksha (yak meat) or dried yak cheese. For the 1st half-hr, it is like having a small oily rock in your mouth, but eventually starts to soften up and tast like old, dried yak cheese. Yucks!

The symptoms of AMS has started for some people, like my parents who didnt had appetite already and a thai tourist who started vomiting profusely. The Thai tour co-ordinator was trying to be hip, wearing one thin layer of shirt, thinking he macho...until one Tibetan person warned him to wear thicker as he can catch cold very easily.

Meanwhile, it started raining outside. Weather is really unpredictable. It turned out to be gloomy but the temperature (8C) wasnt cold enough to solidify it into snow. However, it is clearly visible that the mountains surrounding us is already experiencing another snowfall again. From the streets, I could observe that a typical Tibetan has very red cheeks, dark skin tone (oevr-exposure of sunlight UVB rays due to high altitude). After navigating a few routes & crossing Lhasa river (kyi-chu), we finally arrived Xianzu Island Holiday Village Hotel. It is indeed situated on a island itself. Our accomodation for that few nights...

^ Lavishly decorated hotel lobby

^ Reception Counter

As you can see, its just a 3 storey hotel, full of privacy, with great Tibetan architecture

A standard room all to myself...note that the walls have Tibetan motifs

Back gate of the resort - ~5500m high mountains

Generally, the entrance of the hotel has a huge wooden door and a connecting garden with basic playground facilities. The lobby is like some monastery. Due to the low-peak season, there is hardly anyone in the vicinity. It feels like a ghost town. Got room 8104.

Now this is the beginning of many problems & glitches: The carpet seems drenched or perhaps its condensation. The toilet bowl flush doesnt seem to work, one must press very hard to get it activating. There's even a sign that warns people from throwing tea leaves & garbage into the toilet bowl as it will be choked. The bath tub seems very clean, maybe hardly anyone bathes in Tibet (all 1st day arrivals to Tibet shouldnt bathe as you can get cold easily = get hospitalised or airlifted; its fatal). Oh, the door latch was also broken...by me...its too loose and there seems to be some great friction hindering the opening the door. The TV reception is B-A-D. My 51 PRC channels cant work properly...then halfway while I was inspecting...bzzzz....power shutdown. Total shutdown. No warm air! Very soon, my room temperature declined to 10C.

Oh goodness, the telephone is faulty as well...after taking a long time searching for staff, the assistant manager came over and said they'll restore the energy supply and started rectifying all the faults. Imagine a guy in blazer fixing the toilet bowl. Whoa!

Soon, the symptoms of AMS is starting to appear on me...yeah, after 8 hrs upon arrival...I had all kinds of unwellness like a pregnant woman. Felt like vomiting, had a headache, giddyness, breathing difficulty, chest pain...its so bad that I feel like ripping my head off. Theres no warm air, so I had to cuddle myself despite the blankets being insufficient. We 'rested' until 1900h before leaving for dinner. Somehow, the sunset seems very late. It feels like 4pm at 7pm.

Dinner was at a restaurant next to Potala Palace. It was horrible. Looks like its a fusion of Tibetan & Chinese food. Wintermelon soup w/ unknown bony meat, szechuan spicy food, harden rice. Only the tea was good. My m2 who ran to catch her cap that flown away felt very nauseous and breathless. Seriously, I think i felt that my age was 4 times than I was. Climbing a few steps was tedious and breathless. Giddyness is very common. Dinner was not pleasant.

Returned to hotel shortly after, had a chat with the Chinese doctor, who was supposedly to be on 24hr standby (his bed was there) and he gave us a few old advice heard from the others & guide books as well.

I probably woke up a few times in the middle of the night due to breathlessness. Other than that, the sleep wasnt that peaceful at all. The night was pretty cold as well. 3 blankets and it seens insufficient. It was snowing heavily in the mountains le....