ASIANOVERLAND.NET SYDNEY TO LONDON DAY 86: SHIGATSE TO MOUNT EVEREST, TIBET, CHINA

In 1985 there was no accommodation for a chartered bus of passengers between Shigatse and the Nepal border, which was past Mount Everest and all the way over the Himalayas. However, we heard that the People’s Liberation Army (“PLA”), the largest army in the world, had an army camp near the base of Mount Everest, so we drove there to see if there were any available beds.

It was a long, hard drive, over 5,400 meter mountain passes, which was made all the more difficult by our bus driver not knowing how to use his gears. He refused to use the lower gears going up steep hills until he stalled the bus or overheated it. And driving downhill was a freefall, with no use of the lower gears to slow the bus down. As a result, and despite my backseat attempts to coach the driver (with some eventual success), we drove towards where the PLA camp should have been in pitch black darkness, except for the top of the peak of Mount Everest, which reflected sunlight long after sunset.

Finally, we found what appeared to be the front gate of the PLA army camp, which was open with no guards present, so we drove into the Chinese army camp. However, the entire PLA army camp appeared to have been evacuated, with stillness and darkness everywhere – even the peak of Mount Everest had finally gone to sleep. Finally, we found a large dark building which appeared to have noise coming from it. Yes, the PLA were present and accounted for. But we had arrived on their film night, so the entire army was watching films, without anyone on guard duty. Make a quick note of PLA film nights if you want to invade China.

Jokes aside, once we caught the PLA’s attention, and waited for their film to finish, they were extremely hospitable, polite, provided ample accommodation, which was clean and tidy, and even fed us like army officers (and/or Tibetan Buddhists). Thank you!!

The Tibetan name for Everest is Qomolangma ("Holy Mother"), which was recorded in the 1721 Kangxi Atlas during the reign of Emperor Kangxi of Qing China. It is commonly romanised as Chomolungma. 

In 1849, the British decided that Qomolangma should be named after British surveyor Sir George Everest. Everest himself opposed the name and told the Royal Geographical Society in 1857 that "Everest" could not be written in Hindi nor pronounced by "the native of India". But in 1865, the Royal Geographical Society officially adopted Mount Everest as the name for the highest mountain in the world.

The Nepali name for Everest is Sagarmāthā ("the Head in the Great Blue Sky") derived from “sagar” meaning "sky" and “māthā” meaning "head" in the Nepali Language.

The Tibetan name for their land, Bod, means 'Tibet' or 'Tibetan Plateau', although it originally meant the central region around Lhasa, known in Tibetan as Ü. 

The first written reference to Bod ('Tibet') was in the Egyptian-Greek works Periplus of the Erythraean Sea (1st century CE) and Geographia (Ptolemy, 2nd century CE).

The best-known medieval Chinese name for Tibet is Tubo,  which first appears  in the 7th century and in the 10th-century (Old Book of Tang, describing 608–609 emissaries from Tibetan King Namri Songtsen to Emperor Yang of Sui).

Humans inhabited the Tibetan Plateau at least 21,000 years ago. The original population was partially replaced around 3,000 BP by immigrants from northern China, but there is genetic continuity between the original inhabitants and contemporary Tibetan populations.

Under the next few Tibetan kings, Buddhism became established as the state religion and Tibetan power increased over large areas of Central Asia, while major inroads were made into Chinese territory, even reaching the Tang's capital Chang'an (Xi'an) in late 763. However, the Tibetan occupation of Chang'an only lasted fifteen days, after which they were defeated by Tang and its ally, the Turkic Uyghur Khaganate.

In 747, the Tibetan Empire tried to re-open direct communications between Central Asia and Kashmir. By 750, the Tibetans had lost almost all of their central Asian possessions to the Chinese. However, after the civil war known as the An Lushan Rebellion (755), Chinese influence decreased and Tibetan influence resumed.

At its height in the 780s to 790s, the Tibetan Empire ruled and controlled territory stretching from Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, Burma, China, India, Nepal, Pakistan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan.

In 821/822 CE, Tibet and China signed a peace treaty. A bilingual account of this treaty, including details of the borders between the two countries, is inscribed on a stone pillar outside the Jokhang temple in Lhasa. Tibet continued as a Central Asian empire until the mid-9th century, when a civil war over succession led to the collapse of imperial Tibet.

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