One the road again. Hundred of miles of travel to get to the Mount Everest Basecamp and its amazingly dusty, muddy, and jiggily as we drove over rutted roads, sandy wheel-sucking canyon tracks. Getting even more sunburned and choked with dust. It got in our nose, eyes and mouths.
Inside our room in the crossroads town Saga. Defiantly not a garden spot of the East but I had enough time to do a little pencil sketch and watercolor of the guestroom with some yak-dung stoves, a large wash bowl on a pedestal. The place didn't have much to see and I think we just regrouped for our approach to Everest.
Our approach to Mt Everest lead us through some amazing terrain of mustard fields, with the farmers putt-putting around in these cool little 3 wheeled tractors with freshly cut crops bundled in the back. Kids leading cattle down the tracks and women and children with tools slung over their backs
This rowdy bunch hanging out in front of palatial room (see below) in Dingri, just a few miles from Everest. George, Gary and Jamison in the back of a truck lot in a very gritty city.
A couple of sketches from around the town. The left is from inside our bunkroom looking out into the courtyard. The right is done while I wondered through town. I sat down to draw these two women digging a sewage ditch and then notice a group of little hooligans, who had stolen a couple of apples, run over to hide in a doorway and cut up their tasty prize. One came over to me later and sketched with me
I found this nice little place to sit and try to capture the essence of what a Tibetan town and what made it "tick". Simple pieced together buildings, unpaved streets, horse and cart, stray dogs everywhere. As I sat there one of the local teenagers came up and we "talked", he went through the sketchbook and then he asked for a pencil and I posed and he drew me (on the right and on the brown paper). Pretty good likeness.
In a Dingri restaurant/bar late at night playing cards and drinking that cheap Chinese beer while everyone else was watching "Monkey King" on a small solar battery charged TV. Tara, a wander from Holland joined us in gambling, swilling booze and smoking (ok maybe just the cards)
During the trip I brought some photos of the wife and kids to show the locals. This is the son of the owner of the bar holding a shot of my kids gathering ladybugs in the hills above my town.
All the local animals I saw in town in one little pencil sketch
Most of the "shops" were roll up carts covered in clothes and unloaded and hung on fold up racks. As I sketched I noticed a man dressing up a little girl, straighten her clothes, Hold her hand and then started walking her over towards me as I drew the animals above.
The father got over to me and must have known what I was doing because he pointed at me then the sketchbook and then his daughter and then made a "drawing" motion with his hand. I punched this drawing out in about 15 minutes. All the time the father watching over my shoulder and the little girl straining her neck to see what/how I was doing. Finished it up and luckily it looked just like her. Dad smiled, I turned it so she could see it and she started crying and smiling. Boy that felt good.
Loose watercolor done on a stop after we left Dingri on the way to the north face of Everest. The Himalayan crest with 25 thousand+ foot peaks and huge sweeping storms building overhead
Very loose quick watercolor done as the storm let loose and cascade of rain sweep down onto the rolling valleys
After a hair raising drive up some very treacherous roads where the back wheel sometimes slipped slightly off the road with a 300 vertical drop into the river awaited (no joke...I had my hand on the door handle to jump out if we went over). We stopped at this plateau at about 16+ thousand feet where it felt like the end-of-the-world. I cant explain how empty and other-worldly it was.
WE finally made it. The north face of Everest. We had heard it was cloud covered for over 2 weeks and as we walked up the canyon the skies opened up for the 2 days we were there. Ever since I was a kid Id read of this and wanted to see it with my own eyes.
A panoramic plein air pencil sketch of the entire mountain mass of Mount Everest. An amazing time and subject. couldn't figure out with the subject and altitude what I was doing. 29,000+ summit and lots of ice and snow.
Glory shot at the basecamp of Everest. Had to use a wide angle lens to get everything in I got it. As a climber it would be a sin to miss this vain (but satisfying) opportunity
I ran up the canyon in the brisk morning to see the face again before we left basecamp. I focused on the vertical wall that empties right off the summit.
Everest at in the evening. The peak was so big that it still had sunlight on its upper flanks at 12 midnight and the clouds were bright afterwards as the moon shone in the heavens.
Late summer flowers at basecamp
At base everything was in the small room we stayed in, including kitchen, bedroom and dining room. Our hostess, Ten did everything and was as nice as nice could be.
A pencil portrait of Ten Don, our gracious Everest hostess. I did this nice little portrait while she looked on with the most tender little eyes Ive seen. I must have made a good impression. She asked our guide if he would ask me to stay with her and help run the Everest hut.
At the base of Everest, hidden behind a landslide is a monastery slowly rebuilding after the Chinese blew it up in a religious cleansing in the 1960's. There was a sky burial site here covered in eagle feathers and what was left of prepared bodies. I don't know why but as I was "talking" to one of the priests he presented me with one of the knives. 5X12" pencil sketch in a very windy brittle storm.
I joined up with George and we found our way into a hermits cave and were invited to take part in a drumming and chanting ritual. Yak butter lamps and sacred shrine. Pilgrims would arrive and descend into the sacred cave entrance under room.
A little sketch of our wonderful guide Migmar (pronounced MAG-Mar) who like the wizard Gandalf lead us throughout Tibet and all the wonderous places for a month.
Penba (pronounced PEM-ba), our chain-smoking driver, mechanic and generally ever-laughing friend who ultimately knew how really out of place us silly Americans were in his country. This guy had connections and not all of them legal.
As we left the barren plains of Tibet we dropped steeply down the flanks of the Himalayans and onto to the Nepalese border. It was amazing the amount of hairpin twists and turns on the mountain road down to Zhongba. This whole area looked just like all the Chinese landscape paintings I thought were made up and were too fantastic to be believed.
A 16 X 5" pencil sketch and the real deal from our hotel room. It was amazing that these places could be attached to the steep, wet mountains the way they are. Waterfalls and springs were everywhere ( even crashing through hotel walls and windows ). Streets were jammed with huge trucks, road repairs, torn up street, squealing bulldozer brakes and blaring Chinese Disco thundering and pouring out of every bar as were the bar girls.
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