Have been on the road for 4 days now, traveling around Tibet in a beat-up 20 year old landcruiser. Our driver's name is Tenzin, he's a pretty cool guy; getting into snowball fights with us, making sure we get fed in clean restaurants, finding cheap hotels for us bc we are all on a budget. He only speaks Tibetan and Chinese so I have become the default translator on the trip. Fiona and I are traveling with 3 other guys; Mark, Tom and Alex.
Day 1 - Lhasa to Nam Tso Lake, 6 hours
This is the biggest holy lake in Tibet and it was breathtaking! It's the 2nd largest lake in China, surrounded by snow-capped mountains, fields of yaks, nomads. The colour of the lake was a gorgeous turquoise. We hiked around the kora (pilgrim) path, investigated caves and saw a monastery. The lake is at a pretty high elevation, about 5000m so we all suffered from AMS, Alex even fainted at one point but only bc he starved himself on the landcruiser ride up.
We stayed in these tents that seemed really cool during the day but at night it was sooo cold and we could hear the dogs howling all night. A storm hit us during the middle of the night and the tent started leaking! The funny thing was, our toilet was a communal patch of rocky dirt behind a big tree. It was pretty gross navigating through other ppl's faeces, esp during the early morning when everyone took their morning dump. That was certainly an experience. We left after one night.
Day 2 - Nam Tso Lake to Sygatse, 11 hours
This involved a LOOONG drive during the day on bumpy road and at one point through a snow storm. Despite the very old landcruiser we got and mostly bald tires, Tenzin is a great driver. This was a tiring day for all of us though since we didn't get any sleep during the night in those tents. We arrived into Sygatse fairly late at about 8pm, most of the hotels were full so we ended up at a hotel fairly far from town and stayed in dorm rooms that were incredibly filthy! Had to break out the sleeping bag again! I guess the fact that there was a toilet block was a plus, though it was little more than a trough. No showers in the dorm rooms! We had to go yet another day without a shower...my hair was getting so dirty I could barely run my fingers through it.
Day 3 - Sygatse
On this day we went to visit the monastery which was beautiful, this was where the previous Panchen Lamas were buried in these very elaborate chortens. We spent about 2 hours roaming around the monastery, visiting chapels. We then did the kora path up the mountain. At the summit we saw a gorgeous view of the old town. We decided to build our own chorten and put a little message inside, who knows whether any of us will be back. It would be funny if someone found our dinky little message.
So traveling with these guys has been ok. Mark and Tom are easy going and a lot of fun. Alex however is a different matter. He doesn't really do much with us, which is probably a good thing. In the afternoon we drove from Sygatse to Gyantse, about 1.5 hours away. After a false start with finding a hotel (where Tenzin very vehemently refused to stay in a hotel that Tom and Fiona found), we ended up in a nice hotel near the Gyantse Monastery that actually has shower facilities!!
Day 4 - Gyantse
Today we went to the monastery in the morning, again lots of exploring. Seeing old faded murals of buddhas. There was this one chapel that was dedicated to a demon god, or protector god, I don't remember what it was. That chapel involved going deep into a small doorway painted an angry red with a face of a demon on the outside. Inside there were all these scary looking murals of ppl being tortured, these masks of monsters hung all around the little chapel room. It was quite creepy.
We just came down from climbing the fort that was used to protect the Tibetans from an invading British army. In the middle of climbing the fort, there was an Anti-British Museum which was a laugh. The fort itself was enormous fun to explore, the altitude was wreaking havoc with our breathing but it didnt stop us from exploring ruined buildings, delving into dirty rooms, down ladders, through locked buildings. There were exhibits with models of Tibetans, by far the creepiest was a dungeon that was down a hole where you could see a model of a man with his legs cut off.
So there are only about 5 days left of this journey. It has been an eye-opening experience so far. I really love being in Tibet, it's a country that has so much history and culture. The ppl here are really wonderful! Oh, I just remembered on our last day in Lhasa, we went to the Chinese area of Lhasa to buy our airline tickets back out to Beijing...can you believe I got ripped off there??! I bought my airline ticket from the only government agency that is allowed to issue airline tickets, I got my change back and the guy gave me a counterfeit 20 yuan note! In a govt agency no less! I didn't find out until I went to pay for something with the change and the shopowner broke the news to me. The 20 yuan is not worth much at all but I was pissed that a chinese agency tried to dupe me. I went back to the same guy who gave me the change, he denied all knowledge and had the gall to look me in the eyes, lie and tell me that the note I was holding was definitely fake but he didn't give it to me. Such a liar! There were other experiences that day in the Chinese quarters; Mark having his sunnies stolen, me getting told off by the Chinese ticket ppl at the Potala Palace to f*ck off and flinging my money back at me, nearly getting ripped buying groceries... I was so glad to be back in the Tibetan quarter. It sounds ridiculous but that day left a really sour taste in my mouth.
So tomorrow our itin is covering an old and beautiful city called Sakya, I think about 6 hours drive away. The plan after we finish this landcruiser trip is to stay in Lhasa city for another 3 days and then flying into Beijing. Hopefully we get our connecting flight into Mongolia straight away.
6.38pm 21st Aug 2004. Saturday. Gyantse city, Tibet
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