Steve's Diary Entries 5 -8

Day 5, December 4th.

Lhasa Bound

Best breakfast so far, sends us off on a long drive to Lhasa. Nine hour drive.  Another cloudless day so with the crisp temperature it makes for some spectacular scenery. The bus travels through 5000m elevation. Plants can't grow at this elevation so the barren landscape looks like the surface of the moon. The lovely blue sky offsets the mountains and glaciers. Luckily the bus is stopping regularly for us to get out and take a good look. We stop for lunch and accidentally order something for Taiga that costs 10 times that of the next dearest item on the menu. Some quick negotiation gets the price back to acceptable.  Despite it being a long drive today, it is an easy drive as we have plenty of stops (including Yak photo stops) at the top of various passes.  We descend for over half an hour, after going through a 5000m pass, on a very tight switchback road.  Near the end of the journey, we cross the Brahmaputra river which originates from Mount Kailash in Tibet.  We are amazed that to hear that this goes on to India and gets renamed as a little river called The Ganges.

Just before sunset we arrive in Lhasa.  It certainly is a big city, and contains many significant monasteries and temples.  We are impressed with our hotel.  It was the residence of the main teacher of the Dalai lama.  That doesn't impress the boys that much, but the electric blankets on the beds certainly do!

Day 6, December 5^th

The most important temple in Tibet - Jokhang

We have three nights in Lhasa so we can spread out in our hotel room.  It is very authentic Tibetan decoration and architecture which just adds to the experience.

In the morning, we went to a monastery and palace up on a hill (Drepung monastery).  We had lunch there which was an experience!  Lisa described it as a monastery mosh-pit as she lined up to get our momos for lunch.  She had elbows flying and people trying to push in but she held her own.  After lunch we went to Jokhang temple which is a pilgrimage site so there were thousands of people.  We went inside and it was quite an experience visiting the temple which has so much religious history and significance, particularly the activities of the various Dalai lama.  We observed the chanting ceremony which was quite haunting.

In late afternoon we used our free time to get in some retail therapy.  I found the "Internet Computer Market" and the boys had fun looking at all the product (Apple was the most sought after).  We had a long walk to our hotel so ate in the local restaurant then crashed into our nice warm beds with electric blankets on high.

Day 7, December 6^th

The Palace day

Another hearty breakfast and then we head off to the Potala palace, the residence (if he was here) of the Dalai Lama.  It is 170m tall, atop Marpo Ri Hill which is 130m tall so it certainly gets a good look over Lhasa.  It is known as the most significant monumental structure in all of Tibet.

As usual at these monastery and temple visits, we walk up hundreds of stairs.  In the palace there are 999 rooms and 200,000 statues.  There is a high Chinese security presence inside the palace and they keep everyone moving through the various chapels.  We take the bus back to our hotel  for a lunch break and then go to the last monastery of our Tibet trip, Sera monastery (the second largest monastery in Tibet with 600 monks – we went to the largest the other day).  The highlight of the Sera monastery visit was watching the monks conducting a philosophical debate.  This was a very animated and noisy experience.  We were also shown their printing process which was completely manual.

This is the last day of everyone on the tour together so the hotel restaurant is busy in the evening.  The Corbett's are spending it trying to resolve our travel agent issues.  We have paid for a private jeep to get us back to Kathmandu in time for our flight to Bangkok, however between various travel agents the funds have gone missing so we don't know what tomorrow will bring.  Oh well, it keeps it exciting.

Day 8&9, December 7^th & 8^th.

Seven Years in Tibet?

We get a phone call from reception asking if we are checking out today.  We have to advise that we really don't know.  A flurry of phone calls doesn't resolve it, so we go and have breakfast and have a great chat with Koen from Holland.  His travel plans are up in the air too.  There are eight people from our tour left at the hotel, and no on knows when and how they are getting back to Kathmandu.  In our case, we have paid for a "private jeep" to which one of the agencies has added an extra two passengers.  So much for private!  There is also an issue with our travel permits (China has this place locked down and you can't travel within Tibet without a travel permit).   Luckily our agent in Kathmandu sorts everything out and we are lucky enough to head off just the four of us, with a driver and a separate guide, in our Toyota Landcruiser (they are everywhere).  We find out later that the other four people have huge problems getting back to Kathmandu.  We drive for 15 hours, stop at a hotel just short of the border, get up the next morning and eventually get through customs (after surviving another bureaucratic issue).  We purchase new visas once we are on the Nepal side and then hire another private jeep to take us for 5 further hours through to Kathmandu.  Overall it was a difficult journey to return to our Kathmandu hotel which is starting to feel like "home".  We were stopped a total of 24 times from Lhasa to Kathmandu to have our visas, passports and travel permits checked.  A tough job to get back, but absolutely a worthwhile trip to see what Tibet really is like, first hand.

Steve.