Back in Lhasa
OK,
I’m back in Lhasa again after 4 cool days. A few friends and I wanted to see Lake Namso, supposedly the highest salt lake in the world. The tour included a few more stops, so we jumped at the opportunity to see more of Tibet than just Lhasa.
I started out at Lake Namsto, a 5 hour jeep ride from Lhasa. We passed a 5,200 meter pass on the way there with stunning views. On our way down from the pass (about 10 K from the Lake) we saw a Nomad that someone had taken a picture of (on a previous trip) and asked us to find him, to give him the picture of himself. We all (six of us) jumped out of the jeep to show him the picture. You can probably imagine how freaked out he was to see a bunch of whitey’s jump out of a jeep right near him and run towards him like we knew him!
When he saw the picture though, he was in awe! He just stared at it smiling and couldn’t say a word, but managed to motion to us to come into his family’s tent. He had a great family, three boys, one girl and a cool wife! They gave us Yak Butter Tea and we gave them cigarettes (I always have some on me to give to locals… a great ice breaker and good for their health too!) and I gave the kids some penny’s from back home. After that we finished the trip to the lake. The lake was beautiful! We stayed in tents for 20 Yuan and had a huge sheep let us know that it was his tent first and we’d just have to share it with him. He was great though and wouldn’t leave us alone!
Two days later, we headed to Reting Monastery. It was beautiful, but a rip off (30 Yuan to enter and 30 to sleep in crusty beds!). That night the monks got crazy! They were snorting some barley powder thing, and blowing it out their noses as smoke!?! Everyone does that out here, almost as an alternative to smoking cigarettes. They offered us all some and I ended up being the only whitey to blow smoke out, so they all flipped out and gave me some dough (that they make by mixing butter tea with a different type of ground barley) and some Yak yogurt. You’re supposed to dip the fresh dough in the yogurt, it’s not too bad either! That night we were all checking out the sky, we were about 13,000 feet high and could see the Milky Way, as well as some shooting stars, magical!
The next day we headed to Drigung Monastery, that’s my favorite spot in Tibet so far! It’s a Nunnery, with two rivers cutting through the village and a killer hot spring (the best hot spring I’ve seen in a while). The houses were set all along the steep hills, with at least one of the rivers sandwiched in between narrow cliffs. I followed the bigger of the two rivers upstream and it led to a gorge no wider than twenty feet, with walls hundreds of feet straight up, and as far forward as I could see! We all just kicked back in the hot springs for the rest of the day and night drinking 50 cent beers.
On the last day we went to Tenjag. We didn’t know, but it’s a Sky Burial! If you want to know what it is, do a search on google for – Tenjag Sky Burial, or just – Sky Burial! I won’t tell you the details, because it’s gruesome and some of you might not like the description! I will tell you that it was probably the most hard core thing I’ve ever seen (I was ten feet away, and saw and smelled everything)! It was an experience though, and the people didn’t seem to mind that we were there (but I’m sure they weren’t happy about it). I wouldn’t tell anyone to go there though, because it is pretty much some strangers funeral, and WE AREN’T INVITED! I can’t believe that travelers are allowed, much less encouraged to go there!
Anyway, I’m about to leave Tibet (in two days), I’m going into Nepal instead of the “Stans”, because I’ll need to line up all my visa’s for the “Stans” before I get to those Country’s , which means more time than I have left on my China visa! Nepal is supposed to have killer, cheap, Western food, and I’m not gonna lie, I miss pizza, good coffee, sandwich’s and… I could go on. After six months of street food and local restaurants, I’m ready to put a hurt’n on some good Western food! I’ll probably do some white water rafting there as well, check out a National Park and then dip into India till trekking season in Nepal (Oct-Nov), when I’ll return to conquer Everest and do the Annapurna Circuit! I’m outta here.
Tags: Tibet
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