BootsnAll Travel Network



On a mission to Tingri “New Tingri that is..”

After waking up before the sun and waiting hours in a cozy tea shop, taking turns looking down the road for busses, or tractors or yaks finally we find a mini-bus that will take us to Tingri!

Past the elusive chekpoint we start weaving up into the mountains, dust is still clearing from little landslides all over the road. Eventually we hit the pass at 5120meters and everyone close to a window throws these multi-colorded papers out the window with printed prayers on them

“Sou-Sou-Sou!”

Yell the people in the van, as the colored papers are tossed about in the swirling wind.

The old woman sitting in front of me is really happy from the snuff I gave her only minutes before, and starts to mock-punch the oxygen bag the snooty japanese guy has in his lap.

Every time she hits it, he doesn’t say a word about it smacking him in the face,

this sends the back row into encouraging giggles. Not that I would encourage an ornery ancient Tibetan woman. hee hee hee

the effect some snuff has on people?!

The sky here is a forever a deep turquoise and the scenery is a barren moonscape, I havn’t seen a tree in amlost a month?

piles of carins in the valley and the rivers are frozen awaiting the spring thaw,

at 5220 meters….

SOU SOU SOU

whitecapped peaks become visible on the decent

audible ohhs and ahhhhs from the backseat where we are sitting.

Suddenly the road dissappears and the soft dirt helps turn the happy go lucky fun ride into the most sketchy journey I have ever taken. The minivan going inches close to the edge hundreds of meters below a raging river.

I turn on my music, breathe deeply and within the half hour, its over and we are on highway again abeit dusty and bumpy but still alive:)

The real fun starts when the driver takes us to a town Shegar or otherwise known as new tingri… Hmmmm 60km aways from Tingri. There outside the van Luis deftly climbs up and releases our bags, we now have the upper hand in telling these guys off, with our bags saftley with us.

With foreginers, comes the cowds of locals,circling around checking us out and with the dissagreement of location, the crowd grows, we refuse to pay and then the standoff ensues.

Finally we agree to pay one third of the price and as I wave a bye-bye to the driver I get the chinese equivilent of the finger and some other malicous sounding tibetan f-u…

The funny thing is that it was our secret plan to come to Shegar, HA HA HA.. sometimes the universe works in your favor



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