Woohoo! 4 months on the road and still going strong if a little fatigued with China. I get a bit snippy after being in a car all day long but Simon is a sweetie and puts up with me still.

And today we were able to actually get on the road and out of Lhasa. We bundled into the car at 9am and headed off stopping ten minutes later at our first checkpoint. Papers had to be checked before we could even leave the city.

As soon as we left the grubby city we were rewarded with beatiful views of bright yellow rape seed fields against a backdrop of barren mountains and charming rivers. The road was new and smooth and trees had been planted alongside large portions.

About 2 hours out we hit another checkpoint. They don’t seem to do speed trapping here, instead at each checkpoint they write your arrival time on a slip of paper that the driver has to carry and then you get fined if you arrive at the next checkpoint too early. It’s ridiculous as what generally happens is that just out of sight of the next checkpoint all the drivers land up stopping for up to 20 minutes waiting till they have killed enough time to carry on. It’s either that or stick to the incredibly low speed limit of 40km/h.

About 4 hours in we reached the top of a pass which had views of Yamdrok lake. It was freezing up there and the lake view was obscured by cloud. Of course we had to buy tickets just for driving past the lake and to my annoyance, pay for the filthy poo plastered toilets. We also encountered what was to be at every stop, hawkers trying to sell stuff.
They were either trying to sell the usuall crappy trinkets, ropes of yak cheese or were trying to get you to pay for pictures of their yaks, dogs or goats. Occasionally they would try to muscle in and get themselves in your photo to try make a few bucks. The yaks were usually done up quite nicely and the dogs were Tibetan mastiffs with bright red fluffy collars which made them look like they had a lions mane. The goats were these cute long haired miniature ones that we had not seen anywhere else. We did not feel like paying 5 to 10 Yuan for a photo though.

As we drove on down to the lake, the clouds cleared and we could finally see the lake propper. It was a beautiful turquoise colour and we stopped at the bottom to take some more photos. There were plenty of other tourists all stopping at the same points and at least one idiot was taking a swim (against the current regulations).

We carried on and stopped at another point much further :gps:(GPS)::29.16094::90.50997:gps: on where the colours of the water were more striking and spent ages taking photos. Something to be noted is that at almost all the stops there were prayer flags plastered over everything, rocks, pylons whatever they could be attatched to and coloured prayer confetti ( 50mm x 50mm coloured pieces of paper with prayers printed on them) littering the ground. Plus the usual trash left by the people who stop at these points to take pictures or go to the toilet.

We continued on to our lunch stop in another nondescript Chinese looking town that pop up every now and then along the route. Pretty much every other land cruiser on the route had stopped at the same place.

Continuing on for a few more hours and we arrived at the town of Gyantse. It was one of the the more pleasant towns we had seen so far. Driving in we could see the Gyantse dzong (fort) on a rocky hilltop and in the afternoon light the scene really look quite wonderfull.

Closer to the fort, there was a large Chinese monument. We were told that the Chinese had erected it to celebrate their driving off of a contingent of British soldiers. On checking our guidebook however, it turns out that the British did send a diplomatic force into Tibet and did have a bit of a skirmish with some Tibetans. But since the Tibetans were armed with a motley assortment of arms that included rocks and protective charms from the Dalai Lama they soon got their bums kicked. The British hung out at Gyantse for a while before getting bored and moving onto Lhasa. So not quite what the Chinese make the situation out to be.

We stopped at yet another monastery :gps:(GPS)::28.92067::89.59610:gps: this time the Pelkor Chode to see the famed Gyantse Kumpum (building) Underwhelmed yet again, but the views of the town, monastery and fort from the Kumpum were quite pretty.

We moved on and arrived in Shigatse where we were overnighting. We tried a local restaurant that had an English menu but it turned out that it had not been translated properly and Egle spent a good while trying to explain to the waitress and then to the waitresses 8 year old daughter in Mandarin that she had ordered the fried yak with vegetables and they had given her fried yak with mushrooms which she could not eat. They eventually just walked away which inevitably led to confusion with the bill which was uncomfortable to resolve.

[Pictures: Beautiful lake. View from Kumpum of the fort. The view of Kumpum]

– Posted from my iPhone via Wifi