The big trip: Tibet 2

Where was I?

So we left Lhasa, made our way to Gyatse by bus. We stopped over at some amazing mountain passes on the way...

Emmie on the bluest river I've seen.

At Gyatse we had 'some free times' (if you were there you would understand). Dave (aka Brian the German farmer), Emmie and I went walking around the old tibetan quarter. Emmie gave some tibetan kids a pen and paper and they started drawing photos of us.

It looks just like me.

The next day we went down to Shigatse, where we stopped off for one night. We got a quite forceful Chinese massage. It seems the lady giving my massage was so forceful she forgot where she was putting her hands sometimes, and there was definite... er... cupping. No photos here sorry. We also saw the monastery that is the seat of the Panchen Lamas. This was a little sad given the history and their is a strong stifling Chinese prescence here (see my last post for the story).

Next stop was Sakya, a small town with a nunnery which we visited. It was starting to get quite dusty here, and we had our faces covered a lot of the time. We got to the nunnery with Krystle and Travis (a pair of Aussies). The nuns were very friendly, even allowing Emmie and Krystle to sit in with them and meditate... which gave us one of my favorite photos so far. The nuns seemed quite impressed with Emmie's ability to be still.

Sakya town

Emmie and Krystle contemplating whether to shave their heads.

The next day, we passed through our highest point on one of the passes on the way to Everest base camp. Things were starting to get cold.

Emmie gets cold.

We got to our accomodation (tents), 2 hour walk from the base camp. Then we did the walk in the cold...

Emmie and Fiona. Note where Fiona has her hands. Its getting properly cold now.

To take the classic photo...

Nuff said.

Coming back to camp, we stayed in a tent with a Yak dung fire inside. It was -5 C in the tent during the night, causing our water bottles to freeze. But it was okay as I had my bright red thermal trousers.

Tasteful.

After Everest, with one more stop over, we got down the Nepal border. We went down to around 2000m (pretty quickly, ears were popping), and the scenery suddenly went from stark desert brown to the lush greens of Nepal. The border was the usual Chinese 'search every bags' story. We took a bus from the border to our only stop in Nepal before Kathmandu.

High five from the top of a bus.

That stop was a place called the Last Resort, a kind of adventure sport resort with luxury tents and (finally) clean hot showers. At this point myself, Travis, Krystle, Dave (aka Brian the farmer) and BK our Nepal guide decided to do the highest canyon swing in the world. For those who don't know, a canyon swing is a bit like a bungy jump, except the rope is attached to a point away from your jump point. So you jump off a bridge, freefall for 7 seconds (100m), then the rope straightens and you start swinging through a canyon on a 240m arc at 150 km/h. It was madness and one of the scariest things I've done in my life.

Sri jumps off a bridge. Yeah baby.