The second part of our trip to Tibet was much more about traveling around the country side. We had arranged to go to Everest Base Camp, or Mt Qomolangma as it is called locally. On the way we went over 3 passes, and got pretty high up in the mountains. But I'm getting ahead of myself.
We started out with a drive to Shigatse, and along the way stopped at Kamba-La pass on the way to Yomdrok Lake, and then on to Gyantse for lunch and visiting the Palcho monastery.
On the way there we passed through several typical Tibetan villages. Usually the houses all had the flags flying on the corners, and many of them had the yak dung piled up drying for the winter burning in the stove.
The pass was about 4800 Meters elevation, and the wind was blowing. It was pretty cold when we stopped to take photos of the lake from the top. It was a spectacular view. Once we got down to the lake, there were many people trying to sell photos of Yaks, riding yaks, and other things. The lake was long and it took us an hour or more to get from one end to the other, with the color of the lake constantly shifting from a bright blue, to reflecting the brown of the mountains around it.
At the end of the lake,
there was another pass, even higher this time 5093m in elevation. We certainly felt it in our heads, and when we got out to walk around we were out of breath very quickly. This one had a glacier on the mountain next to it. 
And if you look to the level where my hand is, that is where the glacier came to in 2005. It has receeded this much in the last 9 years. 
What is surprising to me is that everyone in Tibet seems to know that this is a problem, but that my Chinese colleagues, when I mentioned it to them after my return, none of them knew it was happening, why it was happening, or that it could mean droughts in China as much of the water in China comes from Tibetan Glaciers. At this stop, we met a couple of Italian guys, who were bicycling the Friendship Highway (the road from here to Nepal over the Himalayas). Not something I think I would want to do at these altitudes. Or if I did, it would take serious training at altitude before considering it. We were winded just walking from the car to the Chortan in the above picture.
We passed a second lake which was almost turquoise in color after this pass, and then made our way into Gyantse.
There we visited the Palcho monastery, or at least I did, Cindy wasn't feeling too well that afternoon and decided to rest in the car. You can see in the background up on the hill the large wall where they hang a very large tapestry every year for festivals. You can see locals returning from their visit to the monastery, in their local dress. It was very colorful and they all seemed to be happy.
By this time we were pretty tired of visiting monasteries, but this one was different. The statues inside were all carved from wood, and very different in coloring.
Also they had a lot of texts, wrapped up and stored along the walls of the various chapels and rooms.
They also had a couple of unfinished sand mandalas, which once finished would be wiped away to signify the impermanence of life.
After leaving the Monastery, I managed to get a photo of one of the solar cookers used everywhere in that area (and I suspect all over Tibet). They are used for heating water for Tea, and I'm told it takes about 10 minutes to get boiling water.
The next day we left for Tingri. Before leaving we had to go to get a special permit to visit Everest, as the area is controlled by the Chinese Army. We would have to go through an army checkpoint to get there and needed the proper documentation.
Then we were able to drive on to Tingri. There were speed checkpoints all along our trip, even on the first day. Each time we were given a time to arrive at the next checkpoint, and if we had been driving too fast, we would have to stop somewhere before getting in sight of he checkpoint, and rest/wait till it was our allotted time to arrive. Otherwise the driver would have gotten a ticket.
We also stopped at the Tashilumpo Monastery. Here we enjoyed watching the people visiting the monastery.
And we finally made it to New Tingri. Old Tingri is inside of the Army controlled area, so they built a new town just a few kilometers from the checkpoint. Most tourists seem to stay there. We had to leave very early the next morning as there was a 4 hour drive to the base camp, 4 hours back, and we intended also to drive back to Shigatse same day. So we got up at 5am and had a quick breakfast to leave by 5:30. We were through the checkpoint by 6:30 and on the gravel road to Everest not long after that. Here we had to stop at another checkpoint, and I took a couple of early morning photos. It was almost 7am by this time, but still dark as it is Western China, and all of China is on the same time as Beijing which is more in the east.
By the way, that is the moon going down, not the sun coming up.
We arrived at Base Camp somewhere just after 9am, the sun was just hitting the valley. It was still cold, there was ice on the puddles. So behind this picture is where the "hotels" (Tents) are, and where the vendors, and the very small town is. The actual hiker's base camp is close to where the shadow in the photo is.
It was pretty clear, but the top was shrouded in clouds. Cindy and I put up another set of prayer flags, here we were at 5200 Meters. We had passed another pass the day before at the same altitude, and had gotten our very first glimpse of Everest then, but this was really spectacular. By now we were pretty good with the high altitude, though it still meant walking slowly.
Here Cindy is buying our flags. The last 15 minutes to this point is on a shuttle bus and we had sat next to him and his wife on the way up.
You can see they are really promoting tourism to this spot now, there were constant flows of people in and out. There was even a caravan of cars containing Chinese officials from some other province visiting.
We also visited the small monastery on the hillside by the base camp. This one was interesting as they has both male and female monks at the same place.
And at some point shortly before we left, the clouds blew away enough that we could even see the top....
This was pretty much the end of our sightseeing. We had several days of driving back to Lhasa, and then one morning, before getting on the plane back to Hangzhou.
I have to say, this was one of the most wonderful trips I have been on. The Tibetan people are wonderful, gentle, generous, and obviously very spiritual people. It was a true pleasure to interact with them, especially at the festival. It was amazing to see the Himalayas. It is interesting to see the faces and dress of the people, and to realize how much variety there is, and also to realize how much similarity there is in some of them to the Native American people, especially those in the southwest of the USA. My one regret is that the horse racing festival was at another time this summer and we couldn't see it, but still absolutely an amazing trip all around. Thanks to Pintok, our guide, and China Odyssey tours who arranged it.
We started out with a drive to Shigatse, and along the way stopped at Kamba-La pass on the way to Yomdrok Lake, and then on to Gyantse for lunch and visiting the Palcho monastery.
On the way there we passed through several typical Tibetan villages. Usually the houses all had the flags flying on the corners, and many of them had the yak dung piled up drying for the winter burning in the stove.
The pass was about 4800 Meters elevation, and the wind was blowing. It was pretty cold when we stopped to take photos of the lake from the top. It was a spectacular view. Once we got down to the lake, there were many people trying to sell photos of Yaks, riding yaks, and other things. The lake was long and it took us an hour or more to get from one end to the other, with the color of the lake constantly shifting from a bright blue, to reflecting the brown of the mountains around it. At the end of the lake,
there was another pass, even higher this time 5093m in elevation. We certainly felt it in our heads, and when we got out to walk around we were out of breath very quickly. This one had a glacier on the mountain next to it. And if you look to the level where my hand is, that is where the glacier came to in 2005. It has receeded this much in the last 9 years. What is surprising to me is that everyone in Tibet seems to know that this is a problem, but that my Chinese colleagues, when I mentioned it to them after my return, none of them knew it was happening, why it was happening, or that it could mean droughts in China as much of the water in China comes from Tibetan Glaciers. At this stop, we met a couple of Italian guys, who were bicycling the Friendship Highway (the road from here to Nepal over the Himalayas). Not something I think I would want to do at these altitudes. Or if I did, it would take serious training at altitude before considering it. We were winded just walking from the car to the Chortan in the above picture.We passed a second lake which was almost turquoise in color after this pass, and then made our way into Gyantse.
There we visited the Palcho monastery, or at least I did, Cindy wasn't feeling too well that afternoon and decided to rest in the car. You can see in the background up on the hill the large wall where they hang a very large tapestry every year for festivals. You can see locals returning from their visit to the monastery, in their local dress. It was very colorful and they all seemed to be happy.By this time we were pretty tired of visiting monasteries, but this one was different. The statues inside were all carved from wood, and very different in coloring.
Also they had a lot of texts, wrapped up and stored along the walls of the various chapels and rooms.They also had a couple of unfinished sand mandalas, which once finished would be wiped away to signify the impermanence of life.
After leaving the Monastery, I managed to get a photo of one of the solar cookers used everywhere in that area (and I suspect all over Tibet). They are used for heating water for Tea, and I'm told it takes about 10 minutes to get boiling water. The next day we left for Tingri. Before leaving we had to go to get a special permit to visit Everest, as the area is controlled by the Chinese Army. We would have to go through an army checkpoint to get there and needed the proper documentation.
Then we were able to drive on to Tingri. There were speed checkpoints all along our trip, even on the first day. Each time we were given a time to arrive at the next checkpoint, and if we had been driving too fast, we would have to stop somewhere before getting in sight of he checkpoint, and rest/wait till it was our allotted time to arrive. Otherwise the driver would have gotten a ticket.
We also stopped at the Tashilumpo Monastery. Here we enjoyed watching the people visiting the monastery.
And we finally made it to New Tingri. Old Tingri is inside of the Army controlled area, so they built a new town just a few kilometers from the checkpoint. Most tourists seem to stay there. We had to leave very early the next morning as there was a 4 hour drive to the base camp, 4 hours back, and we intended also to drive back to Shigatse same day. So we got up at 5am and had a quick breakfast to leave by 5:30. We were through the checkpoint by 6:30 and on the gravel road to Everest not long after that. Here we had to stop at another checkpoint, and I took a couple of early morning photos. It was almost 7am by this time, but still dark as it is Western China, and all of China is on the same time as Beijing which is more in the east.
By the way, that is the moon going down, not the sun coming up.
We arrived at Base Camp somewhere just after 9am, the sun was just hitting the valley. It was still cold, there was ice on the puddles. So behind this picture is where the "hotels" (Tents) are, and where the vendors, and the very small town is. The actual hiker's base camp is close to where the shadow in the photo is.
It was pretty clear, but the top was shrouded in clouds. Cindy and I put up another set of prayer flags, here we were at 5200 Meters. We had passed another pass the day before at the same altitude, and had gotten our very first glimpse of Everest then, but this was really spectacular. By now we were pretty good with the high altitude, though it still meant walking slowly.
Here Cindy is buying our flags. The last 15 minutes to this point is on a shuttle bus and we had sat next to him and his wife on the way up.
You can see they are really promoting tourism to this spot now, there were constant flows of people in and out. There was even a caravan of cars containing Chinese officials from some other province visiting.
We also visited the small monastery on the hillside by the base camp. This one was interesting as they has both male and female monks at the same place.
And at some point shortly before we left, the clouds blew away enough that we could even see the top....
This was pretty much the end of our sightseeing. We had several days of driving back to Lhasa, and then one morning, before getting on the plane back to Hangzhou.
I have to say, this was one of the most wonderful trips I have been on. The Tibetan people are wonderful, gentle, generous, and obviously very spiritual people. It was a true pleasure to interact with them, especially at the festival. It was amazing to see the Himalayas. It is interesting to see the faces and dress of the people, and to realize how much variety there is, and also to realize how much similarity there is in some of them to the Native American people, especially those in the southwest of the USA. My one regret is that the horse racing festival was at another time this summer and we couldn't see it, but still absolutely an amazing trip all around. Thanks to Pintok, our guide, and China Odyssey tours who arranged it.
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