Kathmandu to Lhasa

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Originally, the itinerary had us staying in Gyantse tonight & doing a long drive to Lhasa via Yamdrok Tso & Karo La tomorrow, however due to road works, we are now staying in Shigatse an extra night & taking the short route to Lhasa in the morning. There has been a lot of controversy over this change as some group members have heard from other travellers that it is possible to get through the long way via a small off road detour, which should be no problems in our Landcruisers. Much of the Tibetan landscape is similar & it would have been nice to see the lake & the glacier next to Karo La. There is a possibility of paying the drivers extra to make a detour to the lake; however it will be dependant on tomorrow's weather.

We visited Gyantse today & Karma took us on a tour of Kumbum Monastery. The main building was made up of many small prayer rooms, each with its own statue & the views of the town from the roof were fantastic. We watched the Monks chanting for a brief time & then headed off to lunch in the township. Everybody went in different directions, but I decided to eat at the recommended restaurant with Sandy & Indra. Although it was a Tibetan restaurant, my stomach was still not up for experimenting so I settled on a chicken sandwich. Some people headed up to the old fort, but I joined up with a small group & we just wandered the streets, making our way back to the monastery where we found Betsy & Gustavo. They'd been left behind when the cars took us into town for lunch & although I told Karma our driver had left without them, he obviously didn't bother to send anybody back as they had no idea where we'd gone.

Upon returning to Shigatse, David advised me a group was meeting downstairs to go out for dinner later that evening. Monika & I waited in the car park for ages & when nobody turned up, decided they must have left earlier & took off on our own. I was sure David said they were eating at the restaurant next door, so we headed there & ate. I wasn't too hungry & so ordered soup, but I had a hankering for garlic bread & although it wasn't on the menu the waiter said the kitchen could make it for me. I'd heard garlic was supposed to help cure altitude sickness & being that it was day three of me feeling terrible every afternoon; I was willing to give almost anything a try. The waiter served me two pieces of bread, slathered in butter & covered in almond sliver sized pieces of garlic. I love garlic & wasn't concerned about the fact there was about ten cloves on this bread, but I did send it back to be toasted & with a little salt, the end result was quite tasty.

It was still early after Monika & I had eaten, so we decided to check out the local supermarket down the street. We wandered around in there for ages, checking out all the different foods & trying to figure out what the heck some of it was. I bought a cookies & cream ice-cream & we headed back to the hotel for an early night. Incidentally, we found out that our dinner group had postponed the meeting time by a half hour & I'd heard incorrectly about eating next door, they actually went down the street & apparently their meal was pretty good, but so was ours.

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