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Published: February 22nd 2008
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Yamdrok-Tso
One of the holy lakes of Tibet EBC Trip - Wednesday 7th November
We had decided that we wanted to do a trip to Everest Base Camp (normally a five day round trip from Lhasa) as we may never have the opportunity again, so we spent a few days running around checking notice boards outside the popular budget hotels and checking internet forums - the travel agents arranging the trips don't make it easy as they insist that the customer gets a group together, rather than keeping a list of people's names who want to go and putting them together; there's a maximum of four people per Landcruiser, so we had been trying to find two other people who wanted to leave around the same date (it was prohibitively expensive to do without finding others to share the cost), for the same amount of time (4-6 days), and who wanted to see the same sights along the way!
Somewhat fortuitously it all suddenly and surprisingly came together the day before we wanted to leave and we ended up with six other willing companions, enough for two Landcruisers! The travel agent assured us that he could get the relevant permits for travel outside Lhasa in a few hours
On the way to Yamdrok-Tso
If you look closely you can see part of the winding road we'd ascended and that we didn't need a guide as our drivers would have all the necessary paperwork - we found this to be slightly concerning considering the two other tour agents to whom we had spoken had told us that it took two days to acquire the permits and that we would need a guide, but we didn't think too much of it because our collective experiences in China and Tibet told us that this sort of thing all depended on who the agent's contacts were in order to expedite the bureaucratic process.
After spending the evening frantically running around Lhasa acquiring sleeping bags and warm clothes before meeting up with the group for a drink, we were up the next day at the relatively early time of 7am, arriving at the meeting point outside the familiar Yak Hotel early too, surprising ourselves again! The others gradually trickled down from their rooms, some of them feeling a bit worse for wear after staying out late last night (the shape of things to come?) - we have in our group one Irishman, a Scot, two Dutchies, a Kiwi and an American, and they seem like a good bunch.
After leaving
Lhasa we drove for a few hours, first along part of the Friendship Highway which runs all the way from the capital to Nepal, and then along a windy road which gradually snaked its way up into the mountains - replete with some 'exciting' driving thrown in for free from our generous driver! - culminating at our stop high above the picturesque, turquoise Yamdrok-Tso Lake (4,441m), one of the holy trinity of lakes in Tibet. We stood on a cliff edge overlooking the lake and took in the view for a while - we were too breathless to do much else! Andesh (the Kiwi) sat on a Yak for some photos as it was the first one we'd seen close up (alive), and we tried our best to ignore the men with big dogs in red collars trying to charge us to take photos of their depressed looking animals.
Sean, from Chicago, speaks Chinese which is a godsend as most Tibetans speak Chinese as well as their native language, and it also saves me fumbling through my phrasebook only to completely mispronounce what I'm trying to say and unintentionally offending my unfortunate recipient! We asked Sean to speak to
Lone ranger
This guy was on a long journey - there was nothing for miles around our driver, as he'd been going way too fast along the narrow mountain roads and was taking blind bends on the wrong side of the road as well as overtaking in wholly inappropriate places! Fortunately this did the trick, and our return to the Friendship Highway, over the 4794m high Kamba-La Pass, was far less nerve wracking!
After descending we stopped at the side of the lake itself to be met with the slightly unnerving, if not totally unexpected, sight of the water flowing rapidly along the bank nearest to us. Unnerving because, aside from being one of the holy lakes, it has no natural outlets - evidence of the controversial draining of the lake by the Chinese to provide hydroelectric power, which may eventually see the lake run dry in perhaps only a few decades (Yamdrok Tso Hydroelectric Project).
After a few hours on the Friendship Highway we turned south to begin an off road section (probably to avoid a permit checkpoint!) which took us through small villages, past farmers and, to the surprise of us all, sand dunes! After a photo stop, which seemed to leave a local guy riding a donkey drawn cart bemused, we
carried on to the small town of Gyantse, our first overnight stop.
On arrival we went straight out to Gyantse Dzong, a 14th century fort which overlooks the town. It was quite a steep climb in places. JP (the Irish guy) and I explored some of the back rooms and dungeons which were very dark and had to be lit with a lighter, and I may have caused a cat to jump out of a high up window - I only heard it but JP saw it flash between two windows behind me and thought I was a goner! I guess that cat didn't get many visitors up there! Fortunately I survived my near death experience and we carried on to the top of the fort.
It was pretty tough getting to the top as it was a climb of maybe 150-200m, coupled with the fact that Gyantse is 350m higher than Lhasa - it may not sound like much but it makes more of a difference than you might imagine! The view from the top was great, looking out over the town and the monastery with it's huge 'kumbum' (chörten) and defensive walls, watching the sun setting
beyond the distant mountains.
Going for something to eat afterwards was an interesting experience; we went to the Yak Restaurant opposite our hotel where a little girl took a particular liking to Andesh which provided some amusement during the long wait for our food which they literally seemed to be cooking one meal at a time - not normally an issue, but the eight of us were sitting on a long table with six other people so the whole process from first to last meal took a few hours!
I had a yak burger (looks and tastes much like beef) which was pretty good but no one else was that impressed with their food, least of all Michelle with a very strange vegeburger - just some salad in a bun held together with yak cheese - and her chocolate cake (ordered to make up for the disappointment that was the vegeburger) which consisted of two slices of brown bread with a hint of ginger and not a trace of chocolate! As a big fan of chocolate cake she was considerably upset and nearly cried.
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