Day 7 Drive to Gyangtse

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Awoke today with a clear blue sky & was the start of our drive on the Freedom Hwy a fantastic piece of engineering built about 10 yrs ago. The drive was a slow but spectacular 8 hr 260 km trip to Gyangtse driving down the Kyi- chu Valley along the Yarlong Tsampo river canyon (deepest canyon in the world) before ascending the Khamba La Pass at 4900m. Looking from the summit were outstanding views of the vast freshwater Yamdrok Tso or Turquoise Lake on one side and the snow-capped Himalayan ranges and receding glaciers on the other.

We crossed two other passes around 5000 mtrs each with a decent of about 1000 mtrs which is the level for our night stop at Gyantse. This up & down method is apparently a good way to avoid altitude sickness & seems to be doing the job.

At every conceivable high point the locals fly colored flags representing the elements of the earth and seem to be some sort of good luck. Yellow represents the land, blue represents sky, red is fire, green is water & white is wind.

Met at all the photo stops by locals with either trinkets for sale, or with baby goats, yaks & mastiff dogs touting tourists with photo ops.

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