Tibet to China to Armenia

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We flew out of Tibet early for a flight back to Chengdu China to pick up some tour people that did not want to go to the Tibetan altitude which was 12,000'! There were about 4 people that were affected dangerously by that altitude. Climbing the Potala Palace (the Dalai Lama's winter home) took its toll. It was up a stone pathway for a quarter mi. but what a spectacular view of the Lhaza Valley. So we landed in a rain soaked Chengdu, met the others who had gone instead to Kunming to see Panda's in a natural habitat, and hopped on the plane for Armenia. We wound our watches back 3 hours and landed around lunchtime, hopped on a bus and drove a half hour to Yerevan, a bussling, new city that had plenty of tragedy in the past. It has valcanos on all sides, Mt. Ararat (13,000') and Mt. Aragat (11,000'). The people apear to be more western than we have seen since the start of this expedition. They went through genicide in 1912 which wiped out 1 1/2 million people, and Turkey and Russia took over much of their land, then recently had an earthquake that demolished the city. They are rebuilding and are making the structures with arches and columns kinda like Rome. Their are so many cranes and high rise apartment buildings, you can hardly see the skyline. We saw the first ever Christian church and met the priest who happened to be from Fresno Calif. Their museums had incredible paintings, crosses, tapestries, sculptures and artifacts. We saw an ancient metal smelter made of holes in the earth and volcanic rock forming the pits for heating the metal. We went to the artisans market in the evening and tho it was like a huge garage sale, everything was hand made and cheap, tho they did not bargain much, they started their prices low. They are not a colorful people, just wearing drab gray and black. They are large and not overly friendly and just about everyone smoked and took pride in their Ararat Conyac distillary. They reminded me of Russians in everyway. Their is a huge lost city just across their river called Ani, but since the Turks swollowed up their land, the ruins are in Turkey, and not preserved and tho one can see it from the river bank, Armenians are not permitted to crosss and tour. No one can get to Ani unless you fly into Turkey. The Turks seem to not be proud or care in any way for the ruins. UNESCO needs to save and preserve the site. Tho with all this, the Armenians seem not to be very hostile towards the surrounding courntrymen?!
After a few nites in Yerevan, we began our 8 hour flight back to London for an overnight at a Hotel 35 mi. out of London. A farewell to our new friends of TCS Expiditions and the next morning a trip to Heathrow Airport for our long flight to Chicago and connection to LAX, arriving home at 8 p.m. with some jet lag. Shanti was none to happy to see us. Ken is still snoring as I'm up and ready to hit the day at 5 a.m. No doubt I'll be crashing along the way today. We arrived to new doors and windows installed in our house...what a change.

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