Mountains & Monasteries - mile 9135

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We're on yet another diversion. This time its not due to roadworks its of our own making. Our ultimate target is Beijing so we should be heading north-east but instead we are riding south on a gravel road with 100 or so switchbacks that take us up, very steeply, from 4300m to 5200m and back again. Why? To see Mount Everest up close from Base Camp. It's worth every inch of the 134 mile round trip to stand underneath the towering peak.

From Dingri it's a great ride up and down the mountain passes and its made more enjoyable by the good gravel and lack of sand!!. From the top of Pang-la pass (5200m) the views are spectacular, precisely how you imagine the Himalayas. We are so, so lucky - there's clear blue skies and 4 of the 6 highest peaks in the world, including Everest, are standing before us.

To get closer we drop down into the, surprisingly lush, Dzaka Valley (via more gravel switchbacks). From the valley floor you cant see Everest and its a couple of hours ride before she comes into view again. Now she really dominates the scenery, towering above the end of the road, we are headed straight for her. We are gradually climbing again and at 4900m we get to Rongbuk Monastery - the highest monastery in the world. Its very peaceful and tranquil with the monks chanting away rhythmically.

A few miles further and the road ends at Tent Camp (5000m) - this is as far as we can go on the bike and a bus takes us the last few miles to Everest Base Camp (5200m). Its another spectacular view; Everest fills your whole field of view and today there's not a single cloud to obscure our view, just a trail of snow being blown off the top. You could sit here, in amongst the prayer flags, for hours just soaking it all up. Its amazing to think that we have actually ridden all the way here - from our front door to Everest!!

From Everest its back to the Friendship Highway and back on route to Lhasa. Since we reached the Friendship Highway the other day everything has changed. In Western Tibet we had sand and gravel roads, scruffy villages with no electricity or running water and sparsely vegetated arid steppe land. Now its good tarmac, incredibly smart villages with electricity and lush green valleys. The greenness surprises me - I pictured Tibet as vast flat plains with herds of grazing yaks and mountains in the distance. Western Tibet matched these expectations but now we are riding through avenues of towering trees or alongside fields of wheat and oil seed rape. In Lorraine World these should not exist in Tibet!! Plus its hot and sunny (29C) - a few days ago it was -6C. Its like we have entered a different world.

The Friendship Highway passes through Shigatse, the home of the Tashilhunpo monastery, the seat of the Panchen Lama. Its an important place: it was one of the few monasteries to survive the Cultural Revolution relatively unscathed and is the largest functioning monastic institution in Tibet. The group are stopping for lunch so I suggest we could go off and see the monastery (in theory we are supposed to travel together as a group whilst in Chinese and stay on the designated route). When we first mention the idea our Chinese guide, John, gives us a quizzical look. pouts and utters, the now immortal phrase, “no I don't think so”. With time we learn that this means 'normal tourists dont request this but give me 10 or 15 minutes and it will all be sorted out'. So once the noodles and green tea have been ordered he suddenly turns to us and says “lets go” and 4 of us are whisked off to the monastery on the other side of town. We only have ½ hour there but its well worth the effort.

Its an enormous place (70,000 sq meters). Its like a small town with cobbled lanes meandering between the living quarters (painted white) and temples (painted red and tipped with a gold band). It's a lively place with a real buzz it. Lots of smartly dressed Tibetans are spinning prayer wheels and making koras round all the temples. Its another place where you could spend hours soaking up the atmosphere.

Back on the road we pass through more smart villages with brightly painted houses all looking very new. The Friendship Highway is the main tourist route between Nepal and Tibet and a cynic might say that the villages are a show-piece for tourist to demonstrate how well looked after the Tibetans are. Of-course it could just be that the road provides access so modernisation inevitably follows - maybe when the road through Western Tibet is completed the villages we stayed in will be modernised.

All this building of roads and new villages generates a lots of discussion within the group - the “what's best - a fridge or freedom?” debate. Quite a few think good roads, brick houses and electricity and what the locals want and that they are better off now. I'm not so sure - during my travels over the years I've met a lot of incredibly poor people but they are proud people as they have earned the right to be who they want to be.

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Photos

Chomolangma (8848m) or, as we would say, Mount Everest
Tent Camp - this is as close as we can get on the bike

the view from Pang-la (5200m) with 4 of the 6 highest mountains in the world
[list]
* Makalu - 8463m, 5th highest
* Lhotse - 8516m, 4th highest
* Everest - 8848m
* Gyachung Kang - 7952m, 15th highest
[/list]
* Cho Oyu - 8201m, 6th highest

Rongbuk Monastery
at 4900m its the highest in the world

Everest up close from from Base Camp
the climbing season finished at the end of May - a few days ago this plain would have been filled with expedition tents

Tashilhunpo Monastery, Shigatse
this building is the home a 26m high statue of Jampa, the future Buddha

the alleyways at Tashilhunpo Monastery, Shigatse
I'm just in there for scale

a monastery that didn't fare so well
the roadside is littered with the ruins of monasteries destroyed during the Cultural Reveolution and dzongs (fortresses).

crossing the Brahmaputra River
its sacred, as are a lot of rivers, hence all the prayer flags

The Yarlung Tsangpo (Brahmaputra)
we followed teh river for most of the day. It constantly changed from blue to green, from lazily crossing a gravel plain to gushing through a narrow gorge.

one of the many smart villages lining the Friendship Highway
contrast this with the previous photos of the villages in Western Tibet

another smart house
clean whitewahsed walls and brightly painted windows and doors

Comments

[David Moody]

Awesome
Once again, this is a great travelogue. Wish I could be there.

[David & Diana]

Tibet as we think of it
Agree..........think of Tibet as the Lorraine mental picture......... not as the photos are portraying! Also some thought proviking comments regards " Fridge or Freedom? "........ but does it have to be a choice? Many thanks for insights into worlds far from us............ David & Diana