Steintore
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Steintore
We drove to Gyantse and stopped along the way to take photos of Yak dung being dried out. A woman in an upstairs room of a house beckoned us to go over. We weren't sure if we had understood her meaning so we gingerly opened the gate and were welcomed inside. A mother and daughter proudly showed us all their animals and invited us to see the inside of their very colourful house.
We managed to communicate by using our hands and smiling a lot and it seemed to work. They obviously have money as it was a very large house. Our driver told us we should give them a tip for showing us inside but they refused the money which made us respect them even more.
It was a wonderful opportunity to be able to see how the people here really live and all because we wanted dung photos!! A great experience.
Our next stop was at a factory where they make Tsampa which is Tibetan porridge made from ground barley. Kirsten got powder all over her jacket! We also took photos of the typical toilets here.
The itinerary that we had wanted and planned would have given us a night in Gyantse. But Bar and Claudie had flights back to Kathmandu already booked for them so we ended up with a huge sightseeing day today and an extra night in Lhasa.
After lunch (potato omelette and apple fritters) we went to Pelkor Monastery in Gyantse. It was founded in 1418 and was once a compound of 15 monasteries that brought together three different Orders of Tibetan Buddhism - 9 Gelugpa, 3 Sakyapa and 3 from the obscure Buton Order - a rare instance of multi denominational tolerance. Most buildings are now empty.
We paid the $4 fee to take photos of the main building called the Assembly Hall with it's various statues, Buddhas, shrines etc. all in vivid colours. We only had 75 minutes for another whirlwind tour which also included our own tour of the Gyantse Kumbum (Stupa).
The Kumbum is the towns foremost tourist attraction and is 35m high with its white layers trimmed with decorative stripes and it's crown-like golden dome. Murals date back to the 14th Century and much of the statuary was damaged during the Cultural Revolution. It is the most important of it's kind - the other two are remote and ruined.
We climbed up to the top for a view over the area and to take a closer look at the large eyes painted on the wall. We were up on the 6th floor and then dashed around every floor trying to look into as many of the shrines as possible. Kumbum means 100,000 images and it probably had that many! It certainly was a rush!
We left just after 4pm and drove in the rain past the Kharola Glacier and over the Khar La Pass at 5,020m. It started snowing again so we couldn't see much out of the Jeep windows. We had a short toilet stop at an open air brick building in the middle of a field! We also drove past Yamdruk Lake but the weather wasn't good enough to be able to admire it's beautiful turquoise colour.
We had a complete misunderstanding with our guide and driver due to the speed check points. We didn't just want to drive fast and then wait at the side of the road for a long time before going through. So we asked if we could find a restaurant to eat.
We went through a village but were told they only serve yak meat and it's not very good and they were trying to put us off the food at the next village which turned out to be a shop selling pot noodles where they would provide you with hot water and chopsticks to eat it.
We knew it would be very late before we got to Lhasa - probably after 9pm - so we opted for the pot noodles. Fortunately it had English written on it so we knew it was roast beef but it's the first time we've tried eating one with chopsticks!! Quite an experience.
Anyway, not long after our short food break, we went through the checkpoint which was closed. The driver knew this apparently because, when we asked, we were told that all the checkpoints close at 7-30pm!! So why all the fuss? We also went through a very large town with dozens of places where we could have eaten properly so we don't know how the misunderstanding happened in the first place. Oh well, just part of the experience!
Now that the checkpoints were all closed we could race to Lhasa without a problem and got to our hotel at 9-15pm. We had a nice, large room with an en suite bathroom and clean sheets on the beds. (Sorry I keep mentioning the clean sheets - a throwback to India where we didn't get clean sheets so now I keep mentioning it when we do get them!!)
We simply dumped our stuff inside and then went out onto the streets to find something to eat in a restaurant. But it was too late at night - most restaurants close by 9pm even though Lhasa is the Capital. So we ended up buying a few things from a few of the small shops that were still open - a pot of what we hoped was yoghurt (no English on the pot), some biscuits and a pack of nuts that were so spicy hot that we couldn't eat them! But at least we had something and we would just have to wait for breakfast the next morning.
It had been another very long day and we were pretty much exhausted from all the sightseeing and the accumulation of missing sleep since we left Kathmandu.
Tibet Tour Part 2 - Rongbuk Monastery to Yamdrok Lake
