Tibet!

So last we spoke I had given up on going to Tibet. And since then I had given up maybe 3 more times until it finally just came together. After I left Xian I headed to chengdu where I met a couple other people going to Tibet, or trying to go. With the politics the way they are you can only go with a group tour and guide, the chinese government won't let you just travel there alone so we (ryan from austrailia and Regis who is from belgium but lives in Austrailia and I) booked a tour with a driver and guide from our hostel in Chengdu. So I ended up spending 6 days or so in Chengdu just trying to work out the details. I met some pretty fun people in Chengdu so we just drank beer alot and chatted about nothing really so it made the Tibet rollercoaster bearable.

We ended up getting the train from Chengdu to Lhasa, which is a 45 hour train trip! It actually went bye really fast because the scenery was amazing.

from the train somewhere in tibet.

We got to Lhasa on a sunday and our guide met us and took us to our hotel then out to eat. So here is the Tibetian food section of the Tog... for all those vegetarians in the audiance you may want to skip ahead because Im about to talk about some delicious animals, well one in particular. Thats right Yak. The first meal we had was a rice, potato, yak, and pickled radish dish which was really tasty. I also had a yak burger, yak noodle soup, dumpling soup (no yak), momo bread (a dense tibetian bread very good). We also got the chance to stop at a friend of our guides house to see a traditional tibetian home and it was so much fun. The people in Tibet have this custom to force feed you drinks. Mostly it is sweet tea which is yak milk tea and sugar. So when they serve you a drink they motion to you to drink while they are holding the thermos then you drink and they fill it to the brim again then motion for you to drink again and fill it once more. This goes on and on until the meal is over. So when we were at our guides friends house it got a little out of control. At first we were just going to have tea then they brought out potatoes, then a barley mixed with milk rolled in a sheep bladder, then pickled cabbage,l then reaw meat that had been sitting out (and yes I ate it because its hard to say no). So at one point I had chopsticks and a hunk of barley in one hand, raw meat in the other and the lady was motioning at me to drink more tea so she could fill my glass again. It was a ball. We also had barley beer which tastes like cider sort of. The tibetian people are some of the nicest people Ive met so far.

Potala Palace Lhasa

Lhasa Bangkor square

Barley beer in the clear glass, yak butter tea in the saucer, potatoes, and barley mixed with milk on the brown plate.

So from Lhasa we went to shigaste then to Tingri then on to Everest base camp. Everest is so beautiful and COLD! We spent the night at the monestary near the base camp at 5200 meters high. It was pretty hard to breath even at the base camp. I didn't get altitude sickness very bad but I had a headache and trouble breathing a bit. All in all Tibet is amazing. I wish the chinese government would allow people to travel freely but not now. Well thats it for now Ill fill in more details later.

Everest!

Me, Ryan, Regis

So other mountain in tibet