Lhasa to Nepal - 7 days

Gyantse - Xigatse
Next stop was the Shalu monastery on the way to Xigatse. This was a bit different from the other Monasteries we had visited as it was built during a period when the Mongol rulers of China (Qing dynasty) were protectors of the Tibetan Sakya order which in the 15th and 16th century was the predominant and most powerful Buddhist order. The Mongol court sent many Chinese workers who left their mark on the architecture with typical Chinese wood-ornamentation and green glazed roof tiles. The Buddhism practiced here also incorporated a strong element of the animistic pre-Buddhist B'on religion so it was interesting to observe a mix of styles in both architecture and religious practice.

Tashilumpo still has 800 active monks. It houses the world's largest gilded Buddha, a Maitreya (or Jampa = future Buddha) standing a proud 26m high Prayer break at Sakya. It also houses the funeral stupas of the 4th-10th Panchen Lamas.Most intersting for us, though, was the chance to not only witness a buddhist prayer ceremony in the athmospheric main assembly hall. Today was a special day and the monks would be holding ceremony more or less all day, interspersed by tea breaks and lunch to commemorate the anniversary of the Buddha's descent to earth the following day. We were especially fortunate to be the only western observers of an outdoor ceremony of well over a hundred festively robed yellow hat monks in the courtyard in expectance of this anniversary. What a captivating spectacle!

Xigatse - Old Tingri
Our next stop was to be the last monastery on our trip, Sakya monastery, seat of one of the oldest orders of Tibetan Budhism and built like a fortress A tall Tibetan from the Kham (eastern) region. Here the monks held an all day service to commemorate above event and here we could witness the auditory onslaught of tantric buddhistic ritual instruments. There were horns (some of them like long straight Alphorns), cymbals and drums, beat to the rhythm of recitation from the old sanskrit texts (the music comes out when Sanskrit is read, whereas most lithurgy comprises Tibetan translations of the old texts with Sanskrit only being used for the most holy, untranslateable, bits). It was also mesmerising to observe some of the monks ritually contorting their hands into shapes and figures as they sang and mumbled the words of the scriptures.

After a brief lunch stop in the farming town of Lhatse we entered the Everest region. Our aim was to visit the world's largest mountain from the Tibetan side where the base camp is accessible by dirt road rather than the 2-week overpopulated "trecker's highway" on the Nepali side. We first made stop in a cozy guest house in Old Tingri from where we had splendid sunset views over the Everest Range and a large rising winter moon. Only interrupted in our marvel by a Chinese soldier wielding a stick who came bounding up the hill we were on to check our cameras to make sure we hadn't snapped the local military base and then, satisfied, spurted back to his base.

We then took the jeep for another 15 minute drive up to Everest Base Camp (5200m). Here the icy cold strong wind threatened to blow us off the morane from which we had some beautiful views of the sheer glacier-clad north face of Mt Everest (8850m) which the Tibetans call Chomolongma ("Mother Goddess of the Universe" - or "Princess Cow" - dependig on the translation). It's sheer size has a magnetic appeal and it certainly dominated the entire valley as it poked far into the clear blue sky.

We returned to Rombuck by foot, stopping frequently for one perfect photogenic spot after the other Small town street scene. We also explored a Hermitage covered with prayer flags on the way back, The area was beset with many funeral stupas and was a bit eery in a sense that we felt we should not be here. Smoke from a small house on site and a glowing butter lamp behind a large prayer wheel were the only signs of use and intensified the "The Hills Have Eyes" or "Blair Witch" feeling. We mused that this place was probably one of the remote sky burial sites, the prefered way for Tibetans to leave the Earth. In my understandig the way sky burials work is that the body of the deceased is kept at home for 3 days during which it is attended by a specialist monk who ensures the soul has fully departed from the body. Then family friends organise transport to a remote mountain spot where vultures breed. The body is then chopped to small bits and mixed with Tsampa (remember? - the roasted barley flour most tibetans have for breakfast) and left for the vultures to eat, thus carrying the body in parts back to the sky. I believe the remaisns are then burnt as we encountered heaps of ash rather than bones on this site.

The gravel road took us along the open plateau with sweeping views over the Himalayas with the last pass we crossed offering the most jaw-dropping scenery: a set of wind-powerd prayer wheels in the foreground and the mountains so close we felt that Shisha Pagma was only an arm's length away Spectacular Himalaya views!

We then began to drop in altitude towards the Nepali border, encountering green trees for the first time in 10 days before we hit Nyalam, an ugly town where we had to wait a few hours until the road ahead was opened to traffic. This last stretch of the Friendship Highway is under major reconstruction. We drove past groups of workers putting the finishing touches to their day's work while others waited for transport back to their tentcamps hovering above the abyss on the valley side of the road.

The border town of Zhangmu was a crazy affair and a stark contrast to the sterile arrival at Lhasa's empty airport a few days back. Here a single track road was besieged by heavy traffic from both sides: the colourful trucks from Nepal vs. the heavy duty lorries from China head to head accompanied by a cacophony of tooting horns. We managed to secure a nice 4-bed dorm for our final game of cards and a prize bottle of wine organised by Beat. Turns out this brew (allegedly made in England) had no similarity with what we would commonly perceive as red wine. It was red, yes, but tasted like cool-aid enriched with ethylene glycol. We fairly quickly abandoned any serious attempt at guzzling the concoction for fear of the integrity of our vital organs. The next morning we managed to buy a few records to recreate the soundtrack from our Tibetan trip, courtesy of Jampa's CD collection. Some of the music we then had to get in Kathmandu due to censorship issues...