Day 3 here. Absolutely amazen place. I could sit for hours in the cafe on the roof of our hostel and look at the Potala. Head off on in a couple o days for a 6 day trip in a 4 wheel drive to see everest and a bit o Tibet. Weve met a sound Dutch couple who are comen with us. Cant wait. Take care, Daithi.

Tak jsem konecne v Tibetu! A vicemene legalne. A videl jsem jiz mistni nejposvatnejsi chram, ktery jsem prochazel v zastupu poutniku z jedne svatyne do druhe. Bohuzel mi v tom chramu upadl {ci jinak zmizel} satek, takze jsem pred prochazkou bez cepice, navleku na eventualne spaleny krk, piratskeho satku proti upalu a tak. Ted tu navic straslive ...

And so, back to Lhasa. I needed a good few days of doing sweet FA to recuperate after my Himalayan excursion. A few days ended up turning into a few weeks. There was one other thing I wanted to do in Tibet - a five day hike from Gamden Monastery to Samye Monastery. Getting things done here is not easy. The lack of foreign tourists (compared to w...

Driving from Shigatse to Lhasa we stopped at Yamdrok-Tso lake north of Lhasa. It is one of the 4 holy lakes in Tibet. It was a brilliant color of turquoise blue with snowcapped mountains in the background. When I walked up the hill away from the road and got away from everyone else, it was my favorite place in Tibet. The most recognizable landma...

Having spent the last few days in Lhasa doing very little, it was time to at least visit a monastary close to Lhasa: the Drepung monastery. I initially left with Jens, Timmy and Gena. But when getting there and starting the Kora (the 'praying-route' the monks walk around the monastery) I felt I wanted to walk it alone and somehow I did end up do...

We tried a traditional Tibetan breakfast - barley balls and yak cheese in brown sugar steeped in yak butter tea. It was ... not delicious. Morning at Jokhang Temple. It was closed to worshippers but open to tourists. Nevertheless, there were many pilgrims prostrating themselves before the temple. Chamba said that Tibetan Buddhists must make 110,...

We left Chengdu on the 21st of July bound for Lhasa, Tibet. Tibet is an autonomous region of China that rests on the Himalayan Plateau and so the views from the flight over were spectacular. Being on a plateau everything is at altitude and this was immediately evident as we stepped off the plane in the capital, Lhasa, as everything becomes a tru...

We took our flight from Zhongdian to Lhasa. It was about 1 1/2 hours long. The Zhongdian airport looked brand new. We saw some great mountain scenery from the plane. There was one huge mountain sticking up well above the clouds. We think it was Namche Barwa mountain at about 7756 meters high. We started to descend and could see small villages in...

The airport bus dropped us off next to the imposing Lhasa landmark, the Potala Palace. We then walked down the main street towards our guesthouse and the Tibetan quarter. The buildings are all three to four stories high. As we got closer to the Tibetan quarter, they were topped with prayer flags fluttering in the wind. The cityscape is dominated...

Well here I am Lhasa. I have not updated often as most of the internet cafes here are full of young men smoking. One of the things I find difficult here in china is the widespread acceptance still of smoking in hotels, buses cafes etc. That and the spitting, hawking sniffing and amazing throat contortions you hear!!! I travelled from Chengdu to ...