Nam Tso (lake) Tibet
Trip Start
Nov 23, 2005
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93
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Trip End
Feb 27, 2007
Nam Tso, Tibet,
China
Friday, July 28, 2006
We went on this trip with two girls from England. Unlike our last trip, this one went off without a hitch, no flat tires, no break downs. The drive to the lake was about 4 hours. We set off from Lhasa at 8am. We passed by large plains dotted with yaks and nomad tents. At one time we could hardly believe our eyes. We had to be at least half an hour or more drive away from Lhasa. There was a lady prostrating down the side of the road in the direction of Lhasa. She would be going all the way until she reached the Barkor area
7000 meter peaks at backdrop the lake
. We could not believe she would do this all the way there, and we didn't know how far she had already come. We stopped for a break at any area with a large monument. It was a pair of huge sculpted hands that were held out to the sky. As soon as we stopped locals seemed to pop out of no where. Jack was over across the road entertaining some kids. They were all gathered around him. They were trying to climb on him and grabbing his hands to be swung around. While he was busy doing this, myself and the other two girls were being harassed by a group of guys. They were being rude and making gestures, pointing at our crotches and then theirs. Then things got out to of hand, a couple of them were really starting to grab at us. I was just about to go get Jack, but he was already on his way back and our driver had returned from going to the washroom. The guys stopped as soon as they saw the other men coming.
A few more hours of driving and we arrived at the lake. It was massive. The lake is over 70 km's long, 30 km's at its widest and an 35 meters at its deepest. It was just as beautiful as the pictures we saw of it. There were a lot of Chinese tour buses at the area, but they only seem to come as a day trip. They were gone by afternoon and then we only shared the area with a handful of other tourists
accomodation tents at the lake
. There were either tents or tin box shelters to stay in. The girls stayed in a tent to themselves. Jack and I opted to call a more luxurious tin box home for the night! There were actually a few places to choose to eat, they were also tin box shelters. We found one and ordered some rice and vegetables. The food was edible, but nothing to excite your taste buds. It would definitely be another situation where we would be very hungry by the time we left.
We met up with the girls and set off for a 2 hour walk around a peninsula of land that juts into the lake. We passed by areas with thousands of prayer flags as well as stone tablets with prayer inscriptions carved into them. There is also one part of the rock mountain near the camp that has thousands of white scarves on it. People tie one end of the scarf around a small rock and hoist it up onto the cliff face until some of the jagged rock catches it and holds it in place. From far away it looks like a ton of white bird droppings. The white scarves are to show respect. They are also given to people and placed around their necks. We also saw a lady prostrating near a group of prayer flags. She had probably come from very far away on a pilgrimage.
As we came around the mountain that separated us from the camp we got more spectacular views of snow capped peaks across the lake
Alone on the plain
. The lake is such a vast area of solitude and peacefulness. At the end of the walk we climbed up the mountain to get some better views. We could really feel the altitude again and had to stop many times on the way up to catch our breath. It was really windy at the top. There were prayer flags everywhere fluttering in the wind. They are meant to purify the air and the wind is supposed to carry the prayers that are written on the flags. The colours of the flags represent earth, sky, clouds, water and fire. Yellow,blue, white,green and red. Jack had purchased some prayer flags back in Lhasa earlier. We decided this is the place we would put them out. It is neat to know they will remain where we put them until the elements literally wear them away to nothing. You can see really old player flags that are totally washed out of colour flapping in the wind still. We tied our flags on tight and watched them flutter in the wind. We made our way back down the mountain, it was time to eat again. We decided to try a different tin outlet. A man greeted us at the door. The outside of the place also indicated that it was the shopping mall for the settlement. It had the usual items of toilet paper, water, cigarettes and pop. We asked if we could see a menu. The man said he did not have one and asked us to follow him. We went back into a smaller room and he pointed to bowls of various vegetables and raw meats
horses for hire, shop tents, etc in the background
. We all looked at each other in with puzzle faces. We have no idea what to point to and how it would be prepared. We thanked him and decided to go back for the more bland rice and veggies at the first place we went to . It was so windy and cold now that the sun was starting to go down. It was only 8:30pm but we were really tired and there was nothing else to do anyways. So we went to our tin box to settle in for the night. It was another bloody cold night, It was just like the night at Everest Base Camp, we were not that much lower in elevation. We piled on the blankets and shivered ourselves to sleep. We had taken the blankets off of all 4 beds in the room and put them onto us. I guess we kind of over did it because we both woke up and felt like we were suffocating. We threw off about half the the blankets. It felt like we had been sleeping forever so we assumed it was the middle of the night. I reached over to look at my watch, it was just after 11pm! We both laughed. Usually I would be up most of the night if I do something like this. We got up and had some cookies we had brought with us and both went right back to sleep until morning.
The morning was ugly, cold and raining. We had planned to leave at about 11am. We found the girls and they were in the same frame of mind, wanting to leave earlier. We got back to Lhasa by 2pm and it was warm and sunny there and we had the rest of the day to enjoy it.
