Road trip one - Nam Tso lake
Trip Start
Apr 04, 2004
1
20
34
Trip End
Jun 07, 2004
Lhasa,
Tibet,
China
Thursday, May 27, 2004
Monday 27th May
Breakfast at the Pentoc again, this time with Helen, a plump cardigan and slippers type girl from St Albans. An applicant to one of my notice-board advertisements that speaks of a trip up to Nam Tso lake. Nam Tso lake is about 112 km's north of Lhasa at an elevation of 4,718 meters ! Fierce. Helen is up for it. She and I have by now been in Lhasa for the required period of time in order to be considered acclimatised.
However, without 'staggering Den' as part of our group, the cost goes up. Since jeep and driver is now divided between fewer people. This, annoyingly, causes poverty-stricken Chris to pull out as well. So the trip is temporarily bollocksed. Then I find four Israelis who will join us and it's back on again. All of them are ex-Israeli military which is normally the case among their large travelling community. There is Subhash and his girlfriend Tanvi. Their former sergeant Umang and the beautiful Nayana. There's a final goodbye session with my Japanese friends in 203 and a late trip to the place that sells fresh apple pie and cream. I leave them the holy bong since it's now a permanent fixture of room 203 and I sincerely wish them all well.
The loading up of the jeep begins at the Banok Shol hotel about 10am. I see it's a slightly battered Landcruiser and the driver is a little difficult to get along with at first. He's reminds me of a 1960s Mediterranean hustler. Not that I know any. Perhaps its the cut of his leather jacket or the snakeskin shoes.
Nunnery
He'd look more at home driving a Maserati. Bags and tarpaulin secured we hit the road and our first stop is a nunnery. There is a river and its course is abundantly furnished with so many prayer flags that it looks to me like bunting at a village fete. Its earthy and unspoiled and a certainly place of peace. Inside the nunnery are the usual Buddha's and offerings and of course we are invited to participate in something I can't quite remember. It probably involved a financial contribution which explains why.
Subhash and Umang fire up their little cooking stoves and get some tea on the go. The driver has the jeep jacked up at the front, there's something playing up with the undercarriage that we don't understand and don't really care about. Umang assists by standing on a large tree branch which has been inserted through the wheel arch. To give extra leverage. I'm sure its all in the Toyota owners manual.
We rattle through huge landscapes of green pastures, rivers and mountain plains specked with yak and sheep. And see nomads wandering about making the place look untidy. The jeep climbs a steep gradient up to a monastery where the plan is to stay overnight. But a row breaks out. Here we have the first of many stand offs between : Tibetan monks turned Chinese businessmen. Israeli travellers who will bargain loud and hard to the very last shekel. English 'can see both sides of the argument' but don't want to get involved. Our driver and guide who is the moderator speaks no English nor Hebrew.
Finally we do an about turn and descend to the village below where we find a decent size shared room behind a general store that we are all satisfied with . There is also a place nearby that will cook for us. But here, Helen throws a tantrum. "I don't want to stay in this dorm room" It could be that she's a little self-conscious. Dorms by their very nature mean a degree of semi nakedness in public and she's a big girl. "I wanted to stay in a monastery for the experience of it". She's huffing and puffing now and about to blow. The Israelis are amused but not moving an inch. Our driver agrees ( for some petrol money naturally ) to take Helen back up to the top of the sodding hill so she can sleep there with her money-grabbing monks and sort out the cost herself. We'll meet her tomorrow since we are going back up there ourselves anyway to see a sky burial. Maybe hers. We invite our driver to return and eat with us. He can sleep in our room tonight. We prefer him to stay, him and the jeep. Imagine being left behind in a place like this.
Next ; A sky burial
