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Lake Manasarovar
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I felt really tired once we left Dachen. It was a short drive to lake Manasarovar. We found a basic but clean guesthouse, got a room with lake view! The owners were a happy Tibetan family of three. Hostess was a tall, sweet Tibetan woman, with a sense of natural elegance. It's kind of amazing to find such an elegant woman at what seemed to be a forgotten corner of the world. She kept the little place exceptional tidy and clean, though there was neither running water nor electricity. She had a little girl of three years, with bright eyes. We spent so much time lazing on the Tibetan-style couch in the "lobby", watching and playing with her. The family cooked simple but tasty food for the guests. The servings were generous, but really, all they have in the kitchen were potatoes, cabbage, green chili, canned pork, rice and noodles.
Then we met P, a British "professional" traveller who had been travelling continually for 15 years. He just completed his 14 koras around Mt. Kailash, which took him over a month. And there was also an Israeli, who had just left his guide behind as well. We spent a lazy afternoon sun-bathing by the lake and chatted. P told us that there was a hotspring bath nearby, where you could just collapse and relax. A hot bath at 5000m! It sounded so alluring that we decided to give a try.
After 20 minutes of windy and dusty walk, we arrived at this bath house. The price was quite ambitious: 20 yuan per person. A big room with glass ceiling was divided into about 10 cubicles, each with a filty bath tub. Above the tub, where the faucets usually are, was a metal pipe. The girl in charge found me a less filthy one, and left Gigi in competition with half a dozen of Tibetan men who entered the same time as we did, laughing, shouting, full of joy at this obviously not so frequent opportunity of taking a hotspring bath. She pulled a cloth out from the pipe, and hotspring water started to flow into the tub! It came along with a smell of minerals, as well as all the stuff a natual hotspring possibly contains: dead spiders, hair, other undefined black pieces floating...I stared at the tub for a while, evaluating the situation, then decided that the water was probably still cleaner than my body. I stepped in. Didn't get the courage to "collapse and relax", but instead just squadded and splashed water onto myself. When the water filled up to about 2/3 of the tub, it mysteriously slowed down and eventually stopped flowing. I assumed that it was some kind of smart mechanism, probably playing with the pressure equilibrium to avoid wasting water. Later on I learned from P that it stopped simply because algaes clogged the pipe. All we needed to do was just stick our fingers inside and pull that slimy stuff out, then we could have had as much water as we wanted!
Anyway, after the bath, I did somehow felt cleaner and relaxed. The windier and dustier walk back seemed endlessly long. We had dinner at the guesthouse. Driver Laba was drinking what seemed to be 20 cans of beer with his fellow Tibetan drivers. He must have been slightly drunk, since at 10pm he came to our room and told us many of his fantasies, such as Tashi would set us up by telling the PSB that we didn't have a guide; the PSB would come to give our Israeli friend a big fine, and so on. He lowered his voice into a whisper, his small round eyes nervously glanced around, as if someone would be eavesdropping. Our sole candle flickered in the darkness, adding to the atmosphere. Gigi grew nervous too because he couldn't understand a word what Laba was saying. He kepted staring back and forth at Laba and me, not sure whether he could interrupt and ask what was going on.
The night was long and tranquil. It got a bit annoying only when we had to get up and pee. There was no toilet in the guesthouse. The closest one was a few minutes walk. It was dark and there were dogs around. It was freezing cold and we had to put on our woolen hat, gloves, sweaters, woolen pants, wind jacket before stepping out. I didn't have the gut to walk alone to the pitch dark toilet half-asleep. So I released myself a few steps away from the guesthouse, with a sparkling lake view under the moonlight. Tibetans say that the water of lake Manasarovar will wash away all your sins. Our American guide book says it would do so if you drink it (unboiled), then you would spend your day in the bathroom till the last bit of your impurity is gone. But that was the only water source we had. The guesthouse boiled that water and gave it to us in thermostats. The water was far from what drinking water usually looks like. It was murky, yellowish, and has little pieces of black stuff floating. We drank it anyway...me with my eyes closed. Didn't have any belly complains.
We rested at lake Manasarovar for two days. Driver Laba was bored to death. But we fully recovered and were ready for our journey ahead. More thumbnails ...
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