That's a lot of Buddhas

1 June 2010     10:00pm     Shigatse

After an extremely long car ride with many stops along the way, we finally arrived in Shigatse.  We left Lhasa at 9:00am.  I'll admit I was a little sad to leave.  We drove on the Friendship Highway from Lhasa, which has some incredible views but is ridiculously scary.  The road is two lanes (one in each direction), but it has a ton of hairpin turns going up the mountain, and some places on the road have no form of guardrails whatsoever.

Early on in the drive we stopped to see the stone Buddha, which is a Buddha carved into a stone wall.  It is quite impressive.  We also passed by an absolutely beautiful lake.  At one point we stopped high up to get pictures from there.  As we eventually descended, we got to stop by the lake itself.  We also saw crazy amounts of sheep and yak, so about every 5 minutes someone would yell "Sheep!" or "Yak yak yak yak yak!," our favorite call.

We stopped in one town along the way for lunch, and passed by a lot of people playing billiards outside.  I couldn't believe how many pool tables were just sitting outside on the sidewalk.

Leaving there, we stopped by the Kharola Glacier.  The altitude at the stop was 5,560m, or 18,242 feet.  It was absolutely beautiful.  Soon after the glacier we visited Pachu Monastery, where in one of the stupas there are 10,000 images of Buddha.  This monastery was built in the 1400s, and all of the paintings inside are the original artwork- no touch ups have been done.

After a little more driving, we finally arrived in Shigatse around 6:30pm.  They got us set up in our hotel, which seems like a 5-star resort compared to our last hotel.  It's even got a ridiculously fancy shower!  We have one more day and night in Shigatse, and then we're off to the Everest base camp!