"Hello how much!"

2 June 2010     7:44pm     Shigatse

Holy hell I can't take any more monasteries!  I'm monastery-ed out!  As I'm sure is apparent, we went to yet another monastery today in Shigatse, the Ta Shi Lhun Po monastery.  It was fairly small, which was a relief.  There was one cool part- a huge statue of the Maitreya Buddha.  I believe our guide said it was the largest bronze Buddha statue in the world.  I can't remember the exact height, but I do remember that his shoulders are 11m across and his pinky is around 1.8m high, or as tall as an average white man.  [Note- Dee actually remembered, my memory is terrible.  Thanks, Dee!]

I must say we were in quite the giggling mood this morning.  Dawa laughed along with us at some points, but he had no idea what we were laughing about.  I'm pretty sure he thinks we're a little crazy.  Anyway, the monastery.  Before 1959 there were over 3,000 monks in residence.  Now there's only 800.  The number is so high because this monastery cooperates with the Chinese government.  Others don't cooperate as much, which is why their populations are smaller.

After the monastery Dawa dropped us off a ta local market, where we were greeted with the sounds of "Hello how much!"  It's surprisingly standard.  That, and "lookie lookie, cheapy cheapy!"  They are quite insistent.  I found it so much easier to deal with seeing as how I only had 20 yuan.  Out of nowhere, one woman offered me some jewelry for 5 yuan.  It was nice to look around, even though most of the stalls were offering the same things.

Dawa came to pick us up after about 45 minutes.  We all started walking towards the van as we were done shopping there, and a bunch of the saleswomen swarmed around us, offering us more jewelry.  We tried to pile in the van as quickly as possible and the women still stuck their stuff into the van, trying to sell it to us.  Poor Keesler got stuck outside with a couple of women.  Once the ones at the van realized we refused to buy anything, they went over to the other women who were still trying to sell stuff to Keesler.  Somehow, she made it out of there.

We went to lunch after that, finally at a different restaurant than the one we've been eating at.  I had yak noodle soup and garlic naan- I'm pretty sure I'm going to get so fat just off of naan, it's so good!  I've been trying to eat more Tibetan food and less western stuff.  The total off-ness of Western food here definitely helps me try to avoid it.  After this past week and a half, I think I like Tibetan food more than Chinese food.  I'm getting really used to yak meat.

We did a little more shopping after lunch, this time at actual shops.  There's way less pressure to shop there, even though things are usually more expensive.  Nobody really bought anything!  I think we just enjoyed browsing without feeling any pressure to buy.  After shopping we went back to the hotel to nap.  That was so refreshing.

After naptime we had Dawa take us somewhere to get warm stuff for Everest.  Once we got to the market, we found out that stuff could be rented at the camp and that we didn't actually need to buy anything.  We went to the supermarket instead to get food for the next couple of days.  Once we were done, we managed to leave our guides and go out on our own for a bit.  We went to the internet cafe to take care of things, and then walked back home, stopping to get noodles for dinner.  We have now had a thoroughly enjoyable evening eating bowls of noodles and dubbing Chinese television into English.  Not a bad evening of entertainment!

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!