Holy city of Lhasa

Prayer mills abound
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Am loving it. Although already very touristified and altered by the Chinese there's still a very magical mystical feel to this place and I love the attack on the senses: the smell of yak butter mixed with incense everywhere, the vivid colours of orange and red and gold, and the sense of reverence everywhere, pilgrims on route, prostrating themselves every three paces, monks running around the streets and prayer flags blowing in the wind. Found some very nice little monasteries where the monks let me take pictures and all and wandered the streets just soaking it all up.

dentist anyone?
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We're all completley knackered from the journey though so are taking it very easy and the altitude seems to be getting to us aswell, so the long overdue boogy that we keep meaning to have every night never actually happens. I'm feeling the withdrawal sysmptoms!! But we have tasted the local brew- Chang. Man, we should have been suspicion when on the menu it was served by the pot! Pot it was...more like  a recycled washing up liquid container. And inside it a murky lumpy looking mixture....turns out it was fermented yaks milk! And they call it beer!! So misleading. Ah well.

And inside it a murky lumpy looking mixture....turns out it was fermented yaks milk!

Prayer wheels
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Am actually getting very fed up with the Chinese travel restrictions everywhere tho! It's worse than in mainland China- you can't move without paying a fortune for a tour! But us being the sneaky lot that we are, are trying to avoid it somehow and make our own way around. This means saving money but sometimes a lot of frustration also- today we sat in the queue to get ticekts for the Potala palace for no less than 6 hours! And it was a 7 am start! MAN! And only because we'd received about 5 contradictory bits of information about it all.. anyway. It had better be good now! :)

Incense covers the town...smelly weeds burn in ovens everywhere
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Potala Palace

Good it was! It's such an impressive building, looming above town and always visible. The walls are metres thick and it's absolutely huge. But it so sad to see it all empty now and filled with nothing but Chinese security guards and Chinese tour groups. How ironic that they are now so interested to look at and protect what they desperately tried to destroy only a few generations ago! The contrast is starkest just outisde the Potala- right opposite is a typical Chinese park, all concrete, huge and very neat and orderly. Right in the middle of it is a concrete statue- marking the 'liberation' of Tibet from the oppression of religion and mysticism! The irony of it all. And I'm sure it's strategically placed- from inside the Potala you can see that the window of the Dalai Lama's former room where he spent most of his time reading looks exactly onto that statue...Also the picture of the Dalai Lama is still actually prohibited in China so wherever there's a row of Dalai Lamas the current one is removed! I find it amazing how strong the faith still is notwithstanding all of this. ..

Friendly monk
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Lhasa nightlife

It finally happened! We had a boogy! We bumped into some guys that Mathieu knew and that I had met previously in Dali aswell- the travelling world is SO small!!- and they took us to a crazy Chinese nightclub that was blaring techno and served rough Chinese whiskey all night. After a few shots of that we were all up on the dance floor and being the only foreigners were the star attraction! I've talked about the Chinese going crazy at nightime and here was no exception. The dance moves they pulled were so funny. And so we just danced more and more outrageously and they'd happily join in until we were all in hysterics! So that was all good fun.

The Potala Palace towering above town. very impressive!
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And then we spent all afternoon organising our trek around MT EVEREST!!! Tomorrow morning I leave with a slightly downsized group ( very sad parting from Mathieu who has to leave beacuse of Chinese regulations again that make it impossible for him to extend his visa). We have bought a shed load of food to see us through it, have hired tents and bought ourselves fake Northface gear to keep us warm and of course are going illegally again :) Will be in touch with stories and hopefully some amazing pictures in about a week. Fingers crossed for clear skies!