Tashe Dalek from Shigatse

Well, we were finally off...our first day on our four day trip to the Nepal border with stops at Shigatse to see Tashilunpo Monastery (home of the Panchen Lama), New Tingri to get our Everest Base Camp Permits, EVEREST BASE CAMP and Rhongpu Monastery with the night spent in Tingri, and our last night spent in Zhangmu on the Tibet/Nepal border. Wow...what a trip this was!

We started early in the morning from Lhasa with seven other people split between two Toyota Landcruisers. Three were from Slovakia, one from Chile, one from England and the rest were Canadians...and one of the guys was recently working in Fort McMurray...go figure. What a small World!! We couldn't have asked for a better group to be traveling with...and the drivers were great as well. On the way to Shigatse we passed Yamdrok Tso Lake at our first high pass over 4000 meters. Our next stop along the way was at a picturesque stupa which had a magnificent mountain with a hanging glacier as its backdrop...stunning! The scenery along the way was amazing and oozing with amazing photo opportunities, and we had to fight the urge to keep taking photo, after photo, after photo...After about five hours of driving we finally arrived in Shigatse, so we found a hotel and unpacked for the night.

The next day we woke up early to go and visit Tashilunpo Monastery which is home to the Panchen Lama...well, he's not the "real" Panchen Lama, he's the one that the Chinese installed after their occupation of Tibet...but that's another story and much too long for me to get into! You can buy the book however; it's really a good read. Anyways...we had to get up early to go and see the Monastery because we had to get on the road to New Tingri (where we would get our permits for Everest Base Camp) at 11:00 a.m. After a detour to a site that we thought was the Monastery, but was actually a Chinese made re-production of an old Tibetan fort and quite boring, we were running late and now had to really hurry to get to Tashilunpo...which we could see up the valley. The quickest way to get there was by taking the Kora (pilgrimage route around the Monastery), however, we would have to take it backwards (counter-clockwise) and hope that the pilgrims didn't mind! Now, we had done Kora's before, the proper way, and they are quite an amazing and spiritual experience...but this would be different. After we had completed the half of the Kora between us and the entrance to the Monastery, our voices were almost gone by the constant greeting of "Tashi Dalek" to every pilgrim we passed. Of course this greeting was recipricated by the pilgrims and this made for an amazing experience.

Once we got to the entrance it was 10:10 so we rushed to pay our entry fee and get in. This was an amazing Monastery. It was founded in 1447 by the first Dalai Lama and its name in Tibetan means, "all fortune and happiness gathered here." As we wandered through the maze of buildings, we worked our way towards Tashilunpo's two most famous sites; the 27 meter seated Buddha and the gold and jewel encrusted tomb of the 4th Panchen Lama. Both were definitely amazing to see. We then tried to get back to the entrance without getting lost to catch a cab back to our hotel. We managed to do so with five minutes to spare.

We were then off to New Tingri where we would get our permits for Everest Base Camp.

Talk soon from the base of the World's tallest mountain.

Feb 1, 2008

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