Two more long drive days before reaching Lhasa in the late `afternoon of the 15th. The nights of the 13th and 14th were very cold and most people suffered from altitude sickness on the 14th as we camped at nearly 5000m. Consequently there was not much call fro supper of breakfast the following morning and everyone’s hands were absolutely frozen when taking down the tents and washing up the breakfast things.
The road follows the same path over the plateau and the passes of the main electricity pylons to Lhasa and for most of the way the very impressive new (2006) rail track – this has to be one of China’s modern engineering miracles.
The towns are widely spaced and on the 14th it was 4 hrs before we reached a town of any size. At our lunch stop we had to empty our water tank as it had become contaminated and then later we filled it 50% at a small village pump. Road works delayed us by about half an hour as they completely shut the road to make the repairs. The road continued to be variable in quality and the truck ride was very bouncy from time to time.
As we neared Lhasa in a wide gorge valley significant arable agriculture was taking place (on the plateau we only saw the occasional herd of Yak and Sheep).
We drove through the centre of Lhasa and stayed at the Tibet Kailash Hotel – 18 of the group have decided to go on the excursion the Base Camp of Mount Everest tomorrow (for 2 days) while the remainder (including me) will stall in Lhasa for a total of 4 nights.
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