7 days of Tibet

7 days of Tibet 

So a few days ago I just finished my adventures in Tibet. To say the least it was epic.

It began with a flight from Shenzhen to Lhasa. Getting on the plane was a bit nerve wracking as they checked our passports and permits many times (For those who don't know, the Chinese aren't the biggest fans of people entering and leaving Tibet). Alas, we made it onto the plane after a few hours and an airport official disappearing with our passports and permits for what seemed like half an hour.. But may well have only been 10minutes. Nonetheless, 10minutes in a foreign country where not many people speak your language and not knowing the whereabouts of your passport or if you'll get it back is 10minutes I can do without. However due to our kiwi nature we stayed cool headed about it all and it all turned out fine.

Controversial

The next leg was the flight. The majority of the flight was over the Tibetan mountains and it was beautiful. The landing was interesting as we weren't too sure if we'd land on sand or a mountain.. Alas we landed and were picked up from the airport and driven for about 1hour to our hotel in Lhasa. I liked Lhasa immediately. The mountains surrounding it reminded me of central Otago, but I also couldn't help but notice the plethora of Chinese flags. About two on every single lamp post.. Just in case we forgot...

Just like home

Because Tibet is difficult to get into, the only way for us to get in was through doing a tour. The other members of our group were mostly in their late 20s and came from chile, Lithuania, France and the United States. We were lucky to have a really cool group of people who all had interesting stories to share from all different corners of the world. We had a guide and a driver and had 3 main destinations: Lhasa (3300m altitude), shigatze (4500m altitude) and Mount Everest base camp (5300m altitude). The altitude at Lhasa alone was much higher than I'd ever been but luckily I didn't get sick.. Which I was very relieved about!!

Lhasa town centre

The first few days we spent in Lhasa in the old part/the Tibetan part. It was very beautiful and the Tibetans were some of the loveliest people I had met and the buildings were beautiful with Tibetan prayer flags strung all over the place. We visited potala palace (a huge temple with some 299 rooms!). It was pretty magnificent.. I could definitely feel the altitude when I was climbing the steps to it! 

Potala Palace

We also visited a number of other temples as well as trying local food such as yak meat. One evening we watched the sun set over the mountains from a rooftop bar, that was pretty magnificent.

We did much of the same in shigatze. At one temple in shigatze Steph and I were resting sitting on a step an within a number of minutes we had an audience: about 10 locals stood around us just watching us. At another temple we found a very friendly child who ordered us around and insisted he took photos of us on all our cameras.. It was very cute.

Making friends with the locals

Budding photographer

One of the highlights was definitely going to base camp of Mount Everest. To get there involved a very long drive over the mountains with a ridiculous amount of hair pin turns. It also involved a lot of tooting of horns (they're big on that here) and a lot of driving around animals. The animals in Tibet were great. Sheep, cows, dogs, yaks.. They were all very nonchalant and lay around on the road resulting in the traffic having to move around them. However, the scenery was pretty breath taking: mountains, lakes and glaciers, and if course, eventually, Mount Everest.

On our way to Everest

Dam

Glacier

The view of Everest from base camp was amazing. To be honest at first we did think 'it doesn't look that high'. But when we accounted for the fact that we were already at 5300m and the tricks of visual perception, we realised it was pretty awesome (we had that confirmed by watching the movie 'Everest' the following night. We stayed one night up at a guest house at base camp and it was very cold. But we all made it through and were pretty stoked to say we had stayed at the base camp of such a magnificent mountain. People were discussing the first person to climb it and one person from our group said 'oh yeah wasn't he British'... Steph and I were very quick to correct him..

Base Camp

Sun setting on Everest

In sum, Tibet was absolutely amazing. The scenery, the people, the animals, not to mention it's interesting past.. This latter point was particularly poignant with the amount of military and police checks we had to go through while on the road. However, what struck me was the joy and love that the Tibetans still showed. They were curious and caring and still held onto their traditions and beliefs despite it all. I think it's one of the most beautiful places on earth and I am very lucky to have been able to go there.

Peace and Shaka 

J x