Day 7 - Aug 15, 2007 Wednesday

 Lhasa 拉薩 - Shigatse 日喀則

(click the hyperlink for the respective photo album)

Originally we were to go to Yamdrok Yumtso Lake 羊卓雍湖 which was around 1 hour drive from Lhasa.  Because it had been raining since the night before, we would be unable to see anything on the lake.  Our guide decided to change the route a bit to go straight to Shigatse first and then go to the 'sheep lake' on the way back to Lhasa 5 days later.

Also, as we needed to go to Mt. Everest, we changed to a 4WD.

We stopped in a remote restaurant for lunch.  There was no menu and I went into the kitchen directly to order. The dried ducks hanged there in the photo were wild ducks.  One of them was some yellow duck which the guide said was one of the protected animals!  We Chinese like to eat all kind of things - weak (no) sense of protecting the environment.  It was sad.  Anyway, this lunch costed us dearly!  It was RMB360 (normally with the same food, it costed at most RMB120)!!

We continued our journey after lunch and stopped on the road for a watermelon (freshly picked from the farm).  The one who was weighting the watermelon was our driver.  He carried a Tibetan knife - almost a foot long - with him and he used that knife to cut the melon and we ate it all on the road.  Very juicy but not as sweet as the one we bought in Xining.

We arrived at Shigatse at around 4pm and immediately, we went for Tashihunpo Monastery 紮什倫布寺.

Tashilhunpo Monastery 紮什倫布寺 is one of the six largest monasteries of Gelugpa 格魯派 (or Yellow Hat Sect 黃教) in Tibet. The monastery is located at the foot of Drolmari (Tara's Mountain). Founded by the First Dalai Lama in 1447, the monastery's structure was expanded by the Fourth and successive Panchen Lamas. Tashilhunpo Monastery covers an area of nearly 300,000 M² (3,229,279 sq. ft.). The main structures found in the Tashilhunpo Monastery are The Maitreya Chapel, The Panchen Lama's Palace and The Kelsang Temple. Tashilhunpo is the seat of the Panchen Lama since the Fourth Panchen Lama took charge in the monastery, and there are now nearly 800 lamas.

That night, we had hot pot buffet!  Only RMB25 per person plus some charges for the soup etc.  Very cheap.  The spicy section of the pot was scary!  Not even Ronald who eats hot could bear it!  Our guide, Jia Qiang ate them all!

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