Shigatse City to the Border of Tibet and Nepal

The cities of Tibet are fairly filthy places. The people are beautiful which is amazing considering they don't shower. There is 2 inches of grime covering their faces and clothing. Unlike mainland China, which employs around-the-clock sweepers on every street, the streets of Tibet are full of dirt and trash.

At 7:00 a.m., we left Shigatse headed for the border. The drive ranks #1 in near death adventures. The drive was slow-going due to the presense of live stock on the road and the general lack of a road in many parts.



We drove by Mount Everest which was breathtaking.



We stopped for lunch in a town just below base camp at Everest. It was the wild west in China. Other than a few dump trucks and vehicles carrying tourists, there was almost no evidence of the 20th century - or the 19th for that matter.




Most people wore traditional dress and travelled by pony and cart. The ponies were all decked out in the green, pink, red, yellow and blue colors that seem to symbolize Tibet and had large yak fur plooms adorning their heads, necks and tails. Hundreds of dogs rummaged through countless piles of trash and dust from the unpaved road covered man, beast and vehicle alike. It was a rough town with rough hardened people.





We set out from the town at the bottom of Everest about 2:00 p.m. and immediately left paved road to an irregular, pitted dirt road. The views were breathtaking, but around 4:00 we hit a particularly messy road that we were told is about 30 km and would take 3 to 4 hours to drive.





The 30 km stretch was about as beautiful as anything I've ever seen. I'll have to add pics later, because my camera ran out of batteries and I had to use my cell phone. I have no idea how to retrieve pictures from a cell phone.

We were fortunate to stay in the nicest hotel in town with orange crushed velvet bedspreads, a single orange towel and a substance that appears to be red throwup running down the wall toward a plastic trash can.



I believe our room has cable as evidenced by the cable running from the TV along the floor to a hole in the wall, but it won't work. The bathroom is not as modern as the bedspreads. There is a shower head but no walls. This allows you to shower while sitting on the toilet avoiding unnecessary down time in the morning.

Our sheets have hairs on them and one is curly. My roomate went to the front desk to complain: "We have no towels and no clean sheets." Said the hotel attendant. "It has been raining everday and the sheets and towels don't have time to dry."

There is a red lamp in the corner with no outlet; the cord and plug are wrapped loosely around the bottom of the stand. There is a fairly modern coffee maker with two tea cups placed neatly on a tray near the window. The cord is about 2.5 feet long and the only outlet in the room is 7.5 feet up the wallI'm not really sure what they had in mind when they selected that location.