Shigatse (日喀則) (9/23)

After a rocky day of negotiation to settle down the issues with travel agency on my land cruiser rental to Ngari, I finally began my "long march" today, by myself (and the driver). Joseph dropped off the trip due to the AMS in Lake Nam-tso.

Weather of today wasn't good, an overcast day. I was very concerned about my luck in Mt Everest and the entire trip -- I wished the bad luck I had last year in Yunnan province won't happen again this time. The driver, Mr. DanZeng (丹增曲扎), seemed little worry. He said Mt Everest area is high enough that the cloud won't go there. I hope so.

The trip today seemed boring, oh well, maybe it is b/c I've visited all these places last time when I was in Tibet. The Lake Yamdrok-tso (羊卓雍错) is boring too, when compares to Nam-tso, esp. under an overcast day.


We arrived Shigatse very early, around 4pm. The most interesting story of today is the hotel where Mr. Danzeng took me to was the same guesshouse I stayed 15 years ago in Shigatse!!! The guesshouse is called "Danzeng Guesshouse" (旦增旅店), a small private owned hotel. Of course, the facilities are much better than last time I was here. It looks almost all guesses tonight in this hotel were foreigners, I guess it must be on some tour books (I should check the Lonely Planet book :P) and is famous among foreigners, just like the Yak Hotel (亚宾馆) and Banak Shol(八朗学旅馆) in Lhasa. The driver said because I am a "foreigner" :P, so he took me here. Good choice!

We spent some time in Tashilhunpo (扎什伦布寺) monastery. It seemed tomorrow here there would be some sort of festival (the 11th Panchen Lama was here as well), so today the monastery was doing some rehearsal. It attracted a large flock of people. So bad I won't have time to spend in here tomorrow, so I will miss it. (well, I actually don't have much interest in the tibetan dance though)

The weather wasn't good today, so I did not bother to take any photos of any architectures in the monastery. Maybe I should, in retrospect, especially when I fail to find a headline picture for this post!

I felt some headache today, worry about getting AMS (received an email from my brother, telling me that when he was in Tibet many many years ago, he got AMS several days after he left Nam-tso. His email really disturbed me), so I asked a cup of butter tea in the canteen of the hotel. Boy! This is the best ever butter tea I've ever drunk so far! So delicious, I think they must have use top-class butter to make it!

I remember I liked Shigatse very much last time when I visited here, and it was here where I witnessed a Tibetan sky-burial. However, this year I just did not feel the city interesting at all. Maybe it is the mood and purpose (of being in here) were different (last time Shigatse was one of my planned destination, but this year it was merely a "midway island" in my itinerary -- "我达达的马蹄是个美丽的错误/我是个过客/不是归人".

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