From EBC, we drove through a very bumpy road to reach our lunch place. When our finally reached the smooth tar road, everyone rejoiced. We had lunch at a Tibetan restaurant. I was pleasantly surprised that the old lady actually have ketchup to go with my fries. That made my day. She actually asked me whether what I wanted was 'ketchup'. Thrilled!
The map of Tibet on the lunch table has timezones indicated. The map shows China and Singapore has half an hour time difference. That was before 1982!!
Wild asses so shy. Moved away as soon as I started stalking.
We reached the gateway town Saga only to find that the best hotel was already fully booked. We settled down at the next best one but was appaling in standard. Apparently the whole road was under construction so water supply only available 9pm - 11pm. Wtf ?! The toilet stench was unbearable. When the water finally came we quickly wash up and did all necessary. Our car also took opportunity to pump petrol at this town cos this is one last big town before few days later.
We set off at usual time. Once we have taken lunch, we continued our journey. We passed by some sand dunes.
We reachrd a military checkpoint. Before Ali region, police and traffic police checkpoints. Once we entered Ngari region, military takes over. Be it the police or the military, we had to take out our passports so that the guide can surrender them to the officers for verification. We saw many jeeps belong to the Indians pilgrimage tours waiting at the checkpoint ad well, most likely heading towards the same destinations as we are, just that theirs are of religious pilgrimages while we were on a leisure tour.
Not long after we entered wildlife corridor. According to the guide there used to be many wild lifes around this region. Many died due to the heavy snow fall last year. So this year we saw less. We stopped by the roadside to pee. To our surprise we saw marmots and wild donkeys! Both the marmots and wild donkeys were very shy animals. Once they sense that we were around the wild donkeys galloped away while the marmots hid into their holes. What a treat of wild lifes at a random peeing points!
Eagle??
Eagle flying above, marmots scrambling into their holes below.
Bumped into marmots near where we stopped to pee. What luck??
Goat crossing.
Wild asses spotted the second time!
Video of wild asses
Wild deer spotted!!!!
Wild deer shitting video :)
The whole road to ourselves.
How empty the road was.
We reached the sacred lake and the sacred Kailash mountain at about 3pm. Had very good views of the lake, the Kailash mountain, the Kashmir portion of the Himalayas. The other side of the mountains will be the Kashmir region. We had basically seen the Himalayas that bordered China and Nepal, China and India, and soon China and Bhutan. Many pilgrims from Nepal and India come to this sacred lake and sacred mountain every year. Kailash is considered the birthplace of Shiva. We didn't stay at the side of the lake cos need to pay the entrance fee of rmb150 which was exorbitant, considering the fact that the facilities provided by the guest houses there were pretty basic.
Mount Kailash.
Please click on the image above to see the paranoma stitched together hosted in Flickr :)
Please click on the image above to see the paranoma stitched together hosted in Flickr :)
Please click on the image above to see the paranoma stitched together hosted in Flickr :)
We gritted our teeth and endured the long journey to Zhada. Winding mountainous road through some passes towards Zhada. We reached Zhada at 10pm, just before the sun completely set. All the rooms with attached bathrooms in the best motel were booked. We were left with rooms with no attached baths. To make things worse, there was no electricity in the whole town cos the high tension transformer/ transmission pole had been knocked down few days ago and it would prolly takes them another few days to get the power back. The shops were all running on generators. We had dinner at Chongqing restaurant, the shop owner was friendly and offered us some information.
Zhada is on a relatively low altitude of 3500m, so it did not feel as cold. Easier to sleep. Minus the fact that there were no bathrooms to wash up and no electricity, the beds were very comfortable. I slept like a log that night.
Please click here to go to the next destination, Guge Kingdom ruins.
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