Tibet Trek Day 1

We had arranged for a 4x4 (just in case you dont know I hate 4x4's but have to admit we needed it this time!) to come and drive us for a 3 day trek.

We were going North to Nam Tso lake and then onto Reting Monistory, Dripung Monistory and Tidrum Hot Springs then stopping back in Lhasa before going to Samye Monistory.

Picked up in a 70s retro Toyoto Landcruiser we head towards Nam Tso. Nam Tso is 4700m above sea level and reached via a mountain pass which goes up to 5100m. It was a beautiful day and our driver seemed pretty chilled out for a Tibetian. The only worrying thing about the 4x4 was the lack of seatbelts in the front and back ... I thought best not worry about it.

The journey was 4 hrs and as we started up the pass the driver was already not sounding positive. I at the time thought he was a bit of a wuss for being worried. (I have driven a 2 wheel drived Citroen C5 through much worse conditions in Chamonix!). Anyway as we reached the top he pulled over, cars in front were turning around (all wusses together) and we stopped took a few photos of the blizzard and then turned back. As we drove further down the visibility reached about 5m and my thoughts on him being a wuss disappeared too. The difference between roads in Tibet and those in France is that the french roads are marked out ... the Tibetian ones aren't. Anyway after a slow decent we decided to push on to Reting.

The road to Reting ... well its not really a road its a track (and thats even a grand title) which even makes Leeds roads look good (Leeds has some pretty terrible roads) with some crazy sized rocks, streams and potholes to avoid/go through.. to be fair the driver was excellent, doing some nice little slides to keep us from toppling .. it was the most fun part of the trip. However the journey was gruelling with 5hrs of offroad tracking to go through it was really painful on the arse.

We arrived at Reting and were shown our room... a dirty, unheated box with more muck on the beds than outside. We put our stuff down and made for the only warm room in the complex, the restaurant. Here we were introduced to Yak Butter Tea ... ah how I love Yak. Actually it was pretty nice and after saying Tashi Delik ("Hello" in Tibetian) to every man and his dog (speaking of dogs - if you go to Tibet, don't touch the monistory dogs.. they look evil for a reason) we left to go and look round the monistory temples.

Joe and Kate got the camera out and started snapping. Its funny watching people have their photos taken there are 3 types.

1. Those that really don't want their photos taken
2. Those that pretty they don't want their photo taken but keep ending up in shot
3. Those that really do want their photo taken, such that they keep badgering for another photo.

We went into the Temple and were greeted by the head monk, blessing everyone and putting pray flags over their heads... it was an amazing site and filled with so much atmosphere.

Leaving the temple we walked round, smiling and greeting everyone, it was great you felt like a popstar (and the Tibetian girls (and ok the boys too) were gorgeous (dont worry babes - I was well behaved!) - Joe reminded me that I would probably get killed or married if I tried anything.) ... more photos were taken and we went back to the "restaurant".

More Yak butter tea and another game of chess lost to Joe - Kate and I had some noodles, which were pretty darn good.

After Joe wowed the kids with his guitar playing for about 10 mins the power died and we decided to call it a day.

Now the next sentence is gonna sound a bit pathetic but the beds werent the best. The great thing with my sleeping bag is that it can form a cocoon around your whole body so that none of you touches the bed that your sleeping on... this is great if your worried about bed bugs etc.

Whilst we got ourselves ready, Kate discovered that if you rubbed the sleeping bags you could make a little electrostatic lightshow due to the lack of moisture in the air (its great fun and fully recommend you try it when the conditions are right!). After a few minutes of electric-shocking myself I decided to go to sleep...