Blessed to be a witness

Friday, March 25th

Just a phone, we always keep around you

Thankfully the crappy hotel hadn't prevented us from visiting the cheerful and hardy monks at Rongbuk monastery, who were a right laugh, herding their yak and pretending to beat me up. A little old nun led us into the two chapels, and we wandered around the place, which was absolutely tiny, but charming.

Sleep was difficult to come by at 5,000 metres. All of us reported drifting off to sleep for a few seconds before awaking in a panic and gasping for breath. The next morning the clouds had come down to cloak the mountain, and M and the Canadians weren't feeling too good, and there was no real reason to remain. We hailed the van, and descended to meet Gyatso and the Land Cruiser at the bottom. We returned over the two passes to Shegar for another lovely lunch in a charming little Tibetan restaurant, and made it back to Lhatse in good time.

Spent another pleasant if cold night at the Tibetan Farmers' Adventure Hotel, playing with the cute, dirty little kids. This is another place with the unwired lighting consoles and TVs. I'm wondering if it's a governmental requirement - all hotels in China must have these things, but it doesn't matter if they work at all. That would be quite typical of the Chinese government. Hardware/software and all that.

The next day to Shigatse was uneventful, breaching only one pass, albeit unbearably bumpy again, taking a big toll on my lower back. We arrived at the town in good time, and I set off for the Tashilhunpo Monastery, which is my favourite monastery so far in Tibet, and believe me I've seen a few by now. A very relaxed atmosphere, no beggars, lots of happy pilgrims, and some great things to see, including the largest Maitreya Buddha statue in the world, which, at 26 metres is the same height as the Buddha at Po Lin in Hong Kong, except atmospherically housed in a hollowed-out shrine filled with incense, pilgrims, and the smoke of yak-butter lamps.

The Qomolangma Friendship Hotel, in which we stayed in Shigatse, actually had hot showers in the rooms, that started at 6pm. By seven, after having called in maintenance who lifted the sink out of its housing and smacked the pipes around, they were actually working. I had my first wash for four days, and was freaked to see that my head and hands were deeply tanned, while the rest of me was white as an aspirin. Snow and sunburn, that's Tibet. But God it felt good to get warm again, even though the hotel wasn't heated. The room also had a TV with an English-language propaganda channel, which we enjoyed for a while, and the hotel thoughtfully provided a self-descriptive leaflet, which I shall transcribe here for you exactly:

So now you know.