Had the most awesome 4WD'ing experience this morning - we drove from Cho Dzom to Old Tingri which is quite close to the Nepalese border on the Friendship highway. The thing is there is no actual road between Cho Dzom and Old Tingri, just a trail made for horses and trekkers. This made for heaps of fun in the 'cruiser because we were way off the beaten track, there were no other tourists around and hikers rarely use the trail at this time of year because its too cold and dry. We'd often lose the trail and have to drive around in search of 'the path' and we even had to get out of the car at one stage because we were scared it was going to tip over as we crossed an iced-over creek on a steep incline.
As we moved towards Tingri we got views of the Himalayas again, seeing Mt Everest and Cho-Oyu in the distance. Our main reason for going to Old Tingri was because we wanted to try the hot springs there. Udu our driver thought we were crazy to go to Old Tingri - he told us there was nothing to see or do there and boy was he right - its another one street town surrounded by dust, the only thing attractive is the view of the mountains. Tingri was up at 4320m and Hugo started getting sick again so we actually abandoned our hot spring visit there and drove to Lhatse straight after lunch to get somewhere lower in the hope that he would feel better. I now think he's got something worse than altitude sickness, he's definitely got a bad flu as well.
Old Tingri:
Luckily for us, Lhatse also has a hot spring and Udu was kind enough to drive us there after we'd put our packs at the guesthouse and put Hugo to bed. The hot-spring experience was absolutely fantastic. I'll post photos when I get them off Holly but basically it was a bath the size of a 25m swimming pool and about 80cm deep. The water was probably around 45 degrees and it was heaven to soak there. The interesting bit was that we were a total exhibition for the local Tibetan population who were also having a soak. There were a group of old topless Tibetan women who'd brought their own homebrewed 'Chang' (Tibetan beer) who just absolutely loved Phil and I. They'd pull on my leg hairs when I walked past, splash water on us and even pulled Sarah's bikini top off! They kept on asking him and I to try out their homebrew, saying 'haa-lo' to us and eventually we gave in - Chang is supposedly feral.
It was quite a spectacle, I had to make a cup out of my hands while standing in the hot-bath, an old naked Tibetan woman would pour some Chang into my hands and tell me to drink it out of my hands and while I was slurping it out, she poured it all over my head in some sort of 'blessing ceremony'. After a few handfulls of Chang I felt a bit dizzy and sat down for a bit - its actually ok for the 1st couple of gulps but starts tasting like paint-stripper the more you have.
Miraculously, even after bathing in a public bath that was a slimey we felt totally clean afterwards! The Tibetans come and soak probably once a month and there was even a monk there with his tight swimmers on! The apparently believe the hot-spring has healing powers.
Lhatse Farmers Guesthouse - our driver Udu and the chef having a bit of a tussle.
We spent 188rmb on dinner tonight which is a record between 4 people - its not our fault that we're all porkers, we had a total feast 'cos it was Phils birthday today. Be going back to Lhasa tomorrow - finally...
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