Road Trip Day 6: Shigatse back to Lhasa

We arrived back in Lhasa this evening and it really felt like "home sweet home". I ran over to my favorite teahouse for dinner and wandered around the Barkhor area, spun some prayer wheels, plyaed with some kids in a chapel, greeted the pilgrims circling the Jokhang... it just feels great to be back. Lhasa is such an amazing city.

Before we got back, we had quite a nice day. We started by doing the kora (kind of a pilgrimage... sort of comparable to a stations of the cross progression around a church) around the outside the Tashilumpo Monastery in Shigatse, where we'd spent the night. It was amazing; golden prayer wheels lined the path and there were streams of pilgrims to follow. Every time Michael or I stopped to take a photo, one of the old ladies would grab at our cameras, motioning to see the picture. The magic of digital photography!! Then they would snort and move on, swinging their metal prayer wheels and murmuring their chants. We walked up and over the rocky cliff behind the monastery, under thousands of colorful, fluttering prayer flags, and past countless smoking, fragrant incence burners. Really fascinating. At one point, the three of us were just standing on the path, taking it all in, when an elderly man broke off in mid-chant, took hold of my arm and gently placed my hand on a very worn section of a nearby boulder. Obviously it was a sacred spot that pilgrims rub during the kora... we had no idea... but he went out of his way to make sure we were part of it. Absolutly wonderful people here.

For lunch, our driver stopped at a no-name Chinese-ish diner in the middle of a the only short street in a very small town. The only menu was in Chinese. Since we couldn't read, they let us walk back into the tiny closet of a kitchen and just point to what we wanted. Hannah chose the egg & tomato dish that has been our "safety choice" of most of our meals this week, then also asked them to do something with some mushrooms sitting up on a shelf. Then I pointed to the green peppers and the woman motioned to some meat in a bowl. I smiled and nodded and said, "Sure!".... it turned out to be our favorite meal of our trip. Simply delicious. We were happy campers.

So we said goodbye ("Kali-shu!") and thank you ("tu-jay-chay!") to Dawa, our driver, wih a package of Marlboros and sent him home to his family. We are tucked back into "the Yak" and I'm back in the same dorm room I left, happily reunited with Anne, the fourth member of our group who only made it through the first 2 days of our trip before sucumbing to altitude icki-ness.

I have so very much more to share, but it will take some time. Road Trip Days 1 through 5 were also amazing! I will try to fill in on the trip as quickly as I can, before I forget the details. Tomorrow is my last full day in Tibet before I fly back to Chengdu. I'll be back in Tokyo on Saturday, which is both a bit sad and very exciting!