Yakkety Yak From Tibet contd...
After two days in Lhasa, having finally got over the dizzy spells and occasional headaches that go with getting off a plane at 4,OOOm, we decided to take a trip further afield. We hired a jeep and driver, and headed away on a two day excursion to Nam-tso, a vast mountain lake, high in the Hirnalayas. It was a wonderful trip, - trundling ever upwards through the mountains and plateau grasslands, past huge herds of grazing Yak, sheep and mountain goats, until the road suddenly lurched upwards and hairpinned through a mountain pass at over 5,200m. Down the other side, we had left the little villages behind, and were in the land of the nomadic yak herders. We passed little black tents, piles of dried dung collected outside for fuel, and the herders away in the distance with their vast herds. We regularly stopped when there were yak by the roadside, and the herders (often children) came racing over to wave, stand and stare, or shake hands. As is usually the case this side of the world, a pen or biro is the most amazing gift, hastily shoved under the cloak if an elder comes over.
The yak deserves a mention of its own. Not only is it nearly as cute (in a larger, hairier way) as a panda, but without it the tibetans simply couldn't survive. The yak is a beast of burden, a source of milk, butter (for eating, lighting lamps, and making the staple drink, butter tea!) and meat. It's hairy hide provides clothes, tents, and leather for shoes and even plates, and its bones are used to make cutlery, ladels, and finely carved ornaments! All this and it lives in the snow at heights that make my head explode!! However, even though it doesn't need 20kg of fresh barmboo per day, I get the feeling that a yak in the courtyard could be just what it would take for Barbara finally to have me in the courthouse!
Nam-tso lake itself was staggering, a vast saphire blue expanse of water at 5,000 metres with 7,000 metre craggy snow-capped mountains all around. And it was cold. I really mean f*cking COLD, - we're talking all brass monkeys rapidly qualifying as eunuchs to serve in the Forbidden City!! There is a monastery where you can rent a twin room for 4 Oyuan , - if I ever wondered what it would be like to sleep in the garden shed in the middle of winter, I now know!! The rooms are a line of sheds, mud-plastered, with clay floors, wooden roofs, and no heat or electricity. Shortly after we arrived it began to snow, and it became so cold that I could hear my skull crack. There was a canteen where a few fellow travellers could sit on the stove and have food and beer, but once it closed at 10, it was back to the deepfreeze. We stuffed up the holes around the door with the sheets and pillows off the spare beds, shoved the spare blankets into the top of the window where the snow carne in, and settled down, fully dressed, under quilts and blankets, for a shivery, headachey night.
At that altitude it seemed we were doomed either to freeze or suffocate from the weight of bedclothes, but the following morning we pushed the snow (and the goat) away from the door, and were rewarded by an absolute winter wonderland! The drive home was spectacular, the road hardly visible in the snow, the yak standing out black against the glaring white background of snowy plains and towering craggy mountains. All went well till we got to the 5,000m mountain pass, and then we found we couldn't!! Our 4wd was no match for the ice and snow, and after spending almost 2 hours freezing inside waiting for a thaw (we couldn't run the engine for heat because we were very low on fuel!), we finally had to climb out and scrabble in the snow for small stones from the side of the road to make a rough path in front of the wheels, and large stones to hatchet away at the ice. The top of the pass was in sight (though high above us) from start to finish, but it took 3 hours of freezing and, at that altitude, breathless work to get there, moving the jeep forward a few yards at a time. Were it not for a pair of nomadic yak men that came to our assistance as we were getting exhausted (in return for which we gave them a lift down the other side of the pass), we would have been in some trouble!!
The adventure wasn't over, though, as we settled down to enjoy the awesome scenery from the amazingly non-slippery other side of the mountains. Rounding a hairpin bend as we continued our descent to Lhasa the jeep had a rear-wheel blow-out, and careered to the edge of the road, over a river below. It took another 15 minutes, during which every overladen truck rocketing down the narrow road swerved to avoid us and played russian roulette as it swayed around the hairpin on the wrong side of the road, before we were finally able to complete our journey. The five hour 200krn trip had taken nine hours, but in hindsight, now that I'm after topping off the day with a Yak burger and a tall glass of Lassi (Yak yoghurt drink), I wouldn't swap a minute of it!!!
We could really do with another week (or more) here, but tomorrow morning we're off back to China, to start our 3 day cruise of the Yantze River Gorges. It's onwards from there to the Yellow Mountain (the well known craggy mountains from old chinese pictures and china) for a few days trekking, then, barring fatal accidents on the mountains, a flight way down south to Guangzhou (Canton) where we hope to get a hovercraft to Hong Kong for our last few days.
Talk to yiz later
Dara