Everest Base Camp, Tibet | 30 October, 2006 | $5 (my portion of bill – shared with 3 others) Despite what most people expect, there’s not much to see at the base camp on Mt. Everest’s north face, at least in late October. The large field of rocks below Everest stood bare, a small string…
Shekar, Tibet | 29 October, 2006 | $6.25 (my half of bill – shared with roommate) After a long day of travel our driver pulled up to a hotel beside the main road and told us it was Shekar. We knew the main attraction in the area was Shekar Fort and when we pointed this…
Sakya, Tibet | 28 October, 2006 | $1.88 (my half of bill – shared with roommate) Sakya was officially the cheapest hotel room I had in Tibet, tied with the hotel I stayed in on my last day in Tibet at Tingri. After exploring Gyantse and Shigaste, we drove into town after dark. There were…
Gyantse, Tibet | 27 October, 2006 | $3.13 (my half of bill – shared with roommate) The second night of my Tibetan road trip was spent in Gyantse. We covered a lot of ground on this trip, and often visited more than one town each day. Leaving from Tsetang in the morning and detouring by…
Tsetang, Tibet | 26 October, 2006 | $7.50 (my half of bill – shared with roommate) My first day on the seven-day drive from Lhasa to the Nepalese border took me to a monastery named Samye, West of Lhasa and quite a bit out of the way. Most tours skip this location but I found…
Lhasa, Tibet | 25 October, 2006 | $6.88 (my half of bill – shared with roommate) After my exhaustive journey from Tajikistan to Tibet I needed some time to rest and regroup. The high altitude (11,800 feet / 3,600 meters), made simple tasks like walking to dinner in Lhasa difficult and left most travelers around…
All of my photos from Tibet are up in the gallery. Tajikistan is up there as well and I think they’re pretty interesting—maybe because you don’t see pictures of Tajikistan every day. My only regret is the Alichur gallery. You see, somehow I deleted an entire 512mb memory card full of images. Some of them…
After thirteen hours today spent between a landcruiser, minibus and bus Sui and I made it to Kathmandu. The past seven days have been an amazing set of highs (the temple art and Everest) and lows (everything about our French travelmate and the beggars). We had dinner tonight that was not Chinese food and I…
In Lhasa I’m surrounded by tourists, tour groups, travel agencies and Western restaurants. With so many backpacker amenities I figured it would be a snap to organize an overland trip to the Nepalese border. My first day here I met a Chinese-American woman in my dorm room named Sui who I immediately clicked with. We…
Tibet isn’t the most obvious destination from Central Asia, but it’s where I wanted to go next. Although there is a road from Kashgar through Western Tibet it’s illegal for foreigners to travel and can be quite dangerous. While I was in Central Asia I tossed the idea of hitchhiking on a truck around but…