Day 2 on the Friendship Highway (written by Pan-Pan)

I’ve taken over for James for a few of the entries because there’s just so much to write about and James’ fingers get awfully tired!

After spending the night in Samye, we left early in the morning to cross the river by boat, which took about one hour. The landscape around Samye is extremely interesting, all desert and dunes, next to crystal clear lakes, which are themselves striated by blond sand dunes. In the morning, Tommy and Brendan told us about a crazy encounter with some Tibetan police that barged into their room the night before and told them they couldn’t stay in the hotel we were all staying at because it hadn’t been approved by the government for foreigners to stay at. We think it was all a big scam to get rich foreign tourists to stay in their hotels, some of which are owned by police sheriffs, very sketchy indeed.

The boat ride was relaxing as the boat was almost empty. This day, it was James’ turn to sit in the very back of the jeep, with all the luggage, and he did so well, didn’t get sick at all! In fact, all the boys took a turn in the car, and I tried one day for 18 minutes, but then got so car sick, James had to take over my shift. For the rest of the trip, they were all very benevolent about sitting in the back, and all of them offered to take my shifts so that I wouldn’t get sick. Sitting in the back though makes one feel like an animal because it’s cage-like and opening the back door requires the driver to come around. Everytime James got let out, we laughed and said “Release the beast!” We drove for about 9 hours that day, stopping in between at Yamdrok-tso lake, which is a winding turqoise gem. When we were pulling into the parking lot though our jeep got kicked by a yak! It was pretty startling. We got hassled again by some Tibetan shop vendors, who are not friendly at all sometimes. Very different from the monks and nuns who are always smiling!

When we finally got to Gyatse, we entered the monastery there and enjoyed the biggest stupa I had ever seen. It takes too long to post pictures, but I highly suggest you google these places we mentioned because they are all beautiful. Gyatse is full of wild dogs, so I opted to go back to our dorm room early while James went to an internet café. I also got a shower in which is more than I can say about the boys (for your own sakes, I won’t mention how many days my travel companions went without showers!)