Day 3 on the Friendship Highway

This was a hard day of travelling. We spent just about the entire day in the jeep, driving across the roughest "roads" you'll ever see (never paved, hardly ever gravel, mostly just rock and dirt--very bumpy). The Tibetan landscape is harsh. There are green agricultural areas in some of the valleys but the plateau mostly resembles desert. It's rocky and very, very dusty.
At Shigatse we were determined to find thongkas (traditional Tibetan art-works) since we missed our chance in Lhasa.

We only had a couple hours in this town to see a monastery and haev lunch, and we spent half of it running through markets and alleys looking for thongkas. Finally we gave up and saw the monastery, which, if I recall, was not particularly unique. This was the center of the Gelupga order of Tibetan Buddhism, and is significant because it is the spiritual center of the Panchen Llama, second holiest man in Tibet next to the Dali Llama, who is from a different order. But the last Panchen llama is buried in Shigatse. I say the last even though there is a current Panchen llama, 11 years old, but he is being held captive by the Chinese--he's called the youngest political prisoner in the world. (On that note, Tibet is obviously an extremely sensitive political issue--you can get in serious trouble for bringing in pictures of the Dali Llama or discussing politics with local Tibetans or monks--some of whome are known to be undercover agents).

Sakya was where we stayed the night, and it was nothing special. We saw a ruined monastery and walked through it, which was quite interesting. The monastery was destroyed during the Cultural Revolution (along with a reported 6000 other monasteries in Tibet). There was no power on in this town, so we had an early night, in candlelight, in our hotel room (which, again, was nothing special).

Additionally, we began at this point to tire of Tibetan food, which is not a particularly good reason to visit Tibet. Because of the scarcity of resources, Tibetan food tends to be drab and limited compared to Chinese cuisine. We survived the Friendship Highway mostly on fried rice or chowmein.

Our American friends are great travelling partners. We got along really well with them. They have a ton of funny stories!