Did you know that internet is hard to find in Tibet?

Well it is .

So is oxygen.

This will be quick because I'm knackered after today. I trekked up a mountain (about 600m up over 5 miles in rough countryside). I even had a nomad carrying my bag and jacket (he grabbed them and wouldn't give them back, actually) and it was STILL exhausting. The scenery was amazing though. And I had yak butter tea twice in a day, and it was actually nicest in the yak hair tent with some hard yak cheese while inhaling smoke from a yak dung fire. I also had yak butter tea in a semi-nomadic lady's house with some little green apricots and - wait for it - POTATOES! And they were lovely. The potatoes. I've had my fill of YBT.

Saw Potala Palace yesterday - it's huge and colourful and I was glad to have a guide - and the Sera Monastery, which is smaller and colourful. Debating monks were fun too.

Lijiang before that was very nice, though touristy and I climbed millions of steps up Elephant Hill in Black Dragon Park. After that we were in Shangri-La (used to be Zhongdian), which was a nicer Lijiang, and even had a fancy shmancy sugary wine and yak cheese tasting. Oo-er, mate.

I'm at about 3,600m in Lhasa (climbed to about 4200 today). Everest is higher and that's an interesting story for another time. I'll be there someday soon . Oxygen is thin, my lungs and legs are weak and there are slopes, hills and steps everywhere.

There are 6 people on our tour, besides our giant Australian guide, and we're all getting along amiably, which is generally quite agreeable. I'm bunking with Thanh, from London (Vietnamese born Chinese, Buddhist). Mark and Sara are here after the Orient Express (also London, Jewish) and Ayel and Nadav keep us all entertained (father and son Israelis living in Miami, also Jewish). It's great fun all together. It's also Yom Kippur on Monday, and the first time that that has ever meant so much to me.

Missing you all, missing internet even more, and wondering... where's the air? My brain is dead half the time.

Twitpic is the only way I can show you pictures, so keep your eyes there. Check back a few entries for a link. This connection is too slow and unreliable for me to be doing all the work for you. And I'm knackered, as I may have mentioned.

:)


edit:

To keep up with my "rhymes in place of entries" trend, here's Lhasa's!

Lhasa, Lhasa, Potala Palace,
Pilgrims, Dalai Lama.
Lhasa, Lhasa, soldiers, snipers,
Regulations, drama.