China 2014: Tibet - heading back to Lhasa and beyond

I'm slowly catching up with posts. Over the last three weeks, it seems that when I have time to put together a post, the internet is either non-existent or terrible. It's only when I don't have any time that the internet is really good and fast. I rarely have had both time and good internet access. Today I'm actually in an ethnic Tibetan city (Xiahe) in the north central part of China, whereas this post will be about the region we actually call Tibet in the southwest of China. Eventually I'll put together a map showing my path through China, but that probably won't happen today!

After leaving Everest, we headed back to Lhasa with a few stops along the way. It took two days to get back.

This was a small restaurant attached to a hotel. The hotel was pretty terrible, but the food was ok. That's a big stove in the middle of the photo where they cook a lot of the food, right in the center of the tables. I'm sure it does a great job keeping the place warm in the winter! Much of the fuel used in the stoves is yak dung. They collect it and smash it onto the walls around their courtyard where it dries and is easily available when needed. I'll try to point it out in photos of Tibetan houses at some point.

The rocks in the road are how road construction is often indicated. If you see them, you should probably slow down, as the road might just disappear altogether or have huge car-swallowing holes in it!

We stopped to visit Phuntsoling monastery outside of Shigatse on the way. There were a lot of monks living at this monastery and we got to see them playing some instruments to call everyone together.

Baby animals at the monastery!

This is the monastery kitchen. It looked like something from the Middle Ages, except for the blenders. They use those to make yak butter tea, which I can't recommend as a tasty drink. It's salty and oily and kinda gross....

After getting back to Lhasa, it was time to take the train back to Chengdu. The trip takes about 46 hours by train. Here's the schedule:

It was a really long train and it was probably almost full of people. Sometimes it's hard to get train tickets.

My bunk for the trip. This was a soft sleeper compartment, so it had 4 bunks (2 on each side of the space) and a door that we could close. The hard sleeper compartments have 6 bunks (3 each side) and no door - they are open to the corridor.

Sorry this is upside down - apparently I cannot rotate pictures inside the blog app and it's too much work to upload it again.... Interesting reading about the medical conditions that you shouldn't have when traveling on this train because it goes to some pretty high elevations (over 16,500 feet at one point).