[Before you get too excited, no actual mayhem involved whatsoever. But hey, why let that spoil a great title?]

So, as James may have mentioned between rants in our last post re forced changes to our Tibet plans, we set off from Lhasa with much fanfare, five of us plus enough goodies to feed / shelter a small army (is that we got turned back??) in a landcruiser. First stop was intended to be our hard core hike, hence all the gear. Given as that was ultimately not to be, our second stop was at the roadside to drop off our cook plus all the camping supplies and five days worth of food, all of which he then duly took straight back to Lhasa. Hey ho.

So as you can imagine, the shape of our Tibetan roadtrip changed somewhat. Whilst we’d envisaged a pretty rugged trip with lots of hiking and a few cultural stops along the way to give us some variety, the trip as it ended up was pretty heavy on the cultural stuff; although with some fantastic natural scenery along the way and some scary high passes to keep things interesting. The basic shape of the days was: get up (not too early – it’s COLD in Tibet this time of year!!), drive a bit, stop at a stunning monastery, look round for a while, head up to a pass and get your breath taken away (literally – all the passes are 5,000m plus so not too much breathing up here), drive a bit more, stop for the night, have a huge bowl of tasty curry as a reward for all that culture-spotting and head for bed. Not a bad life as it happens.

The actual route took us south from Lhasa, via Samye, Gyantse and Shigatse monasteries, past a number of breathtaking high altitude lakes, and down the Friendship Highway (with pauses for spectacular views of Everest – see separate post) to the border to Nepal, from whence we headed to Kathmandu. The monasteries were spectacular; I’ve already written about the complexities of Tibetan monasteries, so for this post just enjoy the pretty piccies (not so many of the interiors I’m afraid as it’s very rare that photos are allowed inside). The only weird thing was that most of these monasteries, which look pretty amazing to us, are now apparently pretty shabby compared to past glories – the Cultural Revolution hit these places pretty hard, either partially / wholly destroying the buildings or at the very least allowing all the really good bling to be nicked.  Favourite part? Doing the kora (a pilgrimage route, typically lined with hundreds of prayer wheels, which takes you all the way round the monastery), in Shigatse.  The city of Shigatse is a big Chinese affair, recently built from large boring slabs of concrete, but the monastery and surrounding kora are beautiful, peaceful, and very Tibetan feeling – which about sums up a lot of Tibet in fact.  Plus by then we had acclimatised so we got to feel smug at our ability to cope with the altitude!

The scenery is also incredible – very high and very barren, definitely falling on the impressive rather than pretty side of beautiful particularly at this time of year as winter sets in.  I really wouldn’t want to be a nomadic farmer out here – even the yaks looked cold and they are far FAR hairier than James or I even after 5 months travelling.

Jury’s still out for us on whether we’d recommend people to go to Tibet or not given all the associated issues.  But hopefully the travel porn photos below provide the positive side of the argument – enjoy!!