Some more from the Tibetan plateau

I'm no longer in Tibet but I've been doing a bad job at keeping this up to date. I was doing so well before I met people.

So last place I was was Shigatse? I think I need to prod my memory banks a little. Ok I think I've got it. From Shigatse we drove to Shegar. It was a pretty boring day really. We drove over fairly unfriendly roads around some very nice mountains and lakes. Tibet is very brown and lacks a lot of vegetation. Scott kept saying how it reminded him of Star Wars. I guess it is kind of other worldly, maybe Martian like but only because there's hardly any green to be seen. We'd see some other 4x4's making the reverse trip and some shepherds and their flocks. It really is hard to believe that they still have shepherds in Tibet. We's be driving forever and in the middle of nowhere would be this man and all these sheep/yaks. I guess there really aren't any predators there. Unbelievably boring job though.

There's really not much that else can be said for a day of driving. We got to Shegar which for some reason I'd imagined to be completely different. It sounds like some formerly great city, right? Anyways, we did absolutely nothing in Shegar. We arrived and there were no showers at all, no electricity save for a lightbulb in the middle of our room. "You can turn the light on after 7pm" they told us. Really barebones type stuff. Our pillowcases though were adorned with little birds that may or may not have been ducks. I actually had a dream involving these little cartoon birds. We spent most of our time in the main part of the hotel with everyone else since it was the only source of heat. In the centre of the room was a big oven that was really only used to heat water and unless you were really close to it couldn't feel any warmth. Tibet is freezing... well when there's no heat indoors. Yeah, no heat in any of our hostel rooms in the whole of Tibet. They are also lacking fuel in Tibet so yak poop and goat poop is burned. It didn't smell bad but then again I have a really poor sense of smell.

So the five of us sat around drinking beer (which goes a long way at high altitudes) playing cards and other weird little games until it seemed like a good time to go to bed.

I'll update tomorrow probably since I need to meet some people in 4 minutes. I was really hoping to put some pictures up but I'll need to burn a CD for that from Sam's computer. Seems like the easiest way since I've downloaded my pictures on his computer and deleted them from my memory card (reluctantly). I have 80 free minutes of internet from the laundry/internet place so I'll finish up Tibet then. Good times.