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Tour to Tibet 2016 .  Visiting Everest Base Camp is going to be a one of the highlights, while touring western Tibet.  A lot of info can be found here.  

    departure:  Edmonton - Beijing  on Septembar 18

        train: Beijing - Xining - Lhasa  on September 23

        flight:  Lhasa - Beijing   on Octobar 3 rd.

    arrival :     Beijing _ Edmonton on Octobar 6

Jadranka_on The Great Wall

Budalin Great Wall is a section of the Great Wall just one hour by buss from Beijing. One has to be really fit to walk up and down some extreme slopes and downhills. However, We saw so many old Chinese people on the Wall that day. 2-3 hours takes one to complete a walk of a one side of the wall.

went to pick up railway tickets

Huge plato with thousands people. We picked the tickets for Lhasa here.  KFC and McDonalds doing just fine here. For Tibet you have to provide invitation letter, passport and ticket reservation number to get your tickets. Military with guns is on allert.

BeijingAir is poor
Beijing air is really poor.  First couple of days was OK. After that every morning it  wood rain and afterthat smog prsence increased and visibility was reduced.

typical landscape

No trees , no forest. All rivers between Beijing and Xining look like this muddy carrying sediment.Hills seems to be like vasted land.  in the valleys  agriculture is
 the main activity. 

 Hotels in Xining

In Xining foreigners are rare species. Many hotels are not certified yet to rent room to foreigners. Young Chinese couple from the South that we shared ride on the trainhelped us to find a hotel. At the end, it was 50 CAD for a night in the top class hotel - Qing  Hai Hao Long.   We had a hard time to exchange money in the bank. They said we were the first to exchange CAD and it took a half hour before we finally completed transaction. Bank of China is the only one that wants CAD. Everybody here is looking for USA$.Entire citty smells on coal. and quality of air is really low.

catching the Lhasa train

Brand new railway station. there are many bridges , but no river beneath. A lot of Chinese Muslims live here. We shared  a ride with  a young  Chinese Muslims and we comunicated via iPhone translator. The good thing about Chinese is that they are willing to help and share their food with you. 

finally in Lhasa

a guide was waiting for us to take us to the hote. He greeted us and during a ride told us little bit about Tibetan and Chinese relationship. We went to Heritage hotel in Old town. Since i have a problem with some kind of rush on my scin, i went to see a doctor. The first one i saw , I paid only 50 cents, then i went to another one to give me some pils and i paid 2$.  I had a headache since last night because we went onto 5000 m altitude.  Now, headache is gone and i have to deal with this fricking rush on my skin.  It just drives me crazy.

Within last 8 years Chinese expanded Lhasa from 20 000 to halph a million people today. They build a highway and railway to better conect Lhasa with rest of mainland.  It seems that Chinese mostly profit from this opening.  Those Tibetans look like the indians in Peru and South America.

for old woman religion is not easy  

complex Tibetan budhism1

complex religion 2

Tibetans consider their budism more complex because it evolved from mixture of Hindu, Nepal and their own religion that was based on worshiping the nature like land , water , sun and etc. they said that they have many more gods than Chinese Budism, which is a simple form of Budism. The first impression is that Tibetans are over religious. On Bakhor street which is a square or circle they go clockwise. Only few young disrespectfull Chinese one can see are going in oposite direction. It is like a trafic circle, you get in and take exit where you need.  At every entrance to Bakhor street there is police check point where they check your bags on scaner.

bobi at Jokhang entrance

Bakhorstree surrounds Jokhang temple.At the entrance a lot of people are praying while lay on the ground then get up and on and on .

Dalay Lama residence

It was the chief residence of the Dalai Lama until the 14th Dalai Lama fled to India during the 1959. It is now a museum and World Heritage Site.

After spending three days in Lhasa, the day came to hit the road and head toward Shigatse.   The overland route connecting Lhasa with Everest’s North Face Base Camp has distance of 800 kilometers.   On this journey, we passed many times peaks having altitude more than 5000 m.

Jadranka at 5k

It takes two days to rich EBC, with a brake over night in Shigatse.    In 2015, China's government completed a paved road all the way to a ECB, and  reduced entire trip from 5 to 4 days.

serpentine  Ascending from 4000 m up to 5200m and all over again many times.

North Base Camp is in Tibet at 5,150 metres, while South Base Camp is in Nepal. At North Base Camp we came around 6:30 pm and then things started evolving fast. We quickly had to change clothing and race with the time to rich EBC before sunset. The distance that we choose to walk was 2.5 km.

beforeSheTookOff

noMore any  further from this point, one takes a risk to be arested by military.  So, that is it!  Now, we go back to camp and next morning to Lhasa. It was imposible to sleep in a tent , because of  a really strong headache due to high altitude. Next morning, one scrambled egg for breakfast was good enough to get us going.  Tibetan people have to wear many clothing layers, because  yak's crap does not hold a heat for long time.

 The bottom line is that we were extremly lucky!  The weather was cooperating all the way along and we were able to see what we came for. 

tour_26Sept_3Oct_2016

Next to us is a New Zealand kiwi and his girlfriend Amy from London, UK, then a Dutch couple, Greg - an organic chemist from Iowa and a young German couple - Kata and Dominic.