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On The Highway To Heaven (II)
Our
4-wheeler's journey into Tibet along the Friendship Highway had gotten off to
such a shaky start, it seemed nothing else could go wrong. For a while, things
did go smoothly. But on the last day, our vehicle broke down in the middle of
a deserted plateau, leaving us stranded at 5,000m.
------------------------------------------------------------------- By
Tanny Chia
[eastciti.com,
December 02]
Late
on Day 2 of our trip, all 9 of us weary travellers had rolled into the shabby
town of Tingri. Not exactly exciting or bustling, but the town perched high up
on the Tibetan plateau offered a fantastic up-close view of mighty Mount Everest.
The King of Summits did not look as awesome as we would expect, perhaps because
we were more than halfway up its height, but then, who can boast of staring Everest
face to face?
Day
3: Tingri - Lhatse - Shigatse
Although
we had no complaints about our night stop at Tingri (except perhaps for the horrible
toilet), we were quite happy to bundle into the land cruiser and head towards
our next destination. At that high elevation, nothing seemed to grow and we drove
in silence past vast barren land for the next several hours, perking up only when
we saw flocks of luxuriantly coated yaks or longhaired mountain goats being herded
by lone shepherds under the blazing sun.
A stop for
lunch at another roadside town, Lhatse, proved a tedious affair as we fought to
evade throngs of beggars, most of them young children with unkempt hair and ragged
clothes, who persistently ran after us. The poverty of Tibetans was most evident
in these small rural towns and to see a 3-year old making his rounds was a heart-breaking
sight.
Four hours
after lunch and our load of bedraggled travellers rolled into Shigatse, the second
largest town in Tibet after Lhasa. The weather must have been 5 degrees or so,
and our old guesthouse had only 1 public bathroom with no hot water. But a dusty
trip and 3 days without running water makes people do strange things - we happily
turned the freezing water full blast onto our filthy bodies. It was pure bliss
watching the dirt collect in muddy pools under our feet.
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