Unbelievable as it might seem, we are in Tibet! Actually, I am sitting between a million young Tibetans playing violent LAN games, trying to stay focused through the horrid sounds of cracking heads and splattering eye balls. Obviously, Lhasa is a weird mix of the ancient and the modern. In this capital the pilgrims walk alongside the hip young dudes, so to speak.


But let me start with the beginning. We spent a couple of days in Chengdu. We bought supplies, a camera for Chretienne and went to see the panda bears (as any proper tourist should... I guess).
A little horror story can be told about my encounter with chinese scraping massage... Massage amateur as I am, I got interested in chinese traditional massage and decided to have one. Chretienne wisely declined.... The chinese massage girl convinced me to have a scraping massage as well. In fact, this means your back will be scraped with a knife-like tool, and it will clean the skin. It was sort of a mistake (understatement). You should have seen my back (and you will, since we took a lot of pics of it)... from my neck to my lower back it was all purple, like a serious burning wound. It stayed that way for nearly 4 days, and only today it got a little less. Scraping? No, thanks (remember that, folks) (-;
We arranged a permit and all the administrative stuff that is needed to enter Tibet. On thursday we left. A smooth flight from Chengdu got us in Tibet a couple of days ago. During this flight, there was nothing but high altitude desert to see. No human interference is noticable. Slightly different from the Alps, I'd say.

Finally, Lhasa. The Potala can be seen from miles away, the smell of yak arrives at the same distance.. We had the bad luck of picking the most stupid bike taxi driver in the entire city, who got us lost, and lost, and lost. However, we did find us a really nice place to stay, with very friendly staff and tsampa porridge with bananas for breakfast (-;
Our guesthouse is ocated at 50 meters from the Jokhang temple, the center of bhuddist devotion in Asia. All day, thousands of pilgrims circulate the temple clockwise, to earn 'afterlife points'. We did, too, so I feel secure and happy (-;

The first day we explored the place, and went to see the city with some newly made friends. We visited the Potala in the afternoon. What a beautiful place that is. Thangka fetishist as I am, I totally freaked at the murals. Big fat red demons with evil smiles never fail to make me happy (-; The Potala is somewhat sinister, too, since it is a dead palace where nobody lives anymore. It is not like a monastery where monks still live, but it is a tragic monument for the massacres in the past.
Lhasa is scorching hot during the day, but fairly cold at night. My sleeping bag didn't even hold up for one night in the guesthouse... I bought a new one today, since we leave with a land cruiser tomorrow. We are going to NamTso lake (check your maps, friends) which is supposedly still frozen. We will presumably stay in yak tents and a nun's monastery, and swim in a so-called magic hot spring...We will be back in four days, and after that try to get to the Everest region. I will keep you posted whenever I can. Take care!