Right now we are in Shigatse, halfway to Everest base camp. Today we saw pilgrims crawl underneath holy book shelves to absorb knowledge, tomorrow we will see some serious mountains.

The last week we spent in Lhasa, preparing our trip to Everest and some other boring stuff. We had some trouble with Chinese bureaucracy while trying to arrange tickets to Beijing on the thirtieth. We even lost each other in the hustle and bustle of the ticketing adventure. We only panicked a little (-; Next time, we will use another strategy, that's for sure.

The trip to Everest started off with an encounter with Chinese construction work. The main road (the Southern branch of the Friendship Highway) was blocked, so with some creative thinking we managed to get to YamdrukTso lake using an alternative route. Of course this road wasn't all that, and in our land cruiser we thought of the buddhist afterlife a little more than usually.

We originally planned to stay the night in Nangatse, but the ongoing snow storms forced us to continue to Gyantse. We crossed a pass of over 5200 meters to get there. At this KaroLa pass, the English fought their highest battle ever against the Tibetan rebels over a hundred years ago... in january, that is! That must have been frozen stiff upper lip, as the Lonely Planet tells us (-; A monstruous glacier can be seen from the road. Nice pic.

At night in Gyantse we entered the local monastery, where a friendly monk took us in for some hospitality. He showed us the holiest parts of his shrine (he is a so-called shrinekeeper) and shared his food. Nice one.

The next day we climbed the rock on which the Gyantze fortress lies. This is another spot where the British slaughtered thousands of Tibetans (throwing rocks against heavy artillery doesn't really work, apparently). A short visit to the Gyantse monastery by daylight ended our stay in Gyantze. The monastery was filled with pilgrims, who even crawled for miles underneath the shelves of its holy library to let the knowledge flow into their heads (this is no joke, and no, I have never seen this before, either).

The trip to Shigatse was relatively smooth. We stopped at the Shalu monastery, which is wellknown for its magical monks. Apparently they fly around every now and then. It must have been a bad day for flying today, although they were really inspired by the thing my digital camera could do (like, capturing their images and showing them afterwards). We had a lot of fun together, that's for sure.

The Himalaya is waiting, and tomorrow we will get to Rumbuk monastery (or another name I can't remember). In this monastery we will stay the night. The next day we will walk to Everest base camp. Let's light a candle for good weather, allright?