Day 95: Back to Lhasa (拉萨) – September 20th

Waking up to see the sunrise, we were on our way by 6am. The crazy thing was, our neighbours were up as well! We’re not quite sure what time they stopped singing, but it was not earlier than 1am, they got some crazy energy.

By the time we reached the mountain top, a swarm of tourists were already there with their tripods lined up one by one. Our luck with the weather didn’t end, as the clouds were thick and covered most of the light, so we didn’t get any spectacular views before leaving the lake for good and back on our way to Lhasa. Flipping back through the pictures though, it was still a very nice view, but we’ve probably seen too much through those 15 days, and it ended on a bit of a soft note.

The road back to Lhasa was quick and smooth, and the first thing we did was to buy a cell phone! At first we asked for the cheapest cell phone available, which was $199RMB (or ~$30CAD), but we slowly moved up the price range and ended up with a KingK phone worth $250RMB! Score.

We had a really great trip, and one of the best parts was being able to travel with our tour-mates and having such an awesome driver! Throughout the trip, our driver shared with us many laughs, wonderful stories of his eventful past, and even more stories of how he likes to trick his passengers if they weren’t nice, and we all had a great time! He’s earned his nickname of being the King of Ali with his crazy directions and know-how (seriously, trying to properly navigate dirt roads in grassland is not as easy as it sounds), we salute you! So for dinner, we treated our driver and his family to dinner! It was great fun and all, and we all got pretty drunk off Lhasa beer (which is possibly the best beer we’ve tasted in China so far!). And as a parting gift, the driver’s son gave us a rock he picked up at the Everest Base Camp….which has a fossilized sea conch inside!! Cool!