Day 103: Linzhi (林芝) – September 28th

We’re leaving Tibet and heading south-east to the province of Yunnan. Problem is, Kunming (our last Chinese destination) is about 2200km away and being very close to the National Holiday where citizens get about a week off in China, the number of tourists increased exponentially. On our way, we plan on stopping over at Shangri-la, Lijiang and Dali before finally arriving at Kunming.

Originally, there was a bus straight to Shangri-la, but the problem was that the buses from Lhasa for the next 3 days were already sold out!! So, our only option was to take the bus one stop at a time (since there’s only one road between Lhasa and Shangri-la), and our first stop would be Linzhi (aka Bayi or “Eight-One”, literally named after August 1st…haha strange), the supposed “lush valley and flowing rivers” region of Tibet. Considering the sparse vegetation and high altitude of other areas of Tibet, this could be easily understood since Linzhi has a much lower altitude and is situated close to the Yarlung river.

On the 8hr bus ride, we were once again blessed with Jacky Chan and his high-flying ways. Once he was done, the next movie was….. Aftershock (唐山大地震)…. okay? It was a great movie but not wanting to cry our eyes out, we got the driver to switch to music. The driver has some good taste in music, playing a good mix of old music remixed with a techno-background and some Tibetan songs.

Getting into town, it was pretty late and there wasn’t much to see. The town itself is situated in some pretty nice land with good views of the surrounding mountains, but like most other towns in Tibet its rather new and uninteresting. The best part about this place though….is that we found a congee place! At first we were a bit skeptical, but our desire of not wanting to eat Sichuan food overwhelmed everything and we risked our chances and were extremely happy we did!!! Yeahhhh.