The Friendship Highway

Tibet

The last 5 days of our Tibet itinerary were packed with drives over 5,000 meter mountain passes, turquoise-colored lakes and Tibetan villages with yaks and sheep grazing the neighboring fields. The icing was our visit to Mount Everest Base Camp, the base of the world's tallest mountain.
Our drive on the first day started from Lhasa at an altitude of 3,200 meters. As we ascended the neighboring mountains, we reached our first high mountain pass at 4700m. From the top of the mountain, we looked down at Yamdrok-so Lake, the third largest lake in Tibet. It was a deep turquoise color and the sun's glimmer on the body of water made it look otherworldly. We stopped for lunch in Nagartse and had some Tibetan staples, such as vegetable momo (vegetable dumplings with a spicy sauce) and butter tea (Chinese brick tea with yak butter and salt)
We then visited Pelkhor Chorde Monastery in Gyantse, which is home to the largest chorten in the world. Within the chorten are 108 chapels, with each one dedicated to a different protector of Tibetan Buddhism's 3 religions. As foreigners must always be accompanied by their guide while in Tibet, we were taken to delicious Tibetan restaurant.
The following day led us to Shigatse, Tibet's second largest city. As the police station in town closed by noon, we needed to leave Gyantse early enough to ensure that our guide could register us at the Shigatse station. This is necessary protocol throughout Tibet and there were frequent checkpoints along the highway asking for the guide's license and our traveling visa papers. We visited Tashilhunpo Monastery where we saw the world's largest gilded statue. As we were waiting for the main temple to open, our guide spoke very frankly to us about his disdain for the Chinese government. He was understandably quite angry and upset.
The third day, we took a side trip off the Friendship Highway to Mount Everest Base Camp (EBC). The ride to EBC was a bumpy 120 km dirt road. On the drive, we stopped at the top of a mountain pass to admire the Himalayan mountain ranges and got our first look at Everest. When we arrived at Base Camp, we were at 5200 meters and stayed in a hotel run by the highest monastery in the world, Rongphu Monastery. As the rooms lacked heating, we spent the evening in the nearby resturant, which was heated with a yak-dung stove, very common in Tibet. We had tsampa for dinner- the meal most frequently eaten by Tibetans. Tsampa is barley flour hand-mixed with butter tea to make large dumpling-like balls that are then ingested. That night, we slept under 2 comforters and 4 layers of horse blankets and were still cold.
Even though Everest was covered in clouds the following day, we still had a beautiful drive to the Tibetan bordertown of Zhangmu, a town at much lower elevation of 2000 meters. We were relieved to no longer be light-headed or winded after walking up a flight of stairs and spent the day reminiscing with Brandon and Jill about all the amazing sights we had seen on our Tibetan adventure.
Yesterday, we crossed the border into Kodari, Nepal and sadly said goodbye after 2 and a half months of traveling in China. We really loved our time in the country with a quarter of the world's population.