Day 18

We spent almost the whole day in the car going back to east. It wasn't really interesting, but we managed to take some nice pictures again :-)

Pool tables at a small village. These guys have lots of time to play, most probably they could beat the Scottish and English aristrocrats :-)

When we reach the top of the mountain we have seen Tibeatin guys getting out of their car and throwing thousands of "post it"s to the sky containing prayers

We purchased quality Chineese hard liqueur (50%). Did not have the best taste so we gave it to our driver as a present. He was really happy X-)

Did you know that there are 20 millions of Christians in China?

There is only one mobile provider in the country... But surprisingly the quality of service is quite good, even in the Himalaja... 99.5% of the time we had phone coverage and in every town there was GPRS service as well so we could send home some emails :-)

Day 17

In the morning we checked out another local monastery. It is very beautiful with the golden top and the snow-covered mountains behind.












In the afternoon we walked to a small village to see more authentic stuff. Well, this village does NOT have a souvenir store so it was really authentic. We managed to check out a big buddhist get-together, some monks playing a local instrument, the women washing the clothes in the river, and the sky burial place. Sky burial is the traditional Tibetian way of burials. The do not dig holes for the corpse (I guess it's really hard to dig down more than 10cm in a place like this because of the rocks), but a monk slices up the bodies with an axe and they let the birds to vanish it. Kind of strange habit for us but if you think of the local conditions and the reincarnation in buddhism you will understand it.

In Tagong we managed to by nice Tibetian T-shirts with "Made in Tibet" on the tags. I guess we are not going to wear those in Peking airport if we want to get home...

The 3 legged horse :-)

Sky burial pictures...

Found this skull about 3 mins walk from the burial ceremony place

Day 16

On the road again... Road condition a varying in any minutes :-)

Some snow at 4400 meters

Pineapple beer, toilet paper, and Sprite

We reached Tagong (or Lhagong) a small Tibetian town around 2pm. As it was raining the whole afternoon we didn't do much just checked out the local monastery and started our culinary experiences with real Tibetian food/drinks.

Tibetian pancake with bananas, yak yoghurt, and honey: the best ever pancake I had. The pancake is big as a middle size plate, but it is thick, and has a whole egg in it, so it is like an omelette. Excellent!

Yak butter tea: we were afraid of this a bit because we heard stories about people puking for hours after a cup of this tea. Well, the taste is strange, but it is OK. Tastes like the mix of a mushroom soup with sour cream and tea with milk. (We drank a lot of vodka this night :-)

Tibetian noodle (soup with yak meat): home made-noodle soup. Very good.

Yak yoghurt with sugar: excellent choice again, tastes like normal home-made yoghurt.

Tsampa: roasted barley. A bit dry, but great together with the yoghurt.