Lhasa calling

Reached Tibet about two hours ago after 48 hours on the train from Beijing. Naturally the first thing I did was find a hostel with decent internet access so I can bang another blog entry out as I notice from all the comments on the previous post that everyone is eagerly waiting for the next update.



The last few days in Beijing are great. Meet up with a couple of ex-pat English guys, Julian and Oscar, who are the nicest (but rudest) people you could meet. Perfect company. They both have a particular English sense of humour that I don't think goes down well with everyone, but when the alternative is sitting on my own or talking to foreign types I just laugh along and put up with it. They also manage to take 200 yaun off me at a poker night. Bastards. I've posted a picture of them so you can all laugh at them like I do.

I have to leave Beijing on the train Sunday evening and get a cab from Julian's flat to the main station. It takes me about half an hour to work out my train goes from Beijing West. So I have 25 minutes to get a taxi across beijing and find it. Which I manage with about 5 seconds spare. When I get into my cabin, covered in sweat, panting and collapsing I think my cabin-mates are a little scared. I feel bad until they speak - it turns out they are American. I can't even make it up to my bunk and have to lie on the one below mine until my heart promises me it won't burst.

Recover sufficiently to sleep and then while away the next day eating yet more bad chinese food and sleeping. Then it gets interesting. Start climbing from sea-level to 5000m in the morning and they bring round nasal oxygen tubes to plug into an outlet by your bunk to counter the lack of atmosphere at 20000 feet.

So now I'm in Lhasa, the home of the dalai lhama (well actually Dharamsala/London is his home since the chinese kicked him out but spiritually it's here). Temperature is currently close to freezing and the hostel is a bit weird - no locks, open showers with no lights and swastikas all over the place. If I hadn't paid 30 yuan for the bed I'd feel like the fuhrer has something against me.

I've uploaded some photo's (apologies that most of them are shit - but I'm throwing yuan away like crazy at the moment and can't afford the editing time) - http://www.flickr.com/photos/robinsouthgate/sets/72157600191922686/