Chinese Version / 中文版本
Today I woke up very early in the morning to take the same car to Lhasa with the group. M helped me to ask the driver that I needed to pay 100 RMB. Thinking that it costed 50 RMB from the airport to Bayi town, this 100 bucks were comparatively not that expensive. But the van took up so many people already, I could just shift the seat with a broken back with M for the whole car ride. It seemed like riding on a roller coaster all the time.
The car did not directly go to Lhasa from Bayi town, we had several stops on the way. The first one was the waterfall in Ghading Valley. I had never thought that we would have to hike in the early morning. In addition to the moist weather, it would be better to take extra caution while hiking in the valley. The most adventurous part must be the bridge above the river. It was not a normal flat walking bridge, it was actually made of a fallen tree trunk. There was an iron handrail installed on the left side. However, the tree trunk bridge was way up above the river. If I was not being careful enough, I would just slip into the river together with my camera, it was very dangerous!
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| Ghading Valley |
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| Ghading Valley Waterfall |
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| Dangerous tree trunk bridge |
After an hour staying in the valley, we continued to drive directly to Lhasa. On the way, we stopped at a very so-so scenic spot: Mainstay. It is actually a gigantic square rock in the midstream of the river. From the travel guidebook, it is described as "The locals believe Mainstay is the chair for the tutelary god to meditate in Mainling County". Nevertheless, I did not think it was very special and it was raining heavily at that moment, I simply could not find its beauty even from different angles.
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| Mainstay |
On the way to Lhasa, I got to know another bizarre restriction in Tibet, that every driver had to fill in a card, the content should include the departure time from place A and the arrival time to place B (From Nyingchi to Lhasa, there were many sections with very low speed limit). For example, the time from Bayi town to Bahe town is around 1.5 hours. If the driver spends less that 1.5 hours to get to Bahe, it is considered to be speeding and he/she will be fined. Therefore, our driver just always stopped on the side of the road to let time slip, in order not to get fined. This stupid rule made the journey to Lhasa much longer that we expected. Sometimes we just slept in the car without getting anything to do, it was such a waste of time!
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| One of the stops we wasted our time for the stupid speed restriction |
We arrived at Snow XX guesthouse on Xianzu Island in Lhasa. In fact, I had not made any booking before, but the owners were very kind to let me stay at a 3-bed dorm with 50 RMB for a night. After settling down my stuff, I went out with S, M and B to have dinner in the city center. Originally we planned to take a cab, but it was not easy to hail a cab in Lhasa. At last, we took 2 different buses to their favorite Lhasa Namaste Restaurant, which is located next to the Jokhang Square, where they had already dined for 3 times. The Nepalese food in this restaurant was very good, I just planned in my head that I would for sure come back again later these few days! After dinner, we went to another place to eat Mala Tang, which I felt opposed at first, as I had tried a lot of spicy food when I was working at Chongqing few days ago. Now I was a bit scared of the spicy taste already!
At night, we went back to the guesthouse by taxi. Everyone who took the car from Nyingchi today also stayed at this place. The atmosphere of this guesthouse was superb, we all hung out in the living room and told each others some horror stories!
Besides horror stories, S, B and I had a great chat with the owner J, because she often traveled to Nepal and bought many Nepalese souvenirs. She even sold them in the guesthouse. We just played along with the souvenirs while listening to J's travel stories in Nepal. It became such a tempting idea to travel to Nepal after I am done with Tibet~~~
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| Spicy Fries |
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| Nepalese Fried Rice |
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