After Everest I didn't want to head straight back to Lhasa so decided on a side trip to Gyantse which was an extra 200km out of the way. Our first stop was in a one horse town - Latse and after checking out a few of the local hotels finally found one with running water and settled in for the night.

Just outside Latse I'd heard mention of a local hot spring which I thought would be worth a visit. Neither my driver or guide had heard of the place but we located it on a map and set off. Within 1/2 a mile we came across a checkpoint with barbed wire strung across the road. Aparently no one was allowed past for no specified reason! Neither our Tibetan guide or Chinese driver could make him budge.

We were directed the long way round off-road through fields and rivers until we passed through a tiny village, at the end of the village we seemed to have a large welcoming party waiting for us...very nice....erm..with a lot of farm implements!.....OK...no they're big sticks! Alright we're now being told that we can't pass with out paying a special village toll fee. OK my decision now, do I tell the driver to run all 30 of them over, after all a Toyota Landcruiser will still make a good size dent in a small village let alone a few villagers!..How much will it cost? ...10RMB - less than 70 pence! OK here you go boys and good luck with your private enterprise!

We weren't the only ones caught with this as there was several cars sighted coming through the "road" behind us. Eventually the path led us back to the road about 50 meters the other side of the check point. I guess we can figure out which village the checkpoint guard lives in!!

Anyway after another few kilometers we finally come across the hot springs sanotorium. As you can tell from the photo it looked a little like a building site, however we decided to ignore this fact and soldier on ...through the builders. Apparently the site is being rebuilt but is in occasional use so we were led round some of the older buildings. The complex consists of public and private baths of different sizes charges range from 5 RMB to about 20 RMB if I fancied a private room. The water actually did look very appealing even if the surroundings were not. I'd left enough time to spend an hour or so here, however I decided that it would perhaps be a bit better to come next time... once the towels were ready!

One curious monument left at the site was a large field gun, not entirely sure what this is for but perhaps the hot springs are destined to be a major tourist attraction!

After this the rest of the trip to Gyantse was as much fun as before, in that we spent a lot of time off road due to road construction. Sometimes parking at the side of the road was great fun to watch all the overloaded trucks and vehicles suddenly being diverted off the hard top road on to a surface that really wasn't meant for anything other than a goat. You may have seen pictures of vehicles in China transporting goods on ther back of them piled up to 3 times their own height. In one place someone was obviously moving house and had 3 trucks piled really high, so much that you could see that at anything more than a 15 degree angle and the driver would lose it. There were a lot of nervous people waiting for the trucks to topple over on their cars.

In one place they had a token passing system running where two cars were allowed to go through then pass the tokens to the next two cars heading in the other direction. OK so maybe I'm the only one old enough to appreciate this as I have seen this in action on British Rail in the dim and distant past in the depths of Kent.

On the start of our first trip outside of Lhasa we left early in the morning with a guide and a driver all aboard the ubiquitous Toyota Landcruiser. This was to be a five day trip with the ultimate aim of seeing everest base camp. Our aim for the first day (after some discussion) was to reach Shigatse and see the Tashilhunpo monastry by the end of the first day. The views on the road were stunning as we were heading into the Himalayas.

We reached Shigatse by lunchtime and had a really nice Sichuan lunch of spicy pork ribs and a whole queue of people with their noses pressed against the restaurant window watching the Weiguoren eat!

The monastry was founded in 1447 and is the seat of the Panchen Lama. One of the unique things about Tashilhunpo is that it managed to avoid most of the the depredations of the Cultural Revolution, so is much as it has been for hundreds of years. It is essentially a walled town with cobbled streets.

The first thing that hits you when you enter the first chapel is a 26m guilded image of Jampa the future buddha made in 1914 which took 900 artisans 4 years to complete. This was the largest buddha image in China until a larger one was erected recently in Hong Kong.

The remains of the Panchen Lamas are also held here and it isn't until you look up into the faces of the Panchen lama in their funeral chorten that you realise that that isn't a statue that is actually him! ...guilded! ....mumified!

Qomolangma is the tibetan for Mount Everest. The road from Shigatse to base camp is about 12 hours. From Lhasa to Shigatse was pretty good hard top roads all the way, the roads from Shigatse to Everest were very different, single track and often under construction. We spent a considerable amount of time off roading round road workers building the new Chinese funded highways in traditional dress!

All across China and still here everyone still uses the horn as an indicator, i.e. get the heck out of the way I'm coming past!

We stopped at Shegar (don't bother trying to pronounce this it's nothing like the horse even without the extra "r") to buy tickets for the national park...yes it is protected land! More Sichuan food and off to the park.

On arriving at the foot of the road to base camp it was apparent that we either took the local horse and cart or we walked! The driver elected to stay with the vehical and sleep at the monastry at the bottom of the hill until we returned. It turned out later he had to sleep in the car becfause they wouldn't let chinese stay there without a westerner, a role reversal from Lhasa!

The horse and cart trek was about an hour and a half with occasional gtlimpses of the peak along the way. We arriveed in amongst a host of tents which was our hotel for the night!

Arriving at base camp we had a perfect view of Everest as the sun descended, this apparently is very rare as it is usually wreathed in cloud.

We wandered around a few of the hotel tents which we shared with the family for the night, they provided food cooked on the wood burning stove, well sometimes incense burning sometimes manure burning!

Just a further note on altitude sickness...in two days we have gone up from 3600m in Lhasa to 5200m at base camp fortunately in Shigatse we picked up some heavy local drugs which helped but symptoms persisted and we were walking around like emphysema sufferers for a while with a nasty persistant headache.

Anyway back to my point, an inability to breath, a dung burning stove and the air heavily laden with incense not happy! However it was a little on the cold side and stepping outside into the night air helped.

Facilities were reasonably basic, washing...stream outside the tent, toilet...next to the stream outside the tent.

We did find the toilet in the morning once it got light but we quickly saw why even the locals didn't use them.

Food was basic but good, tibetan/nepali type with the essential "su you cha" yak butter tea!

Now I've tried this in Lhasa and the thought of pouring down greasy hot (it had better be hot you never want to try this cold!) rancid yak butter based tea on top of altitude sickness...hmm not the best idea for a peaceful night. However with my new drug fuelled body I felt pretty good so thought "when in Rome" and for the first time really enjoyed it, no rancid taste still salty but very good almost finished an entire flask.

The next morning we saw the mountain in its typical glory...covered in cloud couldn't see a thing so we spent the morning eating pancake, drinking coffee and slowly walking off our morning headaches around the base camp.

I did run into two Czech guys who had paid the necessary fees to ensure the local boss was be asleep when they went past the checkpoint to head further up the mountain. There is a fine of US$200 if you go past without official permission. They spent 5 days getting to camp 3 and back and said the view from 6000m was awesome if a little painful on the head! They saw no one while they were there - 5 days away from everyone, on the Chinese side there isn't even a rescue force if you get into trouble.

I have to come back and make time to get to camp 3