[The following post is from the archives of my In Search Of Incredible blog, originally published on 31 December 2015]

 

30 July 2015, Thursday

It’s Day 7, the halfway mark of the trip. Much like the two days before, it will be another long day as we travel about 515km from Saga to Darchen, which is the starting point for the Mt. Kailash trek. Breakfast at the guesthouse restaurant was “jian bing” (煎饼), two round pieces of pancakes (bread dough would be more accurate) with a piece of fried egg sandwiched in between. We left Saga just before 9am and hit the road once again.

At about 12:15pm, we stopped at a sand dune to take some photos. It was quite strange to see a sand dune suddenly popping out from among the mountain plains. I never expected to see a sand dune at this altitude in Tibet. Beyond the dune was a river and a mountain range with snow capped peaks. Tenzin mentioned the name of the mountain range but I cannot remember it now.

At 1:15pm, we had our lunch break at Jin Yang restaurant. For the life of me, I do not know where this restaurant is located, because it is not in a proper town, but in some random row of shops seemingly in the middle of nowhere. One thing to know about Tibet is that outside the major towns of Lhasa, Shigatse, Gyantse and a handful of others, the rest of the country is vast and sparsely populated and there aren’t many big congregations of human dwellings. Most of Tibet is still largely agricultural based and you can still see nomads rearing livestock and roaming across the plains, sleeping in tents. Nevertheless, the food at this restaurant was as good as anywhere else in Tibet, and we had our favourite tomato egg (番茄蛋) and tu dou si (土豆丝) dishes.

Before setting off, we visited the toilet as usual. By this time, we had developed a rating system for the toilets – on a scale of 0 to 5, with 5 being the best. Here’s a rough guide on how we derive our ratings: If there is toilet paper, +1; if there is a door, +1; if there is a flush, +1. But if there are houseflies, -1; if it stinks, -1. Something like that.  Outside of Lhasa, most of the toilets hovered around the 1 or 2 grade. Sometimes, the brave person who visited the toilet first will return and report back with a ‘0’ rating, and the rest of us will just boycott the toilet and hold on till we find a better alternative.

Towards the later part of the trip, we decided that the Expressway Toilet (i.e. not an actual toilet but just a hidden spot under a bridge or something) was the better option. At least it didn’t stink and we didn’t have to risk falling into the hole or getting our shoes soiled. We also learned the importance of hand sanitiser. That little bottle of liquid saved our lives and was the most in demand thing ever. Before the trip, I never liked using it because it felt weird to me that the liquid could kill germs and evaporate on its own. But in Tibet, water is a precious commodity and there are usually no taps to wash your hands after using the toilet, so the hand sanitiser was a godsend.

We continued driving towards the West, and at 6pm, we finally reached Lake Manasarovar. According to the original itinerary, we were supposed to spend a night here at Lake Manasarovar, but due to ST’s illness on Day 3, we stayed in Lhasa for an additional day. We would make up for the lost time by bypassing Lake Manasarovar and heading to Darchen instead, since they are only 35km apart.

Lake Manasarovar is a freshwater lake, lying at an elevation of 4,590m. It is a sacred lake and it is an important pilgrimage for Hindus and Buddhists, who perform the kora around its 88km circumference. It is believed that bathing and drinking from the lake will clear a person’s sins. Lake Manasarovar is located south of Mt. Kailash, and a narrow river connects it to Lake Rakshastal just 3.7km away, to its west.  Where Manasarovar is holy, Rakshastal is considered demonic, like an yin and a yang.

From Lake Manasarovar, we had our first glimpse of the triangular, snow-capped face of Mt. Kailash. Finally, after three long days of travelling, we were getting closer to our objective! The sight of Mt. Kailash lifted our spirits greatly. After snapping some photos, we pressed on and continued our drive to Darchen.

We reached Darchen (elevation 4,575m) at 7:10pm. In my mind, I had imagined Darchen to be something like Thamel in Kathmandu, since it is the starting point of the trek and I had read that there were plenty of shops selling trekking supplies. As we drove through the town, I realised that it was nothing like Thamel. By Tibetan standards, it was quite a bustling town, with numerous rows of shops and accommodation options.

I don’t think our guesthouse even had a name. It was a very basic guesthouse and consisted of two long buildings with about 10 rooms each. The room was sparse and there were four beds inside. As usual, the toilet was a communal one – door-less, squat-type style with a hole instead of a toilet bowl. The rating was probably a 1.5. I don’t remember seeing any shower facilities there, so needless to say, we did not shower that day.

After dropping our bags in the room, we went to the restaurant for dinner. I ordered a bowl of spicy noodle soup and it was quite good. The food was really a lifesaver, and it helped to mitigate everything else. After dinner, we ventured out to the provision shop next door but didn’t buy much stuff. We saw the portable oxygen tanks and told Tenzin that we wanted to buy some. He said he could get them cheaper for us, so he helped us get three bottles for the trek, which we ended up not using at all.

By the time we were done, it was about 9pm and it was getting dark. We all had an early night so that we could have enough rest for the next three days of trekking. At long last, after three days of sitting in the van, we would be trekking soon, excited!