It’s the 15th chapter of the Tibet travel log and I am sure many people are slowly getting bored with the length of this post. Why is this trip super long and unable to finish?

Reason: I was on this trip for 23 days, that explains why that there are tonnes of photos and it doesn’t seem to finish. Of course I do select photos to be displayed here.

Here’s a recap for those who missed it, the last few posts showed that I was back at Lhasa, and for foodies, the last post was all about the food in Lhasa town, Tibet. Since it was practically 2 days free and easy in the town, Ek Wei, Kenny and me went on a stroll along town to capture the beauty of it. Well maybe to me, it’s the weirdness of it.

[Tibet 1] Hello from Lhasa, Tibet
[Tibet 2] The Rough Journey Tibet
[Tibet 3] Another Day in Lhasa
[Tibet 4] Visiting Drepung Monastery Tibet
[Tibet 5] Monastery Visitation Tibet
[Tibet 6] Moving Around Lhasa Tibet
[Tibet 7] The Day I Visited Temples at Lhasa
[Tibet 8] Weird Blue Lake Tibet
[Tibet 9] Randomness at China and Tibet
[Tibet 10] More Monasteries and Mt Everest
[Tibet 11] Journey to Mt Everest
[Tibet 12] Journey to Namtso Lake
[Tibet 13] Namtso Lake Scene
[Tibet 14] Return to Lhasa from Mountains

So what else can we see at the town. Didn’t I covered that part in the beginning of the post? Well, now we walked even further as we traveled on foot and on the occasion sat in the taxi.

As usual the only superb landmark in Tibet is the Potala Palace and once again we go to this favorite landmark trying to capture it in any way we find intriguing.

Currently all photos published for this post, none got Photoshopped except resize and blog link being added. The vivid function is an overkill but at times it gets the job done.

The above is another perspective looking from the road below towards the Potala Palace in Lhasa.Then up again we go to the shooting place and paid 3 Yuan to go again.

Another shot, this time aiming at the structure on the right with the Potala Palace in the background. Weird shot if you ask me. But then when we thought we’re having a fun shooting and that we’ll be the only one shooting up there, wait till you see what’s next. Other than us, there are like 3  to 5 other people shooting and one person has one of the best equipment there is there.

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Finally back from the mountains, it’s now free and easy in the town of Lhasa and I’ve forgotten that I brought bread up with me to the Mt Everest base camp. Now look at how the bread turned out.

All puffy and somehow reminds me of a fetus that can’t wait to get out from the womb. Jeez… of all things I have to think of that instead. What bread is this though? Just a simple flour and nothing inside. In English, they only wrote French Bread.

Anyway for those that wants to read back a few posts regarding my Tibet travel without hassle, here’s the whole link again!

[Tibet 1] Hello from Lhasa, Tibet
[Tibet 2] The Rough Journey Tibet
[Tibet 3] Another Day in Lhasa
[Tibet 4] Visiting Drepung Monastery Tibet
[Tibet 5] Monastery Visitation Tibet
[Tibet 6] Moving Around Lhasa Tibet
[Tibet 7] The Day I Visited Temples at Lhasa
[Tibet 8] Weird Blue Lake Tibet
[Tibet 9] Randomness at China and Tibet
[Tibet 10] More Monasteries and Mt Everest
[Tibet 11] Journey to Mt Everest
[Tibet 12] Journey to Namtso Lake
[Tibet 13] Namtso Lake Scene

Okay, enough of the bread. Since we’re now having our free and easy in the capital city of Tibet at Lhasa, we thought of looking for places to eat and definitely a few notable places we could hang out. Yes, get ready cause this time it’s all about the food in Tibet. When you’re outstation, one has definitely got to try the local food.

One of the place that we found is Makyeame Restaurant, located at the pedestrian street of Lhasa. As you can see, there are two exposures of the same restaurant. The sun was blazing sunny but the weather there is still cool (compare to our hot and humid Malaysia), so we didn’t even sweat. Well, that’s for a country that doesn’t hit the equator and also about 5000m above sea level.

Seeing this restaurant and since we’re all hungry, let’s get some grub.

Not until we see what’s the view from the top of the restaurant. Remember we’re sitting at the roof top and unlike the houses we have in Malaysia, the houses and buildings here all have flat surfaces.

This is how the place looks like when you’re not overlooking the ground below. Ahhhh…. many people so it seems. Kenny sitting there playing with his HTC and going online. Darn, they have WiFi here. Those days I don’t have a WiFi enabled gadget. We’re actually practically waiting for our food to arrive.

Of course, why not start with a taste of something Tibetish, a Tibetan beer. The name is Tibet Beer – Green Barley Beer.

What an original name. There are loads of Barley in Tibet, heck they even have a tagline for this beer which is Beer From Top Of The World. Simply amazing I must say.Taste like beer and yes, there’s no way you can find one of these alcoholic drink in other countries.

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Finally the 12th installment is here and the continuation of the Tibet adventures at Namtso Lake. How long more will this post be? Beats me… I try to finish all this in a jiffy okay?

Clicking the links below will open a new tab or page.
[Tibet 1] Hello from Lhasa, Tibet
[Tibet 2] The Rough Journey Tibet
[Tibet 3] Another Day in Lhasa
[Tibet 4] Visiting Drepung Monastery Tibet
[Tibet 5] Monastery Visitation Tibet
[Tibet 6] Moving Around Lhasa Tibet
[Tibet 7] The Day I Visited Temples at Lhasa
[Tibet 8] Weird Blue Lake Tibet
[Tibet 9] Randomness at China and Tibet
[Tibet 10] More Monasteries and Mt Everest
[Tibet 11] Journey to Mt Everest
[Tibet 12] Journey to Namtso Lake

So let’s get on with what can one view here at Namtso Lake?

Now surprisingly some people wondered why did I use a logo instead of a url in the photos. Well, maybe after awhile I find that without a url, it feels hard to associate some photos back. Anyway let’s get back to the Tibet thingy. It’s clear blue sky there and this is what one could view at La Ken La. Refer previous Tibet post to understand where it is.

A different view as I go a little bit higher and this time without those flags. Far towards the left of this photo, you can see the NAMTSO LAKE.

Anyway, after arriving in Namtso Lake, it’s time to put our luggage into the inn we’re supposed to stay. This is the place we stayed.

Holy Lake Namtso Guest House, since it’s 5000m+ above sea level, the temperature could drop very low and mind you, there are wools around the building to keep the place warm. Lucky there’s the sun. Have a look in the inside.

The roof is just cloth or rather wool and the place looks comfortable enough. Just wait till you have a look at the room we are sleeping.

3 beds. This was the only time where we were glad that we had only 3 of us going to Tibet. Shot with ISO of 1200, still ain’t so bad. Now enough of what’s in the inn. We’re not here to look at the inn right?

Finall the view of Namtso Lake from higher ground. We climbed up a hill to get this shot. The wind was blowing, and yes, that’s an eagle flying. Settings were set to vivid, makes a lot of things super blue. Seeing that you’ve made it this far, here’s a background of why is Namtso Lake a salt water lake.

As history mentioned, during the ice age, or rather many many years ago, the ocean covered a lot of ground on the Earth. Then the water recede, which what makes the salt water which is part of the ocean unable to move out of it’s location due to a mountain like enclosure trapping water above it. This was then how the Namtso Lake came about.

The small figures you see below on the bottom left are actually human beings. Just imagine how big this lake is. There’s also a festival once in every year where pilgrims would come over here to walk across the dry land that you see in this photo. Too bad we missed it as it was a month ago before we arrived here.

As always, being in Tibet or Nepal, there’s always this familiar arrangement of stones. It’s also here in Namtso Lake where climbing up the hill, we also get to see them.

Just how high it is. If you think you saw snow capped mountain at the background, yes, you’re right. Too bad I didn’t bring my wide up the hill. Kinda loss of breath due to high altitude and the cold wind. We stayed up there for nearly 3 hours. Imagine the strong wind blowing, I needed to find shelter behind rocks at times.

But why?? Why do we have to stay for 3 hours up there? The next photo would reveal something.

Ahhhh!!! Looks like the sun will set soon. When we took this photo, it was already 4pm or 5pm in the evening. We know that we could actually catch the sunset from here. The problem is when the sun starts to set, the air became cooler, my hand starts to shake and I was chilly all over. I couldn’t wait any longer, so we walked back towards the inn. Only for me to get one last shot of the so called sunset.

TA DAH~~~ That’s the best I can do.

After reaching the inn, this is what we all did. You’re right, we didn’t have dinner. Too cold to eat.

Kenny in his sleeping bag.

and the so serious Ek Wei in his own sleeping bag. XD XD… while I took photos.

ps: They requested to help them take this photo actually.

The next morning though, both me and Kenny couldn’t wake up at all. Or rather we were just too lazy to get up. Ek Wei got up on his own and walked at the lake. (Though I wished I had) He called both of us LAZY after that.

Well, I should have learnt my lesson after that. That’s because is not everytime one will visit the place again. By the way, by forgetting to bring one’s razor up here as we left some of our luggage back down at the town, I am sure some of you can’t wait to see how I looked. Maybe you can, but anyhow I am still gonna show it.

Okay, peace out.

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It’s time to recap. It’s now the 11th post in the Tibet category and there are more to come. If you haven’t read the rest before that, you may refer to the list below.

Clicking the links below will open a new tab or page.
[Tibet 1] Hello from Lhasa, Tibet
[Tibet 2] The Rough Journey Tibet
[Tibet 3] Another Day in Lhasa
[Tibet 4] Visiting Drepung Monastery Tibet
[Tibet 5] Monastery Visitation Tibet
[Tibet 6] Moving Around Lhasa Tibet
[Tibet 7] The Day I Visited Temples at Lhasa
[Tibet 8] Weird Blue Lake Tibet
[Tibet 9] Randomness at China and Tibet
[Tibet 10] More Monasteries and Mt Everest
[Tibet 11] Journey to Mt Everest

Finally after descending Mount Everest base camp, it’s time to go on to our next destination which is the Namtso Lake. The world’s highest salt water lake. Yes, SALT WATER! Unbelievable? Well, how can there be a salt water lake high up the mountains?Anyway along the way down, there are lots of crazy roads we have to go through.  From roads that are such cramp in between rocks and hills.

Roads that are in the middle of the mountain are also experienced. We heard a story, just a month ago, there was a cave in and the rock collapsed on the road. We did witness a part of what had happened. Rather it was the history of it.

Here’s another so called hole in the mountain that we had to go through too. Now look at how wide the road is, and how ‘big‘ is that hole compared to the road. What a way to carry on our journey. Still all of us like so called prayed that the driver that is ferrying us in his van would drive safely and that we reached our destination in one piece.

We were in the van for hours, and considering that a few of us are photographers, we needed some stretching done and with beautiful scenery around in this land of Nepal + Tibet, we make sure we stopped for some shots. Most of us won’t be coming back again, so it’s either you shoot now or you won’t be able to shoot another photo in the coming future.

The stream, the splendid mountain. These kind of scenery, what a sight to behold. Of course along the way, we could see herdsmen driving the buffaloes and what another view other than just scenery.

Photos taken from inside the van. Not very good composition as we’re in a moving vehicle and I just shoot with my previous settings.

After what seemed to be a long journey, it’s time to move on, and finally a spot to rest and flex our legs.

Buffaloes roam the place around here. Something funny happened here though, there was this local guy who was basically walking towards us asking for money for shooting the area here. The funny thing was not that, but more of he was practically following Kenny all the way until he tailed him back to the van. I can’t stop laughing. Seems like he’s a local Tibetan magnet.

The snow capped mountains at the background seems so near but yet so far. Well, I was only able to view only and never did I get to touch them yet.

Remember I said there was a guy who kept following Kenny all the way. Well basically he was behind this offering structure and then he suddenly stood up and kept going near to us. Kept asking for 50 Yuan. Practically I was using a zoom lens, so I stood kind of far away. He only came near to me once and I just walked the other way.

Finally it’s time to push forward and this time we stopped at another amazing location. Most photos shot are practically taken straight from the camera with their settings.

I must have set this to vivid. The sky is so blue but I love them. But isn’t it strange to have the mountain being cut in half from the photo. So feast your eyes on a panoramic shot then.

Click on the photo to get it in 1280 x 501 resolution joined together using Adobe Photoshop CS3 by using this technique to merge the photos.

How to do it? This is the tutorial page.

Well, after what seemed like a hard long journey, took like 6 hours, we’ve finally reached a location that somehow mentioned about the Namtso Lake. Did I mentioned that it was salt water? I guessed I did.

Finally the Big Stone wall to welcome us to the entrance to Namtso Lake. Again we have to pay 100 Yuan to go pass the guard house. Everything is money here. Well, the stone wall reads The Highest Lake in the World – Namtso (世界之 ? – 纳木 ? ) . Someone please help me fill in the blanks. I can’t find the han yu pin ying, nor do I know what it reads for the ones with the question mark. Anyone can help?

Now you must be wondering, since we’ve descended from Mount Everest, how high is it right now? The next photo should explained it. It’s 5190m above sea level.

Now don’t you love the way we all jumped. Beyond the horizon is the Namtso Lake and we had a jump before arriving our destination. What a great place to do all our jumping.

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It was our final place to visit. The base camp of Mt Everest. I am one of the few who get to spent like 20+ days overseas and get to visit the base camp of Mount Everest or to the locals here, it’s called Mt Qomolangma. Before we even reached the base camp, we were given a sneak preview of what we’re going to visit. Mind you, even the sneak preview, we still got to pay. That’s like RMB40 again. Darn….

Now imagine for a sneak preview, it’s 40 Yuan. Well, in order to do that though, we wanted a better view, so we climbed up the smaller peak and boy~~~ it was superbly tiring. Must have been the thin air I guess. Well, it was tiring and guessed what, there are a few motorbikes going up and down that peak to ask us whether we want to hop on their bike to go up.

Since we were dead tired, it was a good offer. Only to be asked to pay 30 Yuan which we bargained to get it at 20 Yuan. Money suckers. Every thing is payment here and there. At least though we reached the peak to catch a glimpse of the Mount Everest. Also I get to sit on a local’s bike. Bumpy ride but an experience but then to pay that much, suddenly it felt not so worth it.

The top is a breath of fresh air. I get to see the top unlike others who are below being bothered by peddlers trying to sell their fossils being dugged out from the mountain. Yes, prehistoric fossils. Those shells.

From then onwards, I took out my gear, trying to capture the top of the mountain only to be blocked by a massive cloud. After waiting for 10 minutes, the cloud cleared and there it was, the tip of Mount Everest or Mount Qomolongma.

The mountain only to be blocked by a gravel of dirt. It feels so near, but the peak is 8000m+ above sea level. So after getting the great view, we’re on our journey once more. To go onwards to the Everest Base Camp, situated about 5000m+ above sea level. To think that I was able to stand cold on highlands, the cold here is crazy. My hand was frozen if I don’t have proper gloves.

When we reached the base camp, it was already getting dark, around 6pm, and with nightfall, the cold is getting crazier. It’s approximately 0 degrees Celsius. Early in the morning, Ek Wei woke up and showed us the thermometer he brought along. It’s below 0 degrees Celsius. Wahhhh~~~ and it’s about 530am. It’s time to wake up to reach the starting point of the track towards Mt Everest.

A proof that I was there.

The sight was splendid. It seems so near. If only I could have more time and tracked there. But I was feeling superbly cold and if I don’t get myself warm enough, my fingers could go frozen. What with when my gloves tore around the palm area. Wore 3 pieces of clothing to keep myself from cold, but it’s still not warm enough.

Cold until I can’t pose properly. It’s 5200m above sea level. This is still just below the rocks. Having trouble climbing up the cliff which is a mere 100 meters.

When we finally reached there, the sun came up and a Tibetan does his ritual there. See the peak covered behind by the clouds, that’s Mount Everest.

So fascinated by the beauty of it, I didn’t want to go back down, but being frozen is a far worst experience. So time to do some simple photoshoot before going down.

It was so cold. At least you can see the peak behind . Luckily the sun was a bit out so it was a bit warm.It’s WEIRD ME and Ek Wei.

Kenny came up later, so we didn’t get his photos. Well, group photo was done by ekwei as I brought my zoom lens and hands are too cold to change the lens.

After doing our shots here in Mount Everest, it’s time to go back down, and back to Lhasa Town, Tibet. Of course, one can go back with a souvenir to certify that you’ve been up there and it only cost 70 Yuan. Money again. ARGH~~~~

I was running out of RMB (Yuan) so didn’t want to spent it on unnecessary expenditures.

While on our way back sitting in the van, we stopped for a last time view on the splendid architecture of God’s and capture the scenic view of the Mount Everest bask in sunlight. The view was splendid, I wondered if I could actually one day go there again.

It’s time to go down, and after going down like 20 minutes, it seems that one of the people in the same van left his mobile phone at the base camp. Thus a call was made up there and someone brought the phone down. Of course, not all things are done for free and it’s 100 Yuan. What an expensive carrier. While waiting for the person to come down with the mobile phone, an exciting view comes into my focus, and I got this next shot.

Too much of foreground maybe, wasn’t prepared. Well, could have cropped it though, but I love to picture my photos thru the viewfinder and not by cropping photos. It takes practice. I ain’t a professional yet and I am hoping to take nicer photos in the coming future.

I guessed that wraps up the Mount Everest Base Camp trip. At least it was an experience worth having.

Ek Wei and Kenny wondering, is that all? Darn… can we go there again. I wished for it too.

Until then adios and good time reading.

ps: Upcoming post, a little bit about Malaysia instead. Too many overseas trip. Let’s talk about Beautiful Malaysia in the Land of Kuching.

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