Last few more posts upcoming and this time Tibet is finally gonna rest it’s head. Well, I meant the post though. This time journey is what I am looking forward to show to you people out there. It’s time to head towards the Midui Glacier. If you’ve missed all the travel post about Tibet, the links to the respective places will be at the bottom of this post.

Along the way there, we are met with few animals that would like to greet us whenever they can. For example the Yak, famous animal around Tibet.

Moooooooo…… this is my road and I can do what I like, I am the lone ranger here. Of course there are other animals there, say, the horse.

Snorts….

We see a lot of animals along the way on the road, sometimes on mountain roads where we’re like far from civilizations. Anyway we were given a shock though when we saw Tibetans on the road doing their pilgrimage and will lie on the floor and up after a few steps. I kid you not!!

See… is like something after that we’ve grown accustomed to. Amazed right? Of course the road is so wide, sometimes no vehicle goes along the path at times. So much that we even have someone on the road.

Jeng Jeng Jeng, another Shanghai girl on the road. Yes, imagine posing on the road. Too bad I wasn’t the proper photographer, or I would try to capture the scene against the scenery backdrop.

Well, sitting in the jeep has got it’s use though, we can take scenery shots from inside the jeep as long as the windows are clean though. Imagine how many wipes we’ve done.

The rocky mountains are such a wonder. I suddenly miss these kind of scenery with blue sky.

Of course these are part of what is nice about traveling overseas. Well, it always has been. Though there’s always no place like home but traveling to see the world is also what I would love to do. Even when we hardly get to eat, walked and hiked and near the brink of danger.

So much we have gone through, we would love to travel again as a group, taking photos and showing to people how wide and wonderful is the world out there. Well, as usual the usual 3. Yes, Bae Yong Joon *cough… Ek Wei* is with us again.

It was during that time, we were stalled from continuing our journey due to a fallen tree. So we took the liberty to take a photo against the jeep door. Now and then we would stop by at some restaurant along the road and order our meal. I dare say, I definitely prefer Malaysian food, but sometimes we just have to stomach what we’re given.

Herbal Chicken Soup in Hot Pot. Well, shared amongst 6 people. Well, it looks tasty, and yes, it definitely taste so good, I would love to have another bowl. Well, what are the ingredients for this soup? Wait till you see what they thrown into this soup for the delicate taste.

Amazingly weird. All parts of the chicken were used. Even the head wasn’t spared. Ginger, herbs and some other parts. Well, I guessed not everyone would love to think that a chicken head is in their soup.

Finally the moment to move to what this post is actually all about, The Midui Glacier.

Just look at Ek Wei can’t wait to get his photo taken amongst the lake and the glacier at the back. Hehehe…

Well, the destination is the glacier which takes about 30 to 40 minutes of walking. Yes, we have to walked all the way in. No food, no lunch yet. It’s about 1030am.

Hard to get the right exposure with the yak being all too dark in order to capture the sky and the snow. Of course another way to go to the Midui Glacier is by riding a horse there.

Simple and faster way to the next stop which is about 20 minutes away on foot, but with a horse it’s only 8 – 10 minutes. Of course it all comes with a price though say 40 Yuan?

Of course, one can also travel with style. You can bring along your umbrella to protect from the scorching sun but on a cool weather. Look at how the leaves are turning yellow. Autumn is arriving and definitely a sight to behold. There aren’t 4 seasons in Malaysia, thus having a look at the changing of leaves in another country is fascinating for me.

So with that in mind, I have to get a simple shot of myself in this lovely weather and season.

Now if only there were more trees at the background, the whole thing would have been perfect. So perfect if the color of the background is like the one below.

Yellow, green and the trail to the Midui Glacier. Huh? Wait!!!! Did I meant that I won’t be posting any photos on the Midui Glacier? Well, I kid you not, since this is post is about the journey to the Midui Glacier and not the Midui Glacier.

Well, of course I wouldn’t want to dash the hopes of having a glance of what’s around that area.So I’ll present to you a part of the Midui Glacier.

The whole chunk of ice on which I will stand on it later.

I know that this post has lots of weird photos and not as surreal like the previous posts. I would post more pictures of the Midui Glacier in the upcoming post though. For those that missed other posts, here are the lists below.

[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
[Tibet 15] Lhasa Town Free and Easy
[Tibet 16] Beginning the Journey to Chengdu in Jeep
[Tibet 17] The Giant Tree and Tibet Tradition Wear

Altogether peace out and till the next post.

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Finally time to continue our journey towards Chengdu. For those that missed the last post, and to recap, we were actually taking photos of the rushing water resulted from melted ice. These are the rest of the chapters if you’ve missed them.

[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
[Tibet 15] Lhasa Town Free and Easy
[Tibet 16] Beginning the Journey to Chengdu in Jeep

Now it’s time to continue on and to visit the Giant Tree.

Giant Tree? What Giant Tree? By the way, the oldest and highest tree is recorded here. Highest as in a high location. Of course, in order for us to do that, we all need our rest for the night as the sun sets and it’s still like 4000m above sea level. It’s gonna be cold, there’s no fan in our place. Dinner time we ate the local Chinese “Ma Lat” dishes and can tell you, I was starting to miss home and Malaysian food.

Rest for the night and no one bothered to fold their blankets. Of course at the far end, you can still spot Kenny there still sleeping. Ha ha ha..

So onward we go for our next stop.

The World Cypress King Park. Here is the excerpt from the ticket being sold to us. Cost us 10 Yuan.

It is 13kms away from Linzhi county and the altitude is 3040m, there are 10 hecares precious cypress. It is 44m in average height, 1.58m in average diameter. Here you will see a cypress which has a history of 2600 years, it is 57m in height, 5.8m in diameter and was named “The King of Cypress in China“. It was said that the tree is regarded “Life Tree” by the founder of Ben Sect- Xinraomibao.

Now that was very good information about this place. Lucky I still kept the ticket. The stone marking the tree that is 2600 years old.

Man vs Tree. 20+ years old vs 2600 years old. Young vs Old. Look at how wide the tree is compared to me. They barricaded the place so people would not step in.

Now who said I was old? I am not old.

Now see how big is one of the other trees. I used up most of my strength to tear out a hole in the tree. It was so hard to pry it open (yeah right~~~) that soon after that I became totally exhausted.

Exhausted, The Weird One can’t take it anymore. Kenny thought I was posing, so he did something even better.

Whoa~~~Kenny! Nice expression. Priceless.

Finally it was time to go back to our respective jeeps and on the way out, peddlers are selling the specialty here. Ling zhi and mushrooms and other herbs.

Mushrooms?

Ling Zhi? Mushrooms? They both look the same to me.

Anyway, we didn’t buy any as we don’t know what we’re gonna do with it since we have like 8 days journey left. Yes, days passes by so fast and then we were asking how come it’s so fast coming to an end. There were many stories we talked amongst each another, about how the Mt Everest was superb. How the lake was magnificent in one of the days.

Since it’s Autumn, many flowers started to wither but few remained and that’s where my cameras got moving. Going to places is not all about taking scenery, one have to pay to small minor details. Flowers (nature) is an important part of it.

Along the way we came to a place where the stream was so calm and nice. I spot this lonely tree in the middle of such a vibrant and calm place. I just had to take a shot of this. This shot reminded me of how wide the world is, when you’re just a speck or in this case, you’re just a tree. Okay, wrong analogy, it could also meant I was lonely.

This shot is strange. Felt that there’s something missing with it. Maybe the hills are too high and lack of water background. But still a picture I would show nonetheless. Could have been better.

Of course, every picture is not complete without the 3 of us showcasing what we do best. To pose in front of the camera. Well, we’ve reached to another stop for photo shooting and that’s where we all have our own picture being shot at about the same location.

Meet the 3 Handsome Guys (pssst.. best one is the one on the right), Kenny Lim, Ek Wei, Daniel Chew.

Of course, have to thank our jeep driver, for driving us all along the way. Well, there were clothes for rent that day and we have to pay 10 or 20 Yuan for trying on the clothes. Well, our Jeep driver had his photo shot by me then.

A Tibetan and if only I was using a 50mm portrait lens, the bokeh would have been better. Of course, it’s not everytime one would be going back to places that we’ve been to. So what the heck, I also paid 15 yuan (after figuring the price out) to get my whole self in the suit.

Fui yoh!!! Stylish, looks like a Tibetan Cowboy (whatever that is). If I am dark enough, people might have mistaken me for one though. I am sure some of you are dying to try this kind of things. I did, and I am glad I did.

By the way did you know that there are 3 jeeps on the same course and we’re all part of the driving group going towards Chengdu. There are 3 people from Shanghai there (2 girls and 1 guy). I had problem conversing as my Mandarin is totally no good.

Here she is, one of the Shanghai girl in the traditional local costume. Pretty right? Wonders if she actually know about this photo. For guys out there, no… I don’t have her contact, you can stop wasting time asking for her contact.

But will we ever see her again in part of the journey? That depends. So come on and comment some.

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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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