Day 12 – Shigatse to Everest View Point to Lhatse

We had breakfast at Manasarovar Hotel.  The buffet was decent and my compatriots seemed to enjoy the hard-boiled eggs.  I have no special affection for the bouncy-rubbery-oddly-shaped item.  It’s difficult for me to appreciate the taste, the texture, the dryness and the slight rotting smell.  I thought I imagined the last bit until I found the following at eHow:

Chicken eggs produce a sulfurous smell when they are boiled for too long. Overcooking the egg coagulates the egg’s protein and creates an excess of hydrogen sulfide in the whites of the egg. The sulfide reacts with the iron in the yolk. This leads to an unpleasant odor and a green sulfur coat on the yolk.

Maybe I never had a professionally cooked hard-boiled egg before.

But I think it’s good to try food which you don’t like once in a while. Your previous dislike might have been prejudiced and you are giving the food and yourself another chance.  One would have a more convenient life with less dislikes.

Just the other day, I bought some soya bean drink.  Nothing special but I specially picked an almond flavoured one. Now, I am known to dislike the taste of almond flavoured items like almond pudding and almond jelly.  But for some particular reason that day, I decided to retest my taste buds.  Well, I still don’t like it but it’s not so bad that I couldn’t finish the drink.  Maybe it is an acquired taste.

At 9am, we set off from Shigatse for the long road to Everest View Point.

The kilometer stones I have grown to depend on for my riding trips can be found in Tibet.  Over in Tibet, the distance is calculated from Shanghai.  Why not Beijing?

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Day 11 – Lhasa to Yamdrok Lake to Karola Glacier to Gyantse to Shigatse

The girls’ room power tripped more than 10 times during the night.  They complained they shouted for help but only the dogs in the city howled in response.  Well, our rooms were quite a distance apart and the television probably drowned their voices.  Sorry!

After breakfast in our rooms, Dawa and driver picked us up in a 4WD Toyota 4500.  We would be doing a return overland trip across Tibet from Lhasa to Gyantse, Shigatse and EBC during the next few days.  Today, we would be passing through Tsang region via the Southern Friendship Highway.

Our first stop for the day was a very scenic lake.  I couldn’t really remember if it is part of Yamdrok-tso.

We continued our drive to Kamba-la (4700m) for a bird-eye’s view of Yamdrok-tso.

Ahh, breathtaking scenery of turquoise blue lake with snow-capped mountains.  The coiling scorpion shaped Yamdrok lake is almost the size of Singapore and can be circumambulated in around seven days by pilgrims.  Yamdrok lake is one of the four holy lakes in Tibet.  The other three are Lhamo La-tso, Namtso and Manasarovar.

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