This was another long ride on the bus. As we were getting further and further away from “civilization” the facilities were becoming extremely basic. The restrooms were literally just holes in the ground that smelled ever so slightly (understatement of the year!) Don’t tell anyone, however, most of our stops were actually made in the wild as it was cleaner and less smelly to do it this way.

We stopped at a small town for lunch and to stock up on snacks for the journey. In the afternoon we were delayed for about 3 hours by roadwork, so we all stretched our legs and meditated. After 3 hours, Dawa made a decision that we needed to get moving again to maintain our schedule, and as he walked down the road to where the roadblock was, miraculously the work suddenly stopped and we were able to be on our way again.

An interesting observation was that in the middle of nowhere there would be a small town of houses that were in the process of being built. They were all empty and the suspicion was that the Chinese are building these towns along the route to cater to more Tourism in the future. It reminded me of the movie “A Field of Dreams” where it was said that “if you build it, they will come.” Another interesting detail was that all of a sudden you would see huge banks of solar panels in the middle of nowhere and seemingly miles from any towns or villages.

The hotel was pretty basic, with no electricity or hot water from 11pm to 6am. We had dinner at a local Tibetan restaurant next to the hotel.