The road to God-Knows-Where

The bus cost 826 Yuan. The Korean girl who spoke Chinese paid 760, the Chinese geologist from Beijing who spoke English paid 726, the lovely Tibetan girl who force-fed us paid 500.

The bus took exactly 72 hours, arriving at Lhasa's obscene north bus station at 6pm today.

Highlights:

- The electricity on the bus going at around 5000m.
- Overnighting at 5000m since the headlights weren't working.
- The leaking radiator on the bus. Had to stop at every stream and lake to refill it.
- Niyma, the lovely Tibetan girl, walking 300m to a lake to fill up the radiator since the drivers were too lazy.
- People spitting on the floor, bleeding on the floor, throwing rubbish on the floor, throwing cigarettes on the floor.
- Eating at a dingy restaurant full of prostitutes and a seedy old guy trying to grope them in turn in some shithole in the middle of nowhere.
- Gong-Zhu, the most beautiful girl I've ever met (according to my definition of beauty... which happens to include self-inflicted cigarette burn marks all up both arms).
- Learning to play 'beat the landlord' (a card game), with Gong-Zhu's 14 y.o.-ish sister sitting with a mean look on her face, a cigarette hanging out of her mouth, slapping cards down with some ferocity.
- Running into Dirk (the German guy who we kept meeting in Kyrgyzstan) in Lhatse.
- Breakfast in Lhatse. Decided to eat Tibetan - Tsampa (fried barley flour), Yak butter tea, Sugar. Quite a portion... obviously we're starting to look like anorexic junkies, and the old Tibetan woman took pity on us.
- PSB checkpoints - no one bothered to check our papers.