A day with pretty much no Buddhas

Hard to go a day without Buddha in Tibet, but we pretty much managed. We're leaving tomorrow and though we don't at all regret having come, we are very ready to leave.

Today we went to a sacred lake, which is about 120 KM from Lhasa. It's called Yamdrok and to get there you have to drive for about 2 hours through and up into the Himalayas. The mountains are incredible, they seem to go on forever and they're not all of the same type. We started collecting rocks, because I started by finding some flaky sedimentary rock, but we found lots of other things, including river rocks, at 15,000 ft above sea level, with no river in sight.

We heard about how beautiful the lake was, which it is, but the place where you view it was crowded, filthy, full of busses belching exhaust and honking their horns (because it's illegal to drive in Tibet without honking you horn every 10 seconds), and aggressive vendors selling all kinds of junk or wanting you to have your picture taken with their yak. I have to admit I did take a picture with the yak.

SO we drove beyond where the busses turn around and got a much nicer view. It's a huge lake, surrounded by mountains, with the snowpeaked mountains in the distance. It's bright blue and smooth as glass. There wasn't a single boat on it for some reason. I heard there was a huge hydroelectric dam around the bend, but we didn't see it.

We ate at a local restaurant which had very good food and the most unbelievably disgusting bathroom I've ever encountered. I didn't take a picture, you'll just have to take my word for it.

Got back to our uncomfortable, but traditionally decorated, hotel room and we're ready to pack. I'll have some final impressions on Tibet and some more pictures tomorrow.