Alright!   Today’s the day the real adventure starts!

This morning I’ll be boarding a flight to the mysterious land of Tibet where I’ll start a 7 day tour through the vast autonomous zone on my way to the Nepalese border.

A midnight stroll

At the end of the last blog I said I turned in at 8pm – well, that was a bit of a white lie.

I actually headed back out around 11pm to grab a quick snack and, if you can believe it, search for some TP.

Yup, our hostel here in Xi’an only has no toilet paper in the stalls, just a dispenser outside where you’re supposed to grab a bunch of paper before doing your business.

Alas, my search for TP ended up being futile but, no worries, I’ll be in a hotel the next 3 days so surely that won’t be issue.

Ah, what a great travel blog!   You can come on here and hear me talk about toilet paper!   Fascinating!!!

Okay, I’m getting off track…

Anyway, like I said, I also wanted to grab something to eat.

In my area of the Bell Tower in the center of the walled city, there are quite a few streets with food vendors on them so I headed to one of them.

What I didn’t expect amoung all the food vendors were vendors also doing carnival games like shoot a basketball into a pyramid of beer cans or pop the balloons to get a prize.

And what I certainly didn’t expect were people with cages of cats and dogs for sale.

The poor little animals looked so sad!

And you know me – I just wanted to take some of them home with me.

I think immigration would have something to say about it though and, besides, pretty sure I can’t fit a little kitten into my backpack so I let them be but, man, I was not ready for that site.

I did end up getting a skewer of what I can only call mystery meat which the man grilled for me and rolled in seasonings.

Of course those seasonings ended up being just a tad spicy and, well, I was almost dying so I did what any self respecting human would do it that spot.

Stopped in a Mickey D’s of course to get a strawberry sundae.

Ahhhhh… relief!

Don’t judge me!

By 12:30 I was back at the hostel and really turned in for the night.

Wakeup Email

I woke up this morning at 7am to the most beautiful notification on my phone.

The guys at my website hosting company had figured out what was causing all the problems on the backend of my website!

Yes!!!

Finally everything worked like normal again!

No more workarounds needed!

Wow, what a great way to start the day.

I was actually all packed and ready to go by 8am which was a half hour earlier than I had planned so I decided I’d take the metro to the airport instead of the taxi as i had originally planned.

Ah, yes!   A great metro adventure!

I had read that it takes about 80 minutes to get to the airport via metro while a car only takes 60 minutes but, I gotta tell you, they’re lying to you.

The metro also took 60 minutes and that included a long walk through the Northern Railway station to transfer from line 2 to line 14.

I also got conflicting reports on whether the metro station at terminal 5 was open or closed and I’m happy to report that it was indeed open.

Anyway, the fare was only 8 yuan which is about $1.60 which is ten times cheaper than the taxi option.

More immigration fun

I arrived at the airport at just before 8:30 for my 11:00 flight.

An hour and a half – surely nothing could go wrong, right?

Right?

Well, the lines to get through security and immigration were minimal but getting through immigration – well, that’s another matter.

To get through there are two gates 2m apart.   You scan your passport at the first gate, it opens, you walk through and then the second gate opens and you’re done.

Well, that second gate didn’t open for me and instead the light started flashing red.

Hmm, that’s never good.

In all my travels I’ve never had an issue getting through immigration but it looks like I was about to go through that adventure.

The immigration officer had me back track through the first gate and head over to another immigration officer in a booth a few aisles down.

She didn’t speak English and called another officer over who, of course, also didn’t speak English.

I just smiled and looked on.

Finally the senior officer pantomimed a square in the air which I though meant he wanted my laptop but then he uttered what I presume is the only English he knew saying “permit, permit”.

Ahhhhhh… yes, of course!

They needed to see my Tibetan permit before I was allowed to board my flight.

It all made sense now!

I handed him my permit and then watched inquisitively as the two of them looked it over comparing the info on it to my passport while taking photos of both plus the computer screen they scanned it into.

And then – they waved me through.

Ah, yes, immigration fun.

Xi’an to Lhasa

At 10:15 I boarded my flight to Lhasa.   I was seat 38C which you would assume was way in the back of the plane but it was actually the 10th row in the middle of the 20 row aircraft.

Interesting row numbering but, hey, I’ll take it.

Again, as with my other flight on China Eastern the other day, they served us a nice hot meal despite the flight only taking just over 3 hours.

Soon after lunch, as we lowered through the clouds past a magical mountainous range, the turbulence started rocking us.

Just seeing those mountains outside the plane window immediately brought home the fact that, very soon, I’d actually be in Tibet.

I began to get excited!

I mean, Tibet and Nepal have always seemed like this magical far away lands and in just 20 minutes I’d be stepping foot in the region.

Making new friends

At just after 2pm we touched down.

I had arrived!

I was on Tibetan soil and I was smiling from ear to ear.

The 24c weather I had enjoyed in Xi’an was now replace by 9c weather here but, with the sun shining bright, you couldn’t even really tell it was that much colder.

Now, in Tibet you have to be part of the tour as, with exception of walking through the downtown Lhasa streets, you’re not allowed to go anywhere without a guide.

So that meant I’d be waiting at the airport for a bit for the next shuttle van taking us into the city.

A guide greeted me as I left the secure area and told me to wait in the chairs to the side while he waited for others to arrive.

He said it would only be a few minutes…

It was close to two hours.

No worries, though, because I actually got to meet some other travelers who were also waiting to be brought into town.

They had all booked trips with the same tour company but, as we soon discovered, we were on different itineraries.

While I was going for 7 days through Everest Base Camp on my way to the Nepalese border, others were going on 8 and 9 day journeys that didn’t go as far west and instead looped back into Lhasa.

I met Nina and Oscar, a couple from Warsaw who have been studying in Singapore the last few years.   In fact, this trip through Tibet was their graduation gift to themselves.

There was also Liam and Quinn who, as it turns out, were also from the Vancouver area as I am.

Over the next couple of hours we just chatted about all things travel related – places we’d been, adventures we’d go on, and dreams of future trips.

So, yeah, the time passed by quickly.

Hello Tibet!

At 4pm we headed outside, presented with welcome silk scarves, and boarded our shuttle van.

Now, this shuttle van was the epitome of luxury.

It has massive leather seats each equipped with all sorts of things including, if you can believe a back and butt massager.

Sadly, our tour bus over the next week won’t be quite as luxurious but, for a brief fleeting moment, I got super excited at the prospect of driving multiple hours a day in luxury.

Dammit, now I’m spoiled and I know what’s out there!   Everything else is going to pale in comparison to it.

We arrived at the Xingding hotel at 5pm and checked in to our rooms.

When I checked in, the front desk lady noted that I was in a shared room so I did an inner happy dance at the fact I wouldn’t be dinged with an additional 150usd single supplement charge.

I got to my room and, to my surprise, my roommate hadn’t checked it yet.

Sweet!   I got first choice of bed.

After getting set up, I headed out into town with Liam and Quinn in search of some dinner.

It took about 45 minutes to walk into the main part of town but we didn’t care, I mean, we were in Tibet and there was plenty to see and plenty to talk about.

After a bit of confusion finding the place I had mapped out, the Tibetan Family Restaurant, we finally made it there.

By the way, this top rated restaurant is actually called Lhasa Restaurant and it’s upstairs in a building with the only signage outside being the word “food”.

I chose a couple of dishes – a yak salad and potatoes with egg and cheese along with a banana milkshake.

My yak salad came out first and I made the mistake of biting into what I thought was a nut.

Yeah, it was a Szechuan pepper.

Oh.   My.   God.

So spicy!

Thank God I had that milkshake to ease the pain but, damn, I wasn’t ready for that.

My bad.

My other dish didn’t actually come out until we had all done our food.   It was literally like a Spanish frittata – a layer of potatoes and eggs covered in ooey, gooey, melted cheese.

Mmmmm… ooey.

At 8:30 we had arrived back at the hotel and, again to my surprise, my roommate still hadn’t arrived.

I went down to the front desk to ask if they were checking in tonight and they told me no so, oh happy days, I would have the room to myself tonight.

I took the free time tonight to finally pop together yesterday’s blog as I was already a day behind.

For me, because I blog daily, one of the worst things that can happen is to fall behind.

It’s not just that everything isn’t as fresh in my mind anymore but, as the blogs pile up, it can become a daunting task to tackle the backlog.

I only mention this because this blog you’re reading right now was actually typed up on the morning of day 5 – almost two days behind.

But, I got it done!   I mean, you’re reading it after all, right?

Thanks for reading.

Tomorrow it’s off to explore a couple of monasteries on the outskirts of the capital city.

Should be fun!