March 31, 2007
Rest Day in Zongdian: sightseeing monastery
Since not too many places are open at 0800, we have breakfast at the Tibet Cafe. Also having breakfast is a couple lugging suitcases and they asked us for directions to the Tibet Inn, he is Dutch and she Thai. A single man, also Dutch, has hiked in the Sawtooth Mountains (in Idaho near us). He hiked with an "expert in survival" and they got lost and had to eat ants, biting the heads off first! He'll do well in eating bugs if he continues to SE Asia and Cambodia.
We walk up the main street, find an ATM. We want plenty of cash as we cycle toward Tibet, we may need to bribe the officials to let us go on without a Tibetan Travel Permit (TTP) or to pay a fine if we are discovered at the checkpoints.
After this, we caught the #3 local bus to the 600 year old monastery, there's a 30 yuan entrance fee. Many steps up to the temples, the morning light hitting the golden decorations just right. We wander around and go to the White Stupa off to a side and find the stupa surrounded by prayer wheels and prayer flags. The flags are strung to a corner of the stupa and shrubs on the mound of broken rocks with carved prayers. Some flags almost disintegrating, others look as if they were strung up yesterday.... very colorful of blue, red, green, yellow and white.
Patrick takes our rear tires to find a shop that has the tools needed to change the free-wheels. He is successful as seen by his black hands when he returned. Lunch again in Old Town, then Rachel goes shopping for more supplies especially AAA batteries for our headlights. We need to be able to rely on those the next month of cycling, we might need to be sneaking past checkpoints at night as well as free camping.
Late afternoon, we take our stuff to the post office to lighten our load. Including this paper journal, the next volume will be the journey after Zondgian.
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