Xinjiang, China’s Central Asia and incredible Tibet – Day 25/Part 1

Day 25:

Shigatse is famous for Tashilhunpo Monastery known as seat of the Panchen Lama. This is a large monastic town with temples, assembly halls, living quarters, administrative offices. At it’s peak, it housed up to 5000 monks, today’s Tashilhunpo is just shadows of past, only having 500 odd monks. Maitreya Chapel, the largest building in whole monastery complex houses a 26 meter height statue of Maitreya Buddha which is gold plated, the structure is made of tons of copper and brass, moulded on a wooden frame. This was built in early 20th century by Ninth Panchen Lama and the architecture of this fortress style building would make you amazed. I had to pay 75 Yuan to get permission for photography inside the chapel but with the condition that I could use only one DSLR body and one lens for the entire photo session, strange Chinese way of making and implementing rules . We spent around 2 hours in different chapels inside the Tashilhunpo Monastery before we start our journey through Friendship Highway towards Shegar. We passed through the ruins of Narthang Monastery, formerly known as one of the three great woodblock printing Lamaseries. Further westward we crossed Tso La and due to shortage of time skip of the detour towards Sakya Monastery. In another 30 mins we entered in Lhatse at an elevation of 4000 meter we took the break for lunch. Just beyond the town of Lhatse, slightly towards West, Highway 219 forked out from Friendship highway and crossed the most desolate part of the world through Saga, Mansarovar, Kailash towards Ali and subsequently through the high plateau of Aksai Chin get down to Tarim Basin of Xinjiang. We started winding up slowly on mountain roads towards Gyatso La (5250 meter). Crossing Gyatso La we reached to Shegar (Known as Pelbar as well) and we started experiencing bad weather and heavy snow as soon as we crossed Gyatso La. Shegar’s height was 4350 meter and it was ideal place to acclimatize before you hit Everest Base Camp. We were booked in Hotel Snowland, the best possible accommodation available in Shegar by Woeser and thanks to him, this was a life saver for us. Woeser, unlike other typical tour operators, always chose the best possible stay in every place and helped us to get most out of the most unpredictable tourist circuit in world be in terms of weather or political sensitivity.