After a few days in Lhasa it was time to move on. The next stop was shigatse. The next biggest city. The drive was magnificent. Sharp Brown hills that are high enough to be mountains surround the planes we are driving on. The road is excellent but nothing but the occasional truck or donkey cart uses it. There are many valleys you can see all with ice waterfalls. Winter has set in and the water in these side valleys doesn’t flow. The place at times seems like it is all a brown grey, I take photos in color but they seem as if they have been taken in black and white. But it is a different colorless landscape to Lhasa. You cant describe it properly. Being there is the only way to properly understand. Down in the main valley there are sand flats punctuated by turquoise rivers. The color of the river matches the beats around the necks of the smiling locals. The people and what they wear all seem to flow and interconnect with the landscape. The striped aprons the women wear match the sedimentary layered rocks of the mountains. Some people contrast to nature some just disappear. Then at some point you look to the sky. It’s a different blue. A blue I usually only see in dreams. Small yak black clouds float across. It seems these clouds are only there if you look for them in the sea of blue sky, an ocean in a land locked country.

            Looking carefully into the side valleys you can see old Tibetan settlements. Mud houses some painted white some not. They blend in so well sometimes you don’t know if they are rocks or houses. As we near or enter small towns donkey carts follow tractors both towing trailors of goods or people. They often go the same speed perhaps so the drivers can talk to each other. The further we go from Lhasa the slower life seems to go for the Tibetans.