The half day we spent in Shigatse was finished with a relatively short drive to the next town we where staying at. The drive again quite beautiful. High plateaus and rushing rivers that closed in around you then opened up again unexpectedly. In the rivers I saw several Yak skin flat bottom boats, both where about 1.5m long but almost completely square. The first was being rowed upstream by a very tough looking old woman. Upstream up the freezing river, it was impressive. The second was just being used to take things across the river to a small village on the other side. The road wound on and then we started going up up up! We seemed to be approaching a sort of pass. “This pass coming up is 5199m” that’s as high as Everest base camp! I never dreamed id go so high because of my feet. There I was standing at 17060 feet! Of course photos of the amazing views of the himalays and so many prayer flags had been put up! This made the phrase high point of the trip take on a new meaning. We arrived in Tinggri about an hour before sunset. I dumped my bags after checking in and took a walk. The hills where a fantastic yellow brown as they where lit up by the sun. I walked up to a store and looked in. All calculations where done on a big old wooden counter thing. I baught a big pack of matches with a photos of grazing Yaks! Walking on I crossed a bridge across a big river frozen solid! As I was crossing a herd of very very wooly goats followed by their Sheppard crossed in the opposite direction. An old woman crossing the bridge stopped and smiled and waved. I indicated she was wearing a nice belt, it was small and worn. I baught it from her. Then she indicated she had another belt to show me. She indicated for me to come with. She took me to her house which turned out to be the place I purchased the Yak matches! The belt was huge and very nice. I baught that too. Its very intricate and about 30cm long with a single precious stone set in the top. It seems quite old. I got it for about $20. That nite we slept at a hotel that also had a blackout due to frozen power station! Fortunately they had a generator, this obviously happened often. They also had no water. Toilet water was braught in a bucket and by morning was frozen over. Fortunately they had extra blankets. The restaurant we had dinner at was brilliant, we ate in the kitchen come living room, come bedroom, which had a great old yak dung stove that made the place warm! They cooked us up hot soup it was very good! We where sleeping at about 4300m so I had some headaches when I went to sleep but was fine when I woke in the morning.