The next day we where to drive to Zhangmu. Nothing specific planned but to soak up the scenery of the Tibetan Plateau. This is exactly what we did. The high mountains, sandy flats, the pinks, reds, oranges, greys, browns, shades of all these you wouldn’t know existed without visiting this place. Stunning views of the mountains snow covered with black highlights all cutting into the blue sky like Tibetan daggers. We passed a point and where pointed out Everest. It was uninspiring and not even so beautiful. Because it is winter there isn’t even much snow on Everest due to the high winds. We stopped in a small predominantly Tibetan town for lunch, there was no traffic on the main street but the huge numbers of parked tractors and chatting Tibetans made the town seem riotous nonetheless. Lunch in a great little restaurant, the driver flirted madly with all the girls who he clearly knew already! Food good and a family atmosphere once again~! That afternoon we arrived at another high pass more great views and the driver had become more funny and danced around singing in Tibetan holding Yak horns above his head! After a quick stop we began to head down, the scenery was numbingly beautiful the mighty Himalayas standing so tall and majestically, but it was passing by so quickly. Bob really felt it and made the driver go back up to the pass and come back down more slowly. We stopped at a particularly beautiful point built a small tower of stones and wrapped it with prayer flags. We where both looking at the mountains and simultaneously became overwhelmed and began to cry at the beauty. The rest of the road to Zhangmu became surreal after that experience.

            We drove on through snow covered road around hairy coreners and the vegetation started to change as we went down down down. First shrubs, then conifers then oaks. Snow covered hills and amazing staletights made of ice covering caves! And then just like that we where in Zhangmu.