Oct. 30- Last Day in Tibet

We woke up at 8 on Thursday to drive back to Lhasa. We ate breakfast which consisted of yak baozi, steamed buns, and rice porridge and left the hotel at 9 AM. We took a different route back that followed the Brahmaputra River through the mountains. This route was weird because there are checkpoints every hour or so that monitor how fast the drivers are going. If they are caught driving too fast at the first checkpoint they are fined 400 kuai. If they are caught driving too fast a second time their license is revoked. The drivers have all seemed to find a way around this system though. We were driving too fast every time so we just pulled to side of the road for a 10 minute "picture taking opportunity." As we got out to take pictures several other cars pulled over as well for a 10 minute break as well. The only checkpoint that we didn't have to stop for was when we ate lunch for 30 minutes. Also along this road we came to a section where the road had cracked a lot from the cold so they had taken out sections of it. It was like driving through a Tetris game because all the patches of road were shaped in squares and rectangles. It was a very bumpy-zig zaggy- off roady trip for about an hour. The coolest thing about this different way back was that we got to see more villages and people. I saw a woman herding sheep along the river on a very steep mountain incline and, like the dog at Potala Palace, they made it look so easy.

We got back Lhasa at 2:15, dropped off our stuff, and headed back to Barkor street for some last minute shopping. I got a few more gifts for friends and family and then we walked around the street stalls for something to celebrate Halloween with. We came upon a cart with older looking Tibetan objects and Selina bought skulls prayer beads made from yak bone and I bought a set of 3 skeletons made from yak bone. After about an hour of walking around I noticed how much thinner my wallet was. It's amazing how much money you can spend without even realizing it!!! We returned to Tashi for dinner and got our respective teas and pancakes. We also got a very popular Tibetan dish called Tsampa. It's barley flour rolled into little balls and then you put in your mouth and then drink yak butter tea to help it dissolve. I'm not a huge fan of butter but I tried it anyways. The barley flour wasn't bad but the tea was like drinking liquid butter so we decided to dip our barley flour in the honey from our pancakes instead. Barley is the biggest crop that the Tibetans grow in their fields. We took a rickshaw back to the hotel and packed our things because we had to get up early for our train. This time I made sure that my triple checking didn't leave anything behind!