22 November – 24 November 2013

We started the day in the nearby Somewhere Else café with a delicious big breakie. We wandered around town looking for a good deal for renting bikes, but decided it might be more relaxed to simply walk to the Napa Hai Lake, 7km north of town. We wandered out to the main road and walked through a part of town filled with mechanics shops and truck stops. 


After two hours of walking the lake was still not in sight, so we hitchhiked towards our destination. We hopped off and hearing about an angry stone wielding Tibetan villager who demands a bogus entrance fee we walked across farm fields and found a path leading towards the scenic area. On arrival we were presented with a huge expanse of grassland, but with no water in sight. We walked behind an expensive ticket booth and found a nice spot to enjoy the view and a snacky lunch. One of the main draws to the lake is the rare black necked crane which we saw despite the lack of water.

We hitched a ride back towards town where we found a Nepalese Indian restaurant with a very charismatic and talkative owner, and enjoyed a massive pot of masala chai by the burning fire. From there we went straight to an Italian restaurant for our Friday treat: pizza and beer. Again we were the only customers but were entertained by a charismatic Italian expat. Surprised that this pizza expert didn’t have a wood fire pizza oven, we asked why and discovered that, since Chinese people eat pizza at all times (including for breakie), it is simply not possible to keep such an oven going all day long. After watching the locals doing their daily work-out, we went to bed.

The next morning we headed back to the same breakfast place, this time with Rik. We enjoyed swopping great stories before hopping on the bus to the Songzanlin monastery. We wandered around the huge complex which houses 600 monks – by the busyness it seems we might have seen them all. Grand statues of various Buddhist deities abound, we headed to the roof tops of the temples to appreciate the mountain view amongst golden shimmering statues. 



After losing ourselves in the backstreets of the village where the monks live we hopped back on the bus into town. We got off in the new town and found a tasty pot of noodles in the cheap street eatery. After picking up snacks for the bus ride, we headed back to our hostel to grab our bags and the pants we had left drying on the roof and set off for the bus station. We caught our bus at 4pm and spent the rest of the day/night lying down and snoozing.