Spent a couple of days in Xiahe, a town on the China/Tibet border that contains more Tibetans than Lhasa (the capital of Tibet). Driving through, it looks like a normal Chinese town until you reach the Tibetan monastery, then it just turns completely Tibetan.
We met up with another Dragoman truck headed in the opposite direction, towards Kathmandu so there was a joint BBQ / drinks on the first night and a very late start on the second day. As it turned out the two drivers there were the two I’d later travel round India with, then on to Nepal
Walked off a hangover around the Tibetan monastery, went back to bed, had lunch, went back to bed, had dinner*, joined the locals in a 3km hike round all the prayer wheels in town. All that praying seemed to work as one of the girls from the other truck kindly shared a block of mature cheddar cheese she’d carried from the UK, so i got a decent slice of cheese on toast for supper.
* We ate in a tiny Tibetan restaurant amongst the monks and pilgrims. Had a very nice yak steak, with yak butter tea and two round brown lumps – didn’t ask which part of the yak they were from.
