Tibet # 4 Mountain and River Scenery

Our tour guide Lobsang posed for a photo on our bike trip along the Lhasa River.

Randal and I posing in front of the new Newu Bridge linking the train station to Lhasa City.

We continued riding along the river and across the bridge (no photos allowed on the bridge) and then along the other side of the river until I got tired. Notice what we have on our heads; no helmets! It is the first and hopefully last time we bike without them but the bike rental shops don’t provide them. My seat was too low and none of the up hill or down hill gears worked. So after about an hour when I got tired and we were about to begin what looked like a climb, I said I needed to stop. Randal said he needed to stop too but he wouldn’t have said so! Lobsang could have ridden for the rest of the day. But we turned around and rode back to town. I guess we rode about 10 miles or so because we rode about an hour and a half but stopped for photos and a phone call from our friends Stella and Bill.

Stopping for a rest, water and to let a giant truck go by.

There was no shoulder on the road and though there wasn’t so much traffic, there were big trucks and people often seem to drive crazy. Anything coming up in back would blast its horn.

Looking across to the Potala Palace, the Winter Palace of the Dali Lama.

We did a tour of the Potala Palace the day I am writing this. Nothing is allowed to obstruct the view from the Palace so there are no tall buildings in the city of Lhasa anywhere near the Palace; and none that we’ve seen so far anywhere. Even the Newu Bridge had to meet the height regulations. More about the Palace in another email.

The road up to the Ganden Monastery. It was a beautiful drive and the Monastery was quite interesting to visit. More about that in another email too.

Driving back from the Monastery along the Lhasa River.

The sky was so incredibly blue.

The view of Lhasa from the Potala Palace.