cultural trip

1 WHAT IS TIBET LIKE?

My Journey from dhumba lake to hidden lake with Adventure International Trekking. I recently had a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to visit Tibet. a region filled with mountains beautiful monasteries and some of the kindest people that I have ever met and yet it is also one of the most difficult places in the world to go to especially for a foreigner obtaining a permit to visit Tibet is not easy. Foreigners must also be accompanied by guides at all times. Adventure International organized a trip to Tibet for 14 of us so I traveled to Tibet with a group of foreigners and we actually divided that group into two separate groups one that would travel along a high-altitude route and one that would travel along with a low-altitude route both routes were a pretty high altitude compared to normal you know normal situations and pretty much everybody got altitudes sickness at one point or another being a part of the high-altitude route my group went all the way to Mount Everest base camp. we are here for about a week exploring the beautiful countryside it's a place that not a lot of people go to so I thought I will write a blog just talking about our journey. Lhasa is the capital of the Tibet Autonomous Region and lies at an altitude of 11,000 450 feet which is approximately 3500 meters, this makes it one of the highest cities in the world.  a UNESCO world heritage site as an extension of the Potala Palace. Since Lhasa eyes at such a high elevation, almost all of us felt a little dizzy during the first day in fact one of our friends ended up in the hospital on the first night in Lhasa with severe altitude sickness but an IV and some oxygen got him back on his feet in about a day and he was still able to continue along with us on the high altitude route. whether or not that was a good idea we'll find out later. which is the second-largest city in the Tibet Autonomous Region on the way we made a few memorable stops. Our first stop was at a viewpoint from which you observe much of the Tibetan countryside at this stop there were plenty of vendors who had yak Tibetan Mastiffs and tiny little goats on display to take pictures with at a cost, of course. Our second stop was at a crystal-clear turquoise lake called yamdrok lake no pictures can do this Lake justice, it totally blew me away and was definitely one of the highlights of this road trip. While down at the lake I gave in to the temptation to get a picture of myself sitting on a yak with the lake in the background taking a picture on a yak here costs on average about 2000NRS which is the equivalent of about 3 US Dollars. Yak is one of the main sources of food in Tibet, Tibetans eat yak meat and produce yak butter cheese milk, and yogurt yak Tibetans are basically what cows are Americans they use them for most of their food products. supposedly eating yak also helps with altitude sickness but being a vegetarian I myself did not try this if you're visiting Tibet just be aware that yak is going to be pretty much on every menu. Our third stop was at a little hiking trail that led to a beautiful glacier now this 30-minute hike would have been a piece of cake at a lower altitude but at approximately 17,000 feet or 5,000 meters, it took a huge toll on me. I overestimated how fast I could go and by the time I reached the glacier, I was feeling extremely lightheaded nauseous, and dizzy. I felt so out of it that I barely took any photos up there at least compared to the photos I normally take because it was just so much effort to stay upright and just not fall over, back in the van, I developed the worst migraine of my entire life I felt as though my head was going to explode and I spent the rest of the day hiding my head under different objects so that I wouldn't come into contact with the light and I was trying not to get sick in the van so yeah, I spent the rest of that ride just hiding.