Before leaving Shigatse, we visited the Tashilhukpo Monastery. It had the tallest Buddha in Tibet at 27.6 meters. There were several other Buddha's housed under golden roofed pagoda-like structures.
We then took to the road for Lhasa. Let us pause here a minute to describe Tibetan driving. Each road has at least two lanes, one in each direction. The normal Tibetan driver steers his car (we saw no female drivers of cars) on the yellow stripe that separates the lanes. This method makes it easy to pass slower vehicular devices, which may be a car, a motorcycle, a horse drawn cart, a tractor (or half tractor), large trucks and pedestrians. Passing a vehicular device is always, always accompanied with at least one honk of the horn, thereby scaring the vehicular device off the road not to mention the three of us in the back seat.
Now there is the issue of oncoming traffic. Hopefully, there is room for your car to pull back into the correct lane. This does not always happen leading to major adrenaline rushes. We are writing from our hotel recuperating from the driving adventures.
Today, as we were descending one of the mountain passes we came upon a semi loaded with small tractors. It was unable to make the curve and was stuck, blocking traffic in both directions. While we did not see what the road crew did, they were able to push it off to the side sufficient for our car to squeeze by.
Tonight we are repacking our bags in anticipation of beginning our 3 day train ride through China to Beijing.
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