I am going on a 5 day (4 wheel drive) tour of the Tibetan Plateau tomorrow morning, visiting the more remote monasteries, the ancient hot springs (in the snow), sacred lakes, crossing the highest mountain passes and dropping into the Mount Everest Base camp on the way home…

It’s the end of the tourist season and many of the northern roads are already closed… If you get a map of Tibet, we will be traveling south west to Yamdrok-Tso Lake… then west through Gyantse, Shigatse and Sakya to the Nepalese border….

Full moon last night, the snow covered mountains surrounding Lhasa glowing pink and yellow.

Its cold, particularly at night, I’m currently wearing fabulous red chinese thermal underwear, a black skivvy, long warm black pants, a large red woolen scarf, a thermal fleece timberland jacket (copy), a large woolen ‘maroon monk’s blanket’ (real), a purple gortex jacket (copy), wind proof ‘north face gloves (copy) and just in case it gets really cold I have one of those fabulous military green chinese hats with the brown fur that pull down to cover your ears…

Oh and two pairs of socks …

No real problems with altitude sickness, we are at 4,300 meters now, a bit of a headache and breathlessness if you ‘hurry’ or climb stairs but I have my ventalin (which I’m using several times a day) and we are buying small oxygen tanks to take to Everest base camp (5,300 meters) just in case …

Hope you are warm and well