Fortunately the shops around Kathmandu guesthouse had plenty of
shops selling and renting camping stuff. We manage to find a shop
that was willing to rent us his backpack and stuff but we had to
leave our empty luggage bags with him as guarantees. Problems
solved. It was just as well otherwise we had to find a place to
keep our luggages.
As we had asked the Nepal agency to arrrange for the China
visa, Tibet permit and a one way air ticket to Lhasa, we
didn't have any problem flying into Lhasa. The flight into Lhasa
was exiciting as we look out of the window to glance at Mt Everest
and all the other mountain ranges.
Upon reaching Gongkor airport in Lhasa, I immediately step out
of the plane only to run into the plane again. OMG the air was
so thin and I could hardly breath. As the plane was pressurized, I
didn't feel a thing until I stepped out. We have no choice but to
get out of the plane. 3 of us immediately felt sick (we
didn't know it was altitude sickness even though we had read so
much about it).
All the reading went out the window. I couldn't think straight.
We left the airport and there were touts inviting us to their
hotels. There were 2 five stars hotel and we went for the 2nd
best (different by a couple of tens) which was a China
government operated one. We still couldn't get used to the idea of
guesthouse (guess we thought we could afford and unused to the idea
of shared toilets).
We soon realised that it was a mistake to chose
the government operated hotel. Breakfast operates from 8am to 10am,
lunch operate from 11am to 1pm and dinner operates from 6pm to 8pm.
Any earlier or any later and you get nothing to eat because they
were government's servants and they practice "afternoon nap".
