Mount Everest but then decided to go and get some food and have a beer to celebrate! Wow it really is mad this altitude one beer and you end up feeling tipsy!

The next day was pretty hectic as we were due to met Eric early for another days sightseeing, we were off to Drepung Monastery and the Potala Palace. The Drepung Monastery is about 5km out of the city centre and is nestled into the hillside at the foot of Mt Ganpoi has amazing views over the city below. This is one of the largest Monasteries, was founded in 1416 and is home to thousands of monks, it is incredibly impressive and has an enormous amounts of steep steps!

One thing that had become very apparent to us was the amount of extremely poor people in Tibet, the entrance is full of begging children all wanting you to take

their picture for money or some just come and say ’money’ and wave their hands at you, it is really hard to have to walk past this poor little kids, we gave money to some but it is impossible to give to all. As we were going round the Monastery it becomes clear that these places have money and lots of it, as you go through the various rooms the cost per photo increases the further into the temples you go, which is fair enough but there are huge amounts of cash placed into each important statue and groups of monks counting the cash on the exit of the various rooms. We also visited the kitchen which was massive and nothing like you’d expect a kitchen to be, forget your western luxuries this is basic but never the less it is functional and they manage to feed all the monks each and everyday. We had all been disturbed about the number of begging people and kids so Anna asked if the monks made extra food to help feed some of these kids and to all of our surprise the answer was no, we all just looked at each