building is built out of stone and timber and the thickness of the walls are about a metre wide, no wonder it took 50 years to build! I think it is the most impressive building I have ever seen, the sheer size of it for starters, as you look up the walls just seem to go on forever!

In the afternoon we were supposed to have gone to Sera Monastery where they have the debating monks which is supposed to be great to see, but to be honest we were a little Monasteried out, we had seen so many, not only here but in China as well, so we gave this one a miss and went back to rest our legs, sightseeing at altitude it really tiring, I guess we’re not going to get to much sympathy, it still beats working for a living hands down!!!

The last day in Lhasa before we went on our own way was a free

day, which was great as I suppose we had done so much it was just nice to have a relaxing day doing exactly what we wanted, I also had to buy my Mum’s birthday present and post it home so a nice mornings shopping was on the cards, I could have spent the rest of our money, it is quite hard trying not to buy things, they have such lovely stuff it would be so easy to buy loads to send home! Very much looking forward to our first lie-in for ages we were rudely awakening at 8.15 by Eric on the phone, he was complaining that we hadn’t phoned his travel company to tell them we were going on our overland trip, we had tried but couldn’t get through on the number and we already had forms to say we would be leaving which Greg had said would be fine, but this wasn’t good enough for Eric - no! I was explaining the above to him but alls he kept saying was that ‘it wasn’t in the rules for us to leave so we would have to cancel our Everest trip and take the flight we had in our name’. This went on for ages