side of the border. We found a great hotel overlooking the valley, and after looking at a few rooms, we found a corner one with windows on two sides looking both down into and right up the valley. To our intense joy the toilet was clean and western, which was an absolute dream, and there was a hot shower - in the same cubicle as the toilet interestingly, but very welcome nonetheless! After about 3 hours under the shower and an equal amount of time simply resting and watching the view, we headed down to the hotel restaurant for some beers and food. It was such a joy to be back at reasonable altitude. As well as all the things I mentioned earlier that altitude does, it also means you can’t really drink - one beer tends to give you a hangover after about an hour!!! So it was nice to indulge in some Lhasa beer - from the brewery on the roof of the world!!!! We also couldn’t resist some western food as well - Veggie cutlet with chips and salad - went down very nicely!! And after such a hard five days it

was early to bed for a goodnight’s sleep!

The next day in Zhangmu was spent just relaxing and really not doing much at all - and then the following day we got up early and managed to hitch a ride across the border - pretty essential really as the no-mans land in between the Chinese border post and the Friendship bridge into Nepal was 8km down a really bad and steep road!! Customs was the usual Chinese disorganised mess - with a big queue and only one person checking passports, with lots of pushing and shoving - there was a big group of old Nepali Pilgrims who had been to Mount Kailash in Western Tibet - an important Buddhist mountain and lake. It was really funny to see them all togged up in (probably fake) North Face gear!! There was a Chinese customs lady who seemed to be sitting there doing nothing, until she handed a piece of paper to Hel and asked her if she could sing this song!!! Turned