some lunch and wait for an hour. We had well nice cheese and vegetable toasty, and about 2½ hours later we had new visas, a tourist permit, and we were on the road to Lhatse!!!

What was supposed to be a 3 hour drive turned into a really hard four and a half hour one! Once again the scenery was stunning though, we spend most of the afternoon driving down a rough dirt track following this big river with huge mountains either side. Towards the end we came out of the valley, and saw some big mountains with snow on, and a great thunderstorm with lightning forking round the mountains!! This was some of the best scenery so far! We had been warned that the accommodation would get more basic as we progressed, and Lhatse was the first rung on this ladder. We decided not to negotiate the rather grimy looking shower black across the muddy car park!!! And we had said goodbye to running water as well, bowls

it is then!! After another café style Chinese we were up nice and early for a journey to Everest Base Camp, or Mount Qomolangma base camp as the locals know it!!

I think this section was the hardest, as soon as we left Lhatse, we had to drive over another 5000m pass. The difference this time is that the road was being worked on at the time, and was in a terrible state. Now the interesting thing about Tibetan roadworks is that they don’t close the road, they actually just work on it while the traffic drives over!! Very Chaotic as you can imagine - their driving is not particularly calm anyway, and they use the horn more than any other country I’ve been to!! At one point we got stuck in the mud. No problem says the driver, 4 wheel drive. So he gets out and locks his left front hub, and drives out dead easy! After see-ing him do this twice, I wondered why he only locked the left one. Turns