Nepal and Tibet

Everyone, including Robert, is moaning and groaning about the howling dogs that kept them awake throughout the night. I heard nothing. I slept really well, until I awoke at twenty to eight. We head off to breakfast, feeling relaxed about our late start today. After our very plain meal, I sit on the steps with the son of the proprietor, and blow bubbles with him. He goes from being quite shy and almost frightened by the bubbles to laughing as he tries to catch them. I give him the bottle, knowing that he is the only child in the place. Within minutes, I hear him crying and find he has spilt the liquid and has run to his mother. She is probably cursing me now.

Today is our last full day in Tibet. We drive off along roads similar to those we have encountered all the way along the Friendship Highway. We share the car today with our second guide. He is pleasant company. We wind our way around a high mountain pass or two. On one, we notice many old items of clothing, especially shoes. Karma tells us that it is a custom to leave something at a high pass for good luck. I feel this is making the mountain passes into rubbish dumps. We can still see the high part of the range with the snowy mountain tops but most of the time we can just see the velvety brown rolling hills and lovely green valleys. We see children leaving their school grounds as if to walk home and it is only the middle of the day. Here, as in many Asian countries, they must have two sessions so as to gain as much use from the buildings as possible.

A little further along the road, we stop for our last picnic. We are just gathering everything up after we finish, when we are joined by the big group of children we saw leaving the school about six to eight kilometres back. They converge on us in droves. We all give them the left overs of our picnic food as we will not be needing it any more on this trip. Robert sees one eyeing off his Blue Care cap, which our friend, Faye, had given him before we came away, so he gives that away too. His smile shows us that he believes that he has received the best present of all.