Our last day in Lhasa before we get on the road! I had a really good night's sleep and I felt great vis a vis the altitude, even taking steps two at a time today. Let's get this show on the road!

Bad news when I woke up this morning: my computer wouldn't boot up. I either had a virus or the Chinese had shut me down, but nothing we tried worked. So I talked to the hotel owner and he said that he would get it fixed. I was skeptical, but what could I do? It wasn't doing me any good the way it was. Off to the morning program...

More siteseeing today. Our morning stop was the Drepung monastery, once one of the largest in the world, housing 10,000 monks. It is on the hill overlooking the city, so there are some very nice views from up there. It was founded in 1416, and is still home to under 1000 monks. It's most impressive feature is the very large assembly hall, but it is full of precious artifacts, as are the other sites we saw.

After lunch we went to the Jokhang Temple, which is smack in the middle of town and not far from our hotel. It's the most revered structure in Tibet, and was FULL of pilgrims, as it apparently is all the time. The floors are slick with the yak oil that they burn in the candles, the air is full of incense, the drums bang incessantly. This thing has been around since the 600's! It houses a 3000 year old Budha, the most sacred Budha around. It was quite the scene.

We had a bit of free time before dinner. My computer wasn't back yet, so I went to the bank to get change some more money, did a bit of shopping, and visited the bike stores in the area to see what was available (and specifically if it wasn't possible to rent bikes here rather than in Katmandu...it was). In one place I made a great discovery: a map of the route we are about to take! The guy wouldn't sell it to me, but promised to make a copy and bring it to the hotel, which he did. This map will help a lot!

After dinner, my computer, and the non-english speaking computer guy were back. He had sucessfully fixed the virus and rebooted my computer.....by erasing the entire hard drive and reinstalling windows! That means that EVERYTHING that I had on the computer was gone! Drivers, photos, software, documents, maps, everything! I felt like I had been hit in the stomach. This thing was even more worthless to me now than when it wouldn't boot. I mean, no wifi drivers, no microsoft office, nothing! Stan in our group is a computer whiz, so we worked together for hours to find and reload the minimum stuff I would need to get through the trip. This web update is courtesy of a trial copy of Dreamweaver!

So, it's really, really late and I have a bike ride to do tomorrow! Here are some quick pics, clockwise from top left: our group climbing to the Drepung monatery, me at the temple, the Lhasa old town street scene, the Yak meat stand at the market, the typical paint job of these temples ceilings, and a solar powered heater that you see a lot around here because the sun is so intense.

It may be awhile before I can update again!