AFVOA Newletters of Year 2013

Page 13 of 61 around Rs.5/-. (Nepali currency to a minute). At current exchange rates it works out to around Rs.3/- in Indian currency. Again, once you leave Nylam you cannot make a call back home for the next 3 to 4 days as there are no facilities en route unless your tour operator is carrying a satellite telephone. At Nylam there are again a number of ISD booths including a govt of China Telecom office which works on govt timings and charges are 2 Yuan (approx Rs18/- i.e. Rs.9/- to a Yuan) for a minute. Private booths will charge from 3 to 20 Yuan a minute. With the Chinese you need to do hard bargaining for whatever you buy. No shopkeeper knows English and the price quoted will be shown to you on a calculator. Then you punch the figure you are ready to pay and the haggling continues from thereon till you make the deal. For all you know the shop next door may be selling the same item at half the price. Shopkeepers Chinese particularly are discourteous and rude to the core. If you are not buying anything they just show you the door. This in spite of the fact that their main business is from Indian pilgrims like us and that too for hardly a few months in a year. Wonder what they do the rest of the year! After a hot and sumptuous breakfast we are ready for the next part of the journey. The vehicles are all lined up and ready to take off. For ease of identification, the vehicles have been numbered serially from 1 to 24 both in the front and back.. Each yatri is allowed a back pack and a huge bag for the remaining luggage. Back pack travels with you in your vehicle. If you are lucky you may be having a driver who can speak a smattering of English and Hindi which would make your journey for the next one week a little bit more interesting. We were lucky that way. The same vehicle and the same driver from the border where you are picked up till you are dropped back at the border. Incidentally all the drivers are Tibetans without exception. The road from border to Nylam was totally hill road winding all the way with 2 lane traffic climbing 5000 feet in 38 km .From Nylam onwards there are no steep climbs. Immediately after you leave Nylam you enter the great Tibetan plateau. The roads are long and winding, going over hill and over dale till you hit another mountain pass at a slightly higher altitude. The climb is slow. There is no traffic on the road . The Chinese have built a real good road (except a 50 km stretch still to be black topped) all the way up to Manasarovar and from there to Darchen base camp from where you embark on the Parikrama. Anyway that's still a way off. On the road as far as the eye can see, there is no habitation nor any greenery. Dry and arid all the way except where township has been created. After Nylam you don't get to see any tree. In fact one tends to wonder where the yaks and sheep find food. Hardly any vegetation. One gets to see a herd of yak or sheep here and there. Sometimes you see a partly frozen river flowing by the side of the road. In the distance you see ice capped mountains some of them very picturesque. Our next halt is Dongba 335 km away. We pass Lalungla pass (16000 ft). We also pass by a huge lake, Paigu-Tso and the Brahmaputra River. On the way we are served lunch, piping hot at a so called guest house.