We had breakfast in our cozy communal meeting room and chatted again with Beata and Mike. So I looked at "Mathias" who was sitting there and said, "How are you feeling, Mathias?" No answer. I asked again. This time he looked around, but didn't answer. Then Mike goes, "Mathias? Do you mean Churik (sorry, I don't know the spelling)?" I said, "Churik? He's Churik? I've been calling him Mathias!" Ha ha ha!! We got a good laugh out of that. Where on earth did I get that his name was Mathias!? I'll never know but he'll always be Mathias to me. :-) Even Churik cracked a smile at all of this while it was happening so he must be feeling a little better. It reminds me of the time a group of us were doing a presentation at a dental dealer and kept calling this one guy Jose. He'd repeat this name with emphasis on certain syllables (so we thought) so we would repeat the name 'Jose' attempting to get the accent correct. We continued doing this until he finally said, "Who's Jose? My name is Carlos!" Crazy. So when we were saying good-bye and taking photos I said, "Let's get one of the two of you first then let's get Mathias to join you." That just cracks me up!!
We sat for awhile talking about 'Talladega Nights,' the movie with Will Ferrell and of course quoted lines from the movie like "Dear sweet little baby Lord...", "Dear baby Jesus", etc. We cracked ourselves up and it was fun to laugh heartily about something in our own culture rather than adapting to another. It was really cathartic. And if you haven't seen that movie, you must! It's hilarious.
So off we went Beata and Mike et al in their low-riding van and us in our Land Cruiser aka Jeep. The drivers of each vehicle are apparent friends or at minimum friendly so we stayed with them until we hit road construction that tied us up for about 30 minutes. The police and military sped up and attempted to get to the front of the line all cocky and arrogant so it secretly made us happy to see them have to wait their turn just like the rest of us. When it was all clear to go you should have seen the mad dash to be first - - apparently no rhyme or reason yet it all worked out in the end. Rules on the road are made to be broken here. So on we went up one high pass, then down again, then back up - - often at about 4800 -5100 meters! And each time we came down from a pass we'd say, "It's all down hill from here." But it never was.
We drove on to Shigatse and ate lunch; we had already been there to the monastery so no need to visit. Then on to Giatzse where we would spend the night. We visited another very peaceful monastery and I was able to spend some time alone thinking amongst a pack of sleeping dogs. They maintain their personal space so I found an available spot the appropriate distance from the next dog and sat down on the hot rocks in the square. It was so nice. Before I came on this trip I thought I'd have a lot of down time, alone time, thinking time - - but that's not the case. This is a hard trip that requires constant effort and planning. Any time alone in contemplation is a rarity. And I have a lot of things I wanted to think about and decide upon here but just haven't had the time.
Ate at a Lonely Planet pick for dinner, the Wutse Hotel. We ordered the recommended Ginger Carrot soup and were completely blown away - - it was fantastic. Everything else was only so-so. Our stomachs were full at least so we headed back to our hotel for a hot shower (!) and a good sleep since we were leaving very early the next morning: 5:30 - 6:00.
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