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This morning we drove the short distance along good roads to Gyatse. This town has less Chinese influence than Shigatse and has quite a large Tibetan old town. It also has a 600-yo monastery which we visited with Dopjar leading us again. Pelkhor Chode has a large main temple with a prayer hall in the centre, with three chapels leading off to the sides. The chapels contain large buddha statues, and the building is quite dark inside making some of the chapels feel a bit sinister and intimidating with several large statues staring down at you. The walls are darkened due to the butter lamps but there are beautiful murals underneath - they look like they could do with a good scrubbing.

The other main sight in the monastery complex is the Kumbum stupa, which is the stupa of 100,000 deities. It looks like a huge ziggeraut of 9 levels. Each level has several small chapels around it, each containing a statue of a buddha. There are 75 chapels altogether, but we didn't go in all of them! There was a great view over the town and the valley from the top floor though.

There's also the Dzong, which is a ruined fortress on a huge rock in town that is worth climbing up to for great views, but it looked like a nasty enough walk even if we weren't at 4000m, so we didn't go up there.