We arrived in the Tibetan capital of Lhasa via a flight from Kathmandu. This surely must be the most spectacular scheduled flight in the world as we flew right over the Himalayas and caught a magnificent view of Mount Everest whilst doing it. The approach into Lhasa was also amazing as we flew through a valley and over spectacular lagoons and rivers. The drive from the airport to Lhasa was also amazing with it's barren mountain landscape and we really felt like we were in another world. Lhasa itself is 3700m above sea level which presents altitude acclimitisation problems and hence we are here for five days before we venture higher. As in South America, Stuart had no problems but Jo felt it straight away and was a little dizzy and not always 100% for the first few days. However, an Australian woman in our group faired worse and fainted in the bank whilst changing money and virtually collapsed into Stuart. Fortunately she recovered soon afterwards but it shows the effects of altitude can be quite serious for some. The effects of Tibetan food are not always that great either as Stuart, whilst escaping the altitude sickness promptly went down with stomach problems on the first day and he certainly wasn't alone in our group during our time here. Everyone recovered soon enough but the food can be just as much as a problem as the altitude here. There's a surprising amount of western influence in Lhasa, especially when looking at the shops and many are driving around in pretty decent cars and you get the impression that this is a place that has changed beyond recognition during the last few years. The railway line from Bejing is about to open which will no doubt have even more effect on lifestyles and mobility here. Indeed, much of Lhasa is quite planned and dull, except for the valley setting but the surrounding monastaries, palaces and the Buddhist monks and pilgrims make this a fascinating place. We visited The Potala palace, home (or rather was home) to the Dali Lama, three monastaries plus a walk around the local temple where pilgrims walk around twirling their prayer wheels, always walking in the same direction. Some of the ultra devoted will even walk around and lie on the ground, prostrate every three paces and say their prayers. The monastaries are more interesting for their settings than whats inside them and you rather get pushed out of the way here by the rather rude Chinese tourists. One of the monastaries, the Sera featured Buddhist monks debating. It was a rather surreal site watching them and surprisingly they get rather aggressive with each other at times, although we suspect they were rather hamming it up for us watching tourists. The best by far however was the Ganden monastry, the highest in the world at 4500m. It really was a spectacular site in the mountains and just what you imagined a Tibetan monastry to be like. The walks around the monastry and the scramble to the mountain, another 200m above was even more spectacular and gave us some of the best views of the entire trip and made for a truly fabulous day. We can't wait to get even higher in the Himalayas after seeing this! World Cup watching has also been possible here fortunately although, with Tibet being seven hours ahead of the UK, timings haven't always been kind. Indeed, Stuart couldn't find a bar open late enough to watch the England v Sweden game at 3am and had to watch it in our hotel room with the sound turned down so he couldn't wake Jo up. Given another pretty woeful England performance perhaps sleep was the better option! We left on 26th June via 4WD Landcruiser to go deeper into the Himalayas.