Shigatse, Tibet

We had a short 90k morning drive into Shigatse (3836m), and spent some time exploring above the circumambulation path around the Tashilhunpo Monastery. This gave us a nice bird’s eye view of the monastery and a spot we scoped out to visit the next morning for the sunrise on the Shigaste Dzong.

Fortunately for us, our guide Tashi was raised in Shigaste and he invited us out with a few buddies of his (including one monk) at a teahouse for some grub. They were hard core coca cola drinkers (their substitute for beer) but we were feeling pretty acclimatized to the altitude and decided it was time to celebrate with a beer. The lady of the house said they had either Lhasa beer or barely beer and so we opted for the unknown barely beer. The beer came in a plastic bucket with floating grains of barely and some unintentionally smeared butter on the rim. Tea houses are dark, cold and don’t advertise that they are ‘restaurants’ so the locals were definitely getting a kick out of the fact that there were white folks taking shots of barely beer. The custom is for someone else to fill your mini glass with beer and then you take three deliberate progressive swigs until its empty; then pass the glass. Our bucket was refilled from what looked like an old canola oil jug at least three times, and the owner refused to accept any payment.