The Yamdrok-Tso Lake, southwest of Lhasa.  This day-long trip from Lhasa to Shigatse made the entire Tibet trip worthwhile, because it highlighted the amazingly dramatic and desolate scenery throughout the mountainous countryside.  This was my best day of picture-taking during the entire trip.

While climbing a high mountain pass to the lake, our bus encountered this man and his highly decorated yak, who seemed to appear out of nowhere; no village could be seen anywhere around.  Tibetans appearing out of nowhere happened again this day while having a box lunch near a remote river; villagers saw the tourists eating and came down from the nearby mountains to have us toss leftovers to them across the river.  By the way, yak butter tea is quite good.

The man’s children posed for this picture; they seemed quite happy to receive one yuan (twelve cents) each for their efforts.

Clouds are reflected in this view down a ravine toward the lake.  Perhaps the lake seemed so blue and the clouds so close because of the thin atmosphere at nearly 5,000 meters elevation.

Even at this high altitude, a few terraced fields for crops can be found.  It seemed we passed through every conceivable weather climate on this day, from warm bright sunshine one moment to freezing cold winds the next to strong rainstorms the next and then back to clear sky.  It’s still difficult for me to believe that the pictures on this page and the next were all taken on the same day.

Extremely little can grow at this severe altitude - note the total lack of trees in these pictures - but as shown here, what does grow can be quite beautiful.  The long bus ride along the north side of the lake was full of stunningly beautiful scenery.  And this was just scenery from the first half of the day; much more was to come.