We met at 5 am in the hotel lobby. Ms Wang also decided to come with us. Kelsang, my mountain guide, Ms Wang and myself. Walking out of Darchen, there is a checkpoint on the edge of the town. Kelsang is required to pack oxygen, the Tibetan official asked me worriedly if everything was okay with me... last week a Russian tourist died on the mountain, and shortly before that an Indian... This place is small, they knew I was registered, they knew I caught a cold after the first round and they knew I had an infusion for 3 days and they even knew that the military doctor said it would be good if I rested for another day... so everyone here knows everything...

By the way, at the entrance point they give you a ticket to Kailash National Park. They register you when you enter Darchen and they see who is entering. Beijing has a very strict security policy, so there is a lot of effort.

We put on our headlamps and headed for the mountain... Having passed the first no longer used "Heavenly Cemetery", we passed by the large "Heavenly Cemetery", we rang the bell in the small bell tower, from the mountain we could hear mantra music... so someone is feeding the birds today.

By the time it started to get light, we reached the first shelter where we had breakfast in the teahouse. We have something else for breakfast in the morning besides Tibetan campa.

A campa árpaliszt, amit minden tibeti kis zsákban hord magánál. A legegyszerűbben úgy készítik el, hogy fekete teát öntenek az árpalisztre, és úgy eszik meg… de a tibetiek szárított jakvajat visznek magukkal – inkább úgy mondanám, mint szárított jak sajtot, ami reszelt parmezánra emlékeztet – ezt szórják az árpalisztre, és leöntik fekete teával. A legjobb azonban az, amikor valódi jakvajat kevernek bele: egy jó darab jakvajat tesznek hozzá, egy kis fekete teát, összegyúrják, és kész.

Campa is barley flour, every Tibetan carries it in a small bag. The easiest way to make it is to pour black tea on the barley flour and eat it... but Tibetans carry dried yak butter with them, or rather I would say dried yak cheese, which looks like grated parmesan, which they sprinkle on the barley flour and pour it over with black tea. The best, however, is when they mix yak butter in. Add a good piece of yak butter, then a little black tea, knead the whole thing and you're done. After breakfast we continued and were confident that by the time we reached the Dirakpol shelter we would see Kailash, in fact we saw half of it because the top was in fog... but at least it didn't rain today. We drank a few cups of yak butter tea at the Dirakpol teahouse and then continued towards the Dolma La Pass. There is another shelter at about 5.25o m in front of it, here we drank sweet hot yak milk tea and then set off for the pass.

We walked slowly, looking around, sometimes the sun was shining, sometimes it was cloudy, sometimes it was quiet, sometimes it was very windy... Sometimes Kailash showed some part of itself but we couldn't see it clearly all at once.

There was no snow on the Dolma La Pass now, last time we were in such heavy snow that you couldn't see the wind horses... the snow has melted by now. It's a great joy to get over the pass, obviously the many climbs up make you feel better, although going down the other side is not easy either. They also say that when you go over the Dolma la Pass you leave something behind from your previous life, preferably some bad trait.

We reached the shelter on the other side of the pass in an hour and a half, where we ate some hot Tibetan noodle soup. We planned to sleep there, but we really didn't like the rest room, so we walked another 1.5 km to a shelter further down... well, that wasn't much better either... nevertheless, it was getting dark so we stayed. The bed was full of people who came and went at night... I didn't sleep at all because I couldn't feel comfortable in that bed. I would add that they leave the door open at night... and it can be around minus 5-8 C outside at night. I survived the night under the huge heavy blankets, although I couldn't sleep at all.

In the morning I wanted hot soup so I asked for a Tibetan noodle soup again and then we started down sometime after 8. This guesthouse was at 5,150 m.

The last section to get out of the valley is quite a long, slow descent. I listened to the stories that Ms Wang and Kelsang told. I will post them one by one.

On the way, we stopped at a Tibetan family with tents where there must have been 40-50 yaks around the tents. We saw the woman milking, Ms Wang immediately said that she wanted to drink something... this is where a great experience began. They took us into the tent with a stove in the middle, she put the freshly milked yak milk on it to boil, while she started making real yak butter tea in a kind of frother that is specially made for making yak butter tea. They put yak butter, black tea, a little milk in this... it was sweet, it wasn't very fatty and it was really delicious. Maybe she didn't put much salt in it because I could barely feel the salty taste. Ms Wang saw a wooden barrel that also had a frother. Well, that was yogurt. We ordered some and I have to say it was better than any yogurt I've ever tasted. We ate real kefir in the Caucasus, it was also very delicious... but this... is something fantastic. I was thinking about how I could get it regularly brought to Zhuhai because this yogurt should be eaten regularly.

Meanwhile, the freshly milked milk boiled... here the spring is not 100 C because the boiling point is lower above 5,000 m. The yak milk is also very delicious, it has a kind of sweet taste naturally. We asked several times if they had added sugar... it tastes completely naturally sweet. We had 2 glasses of yogurt and milk with a glass of yak butter tea, or as they say here, Suoyou cha. Everything was delicious. We paid 100 yuan for everything and continued walking.

We slowly made it out of the valley and had lunch in the teahouse of the last rest house. I wasn't hungry after all the yak milk stuff, I didn't eat, but I really missed the fruits... We arrived in Darchen around 3 pm and bought various fruits in the shop next to the hotel. There was a lot of work waiting for me on my laptop, so I said goodbye to the others and started eating the fruits in my room in front of my laptop. I managed to eat a whole melon with 2 bananas... it was good. I thought about it, I finished the 2nd stage in about a day and a half.

Kalsang said he hasn't seen a foreigner who did it in 2 days, but he hasn't seen anyone who did it more than once.
I think it's because foreigners only come on organized trips and there are 3 days of one day and only once.
Now that we have the second one, we'll have a day off and then we'll go on Monday for the 3rd day.
I don't know how much I'll be able to fit in until the 28th...
I have to fly to Lhasa on the 29th but I haven't bought my ticket yet.