Lhasa high

If you have never experienced it, it is almost impossible to make you understand what it is like to be at this altitude. Lhasa is one of the highest cities in the world, 11,450 feet. I have been skiing many places in the Rockies and experienced some dizziness and shortness of breath one year in Telluride, so I thought I was prepared for what this would be like. Wrong! Telluride is at 8700 feet… we are 3000 feet higher than that here.

 

We’ve been advised to drink tons of water – we’ve been sucking it down as fast as we can. Aside from the Yak dinner, we really did nothing after we arrived in Lhasa yesterday afternoon, so everyone could rest a lot and make sure we are acclimated to the altitude. I had a pretty bad headache and just felt tired. Several people felt dizzy and a couple were even nauseous. But, everyone seems to largely be ok. The guides say the effects will wear off in a day or so, though we will probably always find ourselves short of breath fairly quickly.

 

We drove past the stunning Potala Palace last night with its thousands of steps. Tomorrow we will climb those steps to see the inside of this remarkable building. They intentionally put this event on day 3 in Lhasa so we would be past the altitude sickness.     

 

 

Above is a picture of the palace that I took out the bus window as we were on our way to dinner. Getting around that place is all walking, no elevators or lifts in 400 year old buildings.