A photo of me (Tara) along the rice padies in Nepal. Within 2 hours our 6-day trek will be over. Good training for the elevations of Tibet.

Trekking just north of Pokhar, in Nepal, during August. The regular rains kept the rice paddies lush and green, and also sustained the plentiful leeches in the forests in the distance... which we were soon to enter.

Toshen poses in front of a rice paddy in Nepal. Just seconds before he barely managed to avoid falling in! Isn't the color amazing?

Boys come to investigate as we stop briefly along the Friendship Highway in a more rural area of Tibet.

Ruins such as these were a common sight along the Friendship Highway during the first 3 days after crossing the Nepal border into Tibet.

On our first day driving along the Friendship Highway from the Nepal border to Lhasa, the "capital" of Tibet, we saw our first yaks and stopped. This boy was the yak herder, wearing a mixture of traditional and newer clothing as do most of the people. In this region, the earth was quite bare for grazing or growing - and this during the lushest time of the year, the rainy season, monsoon. I always wondered how large yaks could subsist with so little to eat.