Xegar Favorites

Favorite thing: This is the reason we came all the way to Xegar: to see the Himalayas and the Everest. Some 4500 meters above sea level, this village is also called New Tinggri. Very basic accommodation allowed us to be this close to the highest summit in the world.

Favorite thing: Xegar (Tibetan 'Shegar', alternative name 'New Tinggri) a hotel stop along the Lhasa-Kathmadu Highway. The hotel consists of an ex-CPLA-army barracks just off the main road and near one of the check points on the Lhasa Kathmandu Highway.
Xegar comes just after the highest pass on this road, at over 5,200 m. Not advertised is the fact there is a demolished Dzong (fort or palace) across the highway from the hotel (walk south), that is testament to the devastation wrought to Tibet during the Chinese Cultural Revolution. You can just about make out the foundations of the buildings, now being rapidly eroded by the summer rains and hostile weather of the area, this a building that used to be a mini-Potala Palace in it's own right.
For anyone wanting a longer walk, head east along the river and you'll find a Chorten and twice as far again (visible from the Lhasa - Kathmandu highway), there's a small rebuilt monastery.
Reachable from here by Bus or Landcruiser is Rongbuk, for Everest North Side Base camp (I didn't go) - the very rough road for Rongbuk and Everest breaks off to the left just after Xegar.
If you're stay at the hotel, you will want a shower when you get here. It's a long drive from Shigatse and an equally long drive to either Rongbuk, Tinggri, Nyalam or Zhang Mu on the Nepal Tibet border and you'll feel really scruffy - no doubts about it. The bad news is that the hot water only comes on briefly in the evening - when I passed through, this led to a mass rush from the small bar to the rooms by a lot of very desparately dirty people.

Fondest memory: The mass rush for the showers.