Manigango

Daniel and I went after the breakfast to the minibus station to try to find a driver taking us to Manigango. Unfortunately there were not many people here, maybe due to the Golden Week, and after some bargaining with the drivers we agreed to charter a minibus just for us two. Since the roads have been improved a lot in the last years, it only took us about two hours to reach our next destination.

Manigango is a very small town consisting of not much more than the junction, connecting Ganzi, Shiqu and Dege. Since in the last years some additional roads haven been built, the importance of Manigango might even decrease in the future. Shortly after arriving a local driver asked us, whether we wanted to go to Yilhun Latso, a somewhat famous lake, but since this was planned for the following day, we politely declined the offer. Daniel tried to ask some Tibetans for a guesthouse and finally the driver, which we just met, offered us to drive us to a place just some hundred meters down the road. A friendly Tibetan woman greeted us and showed us a room for 40 Yuan per person and we accepted the offer, even though no shower - only some cold water to wash ourselves - would be available. After taking a closer look at the room, we discovered that it was probably the place Elenore mentioned, since the furniture and items present in the room exactly matched her description.

After having found an accommodation for the night, we went out to settle the second important need: food. At the Pani hotel they didn’t had any written menu, so we were shown the way to the kitchen to basically just point to vegetables we would like to have prepared. A young woman from the next table also offered to help us. After ordering our meal, she explained that she was from Lhasa and had studied in Boston for three years. She also invited us to have some Yak butter tea after we initially tried some. Most foreigners don’t like the taste of it and the lonely planet described it once as “[…] there is only one thing worse than hot yak butter tea: cold yak butter tea.” But Daniel and I actually liked the salty, strong and definitely nutritious taste of the tea and had several cups.

Since it was not evening, yet, we decided to hike a bit up the hills for a few hours. Only the darkening clouds worried me, so we tried to keep the distance to Manigango not to big. After having climbed a nearby hill the rain in the surrounding area blessed us with a nice rainbow above Manigango! Despite all the clouds, we didn’t get caught in the rain itself and finally reached our guesthouse again.