We woke this morning at about 7:30 on the train to Lhasa and boy was it an unpleasant experience, headache, shortness of breath, and tingling in the fingers. Then I looked at one of my mapping apps and noted we were at an altitude of 4500 meters. So this is what a sudden dose of high altitude feels like. Trying to look on the bright side we rationalized that Lhasa will be a little bit lower, maybe 3500 meters, yeh right, but before then it will get a little bit higher 5072 meters to be precise. The 5072 point arrived about midday or 14 hours into the trip. There is a bit of a sign marking this point as it represents the highest railway line in the world and the Chinese are pretty proud of this achievement. The train was scheduled to arrive at 17:30 but would not actually arrive until 18:30 so we had a lot of time to kill. So our day was take up looking at the scenery and sleeping. The altitude makes the latter activity very attractive.

The scenery consisted of broad steppes, a few snow capped mountains and some with glaciers, track and car traffic of the accompanying road to Lhasa, Tibetan villages, and various types of Chinese establishments some small but many large. These we assumed had the function of keeping the railway and roadways open and operating. Apparently there are a number of mining operations on the Tibetan plateau. We could not identify which clusters of buildings were mines but no doubt such mines add to the volume of infrastructure.

We arrived at 18:30, met our local guide and driver and transfered to our hotel. It is a large establishment built and decorated in Tibetan style, meaning lots of ornately carved wood. Our room had a machine to dispense oxygen, and another machine to add humidity to the rooms air.