Sherpa appeared to be newly built when we arrived, in fact there were still plasters and builders all over the place. We got a 4 bed room on the top floor that was clean and bright and still smelled like fresh paint. Toilets were mostly squatties, although there was one western loo waiting to be connected to the water supply. Hot water is supposedly solar heated but the glaring sunshine when we arrived was seemingly not enough to supply a hot shower. The staff were a bit unhelpful and seemed to spend a lot of time debating every question we asked without actually answering them.

The best thing about Sherpa Lodge was the attached restaurant. Western food was surprisingly good quality and was exceptionally cheap – a welcome find after several days in the sticks.

Location was good – right at the bottom of the town, just before Chinese customs (although you’ll still need a taxi to get you to the border crossing several kilometres further down the mountain). We’d give Sherpa a much better rating if there was hot water and no builders: 5/10

We stayed in one of many ‘Snowland Hotel’s in New Tingri. There were at least three others within spitting distance from ours – this one is on the corner of the Lhasa-Zhangmu road and the road to New Tingri centre. We stayed in their cheapest room with 5 beds and little in the way of furnishings for 25 yuan per person. As always, there was no hot water or heating and at least two duvets were required to fend off the biting cold during the night (in the morning we woke up to find that the bottle of water we keep next to the bed was frozen!).

Toilets were a bit disgusting hole-in-the-floor affairs long-dropping into a slop room on the ground floor, but are probably typical of this part of the world. Enquiries about showers were met with a chuckle and a firm ‘no’.

The attached restaurant was popular with lorry drivers and other passers-by and served fairly bland but filling Tibetan food for a reasonable price. It was a good place to while away the time until the pass between Tingri and Zhangmu opens as the heat from the oven makes the temperature bearable.

There are supposedly 3-star hotels somewhere in town (although we saw absolutely no trace of them) and it might be a good idea to pay a little extra for some home comforts in this inhospitable corner of nowhere, but by all means come here if you are after the authentic Tibetan experience!

Unrated: it would get 0/10 in normal circumstances, but since it is in the middle of the arse-end-of-nowhere, it is a bit harsh to rate it so poorly. From what we saw, there are no alternatives.

We opted for the tour across Tibet without pre-booked accommodation so that we could save money by choosing the cheapest digs, so this place – listed as the most expensive in Shigatse by the China LP – was not on our radar. Maybe we were just lucky with off-season prices because, when we rocked up after a long day on the road, we snapped up a 4-bed room for 25 yuan each. Admittedly, the room was not the ‘large and comfortably furnished’ one described in the Lonely Planet, but it was clean and the beds were soft. As seems to be the norm in Tibet, there was no heating and the room got pretty cold at night.

The shared toilets were (relatively) clean squatties, and we didn’t use the shower facilities. Staff didn’t speak any English but our guide was at hand to translate. 6/10

One night in Lhasa Internation Youth Hostel was pre-booked as part of our journey across Tibet and, although we weren’t particularly enamoured with the place, we decided to stay for the following two nights as well.

There were three  problems with Lhasa International Youth Hostel: no heating, unreliable hot water and toilet troubles. The first problem was addressed after the first sub-zero night when we asked the helpful staff for a heater and they kindly obliged with a small electric heater that kept our 4-bed dorm (20 yuan per bed) toasty throughout the night. The second problem was trickier to solve – we were advised that there would be hot water from around 8 a.m. however Charlotte had to endure a freezing shower on our first morning there. Later that day, I had a pleasantly hot shower, and we thought the problem was solved. Unfortunately, the remaining showers consisted of nothing but scolding hot water as the cold water supply proceeded to dry up. The third problem required a bit of hunting around the hostel for a toilet that worked (each floor had one western and one squattie affair). The squatties were universally broken, and most of the western toilets suffered from flushing issues (one particularly bad one flushed the toilet contents right out of the bowl and all over the floor), however we managed to find at least one serviceable loo to tide us over.

Negatives aside, the hostel had a lovely top floor restaurant/bar with a superb view of Potala Palace, supplied us with free (Chinese) breakfast and the staff were very helpful and friendly. 6/10

East Vs West

I never intended to write anything about the politics in China – to be quite frank, the situation is far too complicated and the culture too different for me to even begin to grasp. The mind boggles at how a government can rule 1.3 billion people effectively, and I know that many people have suffered at the hands of human rights abuses and what the Dalai Lama refers to as ‘cultural genocide’, but I am simply unqualified to make any comment.

What does interest me, however, is the reaction of the West to China. During my two months in the country I read a lot of Western press coverage about China, specifically about the issue of censorship. For a few weeks at the beginning of 2010, Google made a big fuss over alleged hacking of Gmail accounts by the Chinese Government (something the government denies and Google has yet to prove), threatening to pull out of the country if they did not relax their censorship. At the same time, Avatar was taking billions of dollars at the box-office while news outlets in the West were accusing China of censoring the film.

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Most guidebooks helpfully classify types of accommodation into three categories: top-end, mid-range, and budget. This is most certainly an oversimplification: it fails to take into consideration that the budget category alone is home to a universe of different types of abode, ranging from the flea-ridden pit of hell, to the bog of eternal stench.

After eleven months of sleeping, almost exclusively, in some of the cheapest digs in Asia, I have begun to consider myself a somewhat of an expert in the subject, and yet I still come across hostels that have the capacity to surprise me.

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We spent a full week in Xi’an looking for fellow travellers to come with us to Tibet. Luckily for us, our hostel turned out to be great value and great fun for our entire stay.

We booked Hang Tan Inn online and got a great rate – 20Y per night per bed. This could have been a promotional price due to the recent change in location (on that note, don’t follow the LP directions), but it is worth checking online if you plan to stay there.

Included in the price of our beds were free beers every night and a free coffee on arrival. They also hosted a fun dumpling party which created a nice atmosphere and got all the guests speaking to each other. The TV room was also a bonus, but you have to figure out the Chinese DVD player first (it tended to stop working five minutes before the end of every film!).

The dorms came with en-suite bathrooms and hot showers, but were a little bit on the small side. But the extremely friendly staff made up for it.

The Swiss breakfast for 20Y was worth every kuai.

9/10

The Road Less Travelled

The road to Nepal is no less impressive than the temples of Lhasa. The road seems to snake endlessly off into the distance, while snow capped hills tower on either side of you, and the mighty Himalayas rise up on the horizon. Catching first sight of Mount Everest is a magical experience – its pyramid-like shape is instantly recognisable. At 8800m high it dwarfs the other mountains in the Himalayas; it is simply massive.

But I am jumping ahead of myself: we didn’t catch sight of Everest until day two on the road. Our first leg of the journey took us to Tibet’s second most populace city, Shigatse.

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They seemed to be having a few difficulties when we visited Luoyang – they were renovating part of the hotel (and it was more of a hotel than a hostel) and our room didn’t have a working shower. In fact, each day we had to go to a different room to get washed.

We asked for dorm beds, but were told they were full (we didn’t see any other guests though), so we got a room for 90Y. There was a TV and heating and the room was clean. As an added bonus, the bus to the Longmen caves left from just outside. The communal area was freezing cold in winter.

There is little to recommend this hostel, but it might be the best choice in town. 5/10

We booked Lama Hostel through HostelBookers.com, and were pleased we did so: we had reserved two beds in a 16 bed dorm for just 20Y a night each (a special internet rate), but when we arrived they told us all the 16 beds were full, and upgraded us to 4 bed dorms instead (single sex). The girl’s dorm was very small and cold, but the boy’s had tons of room and heating.

The shared toilets were squatties, and there were only two working hot showers, but that was ok. The staff were very nice, the food in the bar was reasonably priced, there was a video room with lots of DVDs,  and the draught beer was just 3Y a pint.

I wouldn’t buy a tour from them though: they were charging over 300 Y for a trip to the Great Wall, which set us back just 54Y.

We give Lama 8/10 for it’s good atmosphere, proximity to an underground and decent communal area.