Day 25 – June 11, Lhasa Airport, @ 8:03 a.m. Beijing time (alt 3600 m.)
At nine we have breakfast with Jinpa and Mr. Lee. I still have to pack a ski pole. Then everything will be zipped in. What a huge experience to say good-bye to. There were times it seemed it would never end but it did, as all things do.
As I look back on it from this close distance some of my favorite memories are:
- Coffee in the morning
- Fried egg with sriracha
- Walking the Jokhang temple with Jinpa
Prayer drums at the Jokhang Temple. - Sitting in the middle of the Aru Basin at our second campsite
- The day the chiru came around the hillside in the middle of my melancholy. I think that was actually the last day of real melancholy
- The day the cook got lost
- Going after the “wild” yak [actually domestic] with Jinpa
Blue sheep. 
More blue sheep. - Going up the valley and seeing blue sheep with Jinpa
- Tea with the nomad
- The walk to Memar Tso [lake]
- Sharing my binoculars with Mr. Lee
- Reading Parting the Waters in my tent
- Mr. Lee’s auto horn [used frequently on mountain roads]
- The thermoses of hot water
- Of course, seeing the chiru everywhere
- Seeing kiang
- I’m not quite ready for the wind to be a favorite memory but the weather on the Chang Tang is like no other place I’ve ever been
- Hot Tang
- Watching a blur in the distant landscape and realizing that it’s kiang or chiru
- Sheep deciding how to get out of the way of cars. Often they follow the flock all the way across the road when it would be much shorter just to take to the nearby ditch
- Walking toward Aru Tso at the third campsite
- Little sand-colored lizards at the first campsite–there were so many. I did not see them at the other two. Heinrich said he did, but perhaps the first campsite was sandier, better for sand-colored lizards.
