The plan to go to Mount Everest was long in the making, and after considering several ways, it was decided to start the hike from a village where Mount Everest could be seen.

Geng Xin checked the materials of the Tibet Library for a day and chose Gangga Town, the old county seat of Dingri County, as the starting point for the hike.

We didn't recruit any troops this time, and we took the train from Lhasa. It took us two days to apply for a border pass and buy food for the trek in Shigatse, and on the third day, we boarded the bus from Shigatse to Ganggar early in the morning.

After a few hours of driving, we arrived in Ganggar after noon. We decided to stay in Ganggar for a day, one is to see the vista of Mount Everest from the observation deck here, and the other is to experience the local folk customs.

Ganggar is a small market town with a small population, and a street runs from the head of the town to the end of the town. When we arrived in Ganggar, it was early December 2014.

This season, it is the off-season for tourism, almost no one has gone to Mount Everest from here for sightseeing, and it is rumored that in a few days, Mount Everest will be closed and stopped for tourists to visit.

Most of the town's shops are closed, except for a few grocery stores and Tibetan restaurants that sell groceries.

We walked around town before we found a suitable hostel. In a huge hotel, Geng Xin and I also lived that day.

Gangga town is basically inhabited by Tibetans, originally there are many Han people doing business here, it is said that now this season, the climate here is particularly cold, except for the Tibetans who live here, no one has come in outside, so those Han people who do business also close their doors and go home early for the New Year.

It will not be until after the May Day of the next year, when tourists start to come in, and those Han people will come back here and start business.

Most of the people we met in Ganggar didn't speak much Chinese, although most of them wore Han costumes, and very few of them wore their own national costumes.

Most of them only speak simple words like greetings, and Geng Xin and I don't speak Tibetan, so communicating with people here has become our biggest problem.

If it weren't for the signs and shop names all over the street in Chinese characters, we would have to wonder if we were in a foreign country.

Since we couldn't communicate, we had to dismiss the idea of experiencing the local people.

In Gangga, in such a season, there is an inexplicable desolation in people's hearts. Especially at dusk, there are many more dogs than people walking around the streets.

Geng Xin and I followed the signs for a long time, but we still couldn't find the observation deck, and finally found that the road signs here are a bit like playing a puzzle game, and the road to the observation deck is actually on the side of the road a few steps behind our starting point.

It's just that the location of the road sign looks more like the next intersection from the starting point. When we found the observation deck, it was almost dark, and standing on the observation deck and looking at Mount Everest in the distance, it was vague, so the impression was also vague.

Back in town from the observation deck, Geng Xin and I couldn't find a restaurant run by a mainlander, so we had to walk into a Tibetan restaurant and ask, only Tibetan noodles and Tibetan bags.

We were so hungry at this time that we couldn't take care of much, so one of us asked for a bowl of Tibetan noodles and a basket of Tibetan buns. Tibetan noodles are actually noodles pressed with barley noodles, this kind of noodles are sticky, exude an obvious fragrance of barley, and there is a different feeling in the mouth.

When the bag was served, we couldn't help but laugh. It turns out that Tibetan buns are not steamed buns, but steamed dumplings from the mainland.

However, this kind of yak meat stuffed dumplings with barley bread tastes really good, and a little Nepalese pepper is added to make people feel hot all of a sudden, and they are not afraid of the cold of Ganggar night.