Distance Traveled: About 250 Kms

Time Traveled: About 5 hours. Left Saga around 9:30 AM and reached Nyalam by 3 PM.

On our way to Mt. Kailash, our buses did not stop at any photography points and given that even we were keen to get to Mt. Kailash as early as possible, none of us complained. But on our way back, we made it a point to tell our bus driver to stop at a few locations that were good for photography.

The first hour of travel after leaving Saga, we had to travel about 40 kms on dirt tracks. Not sure why only this stretch was not a proper concrete road.

While we were on this dirt tracks and just a little while from joining  the tar roads again, we saw a still lake, with beautiful reflections of the mountains behind them. Luckily our buses stopped at this location and we were told that this was know as the Reflection Lake (not sure of the actual Chinese name), a relatively small lake, right next to the dirt roads.

Here are a few snaps from Reflection lake. Absence of winds is what makes the water to be so still, which paves way for such beautiful reflections.

Having zoomed into a small portion in the above picture.

Yet another section of the reflection lake.

Here is yet another marvel of natures creation. This looked like a peacocks’ feather to me.

Close up of the peacocks feather.

This looked like a leaf. What do you see ?

Further along the way, we came back to the Hanuman Sagar (Paiku Tso) and we did have much better light, as compared to the journey towards Saga.

Another view of the Paiku Tso.

Good weather now made it possible for us to see the snow covered peaks as well.

Black and white image of the snow covered peaks that you see in the picture above.

Yet another view of the same peaks, but covered in clouds.

Chocolate layered sides of the peak.

We moved along from Hanuman Sagar and stopped at another pass. Here is a wide angle view of a entire mountain range.

Close up of one of the peaks from the high pass.

 

We reached Nyalam around 3 PM, but we were yet to have our lunch and were told that we would be served lunch the moment we reached out hotels. The hotel that we had stayed on our way to Mt. Kailash was a good one. Again due to reasons unknown, we were taken to an extremely bad hotel and then we were served our lunch. Did not like this hotel one bit, but we had no choice and some how managed to survive for one more night.