The road leads up to Kamba-la Pass at 4950 metres where there are dazzling views of the deep turquoise Yamdrok-tso lake. In the distance, the snow-capped Himalayas and the huge massif of Mount Nojin Kangstan (7191 metres) pierce the clouds. I've never seen mountains of this grandeur before.
Yamdrok-tso is a coiling scorpion-shaped body of water. Tibetan pilgrims circumambulate the sacred lake in seven days. Controversially the Chinese government wanted to utilise gravity to create a hydroelectric supply and by the mid-1980s had a agreed a plan to build a six-kilometre tunnel 10km below the surface of the lake that would send the waters dropping 846 metres into the Yarlung Tsangpo river. Work was temporarily halted after opposition from the Panchen Lama, but in 1997 the turbines had started generating electricity. The project is controversial not only because the lake is sacred to Tibetans, but because Yamdrok-tso is a dead lake with no outlet and no perennial source of water, which means that the water drained can never be replenished.
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