After four days on the road in Tibet, getting over the border into Nepal was much easier than feared although not without it's interesting moments.
On the first day out of Lhasa we drove through some spectacular landscape. To be honest, it's for this sort of thing that I travel. Most cities are either identikit blobs and/or cesspits of human squalor. 
Lake Yamdrok was a shimmering turquoise pool, shaped like a scorpion (apparently) surrounded by bare light brown mountains (pics at www.energiser.net). Naturally, the Chinese are draining it for hydro-electricity and as no rivers feed it, it'll probably be gone in a few years. That night we stayed in Gyantse, a poor town we'd seen on the BBC's A Year In Tibet. It's main monastery had a fantastic stupa with seventy chapels and a fantastic view from the top. Around the town were several dead dogs who had clearly frozen solid in the sub-zero temperatures at night. We had a heated hotel room. On this occasion.
On the second day we took a short drive to Shigatse, a very poor town further along The Friendship Highway. We climbed a hill, went "ooh!", then visited another monastery and went "ah!" then ordered some random food at a local restaurant and got stared at lot.
Day three was a long, long drive. The scenery was still fantastic as we drove higher and higher, reaching 5200m and Everest Base Camp. The views of the Himalaya and Mt Everest itself were simply gob-smacking (yes, I've run out of suitable original adjectives and I left my thesaurus at home). The road was a bit hairy getting there but the trip back was in a different league. Our guide decided to take a different route back. The guide book described it as a trekking path. Twice the guide and driver got out, babbling in Tibetan, to check we didn't have a puncture. There were no buildings or people for about 50km, the sun was going down and it was freezing cold. Any incidents and we would have been stuffed. At one point we drove along what I can only describe as a shelf, about 3m wide, sloping down towards a 50m drop-off. We finally got to Tigri, a very, very poor town in the middle of nowhere. The hotel was, well, basic. No shower, no hot water and for all intent and purpose no toilet (this is not an issue for locals who just go anywhere - number twos included - and I'm not exaggerating). There was no heating in the room, so we slept in our clothes and were still cold. Couldn't get out of there quicker in the morning.
On the fourth day we were to drive to the border town of Zhangmu and in the process come down off the Tibetan plateau. We got to within 30km only to find the road closed. They were tarmacking it until 8pm. Dan and I got out and walked. It took five and a half hours and we dropped about a kilometer in the process, but the canyon we walked down was very pretty, changing from scrub-clad rock at the top to lush green Alpine-like forest at the bottom. By the time we got there it was dark and we were knackered. The hotel was rubbish again with no shower or hot water, but it did have a squat loo. It was warmer but we still had to sleep in our clothes.
On Sunday we crossed the border into Nepal and said goodbye to our guide and driver. It was good to be masters of our own destiny again and we immediately went about proving how useless we were at it. After a bit of haggling we got in a taxi to take us to Kathmandu. The tyres looked a bit bald but it was cheap. The road was almost all down hill, there were no seat belts and the driver seemed to have to push the brake petal a few times before the car slowed down. After about half an hour the driver stopped to have his spare tyre fixed which was an annoying delay. Another hour later we got a puncture. We finally made it here and had a shower. Was bliss.
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