Lhasa, March 2006 #1

There is a really big difference between Nepal with its child porters carrying all our very heavy bags and faded hand painted signs welcoming you in English to the Kingdom; and China with its green uniformed military personnel berating our Tibetan ‘guide’ for not having some certain obscure form and the large carved concrete gate pronouncing boldly in Chinese you’ve reached the People’s land.

I had a very rough time at border crossing. Let’s just say frustrating bureaucracy (stand here, sign here, passports please, this line, put your bags thru the scanner, don’t laugh, don’t talk, what is in this book, who is photo of, etc.) and we brought entirely too much stuff. And this frustration (and subsequent physical pain) was exacerbated by the fact that someone somewhere somehow forgot to pass along the very important requirement of a roof rack. So when we finally go to the jeep on the Chinese side, not only did we have the driver but because our Dutch companions had tourist visas, we had a ‘guide’ as well. The number of people in the jeep increased by one and made all the difference between comfortable and cramped.

Beyond the truck stop town of Dram, the road went to shit quickly and we began our thematic ride to Lhasa: bump, dust, bump, dust, bump, dust. Oh, don’t worry….only several hundred kilometers more to go…..And I’m PAYING for this???

Our first night’s stay was in another truck stop town called Nyalam, where they are gleefully fond of very loud firecrackers that reverberate off the narrow streets and sending large groups of women home very drunk and singing at the top of their lungs along these same narrow streets at 3 o’ clock in the morning! It was also shockingly cold in Nyalam. So much different than the increasingly hot days of Kathmandu where a t-shirt and thin pants was the normal dress. Here however, we had our long underwear, thick socks, down jackets, wool hats and gloves and it was still chilly. There was snow on the mountains and a stiff wind blowing almost constantly. And it was very, very dry. We were in the heart of the Himalayas and might as well have been on the moon. It was here in Nyalam, during our dinner of shamdre and thukpa, in a small Tibetan kitchen across from our hovel, er, hotel, that I experienced fires kept bright and warm by flattened, dried yak dung. It’s great for the eyes and complexion I hear.

Repacking the jeep in the morning and stuffing our ‘guide’ (poor man) into the back section with all our stuff and after our filling and entertaining breakfast of tsampa, we were back on the road and heading up and up and up. The first day of the 3 day trek wasn’t so bad. We went from Kathmandu to Nyalam, gaining probably 1,000 or 1,500 meters. Not too bad for adjusting. But on the second day, the ‘hell’ day, we went up to almost 12,000 feet….twice! Two pretty tall passes (they get much taller here, some passes in Tibet are upwards of 15,000 feet) and then a third not so bad. **To note, the pass is a place of reverence and usually decorated with a mass of prayer flags, chortens and rock cairns. This could be on a road or a walking trail – we passed several like this on our Nepal trek. When one reaches the pass, after a significant amount of climbing anticipation, there is a loud shout of “Lha gyal lo!” (which means “Victory to the Gods”) and a fistful of paper prayer flags are tossed into the air. It is quite fun if you don’t think of the litter you’re adding to such a pristine and delicate environment.** This left us with mild headaches for most of the day. And it was a long fucking day, clocking in at 11 hours of driving through moonscapes and high passes – cold, dry, rocky, windy, harsh environments. Yet subtly and sublimely beautiful. Like eastern Montana or eastern Colorado, this was God’s country - desolate, stark, wild, and uninhabited. The rolling hills and high mountains that were pretty much our only companions ranged from green, blue, orange, red, yellow and even purple. It was like nothing I’ve ever seen before.

The mountains weren’t our only companions though as we passed through a surprising number of small villages of whitewashed houses decorated with blue and red stripes on the walls that were stacked high with gathered brush and covered along the sides with drying dung for the home cooking fires. I was quite amazed that anyone, no matter how hearty a constitution, could eke out a living here. But they do somehow live here, herding yak, goat and sheep and during the short growing season, planting barley and potatoes. Other random images that flashed by our windows – dreaded and mean looking mastiffs, yaks grazing in the high pastures, wool jackets, wild hair, sun and wind-burned cheeks, tuk-tuk tractors putzing by carrying everything from sheep to rock to a load of people, a yak being butchered on the main street of our lunch stop town, and imposing and grossly out of place Chinese graffiti and signs.

The question still remains – are the Chinese modernizing the plateau and bringing the Tibetans (along with many other ethnic minorities within the ‘Motherland’) or merely imposing their beliefs and culture? This reminds me of another major super power that likes to impose its beliefs on others but not so subtly disguising it as ‘brining democracy’….hmmmm.

Random sections of the road were paved. There seemed to be no real rhyme or reason to when the road would be paved, but the sigh of relief coming from the all of us when we entered a paved section was quite audible as was the sigh of disappointment when it abruptly ended. I guess there is something to be said for pavement……sometimes.

I think the most 21^st century moment came when our Dutch companions and I took turns playing each other’s iPods.

The stars at night were big and bright (clap, clap, clap) deep in the heart of Tibet!

At the end of our second day we entered Shigatse, the second largest city in Tibet and more Chinese than Tibetan, even though it is the home of Tashilhunpo Monastery (the 2^nd largest gompa to survive the chaos of the 60’s and 70’s, it is the traditional home of the Pachen Lama – 2^nd only to you know who). For those of you who don’t know, do some googling on the Pachen Lama, especially the last one and the controversial current one. Very interesting and very telling of the situation here.

In the morning we did kora around the Tashilhunpo, but decided not to go in as we did not feel like supporting the local government and heard that there were many ‘monks’ who really weren’t monks, so it was kind of a creepy place. But, hey, the outside was stunning! And the architecture and history were very impressive.

After kora there was a long-ass walk across town because somebody wanted to see the Tibetan market where there was a very sad breakfast….but I won’t get into that….J

Back on the road by lunch, we soon hit the beginnings of the Bhamaputra river, one of seven major rivers that start in Tibet – Bhamaputra, Mekong, Yangtze, Indrawati, Indus just to name a few. Following this wandering river and accompanying wide valley, there was a noticeable increase in trees, blooming pink cherry and plum trees along with attractive yellow limbed willows.

Then, around 4 in the afternoon of the 3^rd day, in the distance, thru a large cleft in the mountains, around the bend in the river, I saw a distant yet totally exhilarating view of the Potala Palace. It was so exciting! To finally see the symbol of our journey’s destination, after how many months of planning and savings, after innumerable days of waiting and pushing for the visas, after weeks of delay and anticipation in Nepal….finally, there is was gleaming boldly, like no one told it that it was witness to bad times, bright and white in the golden afternoon Himalayan sunshine…the symbol of a people, the icon of a country, an emblem of a culture.

This wonder and exhilaration were soon dampened by traveling through the very unappealing and very Chinese western part of town. I can’t really explain it very well, but the architecture and the general mood, or vibe, of the Chinese parts of town really can’t compare to the Tibetan parts. For one, the Chinese just love concrete. Everything they build, even if they are trying to mimic a traditional Tibetan building, is with concrete; whereas Tibetan architecture utilizes large stones, timber and many more hand made and attractive aspects. I can kind of understand why the use of concreted is so pervasive – it’s cheap, it’s readily available, it’s easy to use. But it is also not very insulating, not very attractive, and not very sustainable.

Driving through the western parts of the city and then into the center of town, I was amazed at all the surrounding signs of urbanization. There are street lights, traffic lights, large banks, countless yellow and blue taxis plying the flat paved streets, tall mirrored buildings, public phone booths on the sidewalks, department stores, supermarkets and very slick very modern urban fashionistas clashing with the nomadic traditional pilgrim dress. It became obvious very early in my introduction to Lhasa, that this was a town caught in between worlds – old and new. A rapidly growing city still trying to find its identity, still wrestling with its tortured past, still looking anxiously and optimistically toward its yet undetermined future. This tension, this juxtaposition, this combination of earnest grasping for modernity and a tight clutch on tradition, makes Lhasa an incredibly interesting and incredibly confusing place. It is a place where one can see entire skinned yak carcasses unloaded onto a street corner for pick up by wind-burned, wool jacketed nomads, right in front of the Hip Hop Station No. 1 store where Chinese and Tibetan youth crowd around the displays looking at the newest Nike or Addidas arrivals with undisguised glee. This is a city where there is city plumbing and a functioning sewer system, yet people shitting and pissing in the streets is still an everyday occurrence. Fascinating and confounding. Colorful and dirty. Loud yet quiet. Kung Fu and Cowboy.

After a jaw dropping drive by the base of the Potala (by far one of the most impressive man made structures I’ve ever seen, ranking up there with Machu Picchu and Borabordor), we arrived at our initial destination – the popular Yak hotel. Here we based ourselves while looking for a more suitable, longer-term residence…something with a kitchen, a double bed, internet and shower (demanding aren’t we?).

Well, it took us longer than we thought as there are not many places with a kitchen, but our determination was finally rewarded after a few days and many city blocks of walking later….We are now happily settled into the Gorkha Hotel, in one of their deluxe suites. A somewhat new hotel built around a grassy courtyard and a very old traditional building (which we are living in), it is located in the middle of the maze of the narrow alley old Tibetan quarter just west of the Jokhang (central temple of Lhasa) and Barkhor (pilgrimage route around the Jokhang). In fact, the Lingkor (an outer pilgrimage route circling Lhasa) goes right by the front entrance of the hotel and in the morning when we walk out into the bright and beautiful sunrise, there is always a steady stream of prayer wheel twirling, mantra reciting pilgrims walking the route. At first there was no kitchen and no internet but after making a deal with the manager for a very affordable 5 month stay, he was quickly persuaded that a small gas burner and a simple Ethernet connection would be easy to do. Much to our surprise, the manager sent a worker into our room that proceeded to build a 2-drawer cabinet, stove counter and gas canister container using nothing but hand tools! No eye protection, no gloves, just a man, some wood and some metal instruments and viola!....we have a kitchen in a day. The only downside to the room is that it is dark…and cold. We’ve had to go out and buy 100 watt bulbs for all the lamps and then obtained a couple small space heaters to help take the chill out of the air. We have quickly settled in and made it our own and now it feels as much like home as anything we could have hoped for.

I have to say it is a bit quiet around here these days as it is not quite season yet. High season is beginning to ramp up but as of now many of the restaurants and several of the hotels are closed or have very limited hours. I personally love being one of the very few foreigners here right now. It makes Lhasa feel more authentic, more intimate and more personal than if there were a bunch of white faces poking around….though this also leads to lots of stares! I learned long ago, to travel you have to get comfortable with the stares and the innocuous “Hello! Hello!” that follows you around.

Random thoughts -

Crazy, weird, surreal, comical TV, i.e. a commercial featuring a Kung Fu master blocking falling wine from staining his clothes

Very beautiful morning and afternoon light

So many faces, so many clothing styles!

Modern, urban, traditional, rural

Fast DSL internet, stoplights w/ countdowns, NBA basketball fanatics

Warm in the day, cold at night

Regular breakfast of Muslim brown bread, Tibetan yogurt and Chinese fried eggs

Running out of breath climbing just one flight of stairs – 10,000 feet, remember?

White washed walls black lined windows

Smell of butter burning, spoiled chang, burning incense and city filth

Leigh’s total joy and excitement of being here

When opening a new store, don’t buy advertising space in the newspaper or on TV, just light a string of thousands of fireworks in front

There are 2 mosques, 2 vegetarian restaurants, chocolate mousse and Pabst Blue Ribbon in Lhasa

One day our shopping list was light bulbs, yak jerky, extension cords and banana bread

It is easier to get cell phone in Lhasa than anywhere in America!

Full moon fireworks

Being sick totally sucks

I miss my family and friends…..