it's not all monks and mountains...

Lhasa/Beijing/Atlanta, June 2007

2007-09-30T15:22:00.000-07:00

As you can see from the date and location, I am back in the States. Wooohoooo!...(sort of). I had thought of keeping that part of this blog until the very end and making it a surprise but now I guess I won’t. Its 5:30 in the morning on my second day back and the battle over sleeping patterns has begun in earnest. The first night was easy. After traveling almost 25 hours to get from Beijing, my body was just plain exhausted. The flight from Beijing to Newark was incredibly comfortable thanks to the rare and total blessing of having all three of the seats in my row to myself! That meant priceless full vertical body prostration on an international flight and deep, deep sleep for almost all of the 12 hour flight, which in some ways was disappointing because that flight is probably one of the most beautiful available flying over Mongolia, far eastern Siberia, within 600 miles of the North Pole, across northern

Canada

then down through Quebec and Newfoundland into Newark, NJ. But considering I have already flown that route in May of 06 when Leigh and I came back to Atlanta for my sister’s wedding, I took the pills and slept about 9 ½ hours! Ironically, the trouble started after arriving in the States – delay in Newark. Started as 1 ½ hours and then as the snowball effect culminates, ended up being a 4 ½ hour delay putting us landing in Atlanta and the rooster crowing hours of 3 am! Ouch. So by the time I got back to my mom’s house, where I’ll be staying this summer, my body didn’t care that my mind was trying to tell it, “It’s only 3 in the afternoon, we shouldn’t be sleeping...” Instead, it was say hi to mom; lots of hugging, a beer, and then lights out see ya!

Today has been a different story of sorts. The circadian cycles have not fully caught up and at 3 this afternoon I was downing some coffee to stay awake and at midnight I was drinking a beer to try to fall asleep! Does anyone have good jet lag remedies? If so, I’d love to hear them. I hate using the sleeping pills and the caffeine to try and force my body chemically back into rhythm. Any more natural and harmonious methods would be much more ideal.

Obviously I have mixed emotions about being back but all in all, I’m ready for it. The adventure of China wore thin after awhile and the language and daily logistical struggles kept me constantly fatigued. Anyplace you stay for more than a few months, where you try to make a living by finding or going to work, where you live day in and day out without much traveling or touring, where you know the short cuts and hidden alleys, where you have established favorite eateries and grocery stores, where you know the place better than some of the taxi drivers and you become the default guide to anyone who visits you, anyplace like this becomes your routine, your habits, your new ‘home’ and comfort zone and I think that no matter where that is, how exotic, it can become ordinary and therefore – I won’t say boring for that is just lack of imagination – less exciting. I think the hardest thing for me was not having steady work, not having something I needed to do everyday, something that helped me feel like I was ‘doing something’, moving forward, helped me feel like I was needed. The contemporary Tibet photo project that I’ve been working on the last year plus has had its incredible moments and it’s a project and a body of work I feel proud of and committed to. But there were times, especially towards the end there after I had been working on it for so long and was getting a little bored with it (or at least it wasn’t as interesting), where I just didn’t feel like shooting...at all. Wouldn’t even want to look at my camera, much less take it out and go work with it. I had become burnt basically on the self assignment and without having any other paid assignments or wanting to get into any new projects; I basically took too much time off during April and May and became really restless. It became a real professional challenge and something I feel I didn’t handle very well but learned a lot from.

Another part of my frustrations being there was not feeling like I had many people to spend time with other than my wife. Don’t get me wrong about this though. This adventure has done nothing but bring Leigh and I even closer. We literally spent 90% of our time together over there and I believe it was extremely beneficial and strengthening to our relationship. We were talking about last night. It’s baffling how I have been gone for over a year and a half and so far I’ve seen my mom, my two sisters, my dad & stepmom, my aunt and one of my best and oldest friends and none of them have made a significant or memorable attempt at asking how my time was there. Leigh and I think that nobody seems to either know how to start that conversation or that what we have just done is so beyond anyone’s daily lives that there is little real comprehension. And talking with other travelers in Lhasa and other ex-pats living and working in Beijing about this, their experiences are the exact same. They go home and nobody asks about their time. Maybe because they don’t know how to ask? Maybe because they don’t care? Maybe because they feel inadequate because they haven’t done anything different since you left? But it is just baffling to Leigh and me that nobody asks us, I mean really gets into a conversation, about the daily experiences, the details, the ups and downs, the funny stories, etc. We lived and worked in a foreign country for over a year, Tibet of all places…aren’t you interested, aren’t you curious? This is all to say that luckily Leigh and I don’t have to ask each other what happened. We don’t have to wait for the other to tell them their stories or have to ask for them ourselves. We don’t have to struggle to find the right words to explain our daily adventures, to try to remember the funny stories or incredible moments. We were both there all the time to experience together, to have those moments, those stories, all those days shared and sacred.

But back to finding people over there to spend time with…In general, we made some really incredible friends. People I hope to stay in contact with and visit the rest of my life. But I was definitely frustrated and felt quite lonely on many occasions, mostly because I wasn’t really able to talk to anyone. We take language for granted so much. We don’t think about how we can communicate with those around us here in the States, how we can read all the signs, all the menus, watch the TV. It’s so familiar and normal. But take that privilege or ability away and I felt immediately and profoundly lost and disconnected. I think the language barrier is one of the most difficult things to overcome and Lhasa just doesn’t have a good location to study Mandarin. There is one for studying Tibetan but it involved registering at the University for a summer session or the 2 year program. Besides with Leigh know Tibetan so well, why double up? It was frustrating to me not having a place to study intensely if I wanted. Lhasa is designed by the authorities as a temporary stop over on people’s tour, not a destination for habitation. Not only do they not have any good places to study Mandarin, but there are only a very few places for a foreigner to stay long term (and of course those places are incredibly expensive). Our place in the Gorkha Hotel was fantastic and very comfortable and we felt incredibly lucky to have found it and get it for such a good deal (we paid roughly 400 USD per month for the place – 1 large sunny bedroom, 1 usable living room with eating table and couches and TV and 1 kitchen/bath combo where the burners and toilet were almost within physical reach of each other…almost could scramble eggs and take a pee simultaneously!). But our situation was not the norm and there were other long term folks living there who were staying in one room hotel space with no bathroom (down the hall) and no cooking abilities. Personally, I don’t know how they managed.

I say this because Leigh and I made some incredible friends while we were living there and it could be a place we would live (at least for a couple more years) if there were 1) language schools so that I could study, 2) more available work for either one of us – the Chinese are very keen on keeping any employment in country for their own citizens, which is admirable and understandable but sometimes impractical…say in photography for example. This small community of friends we developed over the short time we were there became very evident when they honored us with a farewell picnic party a couple days before we were leaving for Beijing. Besides the physical landscape, it is the people I will miss most (as for the food…let’s just say Tibet doesn’t have a great culinary reputation…for good reason!). When I say picnic, most images generated are probably of sitting in the open fields on a blanket and sharing a small meal from a basket of bread, cheese, fruit and wine, right? Well, in Tibet, they take picnic to an entirely new level of sophistication and luxury.

We arrived at the Picnic Park around 11:30 in the morning and found our ‘tent’ – really a small cabin like house surrounded by willows and bamboo and other ‘tents’ for other groups. There were table and chairs, couches, blankets and even a ma jong table. For entertainment, we brought baseball gloves and bats and balls, a volleyball (but no net), regular playing cards and UNO cards. For food, everyone brought one or two dishes. I brought the infamous Lehman cobbler. For those of you fortunate enough to know Heather then you might have been blessed at some point with her divine cobbler. I can’t say enough about this dish other than it was created on the 6^th day of Genesis, just before God took his rest because He wanted something to east while relaxing! Needless to say, besides my Grandma Martha’s green been recipe, it is my prized recipe. And of course it was a huge hit at the picnic where most folks had never heard of cobbler before, mainly because baking things and fresh fruit are both sort of novelties. There turned out to be about 30 people that were there or came by over the course of our 12 hour picnic. Yes, 12 hours! It wasn’t just one meal, but two. We covered lunch and dinner while hanging out together in the willows and the sun. There was ma jong, which Leigh and I finally figured out to play (only on our last day there of course!), there was cricket with a tennis ball, there was group wrestling (hilarious!), card playing, circle volleyball, singing and lots and lots of chang (local barley beer) drinking. It was such a beautiful day with so much fun it was no surprise that there were lots of tears as the farewell kata scarves were put around our necks at the end of the evening. It was the perfect farewell to Tibet. And sad I am to be away from it now, but with the place (and my new friends) holding such a strong place in my heart now, I know I will be back. It’s just a matter of when, not if.

The days and weeks leading up to our departure and good bye picnic party were actually really uneventful. The days were getting warmer and the streets more crowded with tourists, but Leigh and I continued our work – she with the artists, me with my camera – and the time kept flying by. Some days were spent shuttling boxes of our things to the post office for shipping to Georgia or Oregon; some were packing up the room and finding a place for Leigh to return to after our visit to Beijing. Sure there were big plans to go to this place and visit that place and do this and that ‘before we leave’, but most were filled with our respective projects and being with each other.

There were two interesting happenings I should tell you about. The first had to do with my middle finger. It got a pretty bad infection called Paraychia I think. I’m a nail biter as most of you know and have been for 30 + years now but this is the first time it has ever cause me this much pain. Apparently, I got an infection on my right middle ‘birdie’ finger and the tip of my finger swelled up real big and real red and it hurt real bad. I could feel the thump of my heart in my finger with each beat. I tried to soak it in alternating hot and ice; I tried Arnica gel and another anti-bacterial lotion. Nothing was working so we finally looked it up on the internet (you can find ANYTHING on the internet these days) and came to discover the name and treatment for my infection. Unfortunately, it wasn’t something I could treat myself and I would have to go to the hospital and have my finger cut open and drained! Not an encouraging thought there in Lhasa. There are many modern aspects of living in Tibet these days but I wouldn’t say their medical facilities or training are one of them yet. Anyway, with a friend acting as translator accompanying us to The People’s Hospital # 2 emergency department, we went to get my finger taken care of. One could tell immediately some of the differences in socialized and privatized health care. For one, there was absolutely no waiting besides the time it took us to pay our $.50 registration fee and find the doctor’s room. According to our friend, they were sending us to the bone specialist area. When we found the doctor, a young Han man, the doctor took one look at my finger and said we would need to remove the nail first thing. Whoa, no you won’t! Not only is that a form of voluntary torture, but we can fix this without taking my fingernail out, chief. So after explaining to him calmly that we wanted to try just cutting open the finger and draining the infection (who are we to tell a doctor how to treat a condition…but we read it on the internet so it must be true!). He said fine and that he would be happy to do it but that I should wait for a more ‘sterile’ room to become available and that wouldn’t be until the next day. Not wanting to wait (b/c it really hurt and I could already see large pockets of pus under my skin – I know, totally gross) but I was all for doing it right then and was about to say so when my ‘married gene’ kicked in and quietly reminded me to consult my wife about this. The look on her face told me not only was I an idiot for even considering such a thought as having my finger cut open in a dusty, dirty and unsanitary environment and how did you ever manage to survive this many years without my superior infallible logic but we were definitely going to wait until tomorrow when something more hygienically acceptable became available. It’s amazing, but all of that in one look. Chalk one up for the married gene. That afternoon we get a phone call from the doctor and he had found time and a room so we could come back and get it done today. Great! We hop back in a taxi and get there. The room he takes us to is worse than the first one! At this point though, Leigh’s level of expectations had taken a nose dive and her most important priority was to take care of my pain and problem. So she reluctantly agreed to let him go ahead with everything. Me, I was just thrilled to finally have a possible relief for my throbbing finger after 5 days of quietly suffering. When they started to bring out the scalpel and alcohol-ing my finger, I had to stop the nurse and doctor and ask them about anesthetics. The thought of getting my finger cut open with a very sharp knife was none too appealing in the first place and then to do it w/o anesthetics? My thoughts were racing - Don’t scream. Find something to bite down on. Be a man. This is how it was in the 18^th century. The knife isn’t too rusty. Be brave, be brave, be brave. OH GOD IT’S GOING TO HURT! When my question to them was translated about anesthetics, they both just looked at me like I had a tree growing out of my head and said, “Of course we’re going to give you anesthetics for your finger. It was only during the wars when we didn’t have those to give.” In other words, you idiot, do you really think we are barbarians? But come on! They wanted to pull my fingernail out…I wasn’t about to take the chance! After the Novocain shots in my finger, they performed the minor surgery and then wrapped my finger up well and sent me on my way to come back a few days later for a bandage change. Over the course of a week, I went to the hospital 4 times and all 4 times I just walked around giving everybody the bird….and no one had a clue what I was doing. It was great. One of those ‘only funny to me’ cultural moments. Regardless of my jokes here, they really did treat me right, took very good care, were very tender and concerned for me and my finger now had totally healed with hardly a scar to show for it. And the total price for minor finger surgery in fairly medieval conditions by a doctor who really just wants to pull finger nails out (maybe leftover from KGB days or something), 2 shots of Novocain with a pray to God new needle, 4 hopefully new but at least pretty clean bandage changes over the course of a week, and all with no waiting in reception areas for hours at a time - $4.50 US. Not bad for socialized medicine, eh?

The second interesting thing we did before leaving Lhasa was to go on a day trip to a monastery called Tsurphu, the traditional home of the Karmpa (third highest in the Tibetan Buddhist hierarchy behind the Dalai Lama and Panchen Lama). Of course, the Karmapa took off to India several years ago so he could be the teacher he needs to be and it is only there (or at least ‘outside’) that he can do that. I am happy to discuss the current state of Tibetan Buddhism in Tibet, religious freedom, human rights, etc in great detail with any of you personally, but I do not wish to put any of this in writing here. The monastery is a couple hours, which turned into 4 b/c of all the local hitchers getting on and off along the way, at the end of this beautiful agricultural valley to the west of Lhasa. It known as a great spiritual retreat center and many of the hermitage cottages located scattered up in the mountains near Tsurphu are habituated by monks doing the required and very impressive Sakya lineage (I think) silent retreat of 3 years, 3 months and 3 days. Yes, that’s roughly 1,188 days without talking! That’s incredible. I’ve done some 2-3 week stretches in my life of silent retreat but I eventually started talking to myself, or the animals I would see. I wonder if that’s acceptable. To talk to yourself sometimes during a silent retreat? You’re really only verbalizing the mental wanderings you have so it’s like thinking out loud. But then again, it is out loud, so I’m not sure. Interesting and amazing nonetheless. It seemed like a really long bus ride b/c of this one Israeli man sitting with his friend across the aisle from me who talked the entire time virtually w/o stopping! I’m sorry, I don’t care what language you’re speaking b/c it doesn’t matter…if you talk that much non stop, then there is no way you are really saying anything. “You talk a lot, but you’re not saying anything” – David Byrne. If anyone is a candidate for the 3-3-3 silent retreat, it was this guy! Leigh and I walked the out kora, which took us up the valley a ways past the monastery and then up onto the ridge directly behind the main temples where the majority of retreat house are located. It was a beautiful walk and a gorgeous day. Sun bright and strong, the wind gentle and cool and the sky a deep, deep clear mountain blue that only happens at high elevations. (I already miss that sky terribly). We saw a small herd of blue sheep, which are pretty rare these days. That was really special. It was one of those hikes which subtly reminded me of all the innate beauty that defines Tibet, the rare wonder that makes it a sacred place to so many and the undeniable awe I feel living in that stunning landscape. After the walk, we tarried on at the monastery restaurant and had some simple noodles and momos (which we have learned to make so invite us over to your house and be prepared for the dumpling parade!) and talked for awhile with some of the monks, who are always quite nice, curious and tender. For the last hike in Tibet (for who know how long), it was great.

Well, the sad day finally came, like we knew it would. Time seems to be inevitable in its movements and progressions. It was time to leave Lhasa. On Monday the 21^st of May, we got on a plane bound for Beijing. We arrived in the late evening to be picked up by T of the Red Gate Gallery. He was the co-curator with Leigh of the Tibetan contemporary art show, New Works from Lhasa at their 798 gallery space (http://www.redgategallery.com and http://www.redgategallery.com/tanchu.html). A very kind, thoughtful and genuine man, I liked him immediately. He was extremely generous to Leigh and I and put us up in his San Li Tun apartment for our entire stay in Beijing. The apartment was simple, comfortable and very convenient. We loved staying there. After sharing a drink with us, Tony left us to our new ‘home’ – he was given a good friend’s diplomat house who would be out of town, a definite upgrade for the two weeks! After an extremely relaxed sleep, we awoke to our first day in Beijing to steady rain. That’s like showing up in Phoenix and having it rain the first day in town…it just doesn’t occur all that often and really was an unusual introduction to the city. And of course, we were unprepared for it. But having lived in very dry Tibet for a year and being a Georgia boy accustomed to more moisture than I was getting and realizing that rain for this city was a true blessing not to be cursed, I didn’t complain too loudly.

We had some very good sandwiches and coffee for breakfast – the food in Beijing was really good and we totally spoiled ourselves on it – we went out to the 798 art area to see the gallery and Leigh wanted to get to work immediately. She was taking this opportunity to exhibit the artists in this gallery very seriously and wanted the show to be outstanding (which it was but more on that in a sec). I went to print the photographs of Gade (one of the artists) and my collaboration on the ice Buddha installation in Lhasa. I think I might have mentioned in one of my previous blogs about this day back in December when I went out to the main river with a group of the artists to make some photographs of one of them putting an ice Buddha back in the river from which it came and photographing it melting. It was a fun day and there was about 10 of us all out there having a picnic and cheering on the melting process. One of the final products from that project was a series of 8 photographs showing the gradual melting of the Buddha back into the river. There were also 2 other photographs, individual stand alones, that showed a close up of the ice sculpture and another that put it in a very modern and industrialized context. Anyway, those 10 photographs were going to be in the show and they needed them printed. So there I was, minding my own business when BAM!!!, I’m exhibiting at the most famous and hottest gallery in all of China. Sometimes, life is just full of wonderful surprises and adventures! After dropping off the files for printing, I met the Lhasa guide book people we worked with in November (remember them?) for a delicious lunch of sushi. Riding the zing wave of post sushi delights, I caught a cab out to the 798 space to meet up with Leigh and Tony and see the gallery. Little did I know at the time just how much this place would become the center of our universe for the next 10 days. Following a nice afternoon in the gallery, we met up with more friends for a fabulous dinner at a delicious Jaca (pronounced haka, one of the 56 official minority peoples in China) and then out for a few post dinner, celebratory drinks at a couple different bars, one of which was called Bed, a small complex of private, intimate, quiet rooms, dimly lit interiors and cushions spread all over the floor and against the walls with low tables with really good jazz played at just the right volume for energy but not overwhelming the conversations. Very classy, very cool place. This is all to say that our first day in Beijing, a city that honestly I was not looking forward to visiting that much…or at least had very high expectations for, was completely indulgent to all the senses and my first impressions of this capital city were very favorable.

The next few days were spent in preparation for the upcoming and highly anticipated opening on Saturday. The show went through several different visual incarnations before finally being settled on, some of which I stood with T and helped talk him through the layout, moving pieces from one wall to another, continually tweaking things until it was just right. It was really a fun but sometimes frustrating process because it was very much like a puzzle, once you moved one piece all the others had to be adjusted. And to stand back and see how much time and consideration a gallery of this caliber spends on laying out the show was insightful.

During this time, Leigh and I had very little time together for relaxing. Most of it was spent (for her at least) at the gallery helping set up. I tried to make the most of my time there, seeing some sights, but I spent a lot of time editing my Tibet body of work and putting together a small collection of 25 to show T for professional feedback and to see if he could get me some exhibit space here in Beijing in the coming year or so. It was a long and tedious process going from something like 25,000 images that I shot this year to 25! Ouch. The first couple cuts were actually quite easy, but it was the last 80 or so down to 25 that was the real challenge…and I still feel like it’s not quite perfect but close. I’ve made a gallery of them on Picasa (http://picasaweb.google.com/jasonsangsterphoto/ContemporaryTibet) and so you can check them out, but keep in mind this is a work in progress and will change slightly in the coming months. But this will be the project that keeps me busy for some time. I want to make a book of these contemporary Tibet images, a nice 150 + page photo book showing what Tibet looks like today. I would welcome any and all critical comments you might have, so please have a look! T was very encouraging and thought of the 25, six or seven were ‘very beautiful’ (with the rest being interesting, unexpected and some even humorous) and encouraged me that I definitely have an exhibit here and in his opinion a really good show too. He immediately thought of two or three galleries in Beijing that I should talk to and even started talking about ones in Australia (where he’s from) that he knew would be interested in them. So, needless to say, it’s very, very exciting! I can see the potential of this project and I feel strongly that it could really happen. But I told him that I wanted to first secure a publisher for the book and then I would start thinking about lining up gallery shows for this work. I want them to go together, the book and the exhibits, so I’m trying to be strategic. I’ve never done this before, make a book or put on a solo exhibit on a scale like this, so I’ve got a lot to learn. It’s such a blessing, however, to have trusted friends and critics in your corner helping and advising you how to proceed. Such a blessing! But that’s really what it takes I think – someone or someones who believe in the project or believe in me as much as I believe in it (and me). It seems that this might be slowly happening. Fingers crossed…

I’ve also started work on another ‘side project’, a portrait project that is related but not the same style or content as my contemporary Tibet images. Check it out here – http://picasaweb.google.com/jasonsangsterphoto/PortraitsTibet2007.

Leigh and I did manage to make it to the Forbidden City one morning and that was a total zoo and honestly just a bit disappointing. However, it was hot, hazy and so crowded we felt we were swimming in Chinese tourists! There were moments of being there, quiet corners off the beaten track within the walls, which we really enjoyed but the timing was great as most of the buildings were being renovated for the upcoming Olympics. I can’t even begin to describe just how much construction and renovation is happening right now in Beijing. You think the ‘boom’ is bad in places like Atlanta or Denver? It seemed the whole city was being built or rebuilt while we were there. Cranes, scaffolding and orange protective wrap was the architectural style that I saw in Beijing. And that city has Olympic fever like you wouldn’t believe. There are signs everywhere with the countdown in days, hours, minutes. Paraphernalia litters the shops and streets. The official mascots, the Friendlies (one of which is supposed to be a Tibetan antelope), are everywhere. Olympic fever has gripped the nation, at least the eastern side of it. It’s amazing and underlining the general buzz of the city there’s a level of excitement and anticipation that’s half ‘let’s get this over with and get on with our lives’ and ‘we are about to show the world how superior we are'.

We also got to visit the Great Wall, or at least see parts of it from afar, when we went with all the artists on a Red Gate (they really took care of us and the artists…I mean first class treatment the whole time we were there) sponsored field trip to a place called The Commune. The place is a private plot of land that butts up against part of the Great Wall out a little past Badaling – still almost 2 hours out of town. The owners of the place, a fancy hotel chain, invited 20 or so architects from all over Asia to design a house using their own unique country and culture as inspiration. So for example, the Japanese architect used almost all bamboo and very clean, zen-like interiors when he/she designed ‘the Bamboo house’. And there are about 30 houses scattered in a beautiful branched valley. One can rent them for the night or a weekend or a week but you gotta have some big bucks b/c I think each house goes for about $1000 USD per night. It ain’t no Appalachian log cabin for $69.99 a night, but I can’t say I liked all of them. We didn’t see all of them, not enough time, but Leigh and I did get a lot of architectural design ideas for our ‘dream house’. It’s a very famous place and well regarded and even won a special design prize at the 2005 Venice Biennale (sp?). It was like taking an elvin enclave of shelters nestled in the nooks and crannies of the wooded mountains and adding a heavy dose of Frank Lloyd Wright and Four Seasons Hotel (http://www.kempinski.com/en/hotel/details.htm?id=175). We had a delicious lunch there and then walked around to check out some of the houses. Unfortunately, we thought it would be possible to take a short hike up through the woods to the Wall, which would be untouched and uncrowded as it was one of the very few privately owned sections, but the government had just passed an edict like the week before that no one was allowed on this part of the wall anymore. Talk about bad timing and disappointment! It would turn out that that would be the closest I would come to the Great Wall during my time in Beijing, so I wasn’t able to walk on it like I wished, but what I could see from the Commune and the drive to and from was stunning. Kind of like the Grand Canyon in the sense that there really is only one word to describe it: Great!

So the big day finally arrived: the Opening! Months of preparation, timeless hours on the essays, bios and picking the pieces…the day was finally here for the artists (and Leigh) to shine. And did they ever! The show was a HUGE success. Beyond everyone’s expectations. Truly a great show that created tons of buzz and has almost sold every piece! It was extremely well attended and there were some very, very important collectors and curators that came. The seems to be a lot of interest now from Hong Kong and Shanghai galleries, Australia museums and other places in Europe and the US. It was such a success that Red Gate would like to do another group show next year, in 2008. One of the artists was offered representation by Red Gate gallery (huge deal) and like I said, most of the pieces have sold (and there were like 35 pieces or so, some as high as $23,000 US…I even sold 2 edition sets of the 8 photograph series and 1 individual photo…and what a rush!), either at the opening or even before the event. And it seemed that everyone’s reaction was one of pleasant surprise. As in they walked in thinking, ‘Oh, Tibetan contemporary art…it’ll be quaint and maybe cute’ but as soon as they walked in you could see the look on their faces that said, ‘Wow! Real art!’ Afterwards we all went out for a huge 50 person dinner (again courtesy of Red Gate Gallery) that was incredible and then out to a couple parties before finally dragging home exhausted, elated and totally content around 3 am.

It was fantastic event and a total validation to the artists and also for Leigh. I am so proud of her. She really, really put her spot on the map with all this and lots of very important people were complimenting her and even asking her to help them increase their contemporary Tibetan art collections, etc. She was even offered a job at one point! So, so, so proud of her. All her hard work and all that energy to be so well received by a sometimes very unforgiving audience. Stunning work, Leigh. Be very happy with yourself because you really did something special. We had a great day, especially Leigh. And the artists were a little overwhelmed I think. I don’t think many of them were really prepared for the amount of attention they received. There was the opening, but there was also an Australian journalist who did a large article on them, there was an artists’ talk, there was another journalist who is doing another piece on them with individual portraits, one of China’s premier art critics came to the show and enjoyed it so much that he invited them to his house for a dialogue with contemporary Chinese artists. I mean this was a big deal and I’m so happy it was such a success. I think this only bodes well for the future of the artists and Leigh as well.

Everything after that this was completely anticlimactic and actually still a bit hectic and centered on 798. But we managed to walk around the galleries a bit, do a little shopping and continue to enjoy the delectable Beijing cuisine. Finally, on June 1^st it was time for us to leave…and sadly to separate temporarily. I, back to the States. She, to journey back by train with some of the artists and a couple gallery owner/friends to Lhasa for another 2 months of trying up loose research ends and an incredible month long field trip with an academic group from Princeton. So here I am, struggling with jet lag at 5:30 am, back in the States and trying to find my center, feeling ‘in between’ right now – not really there, not really here. And she is now back in Lhasa about to kick some more ass and enjoy some more blue, blue skies (which I miss dearly already…there is no sky like a Tibetan sky). So, 479 days after coming to Asia (42 days in Nepal and 437 days in Tibet), I am now just another American, living in America, speaking English and blending in…now longer the exotic ‘living in Tibet’ prestige to go with my introductions but another anonymous and unremarkable Westerner trying to find his way. It’s not that bad, believe me, but there is a significant let down after living so high, literally and figuratively, for so long. It’s going to take some time to make my adjustments, as I’ve always felt that reverse culture shock is the worse. But I’m very excited about reconnecting with my family, my dear friends and enjoying again the wonders and pleasures that the US has to offer with new perspective, fresh eyes and a humble heart.

So give me a call (just got a new cell phone – 404 354 0536) or just come over for happy hour (noon – midnight everyday)! I look forward to seeing you or talking with you soon to catching up and reconnect!

Lhasa, April 2007

2007-09-29T14:27:00.001-07:00

It’s April already?! Where does the time go? What happened to February and March? Wow. At this rate Leigh and I will be rolling around in our RV wearing our crushed velvet matching jogging suits visiting grandkids all across the

in no time! I guess we are either having a lot of fun, very busy or most likely, not paying attention to calendars. One of the most common questions we have to each other is “What day is it?” I have to admit, I love not knowing what day of the week it is, and not having to know. The concept of time is money just doesn’t apply here. How refreshing! Nobody ever seems so busy they can’t meet you for tea, play a game of snooker (my new favorite game) or share a meal with you. And making plans? Well, if want to hang out with somebody, you don’t call them two days ahead of time and schedule ‘hang out’ time. You don’t even need to call them the day before. You just call them up whenever you want to hang out and say, “You want to hang out?” and they’ll say “Yes! Where?” It’s a given that you’ll do it immediately. And when you do call to make plans a couple days in advance, like Leigh still does often, they tell you to call them back then; they can’t think that far ahead!

That’s not to say Leigh and I aren’t busy. We are very these days. She even more so than me and it doesn’t look like it’ll let up until we return to the States. The Gallery is open again as of April 1^st (though you wouldn’t really know it by looking at the walls as there are large white spaces from artists who have yet to put anything up…slackers!), and she is busy running around making time for interviews and looking at their new works, etc.

In fact, just last night there was a very interesting talk given by one of our friends who was visiting from the US. He is the Executive Director of Art Papers (http://www.artpapers.org), an international publication with a circulation of 170,000 dedicated to talking about contemporary art. Last night he gave a talk at the gallery and asked a lot of challenging questions. For example, he asked how many of them had business cards they could give him at that moment. Only 4 of 14 had them! Here is one of the most important figures for their careers they have met in the last couple years and only 4 of them had business cards!? He made a good point when he then said, “Alright, you four that gave me cards, you’ve just been featured in the latest Art Papers and your exposure there just created 100 new collectors of your work. The rest of you, you just missed an incredible opportunity to change your lives.” It was a strong and somewhat harsh example of what he was talking about – preparing for success, but a necessary one. The reality is that the business and work ethic here and the Western one can be very, very different. But his point was that if you are going to deal with the West, you have to be aware of how the West works. The rest of the dialogue that our friend led was good, despite the chatty and scattered attention of the crowd. At first the artists were very reluctant or shy and didn’t say much, but after awhile (and getting impatient with one or two artists talking all the time), it became quite an inspired and passionate group discussion. There were many locals there who weren’t artists and it was good for them to hear a lot of these issues, challenges and thoughts around contemporary art as they are not exposed to it here at all. It was pretty much an unprecedented event and I’ve never seen so many people in the gallery at once. It was packed, which was a big surprise to the artists.

As for me, well I don’t know where I am right now. There’s a lot going on and it is a very challenging but interesting time for me personally. Since I’ve returned from Amdo, I haven’t really been doing much but somehow have no time to do anything. Unfortunately, I haven't been updating my website at all. I’ve got plenty of new images I’d love to put up there (and take down a few while I’m at it) and actually I want to create an entirely new section of the site dedicated to my personal (i.e. Fine Art) photography. With the break in those communications lines around Christmas near Taiwan, the internet here hasn’t been the same. It's getting better but anything more than dial up speed at this point is an improvement! Thus I still have to send out the blogs via email and not direct everybody to the website. And the blogs are coming much less frequently than I want them to. But I can't force them and nor do I have much time anymore as spring has arrived and that means busy, busy, busy again (at least in theory). Where did the lovely, slow, lonely winter go?

I have hit a recent period of strange mind space and bad luck. I’m not sure which caused the other but it has been one of those ‘when it rains, it pours’ sort of time periods. As far as I can figure, it started with the first series of rejection letters from graduate schools. The first two, from University of New Mexico, Arizona State, were really no surprise. They are probably in the top 3 or 4 MFA photo programs in the whole country and their aesthetics didn’t really line up with mine. But when I applied, I figured what the hell. Why not? The next two really kind of threw me. One, from University of Washington, was dejecting because I really thought I was a strong enough candidate to make it into at least that school. Definitely a 2^nd or 3^rd tier program and yet I still didn’t get in. Aren’t I good enough? The next one, the fourth rejection letter in about a week, was from the University of Arizona. This was definitely a good school and one that I really wanted to get accepted to. The professors were young and enthusiastic and doing really good work. It was kind of funny. I didn’t really know how much I wanted to get into this school until they turned me down. It’s too bad, really. Personally, I think that too many graduate schools have a preconceived notion of what a successful grad school candidate should look like, what kind of background, experience and portfolio they should have. I, unfortunately, didn’t fit into those molds and therefore was considered undesirable. I think it’s sad when you have someone of my talent, with my international working experience and with my undeniable passion for creation, applying for graduate school and being rejected. What sort of people are they accepting? What does this say for the future of our arts? Part of me thinks that it’s the universe telling me that grad school isn’t what I need at this moment, that there is something else out there waiting for me to turn the corner and find it. Part of me thinks that maybe I’m not good enough have enough potential or have enough focused drive for graduate school. Another part of me thinks that it is the schools’ loss if they cannot think outside their boxes and realize the potential that I have. Regardless of the reasons, I have not been turned down by 4 of the 6 graduate schools I applied to. Not an uplifting ratio.

I received all of these notices just before I left for Amdo so my time there was a bit on the dejected/depressed side, but I’ll get to that in a bit. Upon returning to Lhasa, I received some good news – the external hard drive that I bought at the first of the year (Jan 1^st) had finally arrived in Lhasa. It only took the package three full months to arrive. That’s the last time I used surface shipping for anything! I was excited because I had started to get pretty tight on memory space, even though I already have 3 other external hard drives here! Yes, that’s right I have enough photography from my year here to fill almost 1200 GB’s of storage. That’s 1.2 million MB’s for those keeping track. Or to speak in total Star Trek terms, 1.2 Terra Bytes. I don’t know exactly how many images this is, but it’s well over 10,000 at this point. I could open up my own photographic stock agency with what I’ve accumulated in just one year. Not all of it is from Tibet (I did go to Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan, Pakistan, Vietnam and Cambodia on assignment this year), just most of it. This is all to say, I am desperately relying on these hard drives. Anyway, when I got the new hard drive I copied over everything I shot from Tibet in 2007 to it. This took the entire night as there were about 300 GB’s of photos already from 2007. When I checked the drive in the morning, it had all seemed to copy over fine, so I made the HUGE STUPID IDIOTIC MORONIC mistake of deleting everything I just copied from the original source, making this hard drive the only place my entire 2007 Tibet collection exists. I think you know where this is going. I then rebooted my computer after being on and working all night. And wouldn’t you know it, but when the computer came back on the hard drive was missing! After repeated tearful attempts at getting it back and only getting error messages saying things like ‘unrecognized drive’ and ‘drive needs to be formatted’. So now I have one defunct hard drive that hopefully has all of my 2007 Tibet images on it somewhere. I have sent it back to the States to a data recovery company in hopes they can find them and get them back. Miraculously, however, I still had everything I had shot from my most recent trip to Amdo still saved on my Nikon Coolwalker (basically a portable hard drive used in the field when shooting, (http://www.dpreview.com/news/0401/04012802nikoncoolwalker.asp). And I had made back ups on DVD of everything up to the end of January, which I had just mailed home to mom before I left for Amdo. So if those are intact and usable and the Coolwalker saved my ass for March…otherwise, I basically lost one month of images...including the New Year’s celebrations. It is bad…very, very bad…but not quite as life shattering as it could have been. But it’s still bad.

So with the hard drive failing and the rejections letters from schools coming to basically back to back, I have not been feeling very enthusiastic towards photography lately. I think it’s a combination of these unfortunate events happening, being tired and getting pretty burnt out on this book project as it’s the only think I’ve been thinking about for the last like 6 months. Probably not surprising that I haven’t picked up the camera really in about 10 days. I just haven’t been able to get back on the saddle lately but I don’t have the time left to extend this self pity wallowing any longer. If I’m going to do this project right, I have to get back out there and get the work done. The last few days I’ve been using the excuse that we’ve had friends in town and I need to show them around, etc. But they left today, so now I got no reason not get be out there working again…and this is the plan. Just where this plan takes me in the next few weeks and coming months, we shall see.

Many of you have started to ask us about when we’re coming back. Well, our return plans are still up in the air. I'm waiting to hear back from the last 2 schools, but even if I do get in to either (PNCA in Portland or WSU in Pullman, WA) I'm not sure I want to go. I'm in a strange mind space right now and pretty burnt on the photo thing, so I’m probably not in the best place to make a life changing decision right now. Part of me is definitely ready to make it back to the States and start figuring out the next step, the next settlement destination, the next path. But I also know there is so much here still to be done, I just can't leave yet! That said, our tentative plans have us arriving back in the States around the middle of July, packing our stuff in a truck and driving to the west coast, Portland, Oregon most likely (unless I get into WSU and we decide to move to rural eastern Washington state). If I can ride this wave of homesickness and feelings of rejection and decide not to go to any schools, I might find the stamina to stay here through July at least, maybe even stay through the summer. If I get accepted to a grad school, then I will need to be back by July, so we can pack, etc and be on the west coast by early August to settle in and get ready for hell (i.e. grad school). I also have one of my oldest and dearest friends getting married at the end of July in Colorado, so that is a major factor in the planning process. Leigh is committed to a trip with a bunch of Tibetan art historians that will carry her all over Tibet for a month starting in early part of June, and then she wants to come back here to Lhasa to finish up some loose ends, etc before being ready to come back. The prospect of bringing home a puppy seems more remote now. The logistics of our travel schedules this summer and a variety of other factors have put a reality brake on the puppy train unfortunately. We haven’t given up the idea completely but it just doesn’t seem realistic the more we talk it out. There are Tibetan mastiff breeders in the US (http://www.tmcamerica.org, www.abbitt-dynasty-tibetan-mastiffs.com, http://www.shang-hai-tibetan-mastiffs.com) so we could always approach them when we get settled if we are still focused on that breed, which I think we are.

The weather has definitely changed in the last two weeks here. The trees have brilliant green leaves on them now and they burst out seemingly overnight. It's quite warm in the sun these days and my poor face caught the brunt of a 3 hour afternoon car ride back from Tirdrum just the other day. Thank the Goddess for aloe! The wind and dust has picked up again. Just yesterday it was so dusty we couldn't even see Pabonka, which is only about 7 kms away! The nights are cool and very pleasant, though. We spent some time on top of the Gorka roof with our visiting friends having our favorite Lhasa beer (Stout Lodge) and gazing at the full moon the other night. It was very nice. More white faces can be seen everyday and people here are definitely switching into 'tourist' mode. We can't walk around the Barkhor now without getting at least a few "Hello! Lookie, lookie!" yelled at us, whereas during the winter it was as if we were just one of the locals. Alas, Tibet is not our private playground anymore like it was in the winter....

I should finish up my descriptions of Amdo. I left off with us having seen the huge tangkha, or religious painting, at Labrang. Our next destination was Repkong, the home of one of the oldest and most renowned schools of art in Tibet. Because the town of Labrang was full of pilgrims and tourists, we could not find a local bus traveling to Repkong, so we had to hire a private jeep (not the cheapest route by any means) to take us the 4 hours over the pass there. Luckily, we found this one young woman from Slovenia who jumped in at the last minute and shared our expenses with us. She was a very nice young woman and worked for a travel agency there in the capital, Ljubljana, and was mapping out different routes through Amdo for them. We had a good conversation around racism (Slovenia was very involved in the Croatia/Albania conflict of ’99) and international travel. Traveling is such an incredible opportunity to find kindred spirits and have interesting conversations. And luckily for us, but unfortunate for the world, English is the common tongue at this point. Arriving at Repkong, we found our hotel and bid her and the driver farewell.

Repkong, in Central Amdo, just south of the Yellow River, can in many ways be considered the heart of Amdo. Its principal monastery predates the ones in Labrang and Kumbum by at least two centuries and the county itself possesses 36 smaller monasteries. The land around Repkong vary from rolling grasslands which support the nomadic camper groups, through forested gorges (though these are shrinking), to an agricultural zone near the county town itself. The ethnic mix is also fascinating, for there are four villages inhabited by completely Tibetanized Tu people while in the valley to the east lies the Muslim Salar, to the north is a Hui autonomous county and to the south is Sogwo, a Mongol autonomous county. The town is located on the banks of a medium sized river and the wide main valley and many of the smaller side valleys are rich growing lands where wheat, barley, potatoes and a variety of other vegetables are grown. The town of Repkong was up to 70 percent Tibetan just a few years ago but the architecture, both religious and lay, has a very Chinese appearance. This is definitely not on the beaten track and we seemed to be the only white faces many of the folks there had seen in quite awhile.

After checking into our overpriced but comfortable hotel, we began our leisurely exploration of the town. We had come to see the carrying of a large Maitreya statue through the town but didn’t think that was until the next day, so we spent most of our time enjoying the festive atmosphere at what appeared to be a local festival market near the town’s center. There were many gambling games, from rolling huge dice what had pictures of one of six different animals on them and you bet on which animals would be the three dice (kind of like a country version of slot machines). That was very animated and popular. There was another game where you had to throw a ring around a washbasin that contained your prize. Of course, when Leigh and I just took one of the rings and walked over to one of the basins and tried to manually fit it over it barely fit with like a half inch to spare…so I guess carnival gamers are the same anywhere…seems doable but in reality the odds are terribly stacked against you. Finally, there was another game where there was this flying airplane going around in circle and you put money on which color or number it was going to stop on (yes, a country version of the roulette wheel). There was also a place behind all the games where you could rent these electric cars for your little kids to drive around in circles. Of course there were all kinds of different foods available, even a cotton candy maker! It was fun to walk around and see Tibetans enjoying themselves, though a little disappointing to see how eagerly they would throw their money at these gambling games.

As we made our way up the hill towards the monastery, the crowd became thicker and more agitated. The energy was high and people seemed very excited all around us. When we passed through the gate of the monastery we saw why: the statue procession was happening today not tomorrow! And it was such a scene! There were hundreds of Tibetans crowded around this cage on wheels. Inside the cage, well away from the enthusiastic groping of the locals, was a medium sized and beautiful statue of Maitreya, the future Buddha. Pulling the cage by a long threaded and knotted katas were both monks and laymen. Surrounding the cage were a group of monks and laymen, some with long sticks, some using just their robes’ sleeves to try to beat back the crowd when they wanted to move the statue a few feet further. Then standing on the cart by the cage was a monk who seemed to be directing the direction of the cart ever so slowly back to the monastery. It would go like this: the monk on top would yell instructions to the folks pulling it and they would begin to inch it up the hill further towards the monastery, then the men around the cage would beat back the crowd with the sticks and robes (not violently, just forcefully) so the cart would have room to move, the cart would move a few feet and then they would stop and the crowd would rush forward again trying to bonk their heads to the cage. Bonking the head on the cage was especially important of the children, some of which were literally thrown at the cage head first! Mothers would hand their infants to complete strangers in a surging crowd and that person would then bowl his way through to the cage and try to delicately (as delicate as you can with a throng of enthusiastic masses heaving around you) touch the infant or child’s head to the cage. Incredibly, I only saw one child that really got rattled by the iron bars, bringing tears to their eyes. For the most part, everyone was having the best time, laughing, yelling, singing. And following the statue in its protective cage was a large group of older women who just followed the cage a respectful distance and sang a blessing song over and over again. The sounds of their united voices and their little impenetrable knot of womanhood there at the back was a beautiful piece of strong stillness and serenity in the roiling masses of humanity around the icon. Eventually, the statue made its gradual climb back to the monastery and there was taken back inside with much blessing, singing and reverence. There it would be replaced on the alter and await the adventure of coming out again next year.

Having seen the statue parade, it was time to shift our focus to the art schools and artists that make Repkong famous. The next few days were spent visiting the schools and artists in the area. Slightly north of the town, the two renowned painting schools Repkong, known as Sengeshong Yagotsang and Sengeshong Magotsang are located within their unique and idyllic village settings. Almost every house is an artist’s studio and we spent some time with a few, seeing their incredibly detailed and colorful work and just hearing their life stories. The Repkong school of art, known as Wutun in Mandarin, was established by the 15^th century and, by the 18^th century, it had spread to cover much of Amdo, as indeed it still does today. Almost all of the work executed here over the centuries was lost, unseen by the outside world, during the destruction of Amdo’s monasteries in the Cultural Revolution; but due to the dedication of a few elderly masters the tradition is now being carefully handed down to the next generation. The style broadly follows that of Central Tibet, but the infusion of cultures brought by contact with the Mongols, Tu and neighboring Chinese makes the work distinct. This is reflected in the ethnic origins of the people of Sengeshong themselves, who are said to have come from Western Tibet and to have intermingled over the centuries with neighboring communities. This became very apparent to us while we were visiting a family of artists and brought with us an Amdo translator who could understand Lhasa dialect. So Leigh would speak Lhasa-ke to the translator, the translator would then translate into Amdo-ke to a younger son of the elder artist, then the son would translate into Tu language for his father (because he was Tu and didn’t know Tibetan at all) and to get the answers would require the whole process in reverse! It was quite amazing. Personally, I have not seen traditional arts as distinct or as beautiful since visiting the Guge kingdom back in October. Regrettably, nobody was working at the moment because it was still too cold and the paint wouldn’t react very well to the weather. The artists had to wait for the warmer weather before they could begin their work again, so the depth at which we could understand the processes and work was somewhat limited. Nonetheless, it was an enjoyable and thoroughly remarkable place to visit.

It was at this point in the journey where Leigh and I went separate ways. She, feeling she had much more work to do in Lhasa, went back on the train; while I, not having any responsibilities in Lhasa and thinking that I needed to explore deeper into nomad country, hired a personal guide and translator (a somewhat expensive but very necessary purchase) and continued south into the heart of Amdo.

Our first stop was the Mongol county of Sogwo. Taking the bus from Xining, where I met JG the translator, we rode a several hours through the valleys and over the passes until we arrived at the county capital Henan (which in Mandarin means south river). Sogwo is a region where the dominant population is ethnically Mongol but so thoroughly integrated that only a few distinctive cultural traits remain. These, including the Mongolian writing are actively encouraged by the local and regional Chinese governments to both encourage tourism and keep at least little segments of the population from identifying with the Tibetan people and common cause. The yurt, the round felt tent of the Mongols, can be found here in abundance and slight differences in dress and jewelry can be detected. I was interested in this area because of the assumed differences in facial features, dress and customs here, but I soon realized that as time passes, both the yurt and the slight differences in dress seem to fade away. The land around Henan, where we stayed, is all rolling grasslands, broad expanses of land dotted with yak and sheep herds. A perfect environment for grazing and thus populated with almost nothing but nomads. The town itself is really nothing to write home about – a long strip of pavement where shop and administrative buildings line each side and where the people ride in on their motorcycles (the modern horse) to buy supplies, play a game of pool, recharge their cell phones or buy a TV and satellite dish. Even though they may only have one small solar panel outside their tents or small houses that has enough charge to power a 60 watt bulb or a small radio, many nomads will still buy a TV and satellite dish as a sign of wealth! It’s crazy and totally modern. Sadly, we didn’t find any tents with TV’s but there were a couple shops in town selling them that were quite popular.

Making some local contacts, my guide and I went out into the countryside as soon as we could to spend some time with some willing nomads. Now, don’t get the wrong impression…when I say nomad, I’m not really talking about a family group that lives in a tent year round and move about all the time following their herds as they follow the supply of grass. The nomads that are here are usually based in a house for much of the winter. The house will have three or four rooms, a large glassed in south-facing porch and will have two or three generations living in it – from grandparent to kid. The house will be surrounded by ‘their land’ all of it fenced in at this point. This to me was one of the most surprising things to see – fences breaking up and dividing the grasslands into individual plots. This, to me, goes against all thoughts on roaming herds and the freedom of wandering. But there they were, fences dividing neighbors, barring short cuts, containing the families’ herds. A strange sight, reminding me of the ‘subduing of the frontier’ that happened in the States during the 19^th century when ranchers moved from free range to individual plots. When I asked people about the fencing, they all said that it was a good thing because now they don’t have to spend their entire days watching the herds, etc. They can let them out into the ‘back 40’ for example and not have to wonder if they will wander off. But these are also the same people who think a dam on the river is a good thing. They see one surface benefit but don’t have the abilities or exposure to critically think about the deeper, long-term impact these so called ‘improvements’ have. I personally think that it is a technique used by the authorities to keep the nomads in place and stationary. A settled population is much easier to control than one that never sleeps in the same place twice. It is also the first of many subtle steps the authorities are using to gradually gather the nomadic population here in Tibet into the folds of a modern economy and society. After parceling out the land will come electrical wires and then TV and phone lines and then water pipes and little by little, maybe without even knowing it, these nomads will no longer be moving around but shopping at Target, throwing their garbage out into the yard and watching the nightly news getting fed propaganda and worrying about things and people they have absolutely no connection with!

We were fortunate enough to spend the day with a family of herders. Arriving before the sun rose (they had warning we were coming and agreed to hosting us), we stayed until after dinner. It was great. There was a man and his wife. They were probably about my age, maybe a little younger. They lived with his mother and father. They did not have any kids yet which makes me think they were younger. They had not received electricity yet and besides having fences telling them where they could go, lived a very loose and light life during the winter months. In the morning the woman (it is always the woman who works the hardest) would milk the mother yaks, gather up all the dung to dry and use for cooking/heating fuel, drive the sheep herd into one area of their land and then drive the yak herd into another. It’s not that they can’t be together in the same place but I think they eat different parts of the grass and it’s better to rotate (for the most part nomads still have a very innate sense of ecological balance and understand almost without thinking about it the importance of keeping this delicate land in balance).

Well, I don’t know what I expected their daily routine to be but they pretty much ate all day long. From breakfast till dinner they were gradually snacking almost all day long. Being winter and not as much work to do – hardly any milk to gather, no yogurt or cheese to make, no herding up and down the higher mountain valleys – they spent a lot of their time inside the house they lived in, next to the stove, drinking tea and nibbling on dried or boiled meat, fried dough and small candies. We talked a lot about different things. Local gossip for the area, JG the translator told them a lot about being a guide, etc, I told them about where I’m from and my family. It was just a nice relaxed lifestyle…no deadlines, no watches, no appointments, no phone calls, no TV’s. Of course I would go absolutely bonkers within a couple days! But they seemed very easy going, quick to smile and kind. When it was time to drive the sheep to gather water, I followed. When it was time to gather in the yaks for the evening, I followed. At one point we were sitting on a hill overlooking the grasslands below dotted with yaks and sheep, the sun was setting, the clouds were racing by, the wind was stiff but crisp and clean and the older man started telling us stories about the place, its history, his history and basically events that happened there and to him that I regrettably cannot share with you here. Ask me when I get home and I will surely tell you the stories I heard in Amdo. They are not pretty. History can be brutal.

Amdo doesn’t have the same restrictions that central Tibet has. They are much more open, free and willing to hang out with foreigners. Pictures of the Dalai Lama are around virtually every neck and prominently displayed in many of the main temples of the monasteries. People are more willing to share with you their past, something almost no one will do in central Tibet. The oppressive air that covers you while in central Tibet (and it’s currently getting worse with the new hard line provincial secretary in place) doesn’t exist in Amdo. It just feels freer and more open and this is reflected in the people’s attitudes and self image. People in Amdo are happy to be Tibetan and are not afraid to say it loud and proud. They are not afraid to criticize the Chinese openly and in public. Their self confidence is strong and evident. It’s just a totally different country almost. And all it takes is a provincial border crossing and the rules are different. Same, same but different.

Our next stop after Henan was Rapgya, further south and on the banks of the Yellow River. Hiring a local taxi from Henan, we drove the 200 kilometers through the land of huge brown ground eagles, through high red rock canyons and down into the massive and gorgeous Yellow River gorge. Located at the base of the sacred Mount Khyung-ngon, or Blue Garuda, is the very important Rapgya monastery. A branch of Sera monastery here in Lhasa, Rapgya was founded at the advice of Dalai Lama VIII in 1769 (during this same time Daniel Boone begins exploring the Bluegrass State of Kentucky; Father Serra founds Mission San Diego, 1st mission in Calif and Napoleon Bonaparte was born). The complex has been substantially rebuilt during the last decade, but a few old artworks did survive. The architecture of the modern temples is functional but unimaginative, much like that in Repkong, an interesting and mostly clashing collection of Tibetan and Chinese styles.

Though the monastery was located in an incredible location at the base of this unique mountain and on the banks at the bend of the Yellow River, we were there to visit the first private school in Tibet located at Rapgya. Rapgya has always had the reputation of being very independent minded and even today is carefully watched, especially the monastery, for ‘suspicious activity’. The incarnate lamas that have presided over the monastery, even quite recently, have been well known Tibetan independence supporters and strongly believe that if Tibet is going to survive it is up to Tibetans to make it happen. This philosophy helped to found the Rapgya School, a Tibetan only private school located beside the monastery. Housing both monks and laymen (females are not allowed to attend this one – there is another private school just for women 15 kms away), the school teaches classes in traditional medicine, religious debate, natural sciences, English, Chinese, Tibetan, mathematics and computer science. There are around 200 students in attendance and most of them stay on campus and come from all around, sometimes as far as Lhasa or western Tibet. Students are required to speak in only one language at a time with no mixing of words, which is a real problem in places like Lhasa where it’s very similar to Puerto Rican Spanglish. For Tibet, it is a very sophisticated and unprecedented establishment. Luckily, JG had a friend who was an English teacher there so we were able to take an inside tour of the classes. It was really strange but refreshing to see nomads, town folks and monks studying side by side. Too many times do I think that the education received in the public schools and the monasteries are too incongruous, where either one or the other is below average. But here the standard of education was pretty high as was obvious by visiting the English classroom and speaking with several of the students there or visiting the computer classroom where a packed roomful of monks and other students were being taught Microsoft Word in Tibetan! This is the sort of thing that makes a society emerge from a traditional society into the modern world with cultural identity and nationalistic pride. It was great to see and very encouraging. Sadly though, this type of place is definitely the exception to the norm.

While in Rapgya we were able to connect with another family and spend the day with them. This family lived more in a village on the ridge overlooking the Yellow River but they still had a lot of animals to tend and didn’t really have any agricultural fields to care for so I considered them more herders than villagers anyway. There were more people living in this house than in Henan though – an older man and his wife, their two sons, one of the sons were married and his wife and child were there too. They had their own alter room too which showed the slightly larger size of their house, the more settled nature of this family and the level of wealth they had compared to many others who couldn’t afford or couldn’t maintain a whole room of statues, scripture and alters. Like my time in Henan, I just followed around the women of the household (they were the only ones doing any work!) most of the day, from milking in the morning to driving the animals up into the hills to gathering them back in the evening. And again, after hanging out with them it became apparent early on that they didn’t have much to do but eat throughout the day. So we hung out around the dung-fed stove and talked and joked and ate and drank most of the day. And similar to Henan, the older man of the house had very sad stories to tell which I cannot repeat here. Let’s just say that things have been very hard for most people here for a very long time.

Besides an all too brief visit to the Golok capital of Tawu because I was getting very tired and worn down after almost 3 weeks of hard travel and intensive daily work, that was the last place we visited in Amdo. We traveled back to Xining so I could catch the train back to Lhasa. And here I am, two weeks later finally getting it all down on paper. Whew. I hope you enjoyed. I’ll be back soon enough with other adventures I’m sure. Much love and many blessings!

Amdo Region, March 2007

2007-09-29T14:12:00.001-07:00

“You need chaos in your soul to give birth to a dancing star”. – Friedrich Nietzsche

Amdo – home to the headwaters of three of Asia’s greatest rivers: the Yellow, the Yangzi and the Mekong; the birthplace of the current Dalai Lama, the 10^th Pachen Lama and Tsongkhapa (founder of the Gelukpa School of Tibetan Buddhism); high altitude grasslands and plateaus, cold, dry and windy. Amdo is the region which the Tibetan peoples have been the most exposed over the centuries to cultural contacts with neighboring peoples: Tu, Salar, Mongol, Hui and Chinese.

Historically, this area’s Tibetan speaking tribes have played an important role in the formation of several Chinese dynasties in the northeast; but during the Tang Dynasty, the Tibetan Empire of the Yarlung kings consolidated its control over the whole region and culturally the region has remained within the Tibetan sphere ever since. It was through contact with the Sakyapa and Kagyupa traditions in the grasslands that Mongol tribes of Genghiz Qan (Ghengis Khan) and his successors were brought within the fold of Tibetan Buddhism. For some 500 years (13^th – 18^th century) the Mongol tribes dominated the grasslands, and following the conversion of Altan Qan by the 3^rd Dalai Lama in 1580 to the Gelukpa School, successive qans zealously sought to impose the acceptance of the Gelukpa order upon the diverse cultural traditions of the region. In 1641, Gushi Qan, who established his empire near Lake Kokonor (Qinghai Lake) helped the 5^th Dalai Lama unify spiritual and temporal power under his authority in Lhasa, which as remained under Gelukpa power ever since. Following the pacification of the Mongols by Manchu emperor Qianlong in the 18^th century, the political vacuum in the Amdo area was filled by the Muslims, who encroached southwest from Xining, dominating the trade routes. From 1727 until the mid 20^th century most of the Amdo region was controlled by the Ma family who based themselves around Lake Kokonor as well. Golok, Sertal and Gyarong all remained outside of their jurisdiction in the hands of local Tibetan populace (and Golok was one of my main destinations – Leigh and I had already traveled to Sertal and Gyarong in 2003 during our trip to Kham). Interestingly, the present Dalai Lama (the 14^th) was born in Tsongkha Khar area of Amdo in 1935, firmly under the control of the Muslim warlord Ma Pu-feng. The Tibetan government had to pay a large ransom to ensure the release of this child incarnate and his safe passage to Lhasa. In 1950, Ma Pu-feng succumbed to the PLA (People’s Liberation Army), leaving most of Amdo in the hands of the Communists. And we all know how that has turned out…

Amdo is a region of incredible beauty, starkness and space with grassy hills, marshlands, deep river gorges, agricultural valleys and in parts of eastern Amdo lots of forest. Unfortunately the forests are being cut down at an alarming rate, many of the mountains and hills in the area completely denuded and showing the terrible affects of rapid erosion because of it. And sadly, the pastures are now becoming overgrazed and exhibit only a limited diversity of species anymore. The modern emphasis on animal husbandry, the new road network and changes in stock management techniques have led to increasingly intensive use of the land and deterioration in pasture quality. Almost all of the large wild animals have disappeared but the small mammals like the pika, mole, rabbit and marmot have exploded in the absence of predators, though as a result of this the predatory bird populations of hawks and large brown eagles have risen accordingly. Despite these degradations, the relatively rich pasture lands of Amdo sustain a nomadic population larger than anywhere else in Tibet. I visited the some Golok nomads and some Banak nomads during my visit here. The education system here is (as in all of Tibet) is basic at best, with Tibetans forced to study Chinese if they wish to advance in their chosen careers. There are very few employment opportunities here, so most children follow their parents and become nomadic pastoralists, while a few, mostly boys, join one of the numerous monasteries that have been rebuilt in the last 13 years. Unlike central Tibet, there is no age limit to when a boy can enter the monastery. I saw boys as young as 5 in the monasteries here; whereas in central Tibet is illegal until one turns 18! Surpisingly, government funds have been given over to help rebuild these monasteries, and each site is given a quota of timber and building materials, as well as a construction team, typically made up of Chinese craftsmen. With the exception of the main temples in Repkong, Labrang and Kumbum, virtually all the original monasteries of Amdo were destroyed and the vast bulk of Amdo’s artistic heritage was lost (though there is a small movement currently gaining momentum to reverse this trend).

Amdo is wild, cold, wide open and full of very independent minded cowboys and cowgirls. Nomad country. Very different to central Tibet in so many ways. I have now seen at least parts of all 4 major Tibetan regions here in China: Tsang (central/southern), Ngari (western), Kham (eastern) and Amdo (northern). It’s still hard to believe that they were once (and are still) considered to be the same country. They are all so different…the spoken language, the foods, the dress; but all so similar too…the written language, the religion, the landscape (with sometimes major variations especially between far eastern and far western areas), the faces. Amazing place, particularly when the Chinese aren’t to be seen. My main reason for coming here at this time (it’s particularly cold and windy right now and at least 3 weeks behind Lhasa in the trees budding, flowers blooming, warm sun department!) was to help round out my collection of images from more rural areas, where the people have a distinctly different dress and the landscape might be ever so slightly different and unique. My image collection, the one I hope to build a book out of, lacks the countryside living and traditional nomadic family images (this makes sense because we’ve been living in Lhasa all year!), so I needed to get out of town and explore some new territory. As we’ll see, it was both successful and disappointing.

Because of people here in Lhasa taking long breaks for New Year’s and nothing open or really going on, Leigh and traveled together for the first half of the trip and then she returned to Lhasa and I went deeper into Amdo country with a hired guide/translator. We could have used the translator from the start as even Leigh’s pretty good conversational Lhasa dialect got us absolutely nowhere in Amdo! It’s strange to see it, but Chinese has actually become the default common tongue between the different Tibetan areas because they can hardly understand each other otherwise.

Day 1 -2, Train to Lanzhou

The infamous train. Evil? Beneficial? A scar on the landscape? The end of Tibet as we know it? The arguments rage on.

Personally, I don’t feel much negative towards the train coming to Tibet. It’s been in the works since 1950 (when China starting planning to connect all parts of the Motherland by rail) and it is in humble opinion, inevitable. A basic construct of a nation modernizing, connecting ports of trade, increasing communications, etc. Yes, there will be major negative consequences – increased migrants moving to Lhasa, increase in capacity for shipping coal, minerals and lumber to the east, a long ribbon of steel dividing the Tibetan nomadic countryside, increased ability to ship large amounts of military troops and supplies quickly to the plateau. But I believe that the increase in access to so many young middle class Chinese tourists could be, in the long term, beneficial to both parties. It is my sincere hope that those who will be ruling China tomorrow, come to Tibet today, to witness for themselves what is happening, what changes are being made, how the culture here is trying to survive despite ever maligned intention from the current ruling party, and hopefully, hopefully, one, two maybe even dozens of these next generation rulers might become touched deep down, changed in some small but fundamental way and little by little the situation here will become lighter and possibly even Autonomous government status given (like Hong Kong or Taiwan for example). The important question though is what will happen first – the death throes of Tibet or reconciliation and granting of self-rule? The signs are not positive right now, but the only thing that is permanent is change.

Of course we barely made it on time to the station the morning we were leaving because my alarm didn’t go off! So there we were, running through the station with our large bags and carrying each a bag of food, up and down stairs (anyone in a wheelchair is totally screwed in China!) and even having Leigh lose her bag and have it go racing down two levels of stairs and almost crashing into a large group of people at the bottom like a bowling ball and they were the pins! If it wasn’t so scary, it would have been funnier. We literally stepped onto the train and less than a minute it was pulling out of the station. Whew! We made it. On the train and on our way to Amdo!

It takes about 26 hours to get from Lhasa north to Lanzhou where we would take a bus back south into Amdo. Leaving at 9 am, we got to see most of the Tibetan countryside between here and there and it was quite incredible. For the first few hours the landscape was similar to that in Lhasa – high mountains, large wide agricultural valleys, many small and medium sized villages of adobe houses with white walls, large south-facing courtyards and flat earthen roofs. As we traveled through the Nakchu area (about 4 hours north of Lhasa), the landscape started to change to wider valleys, rolling tall hills, much more snow and many more but more sparsely settled nomads with their huge herds of yaks and sometimes horses. This is the southern fringe of nomad land, rich grasslands that support large herds of grazing animals and therefore many thousands of nomads and their families. It is a beautiful and stark land, much like the people that inhabit it.

The train ride was in itself uneventful really. A lot of sitting and looking out the window. Leigh and I played cards, chatted, ate snacks, napped and read books to help the time go by. We made friends with one of our car mates. The train is divided into three classes of seats. Third class is a bunch of seats with tables in between them and racks above the head to store your luggage. There is no lying down, there is no space. It’s cramped, crowded and receives the least amount of attention from the cleaning staff. The seats are the cheapest option, but honestly it ain’t worth it! Second class or the hard sleepers are 6 beds to a compartment and about 8 compartments to a car. It’s a bit crowded at times and the hallways are pretty narrow, but at least you can lie down comfortably and there’s room under the bed for baggage. Each compartment has its own table and then a couple seats in the hallway next to a window where you can ‘escape’ the confines of the sleeping part to enjoy the view from the other window. And finally the first class or soft sleepers have only 4 soft beds per compartment but basically the same set up like the soft sleeper cars with tables in the hall and compartment, etc. We made friends with one of our compartment mates who could speak pretty good English. She was in Lhasa visiting her husband who is in the Army and stationed here. She was very nice. She made us laugh many times. When we taught her how to play Rummy card game she won like 8 in a row immediately! And then the funniest part was when I was wandering the halls and up and down the train being a little cabin fever like and when I get back to our ‘room’ she and Leigh were in a very engrossed conversation and when they saw me they asked me to stay out for a few more minutes. I obliged and when I finally found out what they were talking about later after we had left the train, Leigh told me that the woman was telling Leigh she had very nice breasts and how her husband is always saying how foreign women have very nice breasts! Hilarious!

After what seemed like a long trip (though I think it was just me being bored), we arrived at Lanzhou our initial destination. I don’t really have much to say about the place, we didn’t spend much time there and didn’t really want to. It’s a big, dirty, paved, crowded Chinese city. In fact, at one point just a few years ago it was ranked at the world’s dirtiest city. Lovely. Leigh and I got a hotel, wandered around for a little while, found the bus station and figured out the tickets to our next destination, had a KFC dinner (yes, that’s the fried chicken place!) and basically chilled. After the train ride, neither of us was feeling too energetic.

Day 3, Xia He/Labrang Monastery

More traveling. This time a 5 hour bus ride. Boy, this area is not easy to get to! Passing first through the heavily populated and deeply eroded valleys around Lanzhou, we gradually began to climb into the mountains. At first every community we drove through was Muslim, with the tall minarets of the Mosques and the white caps of the men and the colorful head scarves of the women prominent and hard to miss. Eventually, the highway passed deeper into the mountains and the higher we got the less and less Muslim population we saw. As the landscape changed, so did the architecture, dress, religion and culture. We began to see chortens and monasteries, different faces and dress. Why is it that Islam doesn’t have a strong focus on monastic living? It was really fascinating to witness the change and think on how this is how it’s been for centuries – where one group of people has adapted to a particular place/landscape/ecosystem so fluently that it just becomes their land, synonymous with their people. I say this about the Tibetans specifically here, but this idea can be applied to people like the Navajo and Hopi, the Dakota and Lakota, the Cherokee, the Seminole, the Maya, the Celts and thousands of other indigenous cultures that have either been absorbed into the stronger, industry based, invading culture or have disappeared entirely, lost to our memories and fantasies forever. Over the years, I have become increasingly aware of the relationship between a culture and its environment. It is especially evident here because the land can be so barren and unforgiving here, it’s truly amazing to see how an entire empire has thrived for so many years with so little to found it on.

Earlier than we expected, we arrived at our destination: Xia He and the home of Labrang Monastery. Like so many other rapidly growing small Tibetan towns, Xia He (which I believe means narrow or straight river in Mandarin) is based on one uber-long main street with dirt road branching out leading to smaller side valleys and house clusters. Sprawling along the banks of the Sang-chu river for over three kilometers, Xia He is a town split in half – the east side is predominately Hui Muslims and the west side is occupied by the Tibetans and the dominating Labrang Monastery. Getting off at the bus station, we hailed a motorcycle taxi to take us and find a place to sleep for the several days we would be there. But because of the very popular Monlam celebrations taking place here (one of the main reasons we came), it took us about an hour of searching before we could finally secure a room. The town was packed, and not with tourists, but with pilgrims and nomads and Tibetans coming to see the festival and celebrate the end of New Year. The place we found, as we would later loudly discover, is a pilgrims and locals only hotel. It was cheap, clean enough (by our very low standards at this point) and warm. Did I mention this place was cold? Brrr!

Labrang is one of the six great Gelukpa schools in Tibet (the other 5 being Drepung, Sera, Ganden, Kumbum and Tashilimpo) and is amongst the handful of places to have survived the Cultural Revolution relatively intact. It was founded in 1709 (the same year that Peter I of Russia defeats Charles XII of Sweden at Poltava thus effectively ending Sweden's role as a major power in Europe, the founding of Chihuahua, Mexico is founded and the Emperor Nakamikado ascends to the throne of Japan…just to give some historical relevance). The incarnations of the founder, believed to be a teacher of the great Tsongkhapa, are superseded only by the Dalai Lama and the Pachen Lama. This is the most powerful and largest monastery in Amdo. At its high point, Labrang housed 4,000 monks and even as late as 1947 there were over 300 geshes, or high teachers, 3,000 monks and 50-100 incarnate lamas. Today, however, there are only about 1,000 monks.

We came specifically to see this grand and important monastery, but mostly to witness the Great Prayer Festival held on the 13^th day of the 1^st lunar month. During this 3-4 day festival, a very large (30x20 meter or 98.5x65 foot) appliqué tangkha is carried out and unrolled on a hillside on the opposite side of the river facing the monastery complex. This is then followed by cham dances, butter sculpture offerings and procession of a Maitreya statue around the monastery.

Day 4, Labrang Monastery

We had heard many people tell us that the unrolling of the large tangkha here is a must see and quite incredible. And when the day came, we were not disappointed!

Rising early and quite groggy from sleeping in a room too hot and with next door neighbors who liked to sing very loudly and into the very early morning hours (and if it wasn’t such beautiful vocals or my earplugs I might have said something), we headed to our newly discovered favorite restaurant in Xia He, the Nomad Restaurant, for a quick breakfast of Nescafe and banana pancakes with honey. The man who runs the place is very kind and was about the only person within a 50 mile radius that seemed to understand Leigh’s Lhasa dialect Tibetan. The place was situated at a very strategic corner that overlooked the monastery complex and the bustling street market below. The clientele was mostly Tibetans there to enjoy some hot milk and sugar (in Amdo they seem to forget to put tea in the ‘tea’) and the atmosphere is really relaxed. So we enjoyed hanging out there a lot.

After breakfast, we made our way with most of the rest of town to the tangkha hill where everyone was gathering and there as a palpable air of intense excitement and festivity. Everyone was dressed in their finest chubas and waited impatiently for the procession to begin. There were so many people. Definitely one of the largest single gatherings I’d ever seen in Tibet, because a gathering like this in Lhasa or central Tibet would be totally illegal and prohibited. After just awhile, the restless crowd finally heard the conch shell horns and drums of the procession emerging from the monastic complex and the level of excitement rose noticeably. Coming across the bridge from the monastery, lead by a group of royally dressed horsemen, a few Tibetan clowns and most of the monastery’s highest lamas, was the huge rolled tangkha carried by probably over 100 monks! It looked like this massive yellow caterpillar with 100 pink and maroon legs inching its way over the river and up the hill. Then, as soon as the procession crossed the bridge, the stampede to touch the head to the tangkha began! Wow. It was so much fun, so much pushing and shoving, so much energy and excitement. Hundreds of people were shoving up to get close to the walking rolled tangkha to try and touch their heads to it and then there were all these monks running up and down the line trying to beat them off….with their robes! Now, I’ve never been hit with a robe sleeve before so I can’t say for sure, but I’m thinking it wasn’t really much of a deterrent for the devotees. And sure enough the rush to touch the head continued as the yellow and maroon caterpillar made its way up the hill and to the top. I had already claimed my spot in the crowd at the bottom of the hill and it quickly became quite crowded around me as the masses filled in and waited the grand unrolling. After the necessary chanting and prayers offered by the higher lamas, the hundreds of monks lining the massive tangkha began the difficult and coordinated task of unrolling it down the hillside. It was massive! And beautiful! I couldn’t tell if it was the bitter cold and biting wind or just the awe inspiring affect of seeing this incredibly large work of art and devotion unfurled, but it was challenging to photograph at times because of the tears in my eyes. I’m not even Buddhist but the power of that moment will be hard to forget. It was deeply moving. And the crowd around me, full of pilgrims and devout witnesses began to prostrate and recite their appropriate prayers upon seeing the huge image unveiled.

The power of seeing large images like this, larger than life, is very powerful. It has given me ideas for my photographs. I think I’d like to see my work from here in Tibet printed life-size or bigger. Like 4 feet by 5 foot or something like that. I think that would add a level of presence and audacity to them. I need to try and avoid the ‘bigger is better’ just because it’s bigger, but with the right images in the right environment, it could be very successful. We’ll see what happens.

The orderly nature of the crowd soon disintegrated after the lamas completed their prayers and left the scene. And the rushing crowd to the bottom or to the sides of the large long-life Buddha of Infinite Light was a site to behold. To see such religious devotion is inspiring but always, for me at least raises questions of identity and self analysis. Why don’t I feel such powerful faith? Is something wrong with me? Am I less than them for feeling nothing but mild curiosity or exotic fascination? Is this religion better than others? Why do religion and religious images and ritual have such a strong pull for people? Do these folks really critically think about what they are taught or do they just go on pure faith or because their parents and their friends are this way too? What if I’m wrong in not believing and get to the end of my days and there’s nothing there for me? These are questions that I still struggle with, especially living in a society whose very structure and modes of living are based within and around a religion (or as many Buddhists will argue, not a religion but a philosophy). Again, the monks who were lining the sides and bottom to ‘protect’ it were just using their sleeves for weapons and didn’t really seem to illicit anything more than laughter and big smiles from those trying to touch the image. It was hard not to join in fun, so I rushed forward too and got whacked a time or two but no real harm done and my head has now touched the large tangkha….maybe that will mean something, maybe not, but why not cover all the bases right?

“Acceptance without proof is the fundamental characteristic of Western religion, rejection without proof is the fundamental characteristic of Western science”. – Gary Zukav

Eventually, after only like an hour of having it displayed, the monks began the re-rolling. This was as much fun to watch as the unrolling but for different reasons. With rhythmic songs, good humor, laughter and a lot of yelling, the monks got the thing rolled and began the long caterpillar walk back to the main temple of the monastery from where they came. With this, the crowd began to break up, laughing, hugging and all together in a very cheerful mood. Off into town to drink tea, have lunch, hang with friends and family and I’m sure to relive and share the glory of their head butting tangkha adventures. It reminded me of the feeling you have after a great show, walking out of the venue with your friends…a collective experience shared and enjoyed by all there. With little trouble, I found Leigh (not too many white faced, curly haired whities around), and we went arm and arm down into town to do the same: content, happy and grateful for the chance to see such wonder.

Day 5, Labrang

Today was the cham dances. Pretty cool, seen them before. Colorful but long.

Lhasa, February 2007

2007-09-19T07:46:00.000-07:00

Losar Tashi Delek! Xin Nian Kuai Le! Happy New Year!!!

The air is crisp, clean and cold. It feels sharp entering my nose and lungs but invigorating and a strong reminder of my blessed senses. Cold winter air has always been one of my favorite smells, probably from the time of my childhood growing up in Denver. Unfortunately, the air there was never quite this pure thanks to the traffic and industry. Here, it smells of snow and when I climb to the roof and look out over the city, the tall mountains surrounding our valley has fresh coat of white. I don’t know why, but mountains always look taller when they have snow on them. It’s beautiful and unlike anything I’ve ever seen. It is winter in Lhasa and the New Year is here!

Festivities have already begun as we were witness and participant last night. It is called ghutook. According to tradition, the night before the eve of New Year is the night that you chase away the evil ghosts and negative spirits by lighting fireworks and waving sticks and shouting. It was an incredible show and some part of me, witnessing the arsenal of amateur artillery being fired into, across and above the streets of Lhasa, got a small glimpse of what Beirut or Chechnya might have looked like during those urban conflicts. It was loud. Very loud. It was smoky, too. Very smoky. And a complete assault on the senses. All over the city, there were small ‘poppers’ that sounded more like sticks being broken and extremely shocking ‘boomers’ that would set off car alarms tens of meters away. There was Roman candle like shooting sticks that many of the young children manning them thought it infinitely amusing to shoot at one another. (This of course reminded me of my own youth, when a group of us during high school got a bunch of Roman candles and thought it a great idea to have a Roman candle war. And admittedly, it was quite fun until one of us got hit in the eye. Luckily, he was not seriously hurt but had his eyebrow, lashes and part of his hair singed. That was the last time we ever played that game). Then in the middle of the street, the main street, there were several small bon fires lit and people would just throw entire unopened packages of firecrackers into these fires and run. Finally, also in the middle of the street, there were many large fireworks stations along the main road (obviously there wasn’t much traffic as all the potential drivers were shooting off fireworks too). This was where the really big ones were shot off. Imagine the large fireworks displays that you see at the 4^th of July and scale them down by a factor of ½ and this is what simple civilians, some probably drunk, all definitely untrained, were shooting for a good hour and half. Cannons really. A large boom, a colorful rocket trail into the black sky and then a huge flower of different colored fired – reds, oranges, blues, greens – followed by a silent but beautiful showering of sparks. I won’t get into too much detail about what an immense amount of trash this created; let’s just say a whole lot. The Fire Department was around, to make sure nothing caught on fire I guess, but they were mostly standing around enjoying the show too. We stayed on the main street where most of the action was concentrated, but you could hear the echoes and see the rockets from all over the city, both Tibetan and Chinese areas.

After the great surge of mini-artillery and small bombs tapered off, the city became contrastingly quiet and subdued. The calm after the storm. During this time, after we had regained our wits and come back together (I basically ran out of the restaurant we were having dinner in and left my companions to run up and down the streets photographing…a bad habit, I’m afraid…almost got me trampled in Nepal last year), we strolled leisurely through the Barkhor areas and did a nice kora around the Jokhang. Besides the numerous teams of street sweepers and garbage trucks picking up the large piles of trash left over, the streets were surprisingly deserted after such a city wide explosion just an hour before, but we were very thankful for the peace and solitude. I’ve really gotten back into night photography here. The dark alleys and random street lights make for, in my opinion, great night shots and I have been happily exploring the mysteries and strange surrealism of night photography. It’s an exercise in solitude, exploration and shadow. Part of it feels voyeuristic, part of it feels exploratory, part of it feels secret and sacred. The night represents the deep dark, always an instinctually foreboding place, full of secrets, dreams, mystery, unknowns. It’s a different time to look at the world. You could take a photo during the day and come back to take a photo of the same scene at night and it would be 100% different (except maybe non-sleeping towns like Miami). I really like that, almost a two world kind of process.

This week has definitely been one of anticipation, excitement, eagerness and shopping! The only thing I can compare it to is the week before Christmas. Everyone is off work, everyone is with family and everyone is out shopping for preparations. There are quite a few things to get for Losar (Tibetan New Year). First you have to clean the house from floor to ceiling, wall to wall. This usually takes a family of 4 two days to complete. You also have to buy new clothes (or clean your best clothes) because everyone dressed up on the first day of Losar and you have to look your absolutely finest. You also have to get new window dressings and rooftop prayer flags because the ones put up last year have already faded and gotten pretty ratty in the constant sun and wind here. Some people will go so far as to put new paint on the house and window/door trims. You have to have a lot of food. And I mean a lot. One day recently, Leigh and I were walking though the impromptu meat market that sprouted up for Losar just behind the main bus stop on the main road and we saw family buy not one, but two quarters of a yak! That is about 60 pounds per quarter and costing about 160 USD for both halves. Quite a large chunk of money for someone here…almost 2 weeks salary. Granted that really amounts to 1$ per pound, a steal in the US, and not a bad price for here either, but they bought a whole half a yak (120 pounds of dried meat) just for Losar! The meat will be taken back to their house where it will be hung from the window cages until Losar (sometimes a couple weeks or more) and then eaten with relish. I guess there’s something particularly spicy about the Lhasa air.

Another food item necessity is the kapse or friend dough cookies. The closest thing we have in the States would probably be the funnel cake but kapse isn’t chewy, it’s crunchy. It is not Losar without kapse, and it comes in all sizes, shapes, colors and flavors (though the standard with a little powdered sugar makes up the larges portion of kapse bought). There are stores that only open for a few weeks around Losar that only makes kapse and huge amounts of it. And it is a precious item as there are lines out the doors of most of these stores during this time. People buy kilos at a time; entire boxes full of oil saturated fried dough. Mmmmmmm! Some more necessities include the 9 ingredients to the special Losar soup that is made. I guess it’s like collards and black eyed peas in the South, the traditional meal. People buy lots of fruit and lots of yogurt too, but this is not that unusual from any other day, just a matter of degree. Finally, there is a special display that is made every year called a cheme. It is the centerpiece of any home and has very special significance during the New Year’s celebrations. The cheme consists of a highly decorated wooden bowl with two compartments. In one you put ground barley in the other you put whole barley. Then you decorated it with butter sculptures on a stick (these are truly amazing what you can do with butter), colored wheat/barley stalks and surround the whole display with fruit, food, etc. We have been invited to go to a cheme making ceremony at a friend’s house today and I will know more later. Right now, I have been spending my time walking the streets, especially in the markets, and trying to capture all the various stages and aspects of the Losar preparations. It has been so much fun, so exciting and very interesting. It is the first Losar for Leigh and me here in Tibet and we are looking forward to it.

On the night before Losar we were invited over to a Tibetan friend’s home to spend the night and enjoy the special intimacy and private views that a typical foreigner is not allowed. It was a very genuine and special invitation and we are both so grateful for this rare opportunity. The day before Losar, a cheme is built. This is a traditional New Year’s display consisting of large stacks of kapse (fried dough), fresh fruit and 7 or 9 offering bowls full of dried fruit, candy, dried cheese. This kapse stack is supposed to represent the body of a sheep, with head, innards, fur, legs, etc. According to tradition, the sheep was at one time more important and more sacred to Tibetans than the yak is currently. To one side is the cheme phu or large decorated container that holds on one side the tsampa (roasted, ground barley) and on the other side the whole barley grains. Into the pile of tsampa and barely grains are placed colorful dried wheat and barley stalks and one butter sculpture created on a piece of flat board for each side. These can be incredibly ornate and complex. Some will have they symbols for longevity, some will have the 8 sacred symbols of Buddhism, some will just have detailed designs and patterns like flowers or mountains. It is amazing all the things that people can do here with butter. I just thought it was good on corn on the cob! It was funny to watch our friend’s (we’ll call her TZ) mother and father ‘discuss’ how best put up the cheme display. It reminded me of the ‘discussions’ that happen regarding the placement and alignment of Christmas tress or Hanukah menorahs.

I can’t tell you how many things that I witnessed here during the last couple weeks that indirectly have a counter part in the Christmas holiday preps and celebrations. For example, another thing that everyone here does is to replace the prayer flags on their houses’ roofs. These are typically created on a small sapling tree (I won’t discuss here the environmental ramifications of thousands of young trees being cut down just for decoration….gee, sounds like Christmas too, huh?). The prayer flags are tied to the small branches and then the dead decorated tree, a true symbol of Christmas, is then put on the roof to replace the one they put up there last new years. I was visiting a corner ‘tree lot’ photographing them make these prayer flag trees when a man bought one and proceeded to tie it to the top of his car and drive off! Now if that doesn’t speak Christmas tradition, I don’t know what does. Very funny comparisons to be made.

Anyway, after the cheme was properly discussed, sometimes very loudly, and finally completed, we ate dinner all together. There was the mother and father, three daughters, a son-in-law, two grandchildren and three foreigners. What a combo! Then, in typical holiday season modern society fashion, the family gathered in front of the TV to watch whatever ‘holiday special’ was on. Because both Chinese and Tibetan New Year fell at the same time this year (sometimes they can be as much as a month apart), there was a Chinese and Tibetan New Year TV special on at the same time. One was being broadcast from Beijing, the other was filmed here in Lhasa. Both were very interesting if not downright amusing. It’s like they don’t really realized they are making fun of themselves because what they think they are doing is completely nice and aesthetic, etc. Come the 08 Olympics, you’ll see what I’m talking about. The Chinese idea of grand performance is rather immature and grand. The TV specials were sometimes very eerie, too. During the Beijing show, there came a performance by a group of 70 Tibetan singers and dancers. All happy and smiley, like little bobble headed dolls. The first couple scenes they showed on the screen behind them were pretty Tibetan landscapes and Lhasa scenes, etc. Within 30 seconds the scenes became one long commercial for the train, images of the train and nothing but the train until the very end of the performance when the last scene shown was Tiananmen Square! Now, if this isn’t subliminal conditioning, I don’t know what is. One of the greatest symbols of power abuse and iron fisted rule being shown behind a troupe of smiley ‘happy’ Tibetans…it was downright disturbing on many levels. Almost like, this will happen again if you don’t behave. Crazy.

I drank more sweet tea and butter tea in these few hours than I’d like to remember. Oh the bladder! I can’t say ‘No thank you’ now without thinking of tea! And I come from the South, the home of hospitality! Well, Tibetans put us to shame. You literally cannot go 5 minutes without someone, usually the mom, coming up to you and refilling your glass, offering you food and telling you to drink and eat. After awhile it becomes a bit annoying but the intention is kind, so you have to roll with it.

At midnight the sky erupted in more fireworks than I have ever seen in my life. It was an incredible display for the Chinese New Year (Year of the Golden Pig) and put the one I spoke of for ghutook to shame. It was a true firestorm that lasted for hours. There was no sleep to be had, not with literally thousands of fireworks going off all over the city simultaneously…and sometimes right next door. The sky was absolutely ablaze with color. Not thinking too much about the amount of trash this celebration was creating, nor the sheer size of the impact if you expand it to China-wide, it was really something I’ll never forget. I thought I’ve seen displays in America, but nothing compares to this. And this was just some ‘backwater frontier town’ called Lhasa. I can’t even imagine what it was like in Beijing or Shanghai for example. I think the most poignant moment of the night though came during the fireworks display, when without even looking up from the pot of soup she was stirring, TZ’s mom said, “There are so many Chinese”. This because Tibetans don’t light fireworks and never have traditionally. And to hear the war zone happening outside, the point was hammered home. Another subtle reminder that things here have changed dramatically in 50 years.

After the fireworks finally subsided a couple hours after midnight, we finally slept. In the morning, we had the traditional Losar breakfast. One was a soup of cracked wheat with oatmeal with meat called tru. The next was kunde (or all good things) and consisted of chang (fermented barley), tsampa (roasted and ground barley), droma (very small sweet potato root), chura (dried cheese), brown sugar and eaten with kapse (fried dough). And the last course was droma dretse (small sweet potatoes with rice). Probably one of the most interesting, if not delicious, breakfasts I’ve ever had. Eating and hanging with the family was fun and interesting. After breakfast we got dressed in our finest. Everyone wears their fanciest chubas. I wore my jacket and button up shirt with dress shoes even. Everyone looked so beautiful! After getting dressed everyone gathered in the living room to do the ritualistic tossing of barley and tsampa while shouting Losar Tashi Delek! Then it was a round ritualistic drinking of chang. When handed your cup of chang, you must make three flicks (offerings) with the 4^th finger for the Buddha, Dharma and Sanga (the Son, the Father, the Holy Ghost maybe?). Then you take a sip, they refill the glass, you take another sip, another refill, a third sip, another refill and then its bottom’s up, or shapda! This goes around the room, starting with the oldest male and making its way around the family and then to us.

We left a little while after the chang drinking to go to another family’s house for lunch. After lunch, which was very enjoyable and delicious, we wandered around the city a little. We first stopped at Ramoche and then on to the Jokhang and Barkhor. Incredible, long lines, beautiful dressed, dirt poor beggars, lots of police. The streets and market areas are completely dead. Except for the Muslims (who are mostly of the Uigyur minority ethnicity), there isn’t anyone working. Again, it’s a lot like Christmas day.

The first day of Losar is a particularly important and auspicious time to get your dharma in. Apparently it counts something like 1,000 or 10,000 more times to visit the Jowa or do a kora or make offerings, etc during Losar. So the lines at the three main temples in Lhasa – the Jokhang, the Ramoche and the Potala were wrapping around the building, 5-6 hours long! According to one monk we know at the Jokhang, they opened the lines at 8 pm the night before and expect them to run constantly for 24 hours. Wow! When we arrived at the Ramoche, our fist stop, it wasn’t so bad, but the Ramoche is never as long as the Johkhang and it was also 4:30 in the afternoon. Either most people were in line at the Jokhang, had already visited, or were saving it for later when the lines wouldn’t be so bad. We didn’t go in, but took some photos and then soon left for the Jokhang were most of the action was happening anyway. We were not disappointed. The police had taken the barkhor’s small wooden and metal stalls and created a people corridor that wrapped almost 100% around the Jokhang, a good half kilometer. This still allowed room for people doing kora (or finding a place unmarked by police so they could clamber over the stalls and break in line – a very Tibetan activity). Leigh and I did a few koras to gain some merit of course but mostly to people watch. On one side, in line, you had highly decorated Tibetans in their finest (reminding me of those people who attend church only on Easter and Christmas) and then on the other side you had dirt poor beggars who seemed much more intent on gaining a few mao (small change) from the passers-by than getting any dharma from the Jowa. Interesting isn’t it? When you’re busy worrying about when or how your next meal is coming, you don’t have a lot of time to spend on thinking about God, the universe or any of that esoteric shit. Eventually, after lots of walking, photographing, and watching, we got cold and very tired and went home, feeling like that after Christmas day exhausted. We even woke up the next morning sore! And all we really did was eat and drink tons of tea…jeez.

On the third day, Leigh and I went to a small Horse Festival here in Lhasa. Started by the Panchen Lama (2^ndonly to His Holiness), it was great fun. The photos can be seen here: http://picasaweb.google.com/jasonsangsterphoto/LhasaHorseRace. I think they really speak for themselves. Incredible stuff. Puts cowboys to shame.

Finally, some enjoyable randomness: http://youtube.com/watch?v=QRvVzaQ6i8A

Phenbo Valley, February 2007

2007-09-19T07:32:00.000-07:00

I can now better understand how at one point in the Pacific Northwest there were over 300 Native American tribes with each speaking their own and totally incompatible languages. Because of the rugged terrains, deep river valleys, thick forests, the tendency to stay within known lands and considerable distances between different peoples, many times one tribe had absolutely no idea that the others even existed. And this was how it evolved and was for hundreds and thousands of years. I think this same concept can be applied to the very ancient world, even before the development of larger cities like Jericho or Sumer, large tribes of peoples had wandered out of Africa and drifted so far apart, become so separated by rivers, mountains, glaciers and miles, that what once was a single ancient root human language (possibly just grunts and sign language, but I think it was much more complex and beautiful than that), splintered into 5,000 or so different branches of the human language tree that we now have. Some of these languages are extinct, some dying and some slowly but surely taking over the rest. It has been said that in the future there will only be a few dozen languages left; that pretty soon only the 5 or 6 major languages will be widely spoken. This seems to go hand in hand with the slow but seemingly inevitable decay of indigenous cultures and minor societies in the tremendous pressures from globalization, modernization and colonization. But I am digressing yet again, as I tend to do, when talking about something as seemingly innocent as a 3 day hike in a valley an hour by bus to the north of Lhasa but a two day walk over the 15,000 foot mountains dividing it from the Lhasa valley (and the modern world).

But before I get back to my story and speaking of language, I want to share some interesting things with you about English. Leigh and I have been investigating the history of the English language, really just because we’re curious. And we found some amazing things. For example, Modern English is less than 600 year old and yet is the second most spoken language in the world (second only to Mandarin Chinese which is spoken by a greater number of people but not as geographically wide as English). There are over 300 million native English speakers, another 300 million who use it as a second language and another 100 million who use it as a foreign language. Two thirds of all scientific papers are written in English, 70% of all post/mail is written and addressed in English. English is the official or second official language for over 45 countries, compared to 27 for French, 20 for Spanish and only 17 for Arabic. It is the official language of mathematics, aviation, astronomy, diplomacy and business. This is simply incredible. Like it or not, English is well on its way to becoming the world’s default official language. No wonder we Americans are so lazy and unmotivated to learning another language!

For more history and some very interesting lists of words in English borrowed from other languages (like avocado is a Nahuatl, or Aztec language, word for testicle!), please visit these sites...

http://www.krysstal.com/english.html

http://www.krysstal.com/borrow.html

http://www.anglik.net/englishlanguagehistory.htm

The reason for this little transect of thought stems from a very incredible, invigorating, soul-warming recent trek that Leigh and I have just completed in the beautiful Phenpo valley. Like I mentioned before, the Phenpo valley is valley directly to the north of the Lhasa valley, only one hour by vehicle or two days by walking, but worlds and worlds apart socially, culturally and environmentally. We roughly based our hiking on 4 or 5 different monasteries and nunneries we (read Leigh) wanted to visit. Though I do have the tendency to become easily monasteried-out, I have to admit that they are really perfect stops on a hike, make excellent and friendly guesthouses and when all roads in the valley seem to lead to them it makes more sense to visit than not. I’ve begun to look at them as really colorful, spiritual tea & guest houses. After hours of walking at 12,000 feet, in the dry, dusty moonscapes of Tibet, I cannot tell you how good that first couple cups of butter tea can be to a weary soul and exhausted body! With butter (fat), tea (caffeine) and salt, it has almost everything the body needs to immediately replenish its stocks of energy. To have a safe haven to get out of the either beating sun (which at this altitude is much stronger than you think, even if the air is cold sunburns occur quickly), or the sometimes relentless and biting wind, or the occasionally bitter cold mountain air, and to have in that safe haven a warm kitchen fire to sit next to, a warm cup of strong tea in your hands and some good cheer for the soul is a gift that I cannot overlook. Thus, whenever I see the golden spires and deep red walls of a main assembly hall and the nearby rising column of smoke from the cooking fires, I feel immediately uplifted and give a small prayer of gratitude that the founders of these sacred places knew what they were doing when the put them half a day’s walk from each other (depending on the valley of course).

Rising early Monday morning and thinking of all the poor saps having to go to work, we boarded the mini-van at the Eastern Suburb Bus Station in Lhasa for the brief but cramped ride east and then north to the main town of Phenpo in the Phenpo valley (imaginative isn’t it?). Sipping our coffee and slurping our yogurt, we left the urban (and mostly ugly) sprawl of the Lhasa valley following the Kyi-Chu river east and upstream and then crossing a prayer flag bedecked metal bridge that is no wider than our mini-van, began our slow curve north into the country and out of the touch of time. Though the drivers here can give you a white knuckle ride sometimes, the roads were relatively clear except for a few wandering yaks and pigs which were easily if not fluently avoided, and we made quick time to the main town of Phenpo.

Donning our backpacks, which always seem to be heavier than you think they will be, we made our first visit to the in town Ganden Chungkor Monastery. An active monastery, most of the monks that live here were leaving as we arrived to conduct a puja in someone’s house, a common occurrence. There are many reasons to conduct a puja in one’s house – to clear obstacles, if someone is sick, to bring auspiciousness to the house and family in general – and they can last for several days. Typically, the family will give a donation to the monastery and then also feed the visiting monks for the days they are doing the ceremony. When we walked into the central courtyard, it was a bit surreal as we could see towering above the white chortens and golden spires on the roof huge cell phone towers and above everything else in the town stood the imposing and really architecturally ugly PSB (Public Security Bureau) building. Thankfully, this would be the last of anything modern or Chinese for the next 3 days. The monastery is pleasant with very friendly and accommodating monks running it. After a nice tour around, we were invited into the kitchen for some butter tea and conversation. Here began our practice of asking directions to the next destination once we arrived at the current one. After several cups of tea and having to refuse innumerable times for more, we were off and heading north and out of town and into the heart of the Phenpo valley.

This valley, one of the most fertile in the entire Lhasa area, is, compared to the Lhasa valley, sparsely populated and very agricultural. We spent more time walking through or besides farming fields than we did walking through villages. There were also probably as many, if not more, animals than there were humans. Large yaks, black and pink hairy pigs, smallish horses and ponies, some chickens and more dogs than we could count. And that was just the domesticated animals. We were constantly hearing and seeing the beautiful waterfowl of the area – orange breasted ducks, long necked geese and black headed cranes (which can only be found in Tibet). There were also a few eagles to be seen because there were hundreds of little mountain groundhogs, called pica, in the valley. They could be seen scampering from one hole to the next during our passage.

The valley floor was sparsely dotted with farming villages, the architecture of which probably hasn’t changed in a thousand years. They first make the bricks from the surrounding dirt, mix with water and the stalk remnants of the barley harvest to make basic adobe bricks. Piles and piles of these bricks could be seen stacked 10 feet high around houses and on the outskirts of villages. Occasionally, we would see a particularly wealthy family using mason bricks instead, but this was rare. The bricks are then cemented together with either mud or actually cement (depending on the wealth of the family). After the walls set, the roof, windows and doors are placed. The roof is usually a few medium to large sized trees, stripped and de-barked that are laid across the walls to form a frame. On top of which are laid many smaller straightened and de-limbed branches cross-ways to create a completely covered roof. They then take a specific mixture of dirt, water and grasses and cover the wood to seal the roof. This process takes lots of stomping and pounding, usually accompanied with singing and lots of laughter. The windows, doors and roof awning are highly decorated, very skillfully carved wood. These will then be painted colorfully. After everything is in place, a thick, goopy plaster is applied liberally over the walls and before it dries to seal in the walls, deep gouges are created in geometric designs to give the walls decoration. Leigh and I were fortunately enough to be able to witness a house building and I would say that half the village (or over 75 people) were there helping build it. With a work force like this and the simple passive solar design (courtyards, doors and most windows faced south), a 3-4 bedroom house of approximately 1000 square feet can be completed in less than 7 days! It was very inspiring to see an entire community working together to build a house for a particular family. Maybe they were paid; maybe they did it because they know that someday they may need to depend on that family’s help to survive too. There was something very simple and communal about the whole process of building a house. It was a pleasure and honor to witness such camaraderie and co-existing happening.

After walking west along a decapitated tree lined dirt road for about 3 hours, deeper and deeper into the valley, and after spending some time entertaining some village kids and three nuns on their way to the big town, we eventually arrived at our first destination – Langtang Monastery. Located on the southern perimeter of the valley and right at the base of the old trade route that goes directly south and over the mountains to Lhasa, Langtang was founded in 1093 and named for its founder Langri Tangpa Dorje Senge. Much of the original Kadampa monastery has been converted to farming land and a very pleasant farming village now surrounds what’s left of the once sprawling complex. At one point in time, very soon after the founding, it housed over 2,000 monks. Today there are only 30 or so. In one way, it is sad to be at places that used to have thousands of monks that now only have dozens living in the midst of ruins and a few rebuilt assembly halls and residences. On the other hand, that those dozens, or a hundred, are there at all, in spite of the past and all the other present options, is heartening.

When we arrived almost every one of them was involved in some sort of preparation for Losar, or Tibetan New Year. In the main courtyard there were several older men from the village sitting at sewing machines making new door and window hangings. It is a custom to clean your house and re-decorate your windows and doors every Losar. There was another middle aged monk who was working on making a new statue from clay of a recently deceased local Rinpoche. Then sitting around the sunny and warm courtyard (everyone here is a living solar panel!), were a scattering of other monks who were painting pecha (religious text) with saffron, then rolling them up into tight scrolls in preparation for placing them inside the new statue as part of the consecration ceremony. With the scrolls, the statue’s hollow interior will also house incense and other blessed objects, some maybe belonging to the deceased Rinpoche. The monks here were very friendly. In fact, everyone we met was kind in a way that people who live in villages and spend a lot of time outdoors and not much time in a city are kind. To our relief, as it was getting rather late in the afternoon and we were a bit tired and dusty, they offered us a place to sleep in the main assembly hall building, upstairs in a room together but definitely not in a double bed. How inappropriate would that be?!

Putting our packs down, we enjoyed some butter tea with the monks in the courtyard and relaxed for an hour or so in the fading afternoon warmth. We also enjoyed the company of many a ‘homeless’ dogs there at Langtang. As some of you may know, Leigh and I are seriously contemplating adopting a Tibetan Mastiff puppy (or two) before we come home to the States this year. So I in particular have been attracted to the local dogs in a way like when you think you want a new car you check that model out anytime you see them on the streets. Anyway, there’s an interesting story about homeless dogs that hang out at monasteries. Apparently, in their previous or a previous life, they were monks and now they are dogs but they feel most comfortable and at home at the monastery so that’s where they tend to gather, sleep and beg. Monks are usually quite kind to them (as long as they stay far enough away from their own bowls of soup!) as they realize that could be them in the next life or the one after. Remember karma and the Golden Rule?

Then late in the day, we casually strolled through the village and did a few koras around the impressive chortens at Langtang. Our route took us around the village and along the way we stopped to talk (well, Leigh talked, I smiled and nodded) to many folks, mostly older and younger as the young adults were either building a house nearby or working in Lhasa or Phenpo town. Our walk eventually took us by the community well where we sat and watched as the kids and old women came to gather their daily/nightly quota. Amazingly, when we asked how long the well had been there, an old, wrinkled grandmother told us 5,000 years! Unbelieving, we secretly asked someone else and got the same response. Wow. People have been gathering water at this spot for over five millenniums. That is just absolutely amazing, stunning and so very humbling. How old is the United States? 300 years old? That’s not even 1/10^th the age of this simple well. I mean, people were gathering water at this spot when they were building the freaking Pyramids! That’s just so cool. So we sat there and thought about how old this place is, how many mothers and children have been here, how much village gossip was spread at this spot, how many lives have depended on this one well. A gentle and profound reminder just how short, small, insignificant and absolutely precious our lives can be. That grandmother further surprised us when she up and hauled a full water container (probably about 50 lbs by my lifting) onto her back and hiked away without a grunt, groan or moan. It is so easy to underestimate the strength of a little old lady just because she has a few wrinkles or is missing a few teeth. Anyway, we eventually passed on and as the sun was setting we climbed up to the roof of the monastery and was rewarded with absolutely stunning views of the huge red and green striped valley we just walked halfway across.

After a decent night’s sleep in our very warm sleeping bags, we awoke to the sun greeting us again for another gorgeous day. Today we walk to the Shar Nunnery, a seemingly innocuous 3 ½ hours to the north and west, basically on the other side of the valley though we couldn’t see it from Langtang. I’ve said it before and I have to say it again here – distances in Tibet are very deceiving! The walk we embarked on this day was epic, beautiful, thrilling and totally exhausting. 3 ½ hours turned into 5 and when we finally arrived at our destination, there wasn’t enough daylight (nor energy in our bones) to walk back! It was very funny because basically folks would give us directions to the next place to ask directions. And they would always be like, “Well, you go to that white house there (they are all white in case you’re wondering) and you keep going until you see a water ditch. Then you….oh, never mind! Do you see that next village there? Just got there and ask. They’ll know”. And that’s how it was for almost every direction asking encounter we stopped for. It was great! We loved it. No street names. No take a left, take a right. No 3.5 miles to X. They would just point and say, “That way”. And honestly, that’s all we needed. The land was so grandly open and available, it was literally a pick your poison kind of hike. But the really crazy thing was that the whole time we were walking, we could see our destination in the distance…and that’s exactly where it seemed to stay – in the distance! A couple hours of steady walking would go by and it wouldn’t seem a damn bit closer. D’oh!

Along the way, we encountered children playing on the quickly melting ice from the night before. A couple of them had home-made sleds and we had a great time giving them extra ‘push’ along the frozen canals. A little while later we had quite an amusing time trying to decipher a toothless grandmother’s (maybe great-grandmother) directions at a crossroads. And even later, as our spirits were tired and our bodies weary, we met a kind shepherd spinning black wool that encouraged us and told us we were almost there. Of course, ‘almost there’ meant another 1 ½ hours! This type of walking, across huge swaths of flat, rocky land with huge snow capped mountains surrounding me, which has been so foreign to me as I grew up in the Southeast’s thick forests and gentle old Appalachians, gave me such a peaceful feeling and possibly a brief glimpse at what our nation’s first white explorers, folks like Lewis & Clark, must have experienced and seen. Miles and miles and miles of land, rock and mountain with nothing much to break the distances but a few creeks or rivers and thousands upon thousands of animals.

But finally we arrived at Shar Nunnery and I must say, after all the toil and tears, it was worth it, every minute. This place is highly recommended and definitely off the beaten track. Before we even got there, it seemed to us to be a very special place. For one it was impossible to see until you were right up on it. The last little bit of walking was uphill and the complex appeared briefly and then would keep disappearing from sight even though we were only a couple kilometers away. But once you come upon it, the magic you think you felt comes full force to your soul and you gaze in wonder at more than 200 gleaming white chortens, of all shapes and sized, with brilliant gold tops on deep red spires. Groups of nomads from farther north were prostrating around them and seemed impressed, or at least surprised, that white people cold also travel without a car! The nuns here are in such good spirits, in a defiant and jovial sort of way, and we saw many photos of you know who in somewhat discreet but open view. In general, nuns seem so confident and proud and earnestly devoted to practice and serving others. And it should also be noted they seem to take better care of their dwellings and chapels than the monks! Everything was clean, polished and well cared for. Sadly, sometimes you just don’t find that in the monasteries. Leigh is an immediate hit at any nunnery we go to because 1) she’s a woman 2) she speaks Tibetan and 3) she’s Buddhist. It almost never fails that at some point in the conversations, the nuns ask, beg and sometimes plead with her to stay with them and become a nun too! I hope that never happens while I’m alive for obvious selfish reasons, but I have to wonder if she’s ever seriously thought about it….Seems I’m good for giving her gray hairs and good meals. How can I compare that to Enlightenment??? After our tour of the chapels and a few koras around the chortens (stares go without saying here), we found a young Tibetan man with a truck parked nearby and proceeded to finagle, or should I say rent, a ride back to Langtang; thus, saving our feet, backs and sunburned faces the return trail. Best $8 ride I ever hired!

That night back at Langtang- our ‘home base headquarters’, we enjoyed our typical trekking dinner of hot instant noodles, hot chocolate and candy bars. We then sauntered up to the roof again, quickly becoming one of favorite places in the whole valley, and watched the hundreds of stars and full moon join the night sky as we listened to the surrounding village’s evening sounds – barking dogs, cooking fires, the isolated mumbling mantras from a older man or woman doing kora around the nearby chortens, kids getting their last bit of play time in before dinner and bed, the gentle spinning sound and splashing at the central well as mothers and young girls fill their families water jugs for the night, a lonely goose call in the distance, the low, Harley-like rumble of a tractor heading home…

Early the next day, after a filling breakfast of oatmeal, Clif bars and coffee, we headed out to our final destination of this Phenpo adventure – Nalandra Monastery. Founded in 1435 by Rongtogpa, a contemporary of Tsongkhapa, the monastery was largely destroyed in 1959 (what a terrible, terrible year for Tibetans!). Nalandra lies 1 ¾ hours west and slightly south of Langtang, nestled up in a nice upper valley against the backs of the mountains dividing Lhasa and Phenpo valleys. The monastery was named after the legendary Nalandra temple near Bodh Gaya in India, the location where Siddartha reached enlightenment and became a Buddha. Nalandra started as a Kadama (but now is Sakay) institution and was considered one of the most prestigious centers of learning in all of Central Tibet during it’s time. The ruins from the Cultural Revolution’s destruction are extensive and deeply upsetting (like any of the CR’s destruction, not only in Tibet). On the bright side, like many of the other sites of destruction, there is also serious rebuilding on-going. As we climbed the gentle uphill track leading to Nalandra, we were surrounded by darting pica and the unbroken views to the east looking over the entire Phenpo valley draped in morning mist. When we arrived, we made our way around the complex following the ancient walls painted in typical Sakya colors – red stripe, blue stripe, white stripe – each representing a particular deity important to that sect. After a good 30 minutes of following this wall we finally realized that we would be walking around the monastery for quite a bit longer and since we had a short time period to explore the grounds we hopped the fence and made our way into the treed and tall grassed ruins surrounding the main assembly hall and two main teaching colleges (recently rebuilt). Making our way into the main courtyard, we were yet again warmly welcomed and invited into the kitchen for tea. Today was a special day, as they monks here were preparing for a Tara puja (ceremony) so they were making lots of torma (butter and tsampa sculptures). After making some photos of the monks there, and enjoying some good laughs with them after they saw them, we joined the monks in the main chapel as they began the chanting for the ceremony. Leigh stayed back a bit and recorded some of it on her voice recorder and I wandered around the perimeter taking photos and sometimes just closing my eyes to fully absorb the sounds and smells of this particular time and space – an oftimes overlooked exercise in trying to form solid memories.

Reluctantly, the time was upon us to leave. We were planning on walking all the way back to the main town this afternoon and we still had to return to Langtang to pick up our packs. As I really do not like to take the same way back, I veered off the road and headed for the eastern ridge, where I could see a foot trail beat into the rocks there. There is something very unique and special about walking cross-country. I wouldn’t exactly call what we were doing ‘bush whacking’ as there was absolutely no vegetation to be seen except for the very short, dry grasses we were walking over. It is hard to describe the feeling of freedom and limitlessness that I feel when just walking across the Earth, with no path, no road and no body to tell me where to go. It’s ancient, instinctual and primitive…but also so absolutely serene, simple and sublime. Just to walk…to point your face in a direction and go. Nothing to bar your way, nothing to bar your view, just walking. Wow. It’s magical sometimes what happens to me when I get into the ‘zone’, the hypnotic rhythm of my breath and my feet working as a team to propel me forward in space. I have to say this to my ancestors, those that came down from the trees – THANK YOU! I haven’t walked as much as I have in the last year, I don’t think ever. It has been liberating, invigorating and much healthier. From Nalandra, we cut across country, easily avoiding the few dry creek beds we came across. With the warm sun, the royal blue sky and the red rocks as our visual sensory stimulus, it took me awhile to notice that besides my breath and steps there was simply no sounds. I stopped walking and stood for several minutes with not a sound to be heard (Leigh was far behind me as I had really opened up my stride upon the open plain). Absolute silence. Magical and so rare. It was so quiet there in the middle of this valley, with not a sign of human habitation to be seen, that I literally got lost in the silence. It was so sublime and perfect, this moment of stillness, of solitude, of utter contentment. And that is why I hike. That is why I seek the quiet places, the green places, the lonely places of the Earth…to find, or should I say rediscover, moments like this. To realize that the stillness in me is the stillness in the Universe and to realize that both are the Same and One…as I’ve said to many of you before, the Earth is my church, hiking is one way I pray. This reminds me of an African proverb I stumbled across recently – ‘When you pray, Move your feet’. I love that!

Finally, I have to let my sports geek self out a little here…..Happy Super Bowl! I was lucky enough to be able to watch it here in the comfort of my own home, complete with over-excited Chinese announcers that in my opinion might have made the game even more interesting that it really was. GO COLTS!!!

Lhasa, January 2007

2007-09-19T07:18:00.001-07:00

“Toss away stuff you don’t need in the end, but keep what’s important and know who is your friend” – Phish

Has it really been since the end of October since I last wrote?! Wow. How the time flies!

To my defense I have been extremely busy the last few months. I became very ill, traveled to Sri Lanka and have been applying to graduate schools. Not to mention there’s been 4 major holidays that we had to celebrate American style!

Where to begin? See, this is what happens when I go so long in between writings…there’s so much to catch you up on I don’t know where to start. Well, I’ll start from the beginning and work my way to the present.

A long, long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away there was a young Jedi by the name of JJ Sankwalker…

The last time we caught up with our young friend, he had just returned from the far western reaches of the Tibetan solar system – the planets of Guge and Kailash. It was an incredibly spiritual trip that touched him deeply in his ever growing center of light. This profound affect included a feeling of pure light expansion beyond his bodily borders, a feeling that his heart was larger than the universe, smaller than a quark and One with All. Using this inspiration, JJ returned to his temporary time and space station of Lhasa in the cosmic vessel that most refer to as the body. Traveling through time and space as the pilot of his own spaceship is a slow and sometimes time consuming process but one that JJ doesn’t mind and in fact appreciates the slowness as it gives room for mental wanderings, deeper appreciations of the space traveled and rare opportunity to connect with not only the local inhabitants (which are really just reflections of his Self) but to connect with the local Source. To put two naked feet and two naked hands and one naked heart on the dirt and breathe in the energy that is that Place, that Space. Every sentient being is an axis of time and space, a meeting of conscious energy and the x/y grid of the universal latitude and longitude. Think of it this way, your birthday is the X axis of Time and the place you were born (hospital, home, back of a cab) is the Y axis of Space. So in reality we are all just points on the matrix of the universe. So in the future, instead of asking what’s your sign? Ask what are your grid points? Sounds unromantic doesn’t it? Maybe but many times, reality is much more romantic than imagination. I guess it just depends on how you ‘see’ your world, your self, and your travels.

I was talking to a Tibetan friend yesterday. He told me that many people we hang out with are envious of my ability to travel wherever I want, whenever I want. For many here, it is virtually impossible to get a passport because it the process is profoundly complex and never the same for any two people or it is prohibitively expensive. So in essence many here are prisoners of the system. Even if they had the money or time or desire to leave, they couldn’t. Without a passport crossing borders is illegal. Personally, I’ve come to look at my passport as my ticket to experience. It is probably one of my most precious and priceless possessions. Speaking with my friend, I am once again reminded that travel is a privilege, not a right. The whole conversation was about privilege really. Here I am, born a white male from America. Besides a few misplaced prejudices about being selfish or egotistical or violent (which I think I work hard to overcome), there are really no social or cultural barriers in my way to accomplishment. Right? I’m not a woman and all the inherent stereotypes and glass barriers that come with the heavy burden of sex. I’m not black or yellow or red or green and all the inherent stereotypes and stigmas that come with the unavoidable witness of skin color. I am not Hispanic, Tibetan, Native American or born to some wild ‘uncivilized’ tribe in the rainforest and all the social discriminations and marginalization or cultural taboos that come with being born still deeply connected to the Mother. Ever since the fable of Adam and Eve came out a few thousand years ago, the male has been in power and given ever privilege possible. Gee, I wonder why the patriarchs of that time thought it time to change the predominant myth. Anyway, as a white American male is there anything that is not in my potential? (Besides childbirth of course – a gift I am happy to not have this life…ouch!) No, I don’t think so. Besides the ones I close myself, ignore to see or refuse to open, there are very, very few doors closed to me. In fact, in the last couple years my only real major crises were because I had too many options.

However, as I told my friend last night, with this heavy burden of advantage comes a necessary counter balance weight of responsibility. Exactly because I was born in this time, space, body and ability, I feel the absolute necessity to use these implied rights to help others with fewer options than I. How could I sit on my ass and just cruise through this ‘easy’ life? How can anyone born to similar situations for that matter? I feel it is my (and everyone’s) duty to utilize this precious life, this precious opportunity to create precious life and precious opportunity for others. Sure it would be easy to coast through this life on auto-pilot, allowing life to pass me by as I watch TV, play video games or drug myself seeking escape. But what’s the point in that?! This planet is too crowded as it is for so many of us to be wasting such priceless time and space. If you don’t like your life, change it or get out of the way. This might sound harsh and it is, but I am tired of people wasting their potential. My mom and dad really drilled it into me from the time I was young and for the longest time I absolutely hated that word: potential. But to be honest I think it is one of the most important words in spoken language. When we are born we are born into a certain potential reality. We have our sex, our ethnicity, our family, our genetic cards dealt to us and we’re supposed to over the years build a strong hand with the cards given. Sometimes we can trade our cards in for better ones, sometimes we trade our cards in for worse ones, and sometimes we even pass when it comes our turn to play. Yeah, playing cards is risky. There’s a lot that can go wrong, a lot that can go right. But if you don’t risk anything then you don’t gain anything either.

So I’ve chosen to use my cards and play them. Hell if I’m going to sit back and watch others play when I have a perfectly good deck in front of me! Thus I feel that where I am and what I do, whenever I look in the mirror, whenever I check the time or date, whenever I look around and see what’s around me – at all points, at all times, my life is exactly where it should be because I am the pilot of my space ship. And for whatever reasons (I think I saved the Pope in a previous life), I was born with a super duper ship that can really go anywhere it wants. And as a young Jedi, using the Force (or Source or Light or Center, whatever you want to call it) is as necessary to enrich the life as a good plate of garlic mashed potatoes or a raspberry mocha on a Sunday morning!

Yet again, I ramble…enjoying the ride so far? Where was I? Oh yes, talking about responsibility and potential. Some people don’t have a lot of potential. Sometimes it’s physical, sometimes it’s cultural, sometimes it’s self-restricted. Whatever the reason, if I have too much potential or more than I can use at any given time, why not try to share it with others? Maybe at some point I’ll need someone to remind me or share with me. There are some that think that humans are born selfish, that there is a selfish gene let’s say. Others would argue that there altruism or compassion is innate with being human. In more crude terms, are humans born sinners or saints? What do you think? Do you think we are a conglomeration of self-serving beings only looking for survival of the “I”? Or do you think we are a community of compassionate beings looking for a way to coexist harmoniously?

I have to be honest with you; there are many times I get lost in my own processes. I think that you, the reader, has been given a rare glimpse into my mind and heart. Many times I am working things out with you, in front of you. I never sit down know what will come out when I write these things. Sometimes it is a duly recorded witness of history, sometimes it is a complete random collection of mental wanderings (which seems to be the case this time – lucky you, eh?).

I guess I should catch you up with the happenings since I’ve been away. Basically when I got back from the Kailash trip I got really, really sick with a strong lung infection. Just in time to welcome Leigh’s best friend, Deb, to Tibet. Sorry Deb! The only time I can remember being that sick was when I was 15 or 16 and I caught pneumonia and bronchitis at the same time. I was REALLY sick then and ended up in bed for over 3 weeks and lots like 20 pounds. It was horrible. This was not quite that bad, but it was rough and looooooong. I was sick basically the whole month of November and the first half of December. In fact it took my trip to Sri Lanka and the warm humidity and oxygen-saturated sea level breathing to fully recover. I took antibiotics, drank teas, took heavy drugs…nothing worked. Some of it helped but none of it kicked it out. I coughed so hard and so much that I ended up either bruising a rib, cracking a rib or just seriously pulling my rib cage muscles so badly that even 4 weeks after being cured of the infection, my cage is still sore at certain times. Crazy stuff. I shouldn’t be too surprised about getting sick though. Tibet and Lhasa especially is dusty and unfortunately a lot of that dust has human and animal excrement, human spit and construction materials carried along with it. Tibetans (and Chinese) spit and hock and shoot loogies more than any Georgia farm boy I’ve ever known. When you walk down the street anywhere in Lhasa you have to watch where you step. Green slime is everywhere. It’s gross. And I am also quite surprised at the openness and non-chalantness (sp?) of people pissing and shitting in the streets. The shitting is mostly the kids and dogs but on any given day I’ll see at least 5-10 men pissing on a wall or down a sewer drain…RIGHT OUT IN THE OPEN! It’s like walking down Peachtree Street and seeing some business man whip it out and start urinating right on the Hard Rock Café’s walls…it’s gross and very unsanitary. On top of that, everyone gets sick and when you get sick it takes a long, long time to get better. So everyone is getting everyone sick and then everyone is staying sick. Winter here is one big walking sanitarium of coughing, hacking patients. Thus the end of October, including Hallow’s Eve and the Day of the Dead and pretty much all of November through Thanksgiving was not much fun for me.

We pretty much skipped Halloween though there were quite a few kids running around with masks on, but that’s not really that out of the ordinary. Thanksgiving, however, was another story…we blew it out for Thanksgiving! It was incredible. And I don’t think it would have happened without the encouragement, enthusiasm and coordination of our friend Deb who was in town during that time. She has amazing energy and can really inspire people to live into their potential, which is something I really admire in her and try to emulate. For Thanksgiving we asked the Gorkha (the hotel we stay in) if we could use their kitchen to make our feast, which they agreed to. So Leigh, Deb, Reid and I spent most of the day in the kitchen making the food for the night’s dinner. Reid works for Insider’s Guide to Beijing guidebook company and he and his comrades, Gabe and Simon, were in Lhasa for a couple weeks to work on a Insider’s Guide to Lhasa, which Leigh and I contributed to heavily. It will hopefully be printed in March. Leigh and I both wrote some articles and I sent in quite a few photos, so we’ll see what happens with all that. Could be cool. Anyway, we spent most of the day in the kitchen whipping up all kinds of stuff (of course dependant on the availability of local goods). As there were no turkeys, we had to make do with chickens. But it didn’t matter. We produced a feast! We had roasted chickens, garlic mashed potatoes, candied sweet potatoes, carrot-orange soup, rice, ginger soy oyster mushrooms & broccoli, roasted root vegetables, apple-cranberry crisp, banana bread, warm and iced teas, wine and beer. We had the whole restaurant to ourselves and filled it with friends – both local and foreigner. There were over 25 people there and we all had a great, great time. After dinner we went around in a circle and gave thanks for the things this year and it some of the things said were very touching. It was a rare occasion where people felt comfortable speaking their hearts in public. All in all, it was one of the most memorable Thanksgiving meals I’ve ever had - a real cross-cultural night of sharing, connecting and gratitude for life’s little gifts.

Just a little after Thanksgiving, I accompanied a couple foreign friends to help them work on a mini documentary on the Tibetan ‘river folk’. This includes the fishermen and the ferry people. The documentary makers want to focus on how because of paved roads, bridges and the influx of Chinese fishermen have had a dramatic and mostly negative impact on the river folks’ lives. Our first visit was to a Tibetan fishing village to the west of Lhasa. Culturally it is pretty taboo to be a fisherman if you are Tibetan. The reason being is that karmic-ly it is very bad to kill one sentient being to feed one human. So chickens, fish, rabbits and similar small animals that can only feed one or two people at a time are not to be hunted, fished or killed for consumption. But an animal like a yak or a cow or deer, which can feed several people for many, many days at a time, is acceptable. I guess the logic here is that if you must take a life, which brings with it bad karma, might as well have a big bang for the buck, right? So to be a Tibetan fisherman is to be a social outcast or enigma. When we asked the people living in this village how they can be fishermen (without being so blunt), we were told an incredible story….

A long, long time ago, in the time of Guru Rimpoche, a very important Tibetan Buddhist master who lived in the 7th century, the Kyi Chu River (which runs through Lhasa) had so many fish in it that they blocked the water current like a dam. Guru Rimpoche, seeing this was very bad decided that he should give all the fish wings so they could fly into the sky and leave the river. He could give fish wings because he was Guru Rimpoche of course. But because there were so many fish and now they all had wings, they flew up into the sky and blocked the sun like cloud-cover. Then seeing this disaster, Guru Rimpoche chose three Tibetan brothers and told them to establish three fishing villages and gave them sanction to fish in the river. And of course after that, the river flowed properly and the sun shone strongly (and there was singing and dancing throughout the land). And these three fishing villages were given ‘official’ permission by one of the great Buddhist masters to do what they do. So they do not feel any problems with what they do because of how they began. What a great creation story!

I’ve got another creation story while I’m on the subject. It tells us how the yak came to be. A long, long time ago (has to be to be a creation story right?), there were two buffalo brothers living in India. One day a trader came by to ask if one of them would help him take some rice up to Tibet to trade for salt. One of the brothers agreed. Hearing that is was very, very cold in Tibet, he asked to borrow all his brother’s hair to keep him warm. His brother agreed and gave him all his hair. Then the brother went up to Tibet for the salt trade. When he got there, he saw how green the grass was, how blue the sky was and how beautiful the mountains were. He wrote a letter to his brother in India telling him he as staying forever. That is why the buffalo in India has no hair and the buffalo in Tibet has a lot. That is also how the yak came to be in Tibet.

Pretty cool, huh? I love creation stories….

I was talking about Tibetan fishermen. We stayed in their village most of the day and filmed them fishing, laying their nets and making what is basically fish ceviche Tibetan style. They take the still wriggling fish and on a big wooden block chop the beheaded and de-finned fish, rest of the bones and all, into a sort of mash. They add radish, onions and salt to the mix and this is the filling for the very rare and very interesting steamed fish momos they served us for lunch. If it wasn’t for the bones, they might have been pretty good. They also take the fish mash and add chili river water broth to it and eat that straight up, no cooking! A raw, spicy fish soup. No way was I trying that, seeing what floats around in the river, so I can’t tell you how it was. They all seemed to love it, though. The boats they use are made from wood and yak skin. It takes 4-5 yak skins and about 3 days to make one boat. They use yak hoof glue to seal it. They are beautiful creations if not very light or navigable. Crude but effective, Tibetan traditional boats are becoming more and more rare. For example, because of over fishing (mostly by the Chinese according to this village), there are now only two fishing villages, not three.

Oh! I almost forgot…Leigh’s birthday! That was fun.

This brings us to my trip to Sri Lanka. I was commissioned by CARE USA for 12 days to travel to Sri Lanka and cover the 2 year anniversary rehabilitation/reconstruction programs they have there. On the way I had a nice 1 ½ day layover in Bangkok to pick up my Sri Lanka visa. I used the time to rest, eat sushi and Thai food, take naps, enjoy hot tubs and saunas, speak English, watch CNN and ESPN and generally just indulge myself in carnal pleasures denied to me in Tibet. The commission was pretty straightforward – document the rehabilitation and reconstruction efforts as they stand 2 years later. These stories and images would be used by CARE to give to the media and their donors to show what has been happening on the ground. As some of you know, there has been a lot of press about how much money the NGO’s got during this time. The American Red Cross got something like 1 billion dollars! Imagine…1 billion dollars in donations! That’s more than many countries national GNP for God’s sake! Don’t misunderstand me here. The outpouring of charity and support that happened after the tsunami in 2004 gave me deep hope for the future of mankind. Of course a lot things that have happened since then have again degraded that, but that’s not the point here. For example, when I was still working at CARE, I was phoned one day by the treasury department there who wanted me to come photograph the massive amounts of mail they were getting immediately after the disaster. I dutifully went up with my camera and started to take pictures of them sorting checks, letters, cash. While I was up there, they came across an envelope from an elementary school (I can’t remember where). Get this…the kids in one home room class collected all of their milk money for a week, put it all in a Ziploc bag and mailed it to CARE. And when I say milk money, I do mean nickels, dimes and quarters. And included was a hand written note from the class (in child’s scrawl to boot!) saying how much they want to help and maybe this little bit of money they sent can help the school children there. Wow. I still get goose bumps when I think of that. It’s still one of the most compassionate and awesomely innocent gestures I’ve ever seen!
My trip to Sri Lanka couldn’t have come at a better time too. I was still sick and still coughing badly. The weather was starting to turn really cold and windy and I was very afraid that I might be sick like this through the winter or even have to leave and seek warmer, lower climates to convalesce. Fortunately, this would help me keep my passion for humanitarian work going, get me out of Lhasa and Tibet for a needed break and give me a few extra dollars in my savings account. I was in country for roughly 11 days and saw virtually the entire southern half of the island country. Unfortunately, the north is off limits because of the recent flare up in the decades-long conflict that has ravaged this country. It was doubly unfortunate because a lot of the most affected areas from the tsunami are in the north, Batticola and Tricomalee in particular. And what’s most frustrating about the whole thing is that CARE (and the vast majority of other NGO’s working in Sri Lanka) has had to put a hold on all of their projects in these areas. So that means no houses being built, no schools being repaired, no wells being cleaned. It’s become stalled and there are still people living in tents without clean water to drink! Argh. Shit like this is just so stupid and childish. To let political ideology get in the way of basic human living. But Sri Lanka isn’t the only place this is happening – Iraq, Darfur, Burundi, Uganda – just to name a few. When will we learn? When will the idiocy stop?

Anyway, I teamed up with a writer that was in-country and we hit the road. We visited the southern state of Galle first. There we met with families who are now living in new homes provided by CARE. We talked with women headed households who have been able to earn a little bit more money from the help that CARE has given them in starting up their small businesses (mostly sewing and small shops in the home). We even visited one woman who got a small refrigerator from CARE so she can sell cold drinks in the summers. Talk about personal service! After spending a day and a half there, we continued our counter-clockwise loop of the island and stopped in Hambantota. There we again met with families that had lost everything, literally. When asked if they were able to salvage anything, photos, cooking pots, clothes, anything, the inevitable reply was “Nothing”. Can you imagine? It is just so hard to fathom the absolute complete destruction that occurred. To be peacefully going about your day, washing clothes, chopping wood, walking to school, when WHAM! There’s a 12 foot wall of water rushing towards you, sweeping away houses, trees and your neighbors, sometimes even your family. Gone…poof! In an instant, everything you’ve ever known, people you’ve grown up with, married to, gave birth to….gone. It was really mind numbing. Not to mention the absolutely incredible power of Mother Earth. The trip really reminded me of two things - that every single breath is a gift, every sunrise a blessing, every meal a treat; and you should tell the people you love how you feel as much as you possibly can because you never know when you or they might be taken away. In Hambantota, we spent a half day with some fishermen who of course lost everything. CARE gave them fishing nets to help them get back on their feet. That was a fun rainy morning on the beach.

Oh man, the rain there was incredible. Torrential at times. And the thunderstorms that would roll in with the ear splitting cracks and tremendous light shows was such a nice reminder of those Georgia summer storms that I would sit awake at night and listen to as they rolled over me. I haven’t seen rain in Tibet since August. It hasn’t rained in months! And it’s only snowed of any significance once in October. This place we live in is D-R-Y. Crazy desert dry. It’s quite amazing. So to enjoy daily downpours and nature’s nightly fireworks in Sri Lanka was a special spiritual treat that I will not soon forget.

After a couple days in Hambantota, we moved north to Ampara where we spent the last few days of our visit. Again, there was much of the same – new housing, small business assistance. On the way back to the capital, Colombo, we stopped in the middle of the island in the ancient capital of Kandy. There we stayed in a nice colonial-era hotel right next to Kandy’s most famous attraction, the Temple of the Buddha’s Tooth. I visited in the morning before we left for Colombo, but after standing in line for an hour with all the other pilgrims and finally getting my look into the shrine room, there wasn’t any tooth! There was a medium sized ornately decorated golden stupa that apparently housed the sacred relic. It was a beautiful temple complex, with rich, thick jungle all around. It was a nice contrast to the Tibetan monastic temple complexes. It felt lighter and more relaxed but there definitely weren’t as many murals, detailed paintings, devout pilgrims or mystically chanting monks either. After my brief homage to the Tooth, it was back to the hotel, back in the car (I think we spent more than half our time driving while on this trip – but that’s not that different from any other NGO assignment) and then back to Colombo. A little shopping, a lot of eating, some wandering, some reflections on the trip and a lot of CNN, ESPN and HBO and I was back on the plane for the glorious and all powerful Motherland!

All I can say to you right now is this – you have NO IDEA how fucked up it is here. The things I hear and the things I see (but cannot tell you about here) make me thankful that I have the US to come back to (and for those of you who have to listen to my daily bitch sessions about living in America know the strength of this statement!).

After my recuperating trip to Sri Lanka, I came back to Tibet rested, well fed and healed. Just in time for Christmas too. I arrived in Lhasa on the Christmas Eve morning so there wasn’t much time to enjoy any build up to the festivities. Not that there was much mind you, though there is a surprising amount of Xmas decorations in the windows, doors and in hotels and shops. Amusingly, not many people here really understand the true religious significance of the day and some even told me “Happy New Year” on Christmas Day! People here just know that it is one of the biggest holidays in the Western world and they like any excuse to celebrate something. As China is moving more and more towards a free-market socialist system (I think, never easy to tell what China’s officially doing really), I think that the encouragement to shop and spend and give things to others has been increased. It seems that there are only a few things to do where with your free time – play cards, play pool, go dancing, drink beer, watch TV and shop. Sounds like of like the US, no? I see more similarities than I care to think about. I mean here is yet another super power gobbling up all the world’s energy and money, pushing brain-washing passive consumerism on their population and making the same social and environmental mistakes that all of the other present and past super powers have made and are currently trying to correct! Apparently nobody has learned anything from past mistakes and is just doomed to repeat them on greater and greater scales! Much to the detriment of the global community. *sigh*

Anyway, Xmas was very low key but unique this year with just Leigh and me to share it with each other. She was very sweet and made a little decoration in our living room with tinsel and some sort of lotus flower paper cut out with a well wish for a ‘Happy Yule Solstice Hanukah Christmas Day!’ message on it and below it were a few little wrapped gifts and some stuffed Tibetan wool socks that if you squinted (and put your eyes out of focus) almost looked like Xmas stockings! It was really nice. We spent most of the day catching up and thinking about the ironic balance we were feeling between not having to take part in the obscene American Xmas scene with all it’s accompanying nauseating music in any public venue you go from T-day till New Year’s; the seeming ritualistic gorging on food that occurs at anyone’s house you visit (at this time last year Leigh and I both were the fattest we’ve ever been); and the social compulsion to buy shit to give to others to symbolize how much you love them, etc; and the other side of missing our families (well, me mostly – this was my first Xmas away from family and I did get a little teary when I saw my first Xmas tree here). And to think that present giving wasn’t a part of Xmas until the 1940’s and 50’s. Hmmmm, isn’t that when America became a real consumer society anyway? Coincidence? Yeah, right. But at the same time it was really nice to just have Leigh there. She is MY family now. She and I will soon establish our own clan with our own convoluted and complex sets of intermixing cultural and religious traditions. And it was a nice first holiday season with her. In the morning we exchanged our gifts, one of which was Leigh making us some incredible cinnamon rolls from scratch! And all we have is a little counter-top toaster oven! They were delicious and most welcomed. During the warm and sunny day that followed, we walked around and photographed all the weird collections of decorations and had Nepali food for lunch. Then following one of her Xmas traditions we went to the movies that afternoon (remember, she grew up Jewish!). Then that night we went to the Nangma clubs to catch the Xmas show done Tibetan style. It was great! Dancers flying through the air. Cheesy Chinese pop ballads sung with the whole crowd dancing on stage with the singer. Over the top Tibetan ‘dress’ for the performers. I can’t really describe it well because there is nothing that translates in American culture. The closest thing might be karaoke but that doesn’t do it justice. I guess it’s like Tibetan Bollywood….sort of. For those of you few folks who have seen a Nangma, you know the joy and fascination. For those of you who haven’t, you really should experience it. All in all, it was a nice, relaxed and definitely most unique holiday.

That basically brings us up to New Year’s which was enjoyable as well. Leigh and I gathered up with a few Tibetan, Chinese and foreign friends for the evening. Again, like Christmas, Tibetans are just looking for any excuse to celebrate and have a party! Even though their New Year’s isn’t until the 18^th of February, they still want to go out and celebrate ours too. It’s great. So our team of 6 or 7 folks head out and start the evening with a grand feast of traditional Tibetan foods at one of the better restaurants in town. We had sha katsapo (spicy yak meat), drolma dretse(mini sweet potatoes with butter and sugar in rice), pak tsa margu (sweet dumpling with cheese and brown sugar), logo momo (steamed bread), atsara (spicy tomatoe meat dipping sauce), shokgo katsa (curried potatoes), and pu cha (butter tea). We also had roasted lamb ribs, sautéed spinach with garlic and ginger and of course the obligatory Lhasa beers (which is brewed right here in Lhasa). It’s no 420 or Fat Tire or Duvel’s, but you can drink a lot of it and still make complete sentences. After a delicious and relaxed dinner we headed out to the new club in town – Tang Club. This club has only just opened and it is to rival Babi La (see earlier blog, April I think, for Babi La descriptions). Babi La has recently been rumored to discriminate against Tibetan patrons and taxi drivers. With the Tibetan patrons they are requiring a drink minimum, something like 400 kuai (or $50 US), which is a LOT of money for most. With the Tibetan taxi drivers, the management isn’t even letting them stop there for fares….only Chinese taxi drivers are allowed to pick up departing guests. On top of all that, there have also been rumors of people getting drugged through someone slipping some kind of narcotic into their drinks and then taking their purse or wallet, etc. The way our friends were describing the effects, it sounded a lot like ecstasy. Not that I would know anything about that drug, mind you….Anyway, Tang Club is apparently much more Tibetan friendly and we have discovered plays much better music. In one 15 minute extravaganza the DJ’s played Depeche Mode > Prince > Michael Jackson > Madonna > Donna Summer! That was a sweat and fun 15 minutes. Whew! Unfortunately it is much more crowded and smoky, too. After finally finding a table (there were about 10 of us crowded around a small cocktail table), we ordered drinks, danced and screamed into each others’ ears in three different languages until shortly after midnight. After doing the countdown and kissing my wife the traditional New Year’s welcome, Leigh and I split for home. Tired, smoky and feeling a bit overwhelmed, we sought the refuge of our little palace here in the Gorka.

It was quite amusing to us to know that we were later waking up as most people we knew back in the States were going out. There’s a 13 hours difference now without daylight savings so we were getting out of bed on the 1^st about 9:30 pm of the 31^st for most of y’all.

As some of you may know, the last few weeks of my life have really been occupied with applying to graduate schools. I am applying to 6 different graduate schools for a Masters of Fine Arts in Photography. They are (in some order of preference) – Pacific Northwest College of Arts in Portland, University of Arizona in Tucson, University of New Mexico in Albuquerque, Washington State University in Pullman, Arizona State University in Tempe and University in Washington in Seattle. It has been exhausting! For every school you have to have some many things put together and it seems that every school wants it a slightly different way. Oye! There are really 4 major things that took most of my time pulling together – the portfolio (still not satisfied – how can they ‘know’ an applicant with only 20 images!), the letter of intent (actually pretty proud of this and if anyone would like to read it, let me know and I’ll be happy send), the letters of recommendation (bless you Valenda, Don and Maggie!) and the official transcripts (which are the most royal pain in the ass!). So basically from December until now I have spent the better part of my mornings preparing to send all this stuff off. The first three have been sent, fingers crossed. The next three are being sent as I write this, fingers crossed.

I have very mixed emotions about graduate school. For one I have witnessed what it has done to my poor wife. She thinks it was marrying me that gave her all those gray hairs? HAHA! It’s that ‘other boyfriend’ Emory University that has, I know it. I’ve also always kind of thought that academia is a self serving entity, in the sense that if there weren’t any academics there wouldn’t be any academia and vice versa. Sometimes I can get very frustrated with the self importance that some in academics gives themselves. You see, I have always wanted form over fashion, function over decoration, so sometimes I have to ask myself “What exactly is a Master’s a PhD or even a Bachelor’s good for if you don’t even know how to change a car tire or grow a head of broccoli?” Thus there is a part of me that is very reluctant to enter into and support this world. Granted, I will not be trying to decipher the meaning of String Theory or trying to conceptualize an interpretation of Emptiness, but there is still some part of me that feels ‘real world’ education and experience is more important and more applicable to living a better and fuller life than ‘school’ education. However, there is another part of me that really wants to dive back into my own art and creative ideas and wants to seek a mentor or mentors who will help me rediscover my visual imagination. I have felt somewhat creatively stagnant and unsatisfied with what I’ve been doing recently with my documentary work and some part of me believes that I could find more fulfillment with getting back to my artwork. I still want to maintain a focus on raising consciousness about important (to me at least) contemporary issues. I definitely do not want to become one of those ‘artists’ who glorify themselves or only produce ‘pretty’ work. I have to feel my work tackles great issues like poverty, conflict and environmental degradation. There’s also the thought that after a MFA I may want to get into something slightly different like running my own gallery or possibly being a curator in a museum or getting into teaching on the high school or college level. I just don’t know so I felt it would be better to have the option of going (that is if anyone accepts me) than not. So I’ve applied and in a couple months, I hope to hear some good news. Desert or rainforest, either offers their own magic. But sorry East Coast, I just have to live somewhere else for awhile.

I leave you with a final thought….

What are we without adversity? How can we evolve as a person, as a human community, without struggle? Challenge is the catalyst for our development and as such should be welcomed. It is a mirror reflecting who we are in the moment, a vital and necessary crossroads in our progression from diapers to dad, and a snapshot reminder of who we were before in comparison. Life is suffering. Life is full of adversity, confusion, doubt. Everyone that has ever lived, or possibly will ever live, faces much of the same that we do now. What makes you you and me me and each of us our own unique beautiful souls is how we handle each day, how we face each moment – be it joyous or painful, and what we do with the shit that runs into our lives (or sometimes created by ourselves). Life is making us stronger all the time is seems to be knocking us down…..

PS…They absolutely LOVE the beard here, especially the Muslims….people have even started calling me “Honorable Beard” in Tibetan! HAHAHAHAHA!

West Tibet, October 2006 #2

2007-09-16T14:54:00.000-07:00

DAY 8

“Nature has been for me, for as long as I remember a source of solace, inspiration, adventure, and delight; a home, a teacher, a companion”. – Lorraine Anderson

Leaving Darchen in the early morning, we continued to head deeper and deeper into the heart of western Tibet, heading to the ancient kingdom of Guge, the lost city of Tsaparang and the monastic artistic treasure of Thöling monastery.

The drive was more of the same which we passed through before, but eventually we came to what was the Badlands of South Dakota on steroids. Huge cliffs and small mountains of melted rock and banded soil. It’s like the Earth was made of brown, red and yellow wax and God took a magnifying glass to the sun and melted the world into these massive piles of deeply eroded gullies and steeply faced protuberances. The landscapes here just continue to get weirder and weirder the farther we get from civilization!

A brief history: It was within this eerie, barren, parched and surreal landscape of melted rock and stone that the former kingdom of Guge was situated. Thöling and nearby Tsaparang are the ruined former capitals of this kingdom of Ngari (west Tibet). This crazy land seems a strange place for a full civilization to develop and thrive, but being an important stop on the trade route between India and Tibet and a minor but busy port on the Silk Road helped to make this place prosperous during its heyday. The Kingdom of Guge was established in the 9^th century after the assassination of the anti-Buddhist king Langdarma and the break up of the Yarlung Empire (central Tibet). One of the king’s sons, Wösung, traveled west to the upper Indus and Sutlej river valleys and founded Guge, establishing Tsaparang as its capital. In the 10^th century, King Yeshe Ö reinstated Buddhism in this part of Tibet and over 100 monasteries were built – the most important being Thöling and Tsaparang. By the end of the 10^th century it was a wealthy center supporting several thousand people. It was during this time that Kashmiri artists came to paint the unique murals still visible today. A further expansion of the religion occurred in the 11^th century, when Atisha, the renowned Indian master, was invited to Thöling to teach. For many, many years Atisha resisted this invitation but then one night he had a dream Tara, female Buddha of accomplishment is one of her many identities, told him he should go to Guge and teach but it would decrease Atisha’s lifespan noticeably. After Atisha arrived and spent three years teaching there, Tibetan Buddhism gained the foothold in the country that we still see today. In 1624, Antonio de Andrade, a Portuguese Jesuit missionary from Goa (India), was the first European to visit the isolated kingdom. He was well received by the King and succeeded in setting up the first Christian Church in Tibet the following year. Buddhist lamas at Tsaparang, upset by the spread of Christianity, enlisted the help of neighboring Ladakh King to overthrow the Guge kingdom in 1630. The kingdom fell into ruin just a couple decades later and was never re-inhabited again.

Our first visit was to Thöling monastery because it is located at the bottom of what is Zanda, a somewhat modern but still very small Chinese town. Located on the cliffs just above the primary stages of the Sutlej river, it is a prime location and to our sincere surprise actually had trees, the first in hundreds and hundreds of kilometers! Thöling was Ngari’s most important monastery, with its influence reaching from Kashmir all the way to Assam in the east, and was still functioning in 1966 when the Red Guards of the Cultural Revolution arrived, shut the doors and left a badly damaged set of buildings and ruins. (I still find it so hard to believe that such meticulous and enthusiastic destruction was rampaged by such numbers with just a few words of encouragement from some very important, but human nonetheless, political voices).

The monastery’s surviving murals are why people drive 1500 km to see them. This is the only place to see such styles of painting and execution within Tibet. The murals are exquisite, colorful, totally interesting (even to the lay person like me) and completely unique to the Tibetan plateau in their styles and subject. These 15^th – 16^th century murals are stylistically very close to those in Tsaparang. Painted in the ‘Guge’ style, they represent an incredible synthesis of Kashmiri and Nepalese styles. When looking at these paintings, it is apparent that this kingdom was much more a part of western India, Nepal and Kashmir’s influential range than anything coming from central Tibet (the influential shift began to happen though in the 17^th – 18^th century). We spent several hours in the afternoon getting a guided tour (the remaining 5 monks living there – down from its heyday number of 500 - would never have allowed us to walk around within the chapels unescorted) through the monastic complex and all the different chapel houses. Again, I must say just how remarkable the paintings are in these two places. Truly magnificent even to the untrained eye…so you should have seen Leigh….she was in hog heaven!

Strangely, within many of the chapels, the partially destroyed statues that used to be housed there and their respective pieces were not swept away and thrown away after the Red Guards did their dirty work. In my opinion, disturbingly, the pieces of what used to be straw and clay painted statues were on display where their former glorious incarnations used to stand. So in several alcoves there were these weird piles of painted broken figures, many times with the smashed but still recognizable head and face sitting atop the pile with what I swear looks like silent screams etched on their now dusty faces. Our debate was whether the monks/Tibetans were leaving the ‘remains’ of these once proud figures as a memorial and a display of the wrath and mindless destruction that happened a few decades ago, or if the caretakers were merely lazy and didn’t want to bother with the proper disposal of these sanctified effigies. Was there enough thought into leaving this for a museum like display of the atrocities that were affronted them? Were we giving them more credit then deserved for complex and undermining thinking? Regardless of the reasons, entering a chapel and witnessing the wanton destruction caused by ideology left a gaping hole in one’s soul for all that has been lost, not just here in Tibet (where it is very apparent and very recent and very widespread – consensus is that Tibet suffered some of the hardest blows throughout China from the Cultural Revolution), but all over the world, at any time in history. For example, legend has it that the knowledge lost during the ancient fire at the Library of Alexandria (which I believe was set intentionally) set back the human knowledge table centuries with so many irreplaceable tomes….some would even go so far as to say it precipitated the ‘Dark Ages’ of Europe).

“Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it”. – George Satanyana

“Human history becomes more and more a race between education and catastrophe”. – H. G. Wells

DAY 9

The journey through the past continues….

The citadel of Tsaparang has been gracefully melting into ruin ever since it’s slide from prominence in the 17^th century. Because Tsaparang was already partially abandoned at the time of the CR, the Chinese did not attack it with quite the same level of vandalistic fury that they vented upon other religious complexes in Tibet. The ruins are spectacular, to be sure, but I’m of the opinion that a little money going towards restoration would go a long way to securing a few more rooms/houses/chapels/palaces before they are lost to us forever in a combination of wind, sun and rain. Although I must admit that there is something very, very Buddhist about the nature of impermanence (and the patient power of Mother Earth to clean her self) watching this one-time kingdom of thousands slowly rot back into the same earth it was raised from. The ruins, which do have a very organic feel, seemingly growing out of the major outcrop they are built upon over looking the Sutlej river, makes for quite the spectacular and photogenic landscape. And I’m all about finding the subtle battles between Man and Earth in my personal photography anyway….this place was so interesting to me, both historically but also on a deeper, more subconscious level where creativity seems to have it’s birth.

The winding trails that take you up and into the ruins complex make for a good fun time exploring the ruins, ducking into the random caves and monastic quarters that were carved literally out of the rock of the mountain (some of them quite large with numerous room, shelves and kitchen areas). One does get the distinct impression that it’s a huge, ancient anthill. This feeling is only reinforced as you move higher and higher up the ridge and literally have to climb through a long stairway tunnel that connects the residential quarters to the palatial complexes on the crest of the mound. The views from here are absolutely wonderful. It strikes me as funny sometimes the importance kings and royalty put on being higher than others. Symbolically this makes sense, but here in Tibet, where the higher you go, the less oxygen and water you have access to, I would think that they should prefer the lowland, the river banks and the fertile plains. In Bolivia that’s exactly what has happened – the rich live at the lower, more oxygen rich altitudes forcing the poor to higher and oxygen starved areas. Guess I don’t know much about the workings of royalty minds.

We spent almost the whole day walking around this immense and impressive complex, gazing in awe at the incredible artwork on the walls, the complex and intriguing architecture and generally wondering things like how did they live, where did their food come from, who did they trade with, who lived here, why did they come/live here and similar wanderings through the past musings.

DAY 10 – DAY 13

“When you travel, remember that a foreign country is not designed to make you comfortable. It is designed to make its own people comfortable”. – Clifton Fadima

Finally we turn back to the East and drive back to where once we came.

The drive was pretty monotonous and uneventful (except for all the animals we saw – wild asses, wild horses, antelopes, picas, brown eagles, brown hawks, falcons, hares and so many ducks) on the way back except for a strange, strong and unexpected snow storm that caught us unaware at the Lake Manasarovar-side monastery of Chiu. As the day was ending and we were making our way through the blowing snow and quickly gathering accumulation on the ground, passing poor tractors and mini buses full of Tibetans who were caught just as unaware as we were (though thankfully we had a good jeep, an excellent driver and powerful 4x4). Huddling close and eating the last of our instant noodles with boiled snow (yum!), we made it through the night just fine and awoke to a very early winter wonderland of first snow. The white blanket of silence spreading out for as far as the eye can see, muffling sounds and distorting distances. I went for a long walk that morning out to the lake shore. I felt like the only man on Earth. It was exhilarating and exhausting. The cold, bitter, crisp air. The glorious blanket of pure white everywhere. The raw, biting wind reminding me that I’m not really supposed to be out. God, I love the first snow of the year!

DAY 14

Finally, we stopped in Gyantse, a surprisingly Tibetan city for its size, for an overnight visit before returning to Lhasa.

There was a lot of old religious stuff. Leigh loved it. I was bored. Typical.

Now, we are safely and snugly back in our little ‘cave’ in Lhasa. The tourists are leaving, the pilgrims and nomads are arriving and we are looking forward to sleeping in, eating good food and just quietly being with one another like we haven’t been able to for 3 months….

Oh, and it’s already started snowing and getting pretty cold. You should see us in our little cave, all bundled up (Leigh even wears her ‘chesty puffy coat’ – the full down jacket – sitting around our room). Winter seems to have come a little bit early to the high plateau!

“It is good to have an end to journey towards; but it is the journey that matters in the end”. - Ursula K. LeGuin

West Tibet, October 2006 #1

2007-09-16T14:00:00.000-07:00

“Travel is only glamorous in retrospect.” – Paul Theroux

Because I really didn’t get enough travel time (i.e. abuse) during my two months of working in SE Asia and Central Asia (visiting 6 countries in 8 weeks and covering over 15,000 km by road, air and boat), I thought it would be a great idea to book this two week 1500 km r/t jeep trip to the far reaches of western Tibet with my wife and 3 other friends as soon as I arrived back in Lhasa. Yes, I know, I know…..at times I can be downright scary brilliant!

The trip had actually been planned for quite some time previous to coincide with Leigh’s friend CC’s visit in early October. It just so happened that my business travels ended just in time to make it back and hop right back in the car after a quick unpack, laundry, shower, eat, re-pack, grocery store rush of a couple of days.

The jeep crew included me, my wife, CC and her two friends, MR and ML, who were tagging on a Tibet visit after a month long intensive Chinese medicine/acupuncture session and an impromptu ‘why the hell not go to visit Tibet, spur of the moment adventure with a friend, respectively. CC is an old friend of Leigh’s from the Nepal days. CC is now a certified, licensed naturopath and acupuncturist who just finished up her last lessons in the Sichuan capital of Chengdu where she and MR went to the hospitals everyday to see patients with overseeing Chinese doctors, etc. Kind of like month long intensive, overseas residency program. MR was in the same program and soon-to-be graduate of the same school in Washington (Seattle area) with CC. MR is concentrating on Chinese medicinal herbs whereas CC focuses on acupuncture. ML works and lives in London, but is American (though, and I didn’t know this, if you live in England for 6 years you can apply for dual citizenship after passing the UK citizenship test, which is what ML is doing. So soon he will have two passports….a USA one and an EU one….lucky bastard!). Anyway, he works in computers as a project manager and can afford to fly off to Tibet at the drop of a hat and take 5 weeks vacation at a time. Like I said, lucky bastard! He and CC are also very old, good friends who go back at least as many years as Leigh and CC. It actually worked out really well dynamically. There were two guys, three girls, two sets of really old friends, one really happy married couple and five distinctive personalities. All of us liked to laugh and joke and play, but then could carry on a very deep, meaningful conversation at the end of the day about the local politics, the global economy or what is faith in religion.

And lucky us! We were traveling with not just one, but two, trained medical doctors!

Leigh and I were both very, very excited about this trip. We have been talking about doing this journey since coming to Kham (eastern Tibet) in 2003. Our planned 14 day itinerary would take us west for several days to the holy Mount Kailash (Kang Rinpoche in Tibetan – ‘precious snow mountain’) which is the source of 4 of Asia’s major rivers - the Sutlej, the Bhramaputra, the Indus and the Karnali (turns into the Ganges) and is sacred to 4 of the world’s major religions – Hinduism, Tibetan Buddhism, Jain and Bön (indigenous pre-Buddhism religion). From there we would travel even further west towards the borders of Pakistan/India to the 11^th century ruins of the kingdom of Guge with its incredibly preserved and astonishingly unique art and then back to Lhasa along the same road. As I dislike backtracking, I had wanted to make a loop and take the northern route back but there just wasn’t enough time in people’s schedule. Interestingly, I was more excited about the kora around Kailash – a three day hike where the lowest elevation is 15,050 feet and the highest up to 18, 675 feet!!! at the Droma-la pass – and Leigh, who was a understandably a bit intimidated by the 3 day hike was more excited about the ancient art and kingdom ruins. A nice balance I should say….

DAY 1

“The true traveler is he who goes on foot, and even then, he sits down a lot of the time.” – Colette

After arranging and paying for everything at the travel agency the day before, we met our driver TD – a sometimes cranky, sometimes sweet, chain smoking, middle aged Tibetan man with various and oft-time shifting bodily ailments – early on the morning of departure day at our hotel. Packing ourselves, our bags and our food into the jeep was quite a puzzle, but finally we got it worked out and were on the road, heading out of Lhasa on the smooth, taken-for-granted paved roads west. Our first destination was Lhatse, 400 km from Lhasa.

Because of leaving early in the morning, we were able to arrive in Lhatse with enough time to do a short 3 hour day hike up one of the side valleys and get off the main highway. Following a small river and a briefly viewed snow-capped peak up the valley, we passed fields and fields of harvested barley, the dried yellow stalks being hungrily and quickly eaten by the large herds of yaks, sheep and goats the villagers in this valley owned. Right now in Tibet is barley harvesting season. Everywhere one looks, there are huge piles of the golden stalks taking up entire courtyards or side yards drying in the sun; large groups of Tibetans winnowing the dried barley by throwing it up into the air in large clumps, letting the wind take the husks and unwanted chaff with it; sifting the winnowed barley for the precious grains; and then finally sweeping up the precious barley grains into huge piles and packing them up in large bags for transport by horse drawn cart or yak saddled caravan, for storage or for market. It’s a nation-wide (at least in the rural areas) process which includes everyone, old, young, male and female. And it seems not to have changed in 1,000 years. Watching a group of 6 or 7 men and women take wooden rakes full of dried barely stalks and throw it high into the air for the wind to catch and separate out while loudly singing together to keep the rhythm is something that touches the ancient, ancestral communal farmer in me. Let’s say it’s difficult not to witness such scenes at the golden hour of sunset and not get a little nostalgic or romantic.

Lhatse marks the first of countless nights of all five of us sleeping in the same cramped dorm style rooms across the span of western Tibet. Cheaper and more communal in my opinion, though admittedly it does get a little old after like the 10^th night in row.

Lhatse was also the last tree for 1000 km there and back. Not a tree to be seen for the 12 days driving and walking in western Tibet. Not that central Tibet has many trees of course, but compared to western Tibet it’s a rainforest!

Lhatse also marked the last of the pavement would we experience for the next 12 days. Now you know me, I’m a pretty crunchy environmentalist and think that too much paving is not a good thing, but I have to say that pavement is my ass’s friend and something very much needed in western Tibet – though it’s probably still 5-8 years still coming. Some might argue that the dirt roads and stream crossings, etc make it all more adventurous and mystical. Bullocks I say! There’s nothing wrong with having a little ribbon of asphalt to guide your vehicle smoothly and quickly from point A to point B, especially when those points are 4 days apart!

DAY 2 - 3

Lhatse to Saga, 306 km. Saga to Darchen, 518 km.

Driving, driving, driving, driving, driving and more driving…..I’m not going to spend much time talking about our road time b/c it was pretty much the same for the first and last 4 days. Dust, dirt, rock, wind. A barren, harsh land inhabited sparsely (western Tibet makes Wyoming look crowded) where the wind, sun and snow rule. I’ve never driven through a land less touched by humans. Time seems to be the only inhabitant, with an occasional Himalayan hare or hawk to remind you that this really isn’t the Moon or Mars, just a land reserved for the Mother herself, a private sanctuary of silence and space. A place where the mind could lose itself in openness, where distances are deceptive and deadly, where a trickle of water means desperate, clinging life can be found nearby. Broken only by the occasionally bathroom break/seat shift or the random outpost of a town here and there, the dirt track continued on and on into the distance, where time was measured by shadow and cloud movements, not hours or kilometers.

At the end of the Day 3, we finally reached Lake Manasarovar, a brilliant turquoise blue-green oasis in this seeming desert of rock bone and dust breath…and there, our first views of Mount Kailash in the distance. Manasarovar, or Mapham Yum-tso (Victorious Lake) in Tibetan, is the most venerated of Tibet’s many, many lakes. According to ancient Hindu and Buddhist cosmology the four great rivers of the Indian subcontinent, the Indus, the Ganges, the Sutlej and the Brahmaputra arise from Manasarovar, though in reality only the Sutlej originates at the lake. This lake has been circumambulated by Indian pilgrims since at least 1700 years ago when it was extolled in the sacred Sanskrit literature called the Puranas. A Hindu interpretation has it that this lake is the outward manifestation of the supreme god Brahma. Legend also has it that the mother of the Buddha, Queen Maya, was bathed at Manasarovar by the gods before giving birth to her son (through her side, not her womb, nonetheless).

Whatever the poets and ancients saints have said about this Lake, its deep blue-green waters are a remarkable sight to behold after several days covered in dust and seeing nothing but burnt shades of brown and yellow. A deep sense of reverence and relief spread over us as we could now finally see our destination within sight. We were so close after such a long journey (and this is not to compare our jeep travel to those of the really devout pilgrim’s route which may take upwards of 3 years of prostrating to reach the sacred waters of the Lake or the foot of the holy Mount!).

DAY 4

The day of preparation, planning and packing.

Let me just say that Darchen, the town at the base of Mount Kailash, is a 100% certified shit hole. The place is dirty, has absolutely no character, seems totally Chinese run (though it’s not), has a 5:1 homeless dog to human population ratio, shit and piss run in the streets and is basically nothing more than a quick pit stop for starting the Kailash kora.

The first thing we had to do this morning was check in with the local PSB (Public Security Bureau). They are your local ‘spooks’. They are basically responsible for keeping track of all foreigners’ movement and identity. All the really unnecessary permits that we had to get – one for each prefecture we traveled in, 3 total I think, each with their own ‘fee’ of course – are what keep these guys in a job. Besides checking permits and generally harassing those they feel like, their other job is to get drunk and sleep the mornings away in a hangover stupor, which is where we found our lovely agents on this morning…barely awake, barely intelligible, barely functioning. But this was a good thing for Leigh and me because for some strange yet undetermined reason we thought it would be smarter to leave our passports in our apartment in Lhasa and just bring photo copies of our photo page and visas. This caused a lot of stress and became somewhat problematic when crossing the three different army and police checkpoints along the way. Our poor driver TD had to basically explain how we were idiots and forgot them in our rooms in Lhasa and please, please, please help us this one time get by and we’ll never do it again. Of course Leigh and I had to walk up to the checkpoints (and into the PSB office in Darchen) and be really, really obsequious (apologetic). Luckily, no one really wanted to make too much trouble so we were able to get by, but there were moments where it was uncertain and we thought we would have to turn around or at least let CC, MR and ML go ahead while we sat around pouting and wondering why the hell we made such a silly decision.

The five of us agreed to hire yaks for the kora to carry our backpacks and food bags, so that all we had to carry for the 52 km (32.5 miles) - 3 day hike would be our snacks and water. This might have increased the cost of our trip, but I can’t tell you how worth it was to us! Not only did we get to walk with 3 yaks and their handler, KP – a young, cowboyish nomad who took his tsampa straight powder style into the mouth with nothing but a shot of butter tea to chase it – but we didn’t have to carry our 30 pound bags over the hike or over the 18,000 foot plus pass. It made the difference between having a tough but enjoyable kora and a really difficult, possible painful hike that some of us might not have been able to finish. So the yaks were a must for us and wasn’t that bad in cost – 10$ per yak per day plus the 10$ per day for the handler. We could’ve hired porters to carry our bags, but that would have been more expensive and we all felt much more comfortable hiring four legged animals to carry our things than hiring a human to carry our stuff. There was something too colonial about that concept for us to accept it.

Having arranged our portage and being fully stocked on foodstuffs, we settled in, after a beautiful golden pink orange sunset on Gurlu Mandata peak (7780 m), that evening for a nice (relatively) dinner of stir fried vegetables and yak meat and a rousing game of UNO (it was either that or Scrabble, but MR and I were the only ones into the Scrab).

DAY 5

“Certainly, travel is more than the seeing of sights; it is a change that goes on, deep and permanent, in the ideas of living.” – Miriam Beard

Rising before the light of sunrise, we dressed quickly and headed off, each of us in that early morning Zen zone of slow thoughts and waking movements, each of us wandering the avenues of our morning mind while matching the world’s awakening. For each day we walked, each of us also decided to concentrate on one intention for that day. Today my intention was Gratitude. Gratitude for the opportunity to do this sacred pilgrimage, gratitude for my incredibly blessed life, gratitude for the wonder that is Mother Earth and the stunning backdrop for which to explore the inner and outer worlds, gratitude for my dear and loved friends and family (the roots of my light soul)…so today was my day to walk with gratitude, graciousness and appreciation. It was a perfect first day intention.

The easily followed trail (I wonder how many have walked this very trail before me? 10,000…50,000? And who? How many famous religious and historical figures trod this same track? How many of the countless anonymous pilgrims like me, searching, seeking, following?) quickly leaves the grubby sights of Darchen behind, heading westward. As the cresting sun washed the towering Gurla Mandata peack and immense, sprawling Barkha plain below us with its soft, golden light, we began to climb up and over the first ridge to reach the first place on the trail where Kailash’s southern (or sapphire) face is visible. It’s one thing to see it from the car as you drive in, but it’s something else entirely when you are basically standing in the shadow of this home of the Gods, this center of the known universe for millions. Awe and humbleness are the two words best to describe the feeling. From here we dropped slightly down into the beautiful and surreal Lha-chu river valley that runs roughly north along the west side of Kailash. A deep, gorge with remarkable geology, the valley is truly impressive and memorable. Resembling something more from a science fiction movie than your walking reality, one becomes easily lost in fantasies and dream worlds. I for one did. Many a thought about “the land time forgot” or “journey to the center of the earth” or “clan of the cave bear” or “total recall”…I didn’t say my brain made any sense did I? The hugeness of the mountains and the utter smallness of me was a powerful lesson in the size of not only this world but the universe. How can I honestly think my problems, my accomplishment, my ego are that important, are that big, when compared to these monoliths of time and natural processes?

Continuing across a small plateau and descending back to river after having climbed through the nearby Chörten Kangnyi, we entered the area of Sershong, where we were to meet our yaks and where our driver was brining our bags in the car to load. Stopping for tea while we waited for all these forces to meet in the same intersection of time and space (isn’t that what meetings are all about? Time = x, Space = y. I’ll meet you at x and y), we were entertained (and entertaining) to the a local woman and her daughter who served us delicious butter tea (it gets better tasting the higher in elevation and colder in temperature you go) in a warm canvas tent set up in the valley. Above the tent and literally clinging to the western wall of the Lha-chu canyon and blending in quite secretively is Chuku monastery. All Kailash monasteries were wrecked during the Cultural Revolution and Chuku, founded in the 13^th century by Götsangpa Gompo Pel (who was Kagyupa, another, older branch of Tibetan Buddhism) was the first to be rebuilt.

After about an hour of tea and fun with the little girl (in their absolutely distinctive and beautifully colored western Tibet style chubas, or traditional dress) making faces and playing mime games, our yak man and driver finally arrived and we packed up and started out again. Following the river upstream along the eastern bank, we passed over rocky landslides and grassy fields on our way to our final destination: Drira Phuk monastery. This whole section of the trail is in the shadow of the western (or ruby) face of Kailash. The closer you get, the more impressed you are with the size and shape of Kailash. It’s actually 50 million years older than any of the surrounding mountains, which in itself is quite unique and unusual. We were joined occasionally on our hike by small pica (mountain rodents) or all black ravens soaring on the strong winds overhead. The farther I walked into the mountainous womb, the quieter and more introspective I became. I usually get pretty quiet when I get into ‘the zone’ of hiking long distances, but this was a bit different. I felt like I wasn’t alone, and I don’t mean my hiking companions. At one point I was nearly overcome with emotional waves of gratitude and awe-inspiring natural beauty around me.

It was a powerful day spiritually.

Finally, towards the end of the day, tired but content, we arrived at Drira Phuk monastery (our first night’s sleeping place), which looks out to the north (or gold) face of Kailash. This to me was by far the most impressive view of the mountain during the entire kora - a sheer wall of gray-black rock and snow and ice towering thousands of feet straight up from the glacier bowl at the bottom. Kailash is a most extraordinary and imposing mountain. The monastery takes its name from the words drira (‘female yak horn’) and phuk (‘cave’). This is where the Bön warrior Drabla tossed boulders around with his horns. The great saint Götsangpa meditated here and Buddhists say he first discovered the kora route around Kailash. He was led to Drira Phuk by a yak that turned out to be the lion-faced goddess Dakini. Ironically, it was our yak man though that instead of leading us to the monastery as agreed, took us across the river to the sod and concrete, recently erected guesthouse situated along the Kailash glacier melt creek. Needing water, I make my way up to the base of the Kailash glacier and in the fading light of the day, as the wind is blowing stoutly up the valley and freezing my breath to my beard, I break through the surface ice to dip my pot in the delicious, albeit very cold, runoff waters and drank deeply. It could very well be the most delicious water I’ve ever had in my life.

Soon thereafter, in the deep dark of early night, with the Milky Way as plain as Interstate 70 across the plains of Kansas, our group, all huddled together in the low roofed sod house, in the shadow of the sacred mountain…there we spent our night, dining on instant noodles, Snickers and butter tea.

DAY 6

“Climb the mountains and get their good tidings. Nature's peace will flow into you as sunshine flows into trees. The winds will blow their own freshness into you and the storms their energy, while cares will drop away from you like the leaves of Autumn”. – John Muir

If we were to have taken the left branch upon coming early the next morning to our first valley’s intersection, we would have walked (in a few days time) to the source of the Indus river. Opting for the kora route to the right, we began the day with a pretty stiff climb from the guesthouse up the Drölma-chu Valley that eventually takes us up to the Drölma-la pass, the big obstacle on the kora and the most intimidating aspect of today. This sudden ascent and pretty cold morning really kicked our butts and caught us off guard. Luckily, after we got moving and onto of the ridge it was easier going to the foot of the pass. Once up on the high ridge that continues up to the higher pass, we entered a stark world of warmth-less sun, rock, ice, snow, wind and glaciers. The air was cold and thin, the wind intermittent but stiff, and the sun a constant companion reminding me what life on Mars could be like – light but no heat. A short distance further, we came to the Shiva-tsal (5330 m), a rocky expanse dotted with stone cairns covered with clothing. Pilgrims are supposed to undergo a symbolic death at this point, leaving their old life behind along with an item of clothing or hair (in Leigh and I’s case) behind so that the compassionate spirits that inhabit that area will not forget you. MR took this place as the right inspiration to cut all of her hair off, not just a lock or two like Leigh and I. It’s a really powerful place to be sure. Because of everyone being all bundled up and wearing heavy hats throughout the hike, none of us even noticed MR’s dramatic transformation until we were back in Darchen at our guesthouse washing our hair in basins!

There are several other ‘karma’ testing sights along this stretch of the trail, but I didn’t take part of any of them. I think deep down I was scared to find out what my karma said!

Eventually, after this symbolic cemetery, we began the steady 200 m climb up the daunting pass. After a stunning reminder that what we thought was bad is really nothing at all thanks to a few very devout pilgrims who were prostrating the whole way around the mountain (takes about 3 weeks!), we were able to continue at a slow and steady pace up the rocky pass to the top which is garlanded with an enormous amount of prayer flags, shouting the Tibetan pass crossing mantra “Ki ki so so, lha gyalo!’ (Victory to the Gods!). Commenting to ourselves that that wasn’t as bad as we had built it up to be, we realized that Drölma (or Tara) actually had helped us….maybe because we were worthy pilgrims, maybe because she was having compassion for us poor suffering ‘whities’. Because of an earlier encounter with a Tibetan fortune teller, Leigh brought several special strings of prayer flags, both for herself to hang but also for me to leave as well. This was a very, very nice and meaningful ceremony at the top of the pass, a stunning 18, 700 feet above sea level, definitely the highest either of us has ever been outside of an airplane. And to think we walked here! Jeez. Hanging the flags with the proper amount of reverence and humility, we took a short break to catch our breath, catch the view and catch a photo or two from this rocky outpost between worlds. Crossing the path represents a leaving behind of your old live and being reborn into a new one, washed of all of your sins from this lifetime. I’ll take that!

From the top of the pass, it is a very steep 400 m descent past a beautiful arrowhead shaped lake called Gauri Kund (at 5608 m is one of the highest lakes in the world), which means ‘Lake of Compassion’. Passing over generally barren and rocky ground, the trail becomes quite indistinct though this doesn’t really matter as there is only one way down. Of course as we are tenderly making our way down the rocky slopes, along come a large group of Tibetan ‘one-dayers’, pilgrims who make the 52 km kora in one long 14+ hour day. Basically running down this rocky slope, they cling to the mountain like mountain goats, giggling and yelling the whole way down. Their enthusiasm and joy are totally contagious and we found ourselves laughing and yelling along with them, even if we didn’t join them on their reckless rush down. At the bottom of the pass, the trail continues along the eastern (or crystal) side of Kailash (though it remains hidden from view for the majority of the rest of the route) along the long and gentle Lham-chu Khir river valley. Following the valley (which eventually changes names to the Dzong-chu, or Fortress River) for longer than we thought we needed to walk (about 4 hours…day 2 of the kora is the longest and most physically demanding day), we finally turn back southwest and eventually find the Zutul-phuk Monastery, our day 2 sleeping destination.

Exhausted but exalted, we quickly ate our instant noodles, had a very short but very ‘exhilarating’ oxygen party (sniffing oxygen because as CC said, ‘sniffing anything out of a can has to be fun!’), and then found ourselves asleep soon thereafter.

It was a powerful day physically.

DAY 7

The final day….we completed the circle today.

Knowing we didn’t have much time on the trail today, we slept in and had a nice leisurely (and fun) breakfast (our usual tsampa, Tibetan butter tea and coffee) in the monastery kitchen. There was our group of 5, our yak man, the single monk who was responsible for the monastery and a horse man from another group who lost his horse! How do you lose a horse?! This was where we witnessed our yak man taking spoonfuls of tsampa powder (imagine flour), putting it in his mouth and then chasing it with a cupful of butter tea. Well, I guess that’s one way to do it…the cowboy way. Typically, you put the tsampa flour in a bowl, pour in sugar and butter tea and make porridge with it. But not this guy, no way! He’s too hard core. Definitely too hard core for us to emulate!

After a brief tour of the monastery, we launch into our final day’s walking. Next stop is Darchen and a nice hot meal of veggies and yak! No ups and downs today, it’s all slow and steady, relatively flat walking down the river valley. Like its counterpart on the western side of Kailash, this valley has its own unique and unusual character, looking much like Utah or Arizona, with the multicolored sandstone layers. Sooner than we thought, we were being dumped back onto the Barkha plain with Gurla Mandata peak as the mile marker and directional compass to Darchen.

Locking arms with one another, we made our final steps back into civilization high on our sense of accomplishment, some of us (like me) with tears in their eyes at sadness that it’s over and pride in my feat. Walking back into the Darchen guesthouse, we gave each other a big group hug and had lots of cheers to shout. Covering more than 30 miles in 2 ½ days and climbing up over 18,000 feet, we achieved what few have done before…we completed the Kailash kora!!!! A lifetime of sins have been washed away, a new life begun, a rebirth by walking through the physical and mental landscapes of our own makings. Three days of hiking, a lifetime of love, compassion, patience and memories.

It was a very powerful day emotionally.

More to come….

Hanoi, August 2006

2007-09-16T13:51:00.000-07:00

“Well, pardon my birth, I just slipped out.” – Pavement

With some time to finally sit down and take a breath, the first in almost two months, I feel I can finally give the appropriate time and energy to record my journey since leaving Lhasa so, so long ago…..the challenge here will be to remember back 2 months and 5 countries ago because I’m only now getting my trip down after finishing it!

Flying out of Lhasa en route to Hanoi, Vietnam for my first - no second official assignment as a freelance photographer – how could I forget that National Geographic, which is coming out in the November issue by they way, was my first?! – I passed through Shangri-La, literally (otherwise known as Guanxi (sp?) (PRC) where we had a very short layover before getting back on the plane and continuing on to Guangzhou and then finally arriving in Hanoi in the deep, damp evening.

I wish I had more time in Guanxi and never had to witness Guangzhou. The former is a quaint cluster of pine tree encrusted mountain villages situated just high enough in the mountains to remain almost perpetually in fog and mist. The scenery, even from my point of view at 30,000 feet and continuing down as we descended, gave the urge to strap on a pack and walk for days up, over and into the gently rolling crests of these high pasture lands and explore the deep, forested gorges and quiet hamlets nestled far from the roads or for that matter, time. The Chinese, in all their wonderful insight, decided to market the area as “Shangri-La”, though I always thought that designation was reserved for Tibet proper only. There is a very strong cultural connection to the Plateau as most of the ethnic minority there probably has strong Tibetan historical and trade ties. Regardless of the misplaced tourist propaganda, the area in all its rural charm beckons me to return (and hopefully with Leigh if I can ever drag her away from her research!).

Guangzhou, on the other hand, looks like a very bad mix of Mad Max: Beyond Thunderdome and Blade Runner. And if, like my poor deprived wife, if you haven’t seen these two bastions of twentieth century pop culture, shame on you….they are both musts! “TWO MEN ENTER, ONE MAN LEAVES! TWO MEN ENTER, ONE MAN LEAVES!” (OK, so the photo isn’t of Mad Max, but come on….it’s still freaking hilarious!!!). In your mind, take the worst of each movies scenery and combine it into one bleak, drab, gray, industrial, polluted, wasteland of a city and you have Guangzhou. Resounding recommendation, eh? The airport seemed to be the only thing that was any thing close to newly built and resembling clean, and interestingly it was in the shape of a spider. Of course, as Leigh and I have discovered what seems to be law in all our hundreds of airport transfers, my arriving plane was at one end of the terminal and my departing plane was aaaaaaallllllll the way down on the opposite end of the airport, a good 1.5 km walk!

Random thought: Why do airports make always make me clammy, leaving me with a thin layer of gross all over me?

Random thought II: I don’t think there is a Chinese city that exists that isn’t absolutely crawling with construction.

After finally arriving in Hanoi, in the north of Vietnam (Ho Chi Minh, aka Saigon, is in the south), I took a float down the highway in my taxi into the city. I cannot think of another time that I have seen more heavy rain in that short a period of time. Coming from the high, dry plateau, where rain is precious, this deluge was biblical in proportions but thankfully brief in its life span. I really thought we were going to float away as the long drive to the city from the airport led us deeper and deeper into the monster. And when I asked a local about the rain, he shrugged his shoulders and thought it a minor drizzle!

Unfortunately, as I write this, the poor country is bailing itself out from under 4 feet of water after a terrible typhoon which hit a few days ago. My thoughts go out to them. I’m sure if you look into a few international NGO’s, like CARE Australia, you’ll find some that are doing some emergency response.

The assignment with CARE Australia, very much the same thing as CARE USA just different country – d’uh! – would take me about 2 weeks to complete and cover several projects in both Vietnam and Cambodia. And all of it was either blazingly hot or depressingly humid. After getting myself quite comfortable in the crisp, dry, light environment of Lhasa, this was an abrupt and not very welcome reminder of what Georgia is like for most of the summer. Too hot, too wet, too miserable. Everywhere we went to do our project visits was just one variation or another on jungle sweat. And for whatever genetic reasons, I tend to sweat more than the next guy. So within a few moments of walking out of the shower, I’m dripping wet again. Blah! I now know with no remaining doubt that I need high mountains, cool breezes, cooler nights, drier air and snow every once in awhile. During my visits, I kept thinking in the back of my mind – Why would ANYONE want to live here?! As far as I’m concerned, people like my mom can have the equatorial latitudes. I’m sticking with higher elevation and more temperate climes! Especially as we head deeper and deeper into the global warming trend.

Unabashed political movie plug: SEE AL GORE’S MOVIE - “An Inconvenient Truth”!

Random thought: Have you ever noticed that in general (broad strokes here) where it’s hot, it’s violent and tense? Palestine/Israel, Afghanistan, Sudan, Congo. Whoever heard of the Inuit going to war?

During my SE Asian adventures, I was able to visit some very remote areas in both Vietnam and Cambodia. Places that are so far off the ‘beaten track’ that I couldn’t even tell you where they are without looking at detailed map, much less pronounce them. This rare and blessed access to these areas and these ‘salt of the earth’ people is one of the most appreciated, gratifying and anticipated aspects of my job. I really love to experience what I consider to be interacting with real folks, with real troubles (many times exponentially more than many of us can imagine) and real dreams (who says a 9 year old from a very rural village going to a CARE sponsored school can’t be president of Cambodia one day?) and not this tourist trap circuit crap where the only interaction you’ll get from anyone is to see how they can get more money out of you.

Vietnam is a Socialist Republic, i.e. semi-police state. It was interesting working in Vietnam because with every project visit, we needed to go and visit the village or community government office to say our diplomatic hellos and give the officials there the opportunity to ‘tag along’ if they’d like. When we would come into their offices, there was undoubtedly a large portrait of Ho Chi Minh hanging above the desk. So very much like China, Vietnam thinks their communist revolutionaries are heroes. And similar to China, these historical figures are plastered all over their money. On every Chinese Yuan and every Vietnam Dong there is Mao or Ho Chi Minh respectively. I guess it’s not that much different than having a bunch of dead, rich white guys on the American Dollar. But because of the structure of the government and the slight paranoia that comes with those ruling with heavy hands, there is a lot of diplomacy with local and national governments while working for NGO’s. Thankfully, every official we met was very enthusiastic about CARE’s work and our visit and of course wanted to tag along (although within the first 15 minutes of our interviews and photo sessions, they grew quite bored).

Our project visits in Vietnam included a widow who is receiving fruit tree seedlings and training on how to grow them from CARE. There were 4 generations living on the farm, from the cutest little old 76 year old grandmother to the youngest granddaughter of 3 years. From there, after a brief visit to a soccer game being played in the midst of a herd of water buffalos (mark that up to something you don’t see everyday), we were on our way to the farm where these seedlings were being grown to look around the farm and talk to the farmer who runs the place who is also giving the technical trainings for the new recipients of the seedlings. Unfortunately, Vietnam is very, very, very wet during the months of July and August – it is a jungle by the way. And the vast majority of the roads are unpaved. So with a lot of rain and unpaved roads, what do you get? MUD! And a whole lot of it. I basically stayed muddy for the entire month of August. So on our way to this farm, our mini-van (why they gave us a mini-van to drive through what an army hummer would have problems with is one of this trip’s unsolved mysteries), got very stuck in the mud. And when no amount of pushing or pulling or stuffing brush under the tires worked, we were officially stuck. It took a tractor, that couldn’t have been less than 50 years old, to come chugging up the road, plowing through the shin deep mud and come to our rescue. It was quite the sight to see this WWII era tractor dragging our poor little blue mini-van up this muddy road in the pouring rain. And of course, after all this we missed the meeting with the farmer. Vietnam’s Roads: 1, CARE Crew: 0.

The next rainy day, we headed out to a sea side community that was hit particularly hard by a typhoon in 2005. The storm surges went right over and through the hand made levees of sand and mud that was the community’s only defense against the ravages of the sea. Most of their farming land was inundated with salt water as were most of their drinking wells. CARE was helping them rehabilitate their drinking wells and also building new rain catchments for individual households. There was also a water filter and corn seed distribution going on later in the afternoon in a near by community that we visited. But before we could get to this community, we had to make our visit to the govt’s office. And as we were driving through the very muddy and rain soaked roads in our poor little blue mini-van, we hit a huge pot hole hidden by a standing pool of water and broke our oil pan! Because of this, we had to hop onto the back of the field staff’s motor bikes and cruise down these slick dirt tracks that were really nothing more than raised levels of land between rice paddies to continue our visits uninterrupted. The motor bike rides in the rain were exciting and thrilling but not necessarily my preferred mode of transport while carrying 30 pounds of camera equipment on my back. Vietnam Roads: 2, CARE Crew: 0.

The next day was dedicated to documenting Avian Flu…..oh boy! I spent all day long surrounded by chickens and ducks in a country where they’ve already had over 30 deaths from Avian Flu this year. And I was asked to jump into the midst of it and shoot away. Oye. Needless to say, this was not my favorite day on the job. Not only were traveling to the street markets where these fowl are slaughtered, where the smells and sights are just short of nauseating to the unaccustomed western senses, but the fowl farms where anywhere from 75 to 200 animals are grown in very close quarters were overpowering in their muck and mire. And where I kept asking myself pointlessly, where’s the health codes? As the day was drawing to a close and we were on our way out of the village where we were visiting a fowl farmer, our poor little blue mini-van (because of what we believe now to be a very inept driver) got very stuck in a roadside ditch. I kid you not. Vietnam Roads: 3, CARE Crew: 0.

Day four, the final day in Vietnam, was spent documenting how a group of women, with special training sessions coordinated by CARE, could make their pigs fatter. This would then mean more money from the market when they sold them. And then we traveled on to another village woman’s thatch and bamboo home where CARE supplied her with better corn seed for her small plots of land. As anticipated, during our drive out from the pig ladies village, the rural mud road sucked us down into its mighty grasp and wouldn’t let go. It took a round up of several of the village’s men, who were all out in the fields tending the livestock or chopping wood, to come and help pull/push our poor little blue mini-van back out of the quagmire and finally onto paved black top again. It got beyond frustrating to just downright comical.

Final score – Vietnam Roads: 4, CARE Crew: 0.

My concluding thoughts on

Vietnam

– I’ve been there and that’ll be enough for me. It was filled with nice colonial architecture from the days of the French contrasted with very simple thatch and bamboo huts raised above the paddies. I took so many pictures of the walls there in

Vietnam

(and some in

Cambodia

). I just found the colorful paint that once was and the gradual decay that a jungle rot can bring to even concrete and plaster, the combination of all these natural and man-made elements, colors and natural shapes and hues, so beautiful. There were many, many very kind and genuine people I had the pleasure of meeting. I am always so impressed and touched by those who have so little wanting to give their guests so much. Not just in Vietnam, but throughout this entire trip, everywhere we went, we were offered tea, snacks, lunches, fruit, dinners. It was green beyond belief with rice paddies and vegetable fields for as far as you can see and hotter than you can imagine when it wasn’t actively pouring down rain. The food was good if you liked some sort of sea creature in your food, no matter what you ordered. All in all, it was a decent place but not really somewhere I’d purposefully go to again. Nothing wrong with it, but nothing struck me deeply about it either.