Well, here I am on the eve of my departure. I can’t believe my time in China is up. It feels like just yesterday I stepped off the plane thinking “what have I gotten myself into?” Turns out I made a pretty good decision. I shall save reflection for some later date though. Right now my purpose of writing is to record for posterity’s sake, the trials and tribulations of my recent trip to Tibet. Also known more specifically as the Tibetan autonomous region- China’s most disputed territory and the rooftop of the world. It was one heck of a trip, so prepare yourself for a monstrous entry. I won’t be hurt if you don’t make it all the way through.
And so our story begins, at 4 in the morning, at my most favorite place in all of China- the Zhengzhou train station. Myself, and two other foreign teachers, Jennie and Rani, wearily stumbled onto the train and attempted to bed down for the quick 38 hour train ride. Being cheap, we purchased hard sleepers, meaning that we had to share our car with 3 other people besides the three of us. Luckily we were able to get tickets for the two bottom-most beds and only one middle bed. This meant that we had a place to sit up during the day, as the second and third beds are stacked too close together to allow for an upright position. The people in those beds had to spend the entire trip lying down, or sitting in one of the few small seats in the hallway. Luckily, both ways, our cabin mates were nice and quiet, with one small exception. When we first boarded the train in Zhengzhou one of our fellow passengers whom we affectionately referred to as ‘Lao Lao’ (grandma- though not to her face) had some serious difficulty locating a place for her luggage and felt the need to communicate this by yelling through the closed double paned glass window to her daughter outside the train. This mode of communication didn’t appear to work so they switched to cell phones, yet strangely (or not so strangely if you live in China) the woman’s volume did not change despite the fact that she was actually speaking on the phone. Soon though Lao Lao figured it out, then monkeyed herself up to the highest bunk where we didn’t hear from her again until many hours later when she re-emerged and offered us creepy Chinese treats and fenangled herself a spot on Rani’s bed. She even managed to commandeer her blanket, that manx. It was all good though, by then Lao Lao was back on our good side. Also, it was amusing to watch her nap (don’t judge, you try spending almost 40 hours on a train and see what you come up with for entertainment). The train ride was uneventful except for the fact that my ipod (fully loaded with dozens of new podcasts ready for the listening) ceased to function within the first few hours of the trip and never came on again until hour 32 on the return trip, which was really quite useful.
Finally, we reached Lhasa, where we staggered off the train 2 hours EARLIER than anticipated (this is a downright miracle in China), and were greeted by our tour guide Ba Tse. To enter Tibet as a foreigner you must have a permit, and to get a permit you must have a tour guide: enter Ba Tse. We had heard from a few people that it is possible to enter Tibet illegally (without the permit) and had considered doing this. But I can tell you with authority that I highly doubt that is actually possible. They checked our permit everywhere: on the train, upon exiting the train station, upon checking in to any hostel, upon entering many sites in Lhasa, and at dozens of roadside checks. I say, shell out the dough, get the permit. Anyway back to Ba Tse. Upon seeing him, and before realizing he was holding a sign with our names on it, Rani, Jennie and I all seem to have had a similar thought run through our heads that went a lot like this: “who is this fool?” Ba Tse is, perhaps, the most gangsta’ Tibetan Buddhist in existence. His wardrobe appeared to consist entirely of: velour LA Laker’s shorts or sweatpants, oversized T-shirts, huge high top Nikes, a NY Nicks hat and a pair of giant aviator sunglasses that rarely left his face. And one can’t forget his Luis Vuitton bag (what I think was actually a woman’s purse) that he wore as a satchel. Oh Be Tse- it’s no secret that he has a serious love affair with America. Unfortunately, Tibetans are not allowed passports by the Chinese government so his chances of ever making it to the good ol’ US are slim to none, unless there’s a drastic change in the political climate sometime in the near future. Anyway, Ba Tse is proof that first impressions are often wrong, as he turned out to be extremely helpful and friendly, fluent in Mandarin, Tibetan, English and soon French, a talented musician, and generally an upstanding guy. Well, with the exception of the time he punched our driver in the face and attempted to gouge out his eye while driving…but that’s a different story.
On our first full day in Tibet we visited the Sera Monastery. This is one of Lhasa’s largest monasteries and our first real glimpse of Tibet. And it was awesome! We wondered through the first room as Ba Tse tried to explain to us all that we were seeing (and I am ashamed to admit that I mostly forgot-Tibetan Buddhism is a complicated religion and difficult to learn when one is being thoroughly overwhelmed with hundreds of new sites, sounds and smells)! We eventually found ourselves as the only foreigners in a huge line of Tibetans, nearly all of them dressed elaborately in their traditional dress, hair braded and tied up with colorful ribbons around their heads, and all of them, men and women, covered in torquoise and red coral jewelry. Slowly we shuffled through a series of hallways until we found ourselves in a room thick with incense and the smell of burning yak butter, surrounded by Tibetans chanting and pouring their yak butter offerings into the candles laid at the base of the statue of the Wrathful Buddha. We waited our turn in line, and finally were able to hand our prayer scarves with money wrapped inside to a monk, who took them from us and then laid a hand on our heads and said a blessing over us. He then directed us to stick our heads into a hole, where we then said a prayer asking for safety from the Wrathful Buddha. It was a great way to be introduced to Tibet, to be allowed into such a sacred place, surrounded by hundreds of devout worshippers and to experience it all alongside them. We spent the rest of the day exploring Lhasa on our own (we gave Ba Tse the afternoon off) and I came to realize that the city feels like an incredibly holy place. It is the holiest city in all of Tibet, and so it is full of pilgrims who come from all over Tibet to see the most important sites of Tibetan Buddhism. Everywhere you go the streets are full of monks and nuns, and colorfully and elaborately dressed pilgrims spinning prayer wheels as they walk. Everyone is always fingering their prayer beads and chanting quietly under their breath, even while sitting on a park bench or walking down the street or waiting for the bus. The devotion of the Tibetan people is remarkable. Of course, because China is fully of strange dichotomies, everywhere we went, among all the peaceful Buddhist pilgrims and monks, there were also tons and tons of Chinese militia. On every street corner, in every major square or marketplace, there were loads of heavily armed (with huge rifles and bullet proof vests and riot shields) Chinese troops, keeping the "peace". It was rather alarming at first, as the military presence is nowhere near that intense anywhere else I've been in China, but like anything else I got used to it.
On our second day we visited the Potala Palace, which was the home of the Dalai Lama until the 14th (and recent) Dalai Lama fled Tibet in 1959. In case you don’t know, the Dalai Lama is the traditional spiritual and political leader of the Tibetan people, though he is currently denounced by the Chinese government and no longer allowed inside Tibet. The Dalai Lama is the spiritual center of Tibetan Buddhism, more or less akin to the pope, and is considered a physical manifestation of the bodhisattva Avalokitesvara who has been reborn to Earth to enlighten others. His palace is giant and beautiful, and apparently has over 2,000 rooms, though we were only allowed to see about a dozen of them. My favorite part of the Palace were the funeral Stupas of the past Dalai Lamas. We also walked around in the park across from the Potala, where the Chinese government has most tastefully erected a large monument in celebration of the People’s Party directly across from the palace. Despite this, numerous pilgrims still were gathered prostrating themselves and praying before the now empty Palace of their leader. I know prostrations sounds like something dirty, but what it is actually is a method of prayer in which people get down on all fours, and then spread their hands out in front of them and lie down flat on the ground, touching their forehead flat to the ground each time. All around Tibet we saw people praying in this way. The most remarkable were the pilgrims we saw along the highway and from the train, who prostrate themselves for miles and miles as they make their way between the holy sites of Tibet and into Lhasa. They take one step, then get down on all fours, then lie flat on their stomachs and touch their heads to the ground, then they stand up, take one step, and do it again. Their hands and foreheads and noses are scuffed raw and bleeding after days and days of their pilgrimage. Our guide told us they bring nothing with them but a small bottle of water, they rely only the kindness of strangers for food, and many of them die along the way. All in the name of devotion, to pray before a palace in which the most important inhabitant is no longer present. Of course, pilgrims come to Lhasa for more than just the Potala, they also come to see the Jokhang Temple. The Jokhang is the most important temple in Tibetan Buddhism. Our guide told us that the Tibetan people believe that Tibet is an ogre, and the Jokhang is the ogre’s heart. In the Jokhang is Tibetan Buddhism’s most important statue, which is usually obscured by a thick iron curtain. However, for whatever reason on the day we visited we were allowed behind the curtain and into the room where the Buddha is kept, which we were told is extremely unusual. On that day the statue was being repainted by a monk with a thin sheet of real gold…which was given to the temple in the will of a recently passed Tibetan. Rani was even allowed to take one picture of the statue, which was strictly prohibited. We had some good luck that day.
On our fifth day in Tibet we loaded up into the car and headed out to Namtso Lake, one of the three holy lakes in Tibet. It took us about 5 hours to get there, and along the way we passed incredible scenery, huge open planes dotted with yaks and goats and nomadic herdsmen and their small tents made of yak skin. The lake was incredibly beautiful, I won’t waste a ton of time here describing it, for a picture will do a much better job than I can, and even that can’t really capture the amazing blueness of the water. The small settlement that we stayed at was not quite as picturesque as the lake. It was full of mangy half wild dogs that we viewed with a leery eye, as Jennie took the liberty of informing us that the number one infectious disease in Tibet is rabies. Our “hotel” for the night was a tin storage shed that had a lovely gravel floor and plenty of cracks to let in the chilly night air. Namtso lake is located at 4,718 m above sea level, and it snowed overnight while we were there, in mid-June, and that’s completely normal. It made for a cold night. The real adventure began though, when Jennie and I attempted to locate the “toilet”. The owner of hotel laughingly led us to the bathroom, which turned out to be nothing more than a raised shack with a hole cut in the floor that we could smell from meters away. If you’ve ever seen the movie Slumdog Millionaire there’s a scene in that movie involving a very similar toilet- so you can imagine. He saw Jennie and I eyeing it dubiously, so he, with even greater amusement, led us to what we affectionately dubbed “Shit Hill” which was exactly that. A small hill located on the edge of the settlement where everyone goes to…well you get the idea. Jennie and I decided this was the better option, at least there was a breeze (a cold, cold breeze). I don’t think you’ve really lived until you’ve squatted behind a tiny hill right out in the open at an unbelievably beautiful sacred lake. Of course while we were out there a nomad man joined us on Shit Hill, but he just went about his business and paid us no mind. Later, after discovering the nomad take on bathroom usage (which apparently is going anywhere you feel like it) we found a spot more to our liking (fewer rabid dogs to wade through) behind a truck near our hotel. All three of us found this to be a pleasant spot to empty our bladders in the morning, and even had the company of a lovely sacred yak (the white yaks are sacred and NOT for eating) who was munching a tasty tuft off grass nearby, likely irrigated by such intrepid pee-ers as ourselves.
We then returned to Lhasa, spent a day recovering and visiting a remarkable coffee shop that had the best baked goods I’ve had thus far in China, and the best Tiramisu I’ve EVER eaten. Let me take a moment here to comment on the food in Tibet. Which was awesome, and mostly involved yak. Yak butter tea (which was actually not very awesome-it tasted like a stick of butter melted in a glass), yak yogurt, yak cheese, momos (which are kind of like dumplings) filled with of course, yak or cheese or apples or vegetables. I even ate quite a bit of yak meat, which was basically the only meat available in Tibet, and was rather tasty. Yum…we ate a lot of food while in Tibet, and it was great!
Then, for our final adventure, we loaded back into the car and started on the 5 hour car ride to Shigatse, the highest city in the world. Our driver and Ba Tse picked up us that morning as anticipated, and Jennie, Rani and I were chatting it up in the back not paying any attention to the two guys in the front seat who appeared to be just having a conversation in Tibetan. Then suddenly Ba Tsa started wailing on the driver. Much shouting ensued, the fists were put away, and we made a nice little detour to the travel agency where we were told to sit tight and not worry. In the end we were told that Ba Tse was angry with the driver because earlier that morning, before they picked us up, Ba Tse had seen the driver hit an old woman with his car and apparently the driver did not stop or do anything about it. This peeved off Ba Tse nicely, and an argument and then fisticuffs followed, and finally ended up with us getting a new driver and continuing on our merry way. No harm no foul. Well, except to the driver…who appeared to have had better days. It took us about 5 hours to get to Shigatse, which is a rather unremarkable town, sadly extremely Chinese feeling, and very dirty. The next day we headed out to our real destination…Mt. Everest!!!!! That’s right, after another punishing 9 hours in the car, most of which was spent on incredibly switchbacky gravel roads that climbed to absolutely ridiculous heights we finally rounded the bend and suddently there we were, Everest base camp, located right at the base of the tallest mountain in the world! We arrived at base camp at about 5 in the evening, but thanks to the ridiculous fact that all of China is in one time zone, this still meant that we had a solid 5-5.5 hours of daylight left (and that’s not an exaggeration). We filled those hours taking roughly 8 zillion pictures of mount Everest and in general freezing our collective asses off. Then we retired to our “hotel” (this term again used quite loosely) which was actually a big tent. The tent was also really more of a restaurant, but the bench seats doubled as our beds. This place was actually much nicer than the one in Namtso, there was a yak dung stove in the middle that kept it much warmer than our tin shed. The woman who ran the place was very nice and had the world’s most adorable little baby who loved to get into everything she possibly could and then dump it all over the floor, much to the chagrin of her mother, who from the moment we arrived to the moment we went to bed never stopped working for an instant. She was always tending the stove or pouring us tea or cooking us dinner or sweeping up dust on the carpet that had been laid over the gravel with her stick broom. When we arrived to base camp it was a bit cloudy, but later on the clouds cleared away and we had an incredible view of the night sky. I can’t imagine a better place to see the stars than from the top of the world.
That’s basically the end of the trip. The next morning we woke up, stopped by the RongPhu Monastery, which is the highest monastery in the world. It was pretty cool, because we were got there early we had the place to ourselves, and the monks and nuns that live there opened up all of the rooms and even let us take pictures inside, which is quite unusual. Then we headed back to Lhasa, did lots and lots of shopping, joined the pilgrims on their circuit around the Jokhang Temple, ate more delicious food (oh, how I miss the yak yogurt and momos and bobis and barley wine already!) spent a solid 42 more hours on the train, and then finally arrived for the last time at the Zhengzhou train station, where I paid my last respects to that dirty, skanky institution that has allowed me to see so much of this country. There are of course many other little details and sites that I didn’t include, but there is just so much to tell about that I don't think I could ever capture it all here. Besides that, I’m tired of writing and I need to go to bed. In just over 12 short hours I will to begin my 24 hour trek back to Mei Guo, and I still have packing to do! I’m sad that my time here is over, but I can’t imagine a better way to have ended it than my trip to one of the most incredible places I have ever been.
So that’s it. This is me signing out…to all of you back home, I’ll catch you on the flip side of this wide and amazing Earth.
