Free(zing) Tibet!

We've been complaining mightily about the weather. It's -6C (around 23F), which, yes is cold, but not deathly. Besides, after catching up on the Yankee front, we've noticed NY is getting hit with a flurry of winter effects itself. The only difference is there, there are refuges for heat-- at the office, in the store, at home (well, except in the case for Bill and li'l sis Nancy, who are subletting our apt and whom we forgot to tell doesn't have heat for the first few wintry weeks-- we'll owe you a dinner when we get back- and perhaps some Theraflu). There's no such thing In Tibet. The weather outside is the same as the weather inside. One night after brushing my teeth, I went outside to rinse on the walkway just outside our room. I took a few steps to gaze at the stars, and after 3-4 seconds walked back and slipped on the ice that had already formed where I spit. These are cold nights in Tibet, where all you can do is just keep adding on layers-- eventually you'll go numb, either from frostbite or from lack of circulation.

So in Lhasa, rather than dizzy ourselves from the altitude, we did so on the monasteries- Jokhang, Sera, Ganden, Ramoche, Drepung. It's the only show in town. We decided it was time to break from the religious environment and see what else Tibet had to offer. There's a popular tour that travelers take that is known as the Friendship Highway- a route that connects Lhasa to the Nepal border. It strings together many of the highlights of central Tibet including lakes, caves, mountains and the ever-so-rare monastery. But with China's current clamp on the countryside they've restricted free travel, requiring you to obtain a permit to visit all places outside of the capital. (You even need a permit to travel into Tibet itself, which was arranged for us by an agent in Chengdu). To get the permit to travel beyond Lhasa you have to be part of a group. And as much of the route plies through the mountains, there's limited option for public transportation, so most people rent their own private vehicle and driver. There is one public bus that travels once a week to Kathmandu- costs only 500Y and makes the 600 mile trip in 3 days, but getting a private car allows you the opportunity to stop freely along the way and travel in a slightly more comfortable setting. We found an agent who wanted 3800Y ($475) for a '95 Landcruiser (Toyota owns the market here) for a 6 day tour, which was pretty good seeing as how the cost during high season has been listed at 6000. So our next step was to get a group together to split the cost.

Commonly, travelers will check the message boards outside each of the hotels in Lhasa for interested travel partners. In this off-season, there weren't too many candidates: 2 French guys leaving in three days. 2 Brazilian girls leaving in a week. 3 Koreans leaving tomorrow. 1 guy willing to go anytime this week (if they don't own up to a nationality, you can safely guess American- it's one label you have to tuck under your jacket when traveling-- thanks for ruining the holiday George.) As you'll spend the next 150 hours with your travel partners it's best to seek out some compatible folks, so you have to be somewhat discriminatory when forming the group. With Europeans, you're bound to spend much of the time defending the US, so we thought it best to overlook the French guys. And not being able to come up with an excuse to stay another week for the Brazilian girls that wasn't obvious to Carolee, we unfortunately had to cut them as well. The Korean guys only needed one more person so that wasn't an option. So we made contact with the anoymous guy- indeed an American, from San Francisco. As well we found a guy from Singapore and were ready to go.

The big feature on this route is a stop at Mt. Everest-- Base Camp. Very cool. The site itself isn't much. I pictured a blustery, snowy plateau, with gale-force winds nearly pulling the pegs out from tents strewn all along the foot of the mountain, guys frantically in communication with climbers already tackling the ascent. But it being December, there's no chance of any expedition so the site turned out to be an empty, rocky wasteland. But it still is amazing to take in Everest from just a few hundred meters away. And at 5200m above sea-level, it feels like you just sucked on 18 helium balloons, so you are hiiiiigh on life. Though Base Camp was impressive, the highlight of the tour was, surprisingly, stopping at all the small villages to witness the raw, unglamorous daily life of Tibetan people. Yamdrok Tso is a huge lake just south of Lhasa that covers 600 sq km of land. The gritty brown mountains that surround the crystal clear waters make all the more salient its unnatural turqouise sparkle. Gyantse was the first town we stayed in where we took in their famous monastery and Dzong (fort- which was kinda cool). Shigatse, the second largest city in Tibet, held for us another monastery. In the old part of town, walking through the markets you'll find row after row of sheep carcasses on sale for consumption. The heads are cut off and the skin is removed so that it's only red meat presented, but they have them all neatly seated upright on a blanket. You can buy the goat heads separately-- I don't know what they're used for- maybe to spruce up the garden or hang on your rear-view mirror. Shegar was a one horse town- nothing but a night's stay. By the way, if you ever find yourself traveling this route, do yourself a favor and delay reading the novel "Secret Tales of Tesur House," by W. Tailing. It's a fictional account of old Tibetan life where a major part of the story is about travelers staying in these same Tibetan towns (Gyantse, Nagartse) who get bludgeoned to death by the guesthouse owners in efforts to rob them of their wealth. (Shit, did the receptionist see me thumb through the stack of 100's in my pocket earlier?) The last night we stayed in Tingri, which is literally a strip of guesthouses and restaurants along the highway. It was a weekend and at night we heard several young girls singing outside our hotel. They were singing loudly, but it wasn't that wretched, out-of-pitch squawking of Olivia Newton John's "Summer Lovin'." This was a tribal hymn, sung captivatingly in a soothing chorus wail. Rather than go down and yell that it was 2am and we needed to wake up in 4hrs, I laid in bed and just let the music put me to sleep.

We actually ended up cutting the trip short. We paid for 6 days, but being as how the whole trip is drivable in one day, the 5 days we took itself was stretching it. So rather than tip our driver, we thought it'd be nice to free him early so he could go spend time with his daughter back home.

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