Greetings From Tibet

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Well it's been a interesting couple of days!

Traveling day was long! We took an early one our flight to Chengdu....then met up with this random Chinese Travel dude who gave us our next tickets and our traveling permits to enter Tibet..slid him some money....and then asked him a whole bunch of questions about China.....apparently there are is no more child labour in the factories, and baby girls are not abandoned on the streets!! (so he says!?!?)

SO then we took a gorgeous 2 hour flight to Lhasa...the capital of Tibet! I got really nervous before getting off because people were telling us about how some people can't breathe and you have to aclimatize to the high altitudes and so on....but I wasn't gasping for air or anything!! It didn't hit us until a couple of hours later. We got on a local bus to the city...surrounded by mountains! Tried to stay awake but did the head bobby thing! Arrived at a random hotel in Lhasa and found someone who spoke english and her friend helped us for a couple of hours to find a hostel to stay at! (she was so nice and got us some water too) They said keep drinking and drinking! So she found us this cute cheap place and it's really nice.

The city is so facinating....the people are as curious with us as we are with them. Their faces are so dark becuase the sun is so strong here and they have so much character. We are staying at a place around this square where people come and walk all day while twirling this thing and praying with their buddha beads..its so facinating to watch. Some of them look 100 years old! Some people will just stop and get down on the ground to pray. ANd there's so many of them walking and their dressed for winter but during the day its sooo hot.
China came in and took over about 50 years and it would have been really interesting to see it before then but i think it still has most of its charm and most of the people haven't changed. They are still wearing traditional clothes and buddhas walking around everywhere. Its like a blast from the past here. I think they also tried to comment on how white our faces are!! People who can barely walk are still going around and around this square. (always clockwise)

BUT back to the first night. Everyone says take it easy for 2 days and let your bodies adjust. After a few hours after landing we felt drugged and heavy and like someone was hitting our head with a sledghammer!! I've never felt that kind of pain before. Apparently our brains were swelling!? We coudn't even fall asleep it hurt so much and i felt nausious..you had to do everything soo slow..so we took some gravol and woke up a bit better but now its been nearly 3 days and we feel fine. BUt the first day just standing up you felt winded and like you were going to fall over. Climbing alot of stairs at once is still a challenge you have to stop and take a few deep breaths. Apparently when we go back to normal sea level we'll feel like a million bucks!! I really hope so because aclimatizing is not something i wish to do again!!

BUt we just walked around the first day and took it easy and looked at the endless amount of stalls along the praying path circle around Barkor square and the second full day (today) we went to the Potola Palace where the Dali Lama used to live and its over a thousand years old and one of the worlds architectural seven wonders?!!? Not to sure if people here are just saying that or its really true!? They recommond you don't do that on your first day here because there are alot of stairs!! What's with Buddah's and their stairs!~?

I think that's about it. I'm really enjoying it here and then tomorrow we're off with 2 other fellows on a 6 day 4x4 ride to Mt.Everest.(with a tibetan guide)..stopping at a few other highlights on the way there and back...but really looking forward to it. I'd be surprised if there was internet along the way so I won't be in contact for a week. We're going even higher and you can buy oxygen bags along the way....mabye i'll have to purchase one of those bad boys (or six)

Take care everyone....sorry we haven't figured out how to upload any pictures yet!!

Oh and the sun doesn't set till 9 or later!! It's weird being so high in the world!! The clouds are so close and it rains almost every night and every night there is lightening over the mountains!!! (we also have a Tibetan tan going on.....red face and white body....i'm working on taking my pasty complexion to about a classic ivory and hopefully sometime soon natural!)

bye-bye (all chinese people now say bye-bye instead of what they used to say...its funny) and up here in Tibet they all know Hello and the stalls know...looky looky..cheapy cheapy!!

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