Tibet to Nepal 2006

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Arriving in Tibet the landscape was grey and desert-like, a mountainous version of the grey and windy concrete streets of Chengdu, from where we had flown. The airport was very rudimentary, and I half expected to see some cowboy-town drama unfold over some luggage or a taxi, but we managed to collect our belongings and make our way to Lhasa without any problems. A simple and inexpensive hotel wasn't hard to find, although a subliminal sense of blasphemy for having come to this place with no real knowledge of its religious significance settled in the back of my mind, to become manifest in various ways later on. The views from the hotel encompassed the mountains surrounding Lhasa and some gilted rooftops, along with a beautiful blue sky crossed and framed by fading prayer flags.



After dumping our kit we took a wander out for some food, sampling the traditional strong chinese tea flavoured with yak-milk, and dumplings. I felt strangely tired suddenly, similar to jet-lag, and suddenly realised that this could be down to the high altitude. The Tibetan people look healthy and ruddy-skinned, some of them with a red flush in their cheeks that you might not expect to see in Asia for some reason. I remember a guy was wheeling another guy around the square in front of the Jokphrang and high speed and a few people were laughing. For some reason I thought this kind of behaviour was unusual, whether because of the proximity to Tibetan Buddhism's most holy temple or because of the sombering nature of China's domination of the province I wasn't sure, but a few months later there were tanks in Lhasa, and I wondered about how the expression on the guys' faces might have changed. The Jokphrang square was also somewhat dominated by a large chinese fried-chicken outfit, which didn't blend in at all well with the surrounding old town with its white-washed bricks and tiled rooves. You can walk clockwise around the Jokphrang temple, and admire the pilgrims as they turn the prayer wheels that surround the building in the same direction. Some swing their own prayer wheels, and others prostrate themselves in front of the temple, standing up, kneeling down and then sliding their hands forward, often on small pieces of cardboard, leaving the slabs at the front of the temple looking incredibly smooth and well-polished. Many pilgrims walk for miles from outlying Tibetan territories, even from beyond the boundaries of the T.A.R., to come to Lhasa to do this, I was told. The walk around the Jokphrang seemed to go on forever, and we were following in the steps of many pilgrims and other people who had witnessed the same things for many centuries. The way around the Jokphrang is guarded closely by peddlers and shops of various kinds, catering more to tourists, of which we didn't see many. Perhaps once they were surrounded by cheap eateries for the pilgrims, or lodging houses, who knows?



We attempted to visit something like a supermarket, a huge indoor area with goods of all kinds packed high on shelves. Mainly the stuff was mass-produced chinese fare, and although the variety was incredible I think we felt like getting out of there pretty quickly. Some of the rest of Lhasa resembled the old-towns of European cities, with a small bakery or butcher here or there, or even an interesting craft-shop of one kind or another dotted around.



The next day we made contact with the outside world on MSN messenger which was new to me, in the courtyard of our hotel, which was a rambling and comfortably traditional place adjacent to the Jokphrang square and a couple of cheap eateries. We enjoyed momos- a traditional tibetan dumpling, and hot noodle soups, which would keep us going for some time. After some demonstration with banks, we advanced towards the Potala Palace, which I hadn't really thought to look for yet, but now loomed over us in beautiful, unassuming yet intimidating splendour. Making our way up to the entrance we could see the whole scope of Lhasa, with the old town and its temples becoming slowly enveloped by the new Chinese buildings, such as banks and municipal headquarters. The area in front of the palace is being re-developed however, with its many ancient buildings being restored to their former condition. You enter the palace past huge wooden doors, and are sheparded gradually around a maze of terraces and rooms painted in gaudy colours. It was all over too quickly really, although I'm sure it would take a lot of patience to see any more of the vast building. The view really is incredible from the top, and on the wind down to the bottom of the hill the sides of the paths are covered with small pieces of slate engraved with sutras. More pilgrims prostrate themselves in front of the potala, scraping their hands forward on the stone to leave them smoothly polished.



After visiting what we thought Lhasa had to offer and becoming somewhat depressed by the new Chinese architecture that we could see hemming in the old town, we resolved to try to see some of the rest of Tibet with the time we had left. Last minute, we managed to join a tour leaving for Namtso Lake, a high-altitude salt lake, one of the largest in the world. In our group were several Israelis, some of whom would accompany me to Nepal later. We left in a convoy of 4x4s along endless roads through incredibly desolate scenery, sometimes coming across a group of pilgrims, a herd of yaks or some settlement here or there. We eventually arrived at the ethereal lake, where frozen ice had crunched up into blocks like antarctic pack ice on our side of the shore, and many pictures were taken. We walked up a nearby escarpment covered in prayer flags for a better look around, and the view really was astonishing as the sun set over the himalayas, with the flags fluttering in the breeze. That evening we barely slept due to the perishing cold in the tents we were staying in, after an evening consuming Israeli tea and chinese noodles. The next day we had time to visit a hermit living in an unlikely cave carved out of the cliff-face, and tried to talk to some pilgrims wearing their impressive coats made of well-stiched and inverted sections of yak-hide.



There was an eierie sense of peace there, although it wasn't a feeling of enduring peace, but rather an unsettled one, however I'm sure that really lake Namtso will always be a place of peace, even if the rest of Tibet is in turmoil.



Back in Lhasa we tried to enjoy a backpacker-bar but it didn't really feel appropriate somehow, so we enjoyed visiting a few more temples and restaurants, and bought some significant souvenirs. I felt very privileged to have been able to visit Lhasa, although I thought it was only worth a short visit, although it really satisfied some of the desire I had pent up in me to travel before I left my own country, and I really felt that I had fulfilled some part of myself by making it there.



My companion left me, and I managed to book my way into a 4x4 travelling to the border of Nepal, with a Dutch lass and two Israeli guys fresh out of their military service. The journey was only three days or so but I wondered about what we would encounter along the way. Many of the roads around Lhasa are fairly uneventful and the scenery is incredibly desolate. This offered some time to muse on the difficulties of living in such a place, while listening to some Pink Floyd which I had exchanged with one of the Israelis for something else. Sometimes the grey shale of valleys which looked like dried up-river beds were replaced by red or yellow sand, and on high mountain passes cairns were adorned with many years' worth of prayer flags. The towns we stopped in seemed mainly unfriendly if not inhospitable, but with all the accountrements and comforts of civilisation they really didn't merit this kind of ill-favoured description. In one we ventured to a tea-bar and played some pool before the temperature dropped and we had to return to the hotel. Strange ruins marked the way on our final day's drive, after herding many Yaks out of our way, and waking at 6 am to see the sunrise in a local village and meet some local villagers. The soil looks completely un-farmable, although people have made a living here for millenia on hard work and rudiments of farming land. The ruins we could see were on the other side of the river from the road, and seemed to be comprised of compacted earth or sand, blown away by the wind to produce something practically post-apocalyptic. Very soon before reaching the Nepalese border, this scenery began to change, and almost withouht warning we were in the border town, set in a lush tropical valley and pressed by humidity and rain. We said farewell to our driver and packed our belongings into a taxi which would take us down to the border. Large dogs barked from alleys and guys offering Nepalese currency abounded. The road down to the official border was a steep winding mud road, totally blocked by richly decorated lorries all blasting out “bhangra” style music. We crossed the border, a concrete bridge crossing the valley, without any problems, and made our way to a hotel set beside the gushing river in the valley below. I quickly realised I had forgotten my camera in the taxi, and rushed back across the border. I managed to get a taxi up the muddy slope, and conversed with a Chinese guard at the top. He entered his office to liase with some other individuals, and I passed his wife, who was sitting nearby, some pomegranate, bought in Nepal, which I had been eating to calm my nerves on the way up the slope. His wife ducked into the office and had some words with him, after which he came out and agreed to help me. We both went out to search the town, fruitlessly on my part, but he managed to find the camera, with all my photos of Tibet, in a cafe owned by the taxi driver's wife! I then made it back down the arduous road to the border and joined my fellow travellers, amazed and glad that everything had worked out and the next leg of the adventure could begin.

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