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Published: August 8th 2006
Hello again.
Currently in Lhasa, the capital of Tibet. Still enjoying myself and loving the food (lots of hot and spicy veggie stuff - heaven). We are still at a relative altitude of 3 800m, but tomorrow are setting off onto the Tibetan Plateau which averages at about 5 000m, 200 less than Everest Base Camp, but do remember that Snowdon is 1000m tall!!!
Shigatse was lovely, went to a huge monastery there which was the home of the Panchen Lama before he was moved by the Chinese. It is amazing how much of the history is edited by the Chinese before it is given to the local people. So much of it has been doctored. So much so that there is a museum dedicated to the anti-British campaign in one of the towns we have visited recently!! They turned the documented facts on their head and turned i into more propaganda!
It seems that only the Tibetans out in the country really exists as they have in the past and maintain their own belief systems as those who are aloowed to go to school (only one child per family in Tibet) has to learn Chinese and the Chinese version of Tibetan history. Even so, many people seem to get on with it, without asking questions. The Chinese dictatorship is fascinating as the people do not ask questions, they just seem to accept what they are being told. It's also amazing as they do not have the concept of freedom of thought or free speech. Some Tibetans do feel that they can talk to some foreigners as we can empethise with them and the amount of hidden feeling is astounding. This trip has certainly opened my eyes to the political situation here. It does seem crazy that the people of China still worship and buy T-shirts of a man who killed millions and belive that he was the saviour of the country. When we are in Beijing I'm going to visit the Forbidden city and Tienaman Square to see what the other side of the story is........not sure it will change my mind about the current opinion though!
Toilet troube is continuing!! The best way to go is defo the side of the road. I can't believe I forgot to tell you all the gruesome story...... Basically on the way from Base Camp to our next stop Lhatse we had a bit of nightmare drive, in that there were roadworks which meant that we were delayed in traffc so couln't camp as planned. These weren't normal roadworks though, this was the worst roadworks in the world ever! Basically the clever people who were making decisions decided to lay tarmac on both sides of the road at once. Hmmmm.... This would have been ok if they had done it during the hours that they actually closed the road (yes over here if they are working on roads over here they close them for 12 hours during the day so thery are only open overnight). Unfortunately the tarmac laying machine broke down and we became a tourist attraction again as the truck filled with white people really isn't a subtle hiding place! Anyway, we ended up waiting till midnight for it all to get sorted because tarmac is expensive and there was no way anyone was going to be allowed to get past before it was all set....... que eating dry weetabix on the truck for dinner and emergency telephone calls to the local hotels to try and find somehwere to stay. This brings me to the link with toilet trouble! The place was a dive. The worst place in the world ever. You may remember that the plumbing over here is not at its best, but we managed to find the place that had loos reminiscent of protaloos at festivals on the Monday morning..... Piles of pooh everywhere. On the floor, in the bowl, one piled so high they must have been standing not squatting to do it!!!!
Seem to be extending our waiting periods of the trip in other ways though as when we got to Lhasa the one thing we all wanted to do was to go to the Patala Palace - the old home of the Dalai Lama before he was forced to run away to India. The organisational issues here were far from fantastic as there are only 2000 tickets a day for visitors, 500 of which foreign and local people are aloowed to buy, the rest reserved for Chinese tour groups. So we were told that the ticket office opened at7 so had to be in the queue for 6am, which we dutifully did, and there was a beautiful queuing system on the go. The gates didn't open until 7.30am and it was as if someone had shouted really loudly "BUNDLE"!!!!!! It was amazing, elderly women ran for the gates, everyone pushing and shoving, people climbing over the barriers onto each other......obviously we got a litte involved but in a reserved British way!!! We got in the queue and essentially there we stayed until 11am when we were given a number, and told to return at midday. After all the cuffufle we got our tickets and went in yesterday. The only reason we could think of was the fact that they are trying to restrict the numbers of foreigners in who know the non-edited version of history and stop us talking about the current DAlai Lama. It was ace, and as stubbor as a few of us are on the trip, we were not going the let the system beat us, so we were surprised that we got the tickets after all that and thoroughly enjoyed our time there. (Incidently waiting time of holiday has now increased to 41 hours. We are going for 2 days!!)
Loving Lhasa though. Planning to go to another monastery today to watch the monks debate which should be ace as we are allowed to watch for the full 2 hours and even take photos..... talking of which am steadily making my way through memory cards at a rate of knots but thoroughly enjoying "capturing the momen" and no doubt when I get back will be boring alot of you with the results!! May even work out how to load them up onto this and make it look really pretty!
Yesterday went on a 15km walk which the pilgrims follow which takes you past a few of the sacred sites and into an amazing part of town where there are a huge number of buddhas carved into the walls of the cliffs. Here loads of the pilgrims come to pray and do this strange hands together and then push themselves onto the floor, pray again and then do a funny push up thing to stand again. They do all this while holding their prayer beads and we think that because there ate 108 beads, they have to do this 108 times. I went with one other guy from the trip and it was amazing as we were the only tourists there and because we knew a few words of TIbetan they were really friendly and welcomed us into their area with no problems.
Have I mentioned how difficult it is to get acomputer here? Honestly, you would have thought that with all the internet places here it would be a doddle. It appears that all locals seem to do is game on computers that you rent by the hour. SO I apologise that I seem to have verbal diarrhoea when I do get access to a computer, but I hope that you are enjoying the updates! I'm enjoying writing them and getting comments/messages..... even getting messages from strangers asking my advice about travelling!!!!!!!
Love to you all,
Becca x
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kate
non-member comment
sounds ace
oh my god babe, sounds amazing. sorr about no messages but only got back to uk last night, germans do not seem to believe in internet cafs. toilets sound like my worst night mare, i understand the small babe and my thoughts are with you!! our house is fine - i close your bedroom window, was not sure if intentionally open or not. we are going to go over an mow lawn later. so glad that you are taking lots of pics - i will look forward to them over a large glass oof vino when you get back. missing your nonsence. get the keys to sp today - v exciting, have been waiting in germany all week - talk about delayed gratification. so sory that no message until now but i am v impressed with your use of the blog - i have just read all of your journal entries, i did not notice the spelling so do not worry!!! markus sends his love and usual derog comments. take lots of care and do try to avoid the poo piles. missing you babe. big hugs and kisses kate xxxxxxxxxxx