A week in Tibet

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From April 26 till May 2 , I traveled to Tibet with the Cercle Francophone de Shanghai. There were 29 of us, all French-speaking, including 3 teenagers, one of whom is in my 8th grade class at the French School of Shanghai! Our first 36 hours were spent traveling. On the morning of April 26, we flew to Xining in western China and spent 6 hours there visiting the city before boarding the Beijing-Lhassa train at 8:30 PM. that evening. 24 hours later we arrived in Lhassa. (It takes 50 hours from Beijing!). The night on board went okay, but the daytime travel was a bit long and “cramped”. Several of my group had altitude sickness, with vomiting and difficulty in breathing. Using oxygen seemed to help them, as did Diamox pills or the Chinese herb medicine most of us took every day for a week. As for me, I was okay “going up”, but once I got to Lhassa, I would wake up every morning at 3 a.m. with terrible headaches which would last for about 7 hours. I was not the only one who had this, and we would all commiserate over breakfast. During the first two days, one of the teenagers on the trip vomited so much, he had to spend a day in the hospital being treated for dehydration. Most of us started having oxygen aerosol cans with us on excursions or during the night and “shooting up” every time we had a “malaise”.
Tibet at this time of year is very dry, and the mountains are brown. I actually sometimes felt as if I was in Utah! Lhassa is at 3800 meters, but since it’s on a plateau, you don’t really feel as if you’re really that high up, even though some of the surrounding peaks are 7000 meters high. As you’ll see on a photo, when we went to Lake Namsto, we drove over a 5100 meter-mountain pass. But it was really only when we flew over Tibet by plane on the return journey that we were able to admire the rugged, snow-capped peaks so typical of the country.
During the week, we only saw a small part of Tibet, but we were able to “mix” somewhat with local people (‘in the fields and in a village we visited), and Jacques (his Frenchified name), our Chinese guide, was very knowledgeable about Tibetan culture. Originally from Sichuan province, he has lived in Tibet for 12 years and knows the area well.
Seeing as I live in China at the moment, and thus for obvious reasons, I won’t discuss politics or make certain comments here. Suffice it to say that you can certainly say that in the 50 years since they arrived in Tibet, the Chinese have greatly improved the infrastructure of this “autonomous region” -building roads, schools, power and telephone lines.
I hope you enjoy the photos. I will be receiving others, as next Saturday the group I went with is getting together to swap pictures and stories of this wonderful trip.

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