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Published: October 16th 2004
monks having yak butter tea
as much as i feared having to drink yak butter tea all the time, it wasn't so bad! a little salty and heavy for my taste, but adding a little ok, may be a lot of sugar wasn't so bad. there was this smell to yak though....AH! The woes of modern life. I just had 3 paragraphs typed out when the computer had some sort of internal error.... anyhow, it was about my trip to Tibet. There are no words to capture what this experience was like. I spent the last week going from Kathmandu to Lhasa, which is about 900km/600mi with about 40 other travelers from all over the world. It took 5 days to cover this distance on what is known as the Friendship Highway. The name sounds great (something the Chinese probably thought up of...), but the road itself was inexistant! Only about 100km of the actual highway was paved, the rest was a very primative road covered with rocks and potholes.
The last portion was the most life-harrowing experience I've had in a while. We dropped about 1000m down a mountain pass of switchbacks where the buses barely fit each curve. One slight mistake and the bus would go hurdling down the mountain! Scary! But our bus drivers are quite insane and are willing to do anything on those buses!!! At one point in time, we went off-roading because there was construction being done on a stretch of the highway and no
A real live YAK!
We stopped at this mountain pass to look at a holy mountain and just happens that there was a yak up here. I think we're about 4700m or ~14,000ft here. where else to go. Off-roading in a 24-passenger bus is quite the brain rattling, skeleton jarring experience! I didn't think I would quite make it in one piece.
In any case, we all made it to Lhasa, the capitol of Tibet. It was quite a shock to see how much the Chinese have infiltrated this city in the past 50 years. There were Chinese flags flying everywhere and they did a pretty good job of hiding the Potala from the main road by building high walls and buildings. The Potala is the old government building of Tibet where the Dalai Lama lived. It is also one of the most well known monastaries and temples, but is no longer in use except for the temples.
Despite the invasion (peaceful takeover is the term the Chinese like to use), the devotion of the Tibetans to Buddhism is enduring. To see the pilgrims walking or prostrating the entire length of one of the temples 8 times is absolutely astounding (it takes about 15 minutes to walk and about and hour to prostrate around the temple)!!
The temples were just incredible- the intricate details and the inordinate amount of time and
An entrance to the Potala
That's me! It was really really cold that day. It snowed during the night and the next day. So strange for it to be soooooo cold (-10 below yikes!!) in October! Again, don't know how people manage to make it through the winters!!! money it must have taken is beyond my comprehension. The level of devotion the Buddhists have towards their faith is something I can't understand yet.
Despite all the craziness involved with the Chinese government and getting into Tibet (we went through 3 series of Chinese inspections before getting into the actual country!) via bus-ride-of-death, this was definitely an experience I never would have imagined going through! One of the best things about this trip was meeting up with several other people who are going through a year or more, travelling and exploring the world. I was fortunate to meet up with some very fabulous individuals who have such interesting lives. It was also nice to know that I'm not the only solo traveler going for many months 😊
Okay, this is getting long, so I will add more later!
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conniechiwa
conniechiwa
love your monks photo!
wish i can go to tibet someday too...maybe i'll encounter some sort of spiritual enlightenment while there....hehe.