Lhasa to Nepal

Asia
April 15th 2007

Published: April 15th 2007

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Devali

Jokang monks contributing to the general colour scheme

Loved hanging out on the roof of the Jokang in the sunshine.

So, where was I? Think I left you all way back in November when I left Lhasa... Here are three more photos taken in Lhasa. One shows a different view of an over-photographed empty shell of a building. No prizes for guessing which one!

Lhasa to the Nepal border was undertaken in great luxury... a land cruiser with only two other paying occupants and the driver. Sounds good, doesn't it? Notwithstanding the driver: a taciturn old b..., in the tradition of land cruiser drivers in Tibet. We met other carloads of travellers, all a hair's breadth away from murdering their drivers. We were relatively lucky with ours. The game is that once you've paid yer money, you then deliver yourself unto said driver's dictatorship for the duration you're in the car you naively thought you'd hired to fulfill your own itinerary desires. He takes you where he feels like taking you (which fortunately in our case was mostly where we wanted to go), takes you to the hotel he’s getting a cut on rather than the one of your choice (when there is a choice), and remains miserable throughout despite all efforts to extract a smile.

First stop,

Prostrators seen from the roof of the Jokang

would go on for hours and hours: up down, up down, up down

Yamdrok-tso: a lake - sacred to the Tibetans, source of renewable power to the Chinese, invisible to us… hiding its famed turquoise splendor beneath a thick layer of November fog. We could have consoled ourselves by taking photos of the yaks and goats that had been dolled up in neck gear and yanked up to our viewing point, a mere 4,794m high, for our perusal. I suppose we really should have. But we didn’t wanna. And I at any rate was made to feel the full force of these enterprising Tibetans’ wrath for not wanning to. Lovely spiritual un-materialistic Tibetans. Would they dream of following me stealthily up the hill with their snarling dogs and waiting until my drawers were flapping round my ankles to suddenly appear around the mound I’d hidden behind and advance towards me, brandishing sticks and demanding (as they so quaintly called my penny) ‘shit’ money? Not in Tibet, land of the holy, surely.

Did I give them money? Did I ever! They weren’t to know my bark is worse than my bite…

And that was the first of a series of spiritual lessons I was to learn in the holy lands of Tibet,

The backside

as everyone calls the behind in international English... Much nicer, in my opinion, than the over-photographed frontside!

Nepal, India and Sri Lanka.

First night stay: Gyantze.
There was a monastery in this town, but I was particularly interested in the fortress, the Gyantze Dzong. Site of Younghusband’s invasion in 1903, in which 700 Tibetans, armed with nothing more than protective charms marked with the seal of the Dalai Lama, were mowed down in less than 7 minutes by British firearms. To the bewilderment of the Tibetans, Younghusband went on to put up hospitals to cure the wounded: kill one day... heal the next?

After signing Tibet over to the Chinese, Younghusband was nonetheless to feel the surreptitious power of Tibet... looking out over Lhasa on the eve of his departure, he had a religious awakening; he was to go on to found the World Congress of Faiths in 1936. Ironic, ain't it?

Intrigued to see the Anti-British Imperialist Elements the Lonely Planet promised I would see, I huffed and puffed my way up to the Gyantze Dzong museum (on the top of that hill you see below). But all trace had been removed. And replaced with human-size dolls in grisly still-life scenes depicting the tortures the ruling Brahman caste (the monks) used to extortion

Me and my land cruiser companions

Everest was meant to be behind us, but got bleached out by the sun

(as many as 90 different) taxes from the peasants.

However, perhaps the invitation in the photo below could be said to maintain traces of said Anti-British sentiment, seeing as it's writ in the 'English' tongue...

Second night stay: Shigatse.
Shigatse is the second largest town in Tibet (tiny) and seat of the Panchen Lamas, second in lineage to the Dalai Lamas. The Panchen monastery, Tashilhumpo, has survived the Cultural Revolution relatively unscathed, leading those with forked tongues to mutter that the monks there pander to the Chinese (and will turn you in if you start handing out the pictures of the DL you've smuggled in for them). The ninth Panchen Lama fled to China and the 10th and 11th never escaped Chinese clutches.

However, once again Tibetan Buddhist power can be seen to win out: In 1961, the 10th Panchen Lama refused Mao's wish that he denounce the Dalai Lama and take his place as spiritual leader of Tibet. He was thrown into prison where he remained for 14 years suffering abuse and torture. Released in 1978 he continued to fight for the preservation of Tibetan culture. No one knows where or how he died. The 11th

Tourist yakety yak

looking surprising miserable in its natural habitat at 4,800 meters in the snow... Apparently yaks can't survive below 3,000 meters.

Panchen Lama, a 6 year-old boy identified in 1995 by the Dalai Lama, was forcibly relocated to Beijing. He is (or was at the time) the world’s youngest political prisoner, in house arrest somewhere in China. To replace him, the Chinese forced the Tashilhumpo monks to come up with another choice who is now under their influence. I just missed seeing this Lama by an hour when we visited a temple in Beijing in early September, but I saw people scouring the cobblestones for the grains of rice he threw to the crowds as he was leaving. To be kept as charms. We know how well those work...

After visiting the Tashilhumpo monastery, I hobbled back to our hotel feeling like a little old lady. The altitude really got to me. On the way, I stopped to take a picture of the cows that you see below. As I was doing so, I felt a tap on my shoulder. It was an old toothless Tibetan peasant. He indicated that the cows where of paltry interest and turned me forcefully around to look up the mountain at the prayer wheels lining the pilgrim circuit. Those were what I should be

Distant view of Gyantze Dzong

Difficult to imagine what motivates the great men of history to manoeuvre thousands of men across vast plains of desolation to these sorts of places with the sole aim of mowing down innocents and enlarging the empire...

taking a photo of! Under his disciplinary eye, I dutifully complied.

Funny, when one thinks that not so many kilometres away to the south and down a few thousand meters, cows are of paramount importance…

To my credit, I turned every single prayer wheel I came across that wasn't even further up the mountain I was currently balancing my pins on. And I can count those in the hundreds... so I've done more than my bit to save the world, and it ain't my fault!

Third night stay: Sakya
Want to experience the full desolation of a provincial Tibetan town settling into the long hard winter? Go to Sakya in November, take a walk around, observe the hardiness of the people, the lack of heating in any of the shops or 'restaurants' that keep their glass doors open to the harsh bitter winds. Go take a look at the boarding school that houses all the kids from all the villages around. Observe the broken dormitory windows, the single grey blanket on each of the army-issue bunk beds. Watch the raggedly dressed children hard at their 4 to 6.30 pm outdoor gym, being drilled for all the world

Jump Of The Cliff

I saw at least three of these invitations walking around the Dzong, the last one actually promising me eternal glory as a hero martyr if I'd only bl... well get on with it and jump (well actually that one wanted me to jump 'in' the cliff, which sounded even more unpleasant).

like soldiers or prison inmates. Walk down the high street, trying not to choke on the smoke that spurts out of chimney pipes half way up the house walls. Try not to feel jealous that the town folk are all settling in for the night around their yak-cake-burning stove in their cozy front living rooms that double as bedrooms. You will be going back to the Chinese tourist hotel: built in marble, no heating, no working toilet or hot shower in the en-suite bathroom, but complete with all-pervading smell of the reception loo wafting down the long echoey corridors to 'scent' both the dining room and your sleeping room. Think of the good folk in their homes slurping their hot noodle soup, nice and cozy in their yak hair skirts and trousers, while you get served a luke warm Western 'sizzler' (yak) in the high-ceilinged, freezing cold dining room, shivering in the clothes you picked up in Kunming, China, where you couldn't even imagine cold like this. And then it's to bed, grateful for your Sigg bottle that you've filled with boiling water and slipped into your cheap Lhasa-bought sleeping bag.

Fourth night stay: A little village in Everest

Inside Gyantze monastery temple

People come from all over Tibet to the various monastery temples, some of them prostrating themselves all the way. Once there, they break up what little money they have into banknotes worth a fraction of a cent, which they then distribute at the feet of the various effigies as they mumble prayers and spin handheld prayer wheels in the hopes of a better deal next life. The older the person, the more constant the mumbling and the more frantic the spinning.

National Park.
The name of the village was impossible to pronounce, but was I glad to stay in a traditional Tibetan inn! The cleanest toilets (holes dug into the brushed dirt floor), the warmest dining room (pictured below) and the coziest bedroom with the three of us crowded in together. There was even a stand holding a tin bowl for giving yourself a flannel wash! Waking in the morning, it was minus 14.

The views on the drive up to Everest Base Camp the next day were stupendous. Unfortunately, none of my pictures did justice to the squished-up piled-up rock formations showing clear evidence of the Indian subcontinent colliding into Asia, though I’ve included one. You'll just have to go take a look yourselves!

I was really excited to buy a fossil of a seabed mollusk found at 5,000 meters in the foothills of Everest from one of the kids hanging around Tengri, the village you go to to get your permit to enter Everest Base Camp. It cost me next to nothing, and it’s perfect!

Our driver let us out at the entrance to the road leading to Everest Base Camp where Rongbuk, the highest monastery

Curious place to put a street lamp...

Tashilhumpo monks debating... beneath the watchful eye of Big Brother.

in the world, is. My two companions who were nicely acclimatized (having spent a few weeks in Lhasa to my five days) dashed off along the 3 or 5 kilometer path (I no longer remember how long) to EBC. I followed at my own pace and fell well behind them. Thankfully, our driver was miserable but thoughtful, and he kept me in sight down on the road as I struggled along, finally picking me up when the path left the plateau to ascend once again. In Tibet, you can be excused for making a mountain out of a molehill!

After taking our shots of us plus Everest in all imaginable poses, combinations and permutations, we took off on an exhilarating cross-country drive to New Tengri, where we spent our fifth night. Once there, after a particularly unpleasant tussle with the people who ran our inn (I found out later that they’d just had a nasty experience with some English travellers the night before and were venting their spleen on us), we decided we'd had enough. The constant stench of yak and Tibetan toilets, combined with the extreme cold and lack of washing facilities, meant that we'd had, in the

Cows versus the holy mountain of Shigatse

space of five days, all we could take of provincial Tibet. So we told Chom'ba, our driver, the next morning that we would forgo the sixth night on our itinerary, if he would only get us to the border pdq. Did we see a flicker of a vanquishing smile cross his lips?

Last night: Zhamgmu on the Tibetan side of the border. Restaurants full of Everest mountaineering memorabilia. Tibetans, Chinese, Nepalese, Indians, Mongols and Westerners in the street. Robes, saris, tunics, waist sashes. Round eyes, almond eyes, hooded eyes, conniving eyes, friendly eyes. Wind burnt cheeks, black skin, brown skin, lobster-red skin, plaits, beards, pointed hats, veils. Curries, noodle soup, yak jerky, eggs and bacon, FRESH FRUIT!!!! Hustle, bustle, oink, oink, honk, honk. Never seen so many land cruisers in my life, snaking down the narrow zigzag road through town. Never run up and down so many stairs in my life, trying to find a bank that wouldn’t tell me I could only change my money with the touts in the street…

Conclusion? I would definitely recommend Tibet to anyone. Just don’t be a klutz like me, and make sure you go in the late summer!