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Published: October 28th 2009
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wooop wooop made it here after a stressfull wait for the train and then two long loooooong days on a train. its the highest train journey in the world at one point reaching 4000m above sea level. each morning i awoke to the sight of a different mountain range and shed loads of snow!! although we did keep zipping in and out of tunnels which meant for less photos but i guess its why it takes two days not two weeks!
due to my stupidity i didnt pack any food for the trip so train food was on the menu, i didnt exactly have high hopes expecting something like plane food but it was actually really good, got loads of rice some meat and the best tofu iv had so far, no complaints here.
along with mountains and some lakes the other dominent sight was yaks, there was like a billion i wander who the hell eats all these yaks because its not popular in china as far as i can gather its a tibetan thing, well getting here you understand how, fancy some yak ice cream? a yak dumpling? how about just a straight up slab of yak?
lhasa train station was strangley empty, especially compared to any chinese station! it was nice. lhasa means god land or land of god and to be fair its pritty close to him on the top of the world so why no celebrate with a lhasa beer bought from some dude praying. m staying in a hotel because im on an organised tour so obviously i had to swag the shampoo and even manged to get my beard a present, ''comby mc beard comb'' (ok so being alone on the train sent me a bit mental) was my best piece of swag + i have enough toothpaste to last me until i get home now!
lhasa seems to be struggling with its buddist roots and devout religious population and the influx of comercialism and chinese youth obsessed with technology and incredibly cheesy music! i even saw a hummer, in tibet, i mean come on seriously? some chinese are making big bucks here. the tibetans themselves are much nicer in generall and its much more pleasant to walk the streeets here than it was in chengdu. people still stare but here at least they smile and say hello, and dont
try and sell you crap! i was even given a silk scarf by this old guy who just nodded smiled and walked on, the beard has mystical powers. aparently these scarves are a sign of respect and you see them in every temple here along with bundles of cash.....monks are living pritty too. that pritty much made my day so going to the potala palace (the most famous in tibet) just topped it off. this is where the dali lamas lived when they could live in china, its darn impressive so im thinking if i ever get on cribs.....
a concern before leaving was the altitude as the oxgyen is so thin that people get ill and stuff so they cant do things, luckly it hasnt effected me too much. however when your visiting temples which are built into or up small mountians and the air gets thinner, your walking up a million steps and the oxygen in the air is being burnt with incense and this fake butter breathing seems to be less of a priority than praying. dali lamas get amazing coffins too, it sounds morbid but one who died at 13 has a coffin made from
500kg of gold plus diamonds etc, and thats not even the biggest one. i think the 13th was pritty important because he kept being mentioned and well his tomb was 3000kg of gold plusssss diamonds rubys turquios and a pearl from the brain of an elephant! i gotta get me one of those!
finally i got some yak meat, and it was lovely much better than beef although i think iv had enough to last me a lifetime! i am enjoying being in the presence of so many monks so after visting a couple temples i got to the sera monastery once holding 6000monks but now a tad less, i got to watch them ''debating'' although it was all spoken in sandscript and they seemed pritty chilled on the most part. from what i could gather the guy standing up asks a question and then claps his hand (louder for the more important/harder the question i think) and then the monk sitting down answers. they also appreciated my ''tin tin in tibet tshirt'' which was so funny.
and so the adventure into the tibetan capital comes to a close as i fly back to chengdu in order to
climb mount emei shan tommorrow. also the captions are screwed up on the pictures again.
cya kids xxx
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