Last Day in Lhasa

The design of the infamous Lhasa train station is based on the Potala. This is the cleanest, quietest, emptiest train station in all of China. I took the scenic route out here. Being solo once more I was again surprised by the helpfulness of the locals. The bus driver drove out of his way to get me to my connection. The train station attendant at the ticket box escorted me to the front of the line. The women in the Barkhor told me they loved me. That seems to be their sales technic. The vendors in Lhasa tell you they love you... I bought a pair of prayer wheel earrings.


Wandering through the streets had its surprises as well. I ended up at Dishi Restaurant, an enclosed courtyard with trees. Pema called out to me from the balcony immediately. He came down to help me place my order (rice with yak meat and chai) and then escorted me upstairs. We had a lovely conversation about his nomadic family. He now has a version of Lauren and Greg's phone number. He will call me to practice his English. Pema will never forget me and prays that I will be reincarnated at a higher level in my next life. In case you are wondering, that's him lounging in the chair in the shot below. To him I will forever be the 24 year old Canadian girl that looks Indian, studying to be a teacher.



On my way back through the Barkhor I met the three boys again. Turns out their jeep isn't leaving until tomorrow. Tonight we watch DVDs at Banak Shol and tomorrow we leave Lhasa. What a great way to end my Tibet trip.


Deprung Monastery:

The Boys in Lhasa

This could quite possibly be the best picture I've ever taken...well, maybe not. It was my last request before Jens, Ruetger and Tim left for their 14 day trip to Mount Kailash. I've spent the last few days with these guys in a four bed dorm. I met each of them in different parts of China on their own and then I decided we had to hang out together in Lhasa.



There's been plenty of laughs. Tim tried to tell a woman at a club that he loved her but she looked perplexed. Turns out he got the words wrong and told her he wanted to eat her....The following day he got on his knees in a bus and proposed to a pretty Chinese girl with a 50 cent ring. She got off the bus. Ruetger has a girlfriend story every 15 minutes. The man gets around. He's also a dancing sensation. Jens is the guy that encourages every bad idea the other two come up with.

Driving on the Rooftop of the World

The four day trip to Everest Base Camp left me exhausted but content. The Australian couple, Alex and Laura, were fine but the Dutch couple, Selly and Lily, had some alitutde issues. They tried to take oxygen right at our first stop but our driver stopped them.

Our first stop was Yamdrok-tso lake at an elevation of 4488 metres. The Kamba-la pass (4794m) overlooking the lake was a zoo. People were selling trinkets and several yaks were on hand to be mounted and photographed. Some of the more daring entrepreneurs attached a black collar to their dogs and chased every new arrival to the lookout with "Dog. Picture. Dog. Picture."

I made my way up the hill past the buses. Huffing and puffing all the way, I finally had to kneel to catch my breath. Looking around it was hard to take in all the summits. This truly is the rooftop of the world and my camera does not do it justice at all. The picture above is the view of the lake from the top of the mountain at 5200 metres and the picture below is the view of the road we took (taken from the same spot).



We figured out pretty early on that our driver was in a big rush for some reason. He kept waving in and out of traffic and took the curves on the mountain at 90km/hr. None of this bothered me too much until we had to off-road toward Gyantse. Having your ribcage jammed into the door of a 4 by 4 is not all that comfortable. Surprisingly, Tibet has sand dunes. I was stunned. The lakes are quite remarkable but the sand dunes were stunning.



In Gyantse I opted to not visit the Pelkhor Choede Monastery. I am monasteried out. Instead I took a walk with Laura and discovered a courtyard filled with people shelling garlic cloves. It looked like a little piece of heaven with its blue walls and the white shells covering the floor, swirling about at the slightest breeze.



The wait for Lily to emerge from the monastery was endless. We kept ourselves entertained with some small children that were begging in front of the monastery. One of the little boys took Laura's blond hair in his hands and kissed it. All of us melted at the sight. He then took to sitting on my shoulder while another one of the girls, baby strapped to her back, came by to fix my hair. Laura had postcards of Tibet on her and the kids were so excited to see them. They each got to keep one.



The following day we drove toward Shegar to get the Everest permit and tickets. The first half of the drive took place in the dark with a Bollywood DVD providing the only light inside the car.



The landscape changed dramatically. It was freezing cold. I had to layer up with an extra pair of pants and my fake North Face jacket.



The sunrise was spectacular. This made up for the foggy failure at Darjeeling. Plus, here I had the experience to myself. Laura was off peeing, Alex was layering, Lily & Selly were freezing in the car and I took a hike away from the car. There weren't any people pointing excitedly at the sun as they had done in India. No other tourists meant no hot chai at steep prizes to help me truly appreciate the Himalayan range.



Shegar turned out to be a road stop town. Nothing more than a highway and a hotel before the 50 hairpin turns up the mountain and 50 hairpin turns down the mountain on unpaved road enroute to Everest Base Camp. Once we arrived at the entrance to the mountain our driver set about popping the hood and fixing something on the car. Our hearts sank a little when we saw the fog covering Everest between the pass.



It was freezing. Our horses were severly underfed. Laura was texting Australia. Our horse carriage driver stopped trying to sell us trinckets and started singing Tibetan folk songs. The sun burnt us from above and the wind whipped my hands into a bright red shade.



A 1.5 hour horse drawn carriage ride later we were at base camp (5200m). I ducked into Hotel California, a white tent like all the others at base camp, for a hot tea. Quite a few people cycled up here from Lhasa. Everest was still fogged in.



I walked part of the way back from the camp, giving the horse a break. My legs felt like jello three steps in, I was short of breath. We drove up the mountain with the hairpin turns and the fog lifted. Everest is unmistakeably the largest of the mountains. The sun began to set and we discovered a leak in one of the tires. The spare tire was frozen to the car and could not be removed. Our driver asked for absolute silence on the 50 hairpins down the mountain in the dark with a leaking tire. He drowned out Laura's sniffling with Chinese dance music. Selly had a tight grip on my hands and Lily's altitude induced headache was replaced by complete and utter fear. The car spun out on some of the turns and a roadside pole on one of the turns went flying down the mountain...a sheer drop. The driver was rushing. 100km/hr down a mountain in the dark. Alex looked afraid for his life 45 minutes into dinner that night. Selly got out of the car in Shegar and threw up. This was the scarriest ride I've taken.

The fake Panchan Lama was in Shigatse the day after our near death experience. The monastery was the site of dancing and chanting and picnicking. Shigatse rivals Lhasa for power over Tibet. The crumbling fortress overlooking the town is now being rebuilt. We did the kora (circumventing the monastery compound in a clockwise direction) and were kept company by hundreds of prayer wheels. Alex cited some facts:
-The Chinese destroyed over 6000 monasteries in the last 40 years.
-1.2 million Tibetans lost their lifes during the 'liberation'.
-China has invested 1.3 billion dollars in Tibet's infrastructure. More than any other province.

The title of Dalai Lama (the title means Ocean of Wisdom) was bestowed by Kublai Khan, leader of the Mongols, upon the leader of the Yellow Hats. I also learned that the fifth Dalai Lama is revered for changing Tibet for the better. He named the first Panchan Lama. His follower, Dalai Lama numero 6, was known for frequenting the brothels around the Potala. His affections weren't only reserved for the working ladies, no monk was safe from his advances either.

Sera Monastery

I went up to Sera Monastery just north of Lhasa. The monastery was founded in 1419 and it currently houses about 600 monks (the original population was 5000). The elevated sidewalks of the monastery reminded me of Pompei. The streets are shaded by tall trees and the courtyards hold a few surprises like the library, and a solar powered water boiling system.



The monks filled the shaded rock courtyard next to the main temple around 3pm and within a few minutes the sound of unsynchronized clapping and Tibetan words filled the air. Debating is part and parcel of the monk's duties. Although not everyone takes it seriously. One monk hid his cellphone in his red shall texting while the other two people on his team answered the questions. The participants get more animated as the debate progresses. Sometimes two or three monks ganged up on one and shouted questions/responses at him. One monk grabbed the head of another and started rubbing it. All this had an aire of theatricality about it. It made for a great picture taking opportunity.






I went back to the Blue Buddha a few days ago and this time I had a fully charged digital camera on hand. Here are some of the pictures.

Skull on prayer flags.

Clay offerings of a Goddess drying near the cliff.

Rock paintings on the cliff.

Prayers in the sky.

I thought of Venus in Furs

China is a difficult place to get a good book. Mostly because many writers and texts are censored and/or banned. In the last four weeks I've read books other travellers have given me and the selection ain't all that great. Small Island by Andrea Levy was funny. A Monk Swimming by Malachy McCourt is a disjointed name-dropping tale. Mystic River was a better read than the Eastwood film of the same name. 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea was the wrong thing to read in the desert. The Lost Country is a great book about the Mongol history in China and (of course) Mongolia. I'd highly recommend this to anyone wanting to visit China/Mongolia. It gave me greater appreciation for all the things I had seen and experienced in my travels.


That pretty much sums up my reading in the last little while. On one of the long bus rides to Tibet I thought of Venus in Furs by Leopold Ritter von Sacher-Masoch. This man put the M in S&M. The book is available online and one day in my cubicle I looked it up. It has one of my all time favorite openings. The first few pages draw the reader into the story immediately:

My company was charming.

Opposite me by the massive Renaissance fireplace sat Venus; she was not a casual woman of the half-world, who under this pseudonym wages war against the enemy sex, like Mademoiselle Cleopatra, but the real, true goddess of love.

She sat in an armchair and had kindled a crackling fire, whose reflection ran in red flames over her pale face with its white eyes, and from time to time over her feet when she sought to warm them.

Her head was wonderful in spite of the dead stony eyes; it was all I could see of her. She had wrapped her marble-like body in a huge fur, and rolled herself up trembling like a cat.

"I don't understand it," I exclaimed, "It isn't really cold any longer. For two weeks past we have had perfect spring weather. You must be nervous."

"Much obliged for your spring," she replied with a low stony voice, and immediately afterwards sneezed divinely, twice in succession. "I really can't stand it here much longer, and I am beginning to understand—"

"What, dear lady?"

"I am beginning to believe the unbelievable and to understand the un- understandable. All of a sudden I understand the Germanic virtue of woman, and German philosophy, and I am no longer surprised that you of the North do not know how to love, haven't even an idea of what love is."

"But, madame," I replied flaring up, "I surely haven't given you any reason."

"Oh, you—" The divinity sneezed for the third time, and shrugged her shoulders with inimitable grace. "That's why I have always been nice to you, and even come to see you now and then, although I catch a cold every time, in spite of all my furs. Do you remember the first time we met?"

"How could I forget it," I said. "You wore your abundant hair in brown curls, and you had brown eyes and a red mouth, but I recognized you immediately by the outline of your face and its marble-like pallor—you always wore a violet-blue velvet jacket edged with squirrel-skin."

"You were really in love with the costume, and awfully docile."

"You have taught me what love is. Your serene form of worship let me forget two thousand years."

"And my faithfulness to you was without equal!"

"Well, as far as faithfulness goes—"

"Ungrateful!"

"I will not reproach you with anything. You are a divine woman, but nevertheless a woman, and like every woman cruel in love."

"What you call cruel," the goddess of love replied eagerly, "is simply the element of passion and of natural love, which is woman's nature and makes her give herself where she loves, and makes her love everything, that pleases her."

"Can there be any greater cruelty for a lover than the unfaithfulness of the woman he loves?"

"Indeed!" she replied. "We are faithful as long as we love, but you demand faithfulness of a woman without love, and the giving of herself without enjoyment. Who is cruel there—woman or man? You of the North in general take love too soberly and seriously. You talk of duties where there should be only a question of pleasure."

"That is why our emotions are honorable and virtuous, and our relations permanent."

"And yet a restless, always unsatisfied craving for the nudity of paganism," she interrupted, "but that love, which is the highest joy, which is divine simplicity itself, is not for you moderns, you children of reflection. It works only evil in you. As soon as you wish to be natural, you become common. To you nature seems something hostile; you have made devils out of the smiling gods of Greece, and out of me a demon. You can only exorcise and curse me, or slay yourselves in bacchantic madness before my altar. And if ever one of you has had the courage to kiss my red mouth, he makes a barefoot pilgrimage to Rome in penitential robes and expects flowers to grow from his withered staff, while under my feet roses, violets, and myrtles spring up every hour, but their fragrance does not agree with you. Stay among your northern fogs and Christian incense; let us pagans remain under the debris, beneath the lava; do not disinter us. Pompeii was not built for you, nor our villas, our baths, our temples. You do not require gods. We are chilled in your world."

The beautiful marble woman coughed, and drew the dark sables still closer about her shoulders.

"Much obliged for the classical lesson," I replied, "but you cannot deny, that man and woman are mortal enemies, in your serene sunlit world as well as in our foggy one. In love there is union into a single being for a short time only, capable of only one thought, one sensation, one will, in order to be then further disunited. And you know this better than I; whichever of the two fails to subjugate will soon feel the feet of the other on his neck—"

"And as a rule the man that of the woman," cried Madame Venus with proud mockery, "which you know better than I."

"Of course, and that is why I don't have any illusions."

"You mean you are now my slave without illusions, and for that reason you shall feel the weight of my foot without mercy."

"Madame!"

"Don't you know me yet? Yes, I am cruel—since you take so much delight in that word-and am I not entitled to be so? Man is the one who desires, woman the one who is desired. This is woman's entire but decisive advantage. Through his passion nature has given man into woman's hands, and the woman who does not know how to make him her subject, her slave, her toy, and how to betray him with a smile in the end is not wise."

"Exactly your principles," I interrupted angrily.

"They are based on the experience of thousands of years," she replied ironically, while her white fingers played over the dark fur. "The more devoted a woman shows herself, the sooner the man sobers down and becomes domineering. The more cruelly she treats him and the more faithless she is, the worse she uses him, the more wantonly she plays with him, the less pity she shows him, by so much the more will she increase his desire, be loved, worshipped by him. So it has always been, since the time of Helen and Delilah, down to Catherine the Second and Lola Montez."

"I cannot deny," I said, "that nothing will attract a man more than the picture of a beautiful, passionate, cruel, and despotic woman who wantonly changes her favorites without scruple in accordance with her whim—"

"And in addition wears furs," exclaimed the divinity.

"What do you mean by that?"

"I know your predilection."

"Do you know," I interrupted, "that, since we last saw each other, you have grown very coquettish."

"In what way, may I ask?"

"In that there is no way of accentuating your white body to greater advantage than by these dark furs, and that—"

The divinity laughed.

"You are dreaming," she cried, "wake up!" and she clasped my arm with her marble-white hand. "Do wake up," she repeated raucously with the low register of her voice. I opened my eyes with difficulty.

I saw the hand which shook me, and suddenly it was brown as bronze; the voice was the thick alcoholic voice of my cossack servant who stood before me at his full height of nearly six feet.



The Velvet Underground wrote a great song by the same name. Here are the lyrics to that:

Shiny, shiny, shiny boots of leather
Whiplash girlchild in the dark
Clubs and bells, your servant, dont forsake him
Strike, dear mistress, and cure his heart

Downy sins of streetlight fancies
Chase the costumes she shall wear
Ermine furs adorn the imperious
Severin, severin awaits you there

I am tired, I am weary
I could sleep for a thousand years
A thousand dreams that would awake me
Different colors made of tears

Kiss the boot of shiny, shiny leather
Shiny leather in the dark
Tongue of thongs, the belt that does await you
Strike, dear mistress, and cure his heart

Severin, severin, speak so slightly
Severin, down on your bended knee
Taste the whip, in love not given lightly
Taste the whip, now plead for me

I am tired, I am weary
I could sleep for a thousand years
A thousand dreams that would awake me
Different colors made of tears

Shiny, shiny, shiny boots of leather
Whiplash girlchild in the dark
Severin, your servant comes in bells, please dont forsake him
Strike, dear mistress, and cure his heart

Congratulations Adriana & Sanyin!

The Vancouver Transit Authorities bus strike brought these two lovebirds together a few years ago. While the rest of us were being rained on hitchhiking around the lower mainland these two were fighting on their daily carpools to work. In hindsight the strike is probably the best thing that ever happened to Adriana and Sanyin. They tied the knot August 25 in Vancouver. The day will forever be remembered by me as the day my good friends got married whilst I inhaled smog fumes in Beijing.

Now, let me be the first: when are you having babies? I promise to be in Vancouver for the birth of your first child.

Congratulations Mr. & Mrs. ...? Is there a new lastname?

EBC

I am off to Everest Base Camp tomorrow. It will be a four day trip. Internet should be a problem considering we are passing through a bunch of small Tibetan villages enroute. Will update about Sera and the uptight Dutch couple that I am going on this trek with as soon as I am back. Now, off to Another Place (a cool bar in an alley I found yesterday).

Dancing in the Barkhor

There are some places you don't expect to make fans. When you have a fan you are generally surprised, flattered and you move on. I made a fan that made me feel, in addition to surprised and flattered, ridiculous at the Potala Palace. The Chinese couple (whom I call Sunny and Chilly) and I were enjoying the wonders of the palace and sneaking pictures when a man from a tour group just walked up to me with a huge grin. I had no clue what he was saying in Chinese but he kept repeating "hello", so I smiled. Then, said man lagged behind his tour group and consistently waited for us to catch up with him. By the fifth time that this happened he presented me with his business card and made Sunny translate for him. Uhm, turns out that I am the most beautiful foreign woman he has ever seen. He should really travel some more. This is the surprised and flattered part. Now, on to the ridiculous portion.



Walking into the Potala you must climb a million stairs to reach the ticket office. Walking out of the Potala you walk down a sloped walkway that delivers the visitor to a gauntlet of shops and Tibetans selling jewellery. It also delivered me into the viewfinder of my fan who then took to following me with his camera for a good five minutes. The man would hide behind cars just to get a shot of me and then run in front of us and turn around and shoot off several frames. People kept staring. Sunny and Chilly thought it was the funniest thing in the world. It was like being followed by a member of the papparazzi with a 100 frame roll of film at his disposal. Eventually we just had to make a run for it.



After our goodbye dinner with Sunny and Chilly, Jens and I went for a midnight stroll around the Jorkhand Temple in the Barkhor. Walking through the abandoned souvenir stalls during our kora we encountered a group of singing Tibetans in front of the temple. Naturally we walked up to them and joined them for some traditional singing, dancing and loads of homemade chang, a fermented barley beer. Many, many shots and songs later we walked back to the hostel.

Chilly and Sunny
The view from the bathroom.
Tibetan girl at the Potala Palace
The light inside the Potala Palace
Money tree outside the Potala
View over Lhasa from Potala Palace
The Barkhor. This is the heart and soul of the Tibetan neighbourhood in Lhasa.
Woman in Barkhor

Help me recover...

...some of my digital pictures! It must be possible somehow. Any clue? Can you send me the program (exe) as an attachment via email or by weblink? I thought of some of the lost pictures of Kashgar and Hotan and would really rather try and save them if possible.

In other news: I am currently trying to set up a trip to Everest Base Camp. It's not as easy as I thought and if it does not work out in the next two days I will shift my energies to trying to leave Lhasa via the southern route (which is off limits to foreigners). Also, the Swede I met in Dunhuang is in town and we are trying to meet up for dinner somehow.

The Blue Buddha of Lhasa

Lhasa. Finally.

The trip out here was crueling. Four nights on transportation. I tried taking the train from Golmud but that didn't work out. The one night spent crossing the virtually uninhabited northern Tibetan plateau was gorgeous. I've never seen so many stars in the sky. The air was crisp. Temperatures dropped to near zero. I could see my breath for most of the ride. At points I felt like my 260 pound brother was sitting on my chest. Breathing was difficult at the higher altitudes. The highest point we crossed was the Tanggu-la pass at 5180 metres.

Met a baby-faced Chinese man with the brightest smile in Lhasa at the hostel. He and his girlfriend and I rented bikes within an hour of my arrival and cycled through town in search of dinner. I had a spicy intestine soup, dry salt rubbed chicken and barbecue duck. Traffic was bad. I almost drove straight into four lanes of traffic when we reached the Potala Palace. It is a magnificent piece of architecture. Incredibly imposing and somewhat of a sad sight to behold considering its recent history.

My new strategy of just walking up to strangers in restaurants is paying off. I met Julia, an American studying Tibetan. We took a walk through the Barkhor and ended up sitting at a butter lamp stall in front of the Jokhang temple on an upturned bucket with a paper cup of yak butter tea. We were offered some snuff which we declined but they wouldn't take no for an answer when it came to refills of tea. It's definitely an acquired taste. The first time I had butter tea in Dharamsala I took a sip and immediately ordered a sweet chai. This time around it tasted good. Apparently consuming fat helps with the acclimatization process. Thankfully my altitude sickness hasn't been bad. The only complaint I have thus far is feeling out of breath and nausea in the mornings. I'm panting just typing this entry.

Dinner was had in the Muslim quarter. Lhasa's Muslims have been living peacefully side by side with the Tibetan population for over four hundred years. All of the butchers in this part of town are Muslim. Again, the city is divided into the Tibetan quarter (which incorporates the Muslim quarter) and the Chinese part of town.

For the first time on this trip my insomnia set in again last night. This morning the Chinese couple woke me at 6 a.m. asking for my ID so they could buy me a ticket for the Potala Palace. It's a two step process. First you get a number on your hand to buy at ticket early in the morning and then you come back and buy a ticket for the following day. I have had quite a few reservations about visiting the Potala and paying the ghastly 200 yuan to get in. However, now that I've seen it from the outside I feel very much compelled to go inside. I know where the money is going and I feel incredibly conflicted for wanting to go inside.

Today was spent walking. I came across the Blue Buddha, a cliff face covered in prayer flags and religious paintings. The oldest painting on this cliff dates back to 1000 years ago. It is the largest outdoor gallery of paintings in the world. Totally untouristed because it is not mentioned in LP. The Chinese have erected a mini lit-up radio tower resembling the Eifel Tower on the hill behind the cliff. It is the oddest sight in the Lhasa night you'll ever encounter.

Nooooo!

I realized that all my shots from Kashgar had been erased off the camera after I left Dunhuang. I found some shots of India though...

Thousand Buddha cave paintings. The paint oxidized over the years(hence the dark complexions).
Magoa Cave Entrance
Me in Jaipur
I took this shot when I thought my camera was broken in Goa.
Dharamsala. Still thought my camera was broken.
Bombay Street
Sunset off the coast of Bombay
Submarine off the coast of Bombay
Man selling books in Bombay


Am in Lhasa now. It took four nights on buses and trains. Quite the hassle and in the end I had to do it the illegal way. Have already met some amazing people and I must say that the Potala Palace is the most humbling and imposing sight I have seen in the seven months I have been travelling. I am late for dinner!