Seven Days in Tibet

Hi All, we can now tick off Tibet. It has been an excellent trip let down only by the operational approach of our package tour. We are here for their benefit, not the other way around, and unfortunately have no way of changing this. Oh well, its been a blast anyway.

We left Kathmandu at 6am Saturday the 19th to travel 5 hours to the border on typically awful Nepalese roads, Along the way we stopped for breakfast at which time our consumer rights were explained to us (none) and oh by the way if you are sick, or your documentation (that they sorted) has faults etc then tough it's your problem, also we are not going to the lake itemised in your itinerary due to road construction. We arrived at the border to be confronted with our first instance of beauracracy gone mad - three different sets of queues, officials and forms to run through spread over a distance of 10km and 2 hours. Due to the time taken (and the two hour time difference between Nepal and Tibet) this pretty much took us to the end of the day and we were forced to spend the night in the very pretty chinese border town of Zhangmu perched high on a forested valley side. We were informed that we had to start the next day at 5:30am (3:30am Nepal time) and were shipped off to the dorm rooms where we had to stay the night (package promised twinshare).

Up and ready to go a 6am we awaited in vain for our Tibetan guide to arrive, finally shows up at 7am pissed/hungover and we discover that he hasn't organised enough vehicles to transport the group. 11 of us have to wait around till 11:30am for more landcruisers (ubiquetous Tibetan vehicle) to arrive. We drive all day through spectacular gorges (like Fiordland, with huge waterfalls and all) and high arid rolling hills, passing through two passes during the day of 5150 and 5250m respectively, as well as amazing and sparsely populated open river valleys like the Mackenzie country of the South Island to finally arrive at our accommodation at 8:00pm in Lhatse. Loooong day, mostly dirt roads for first half of day, but then move onto sealed roads. The Chinese are doing a huge amount of road building and development and in a few years this will be just another highway, not a back country dirt road. Big annoyance is that the drivers will not stop for photos, and there is a lot that is worthy, so we have to try and make do with snaps out the window (this is where you need an expensive camera, unlike ours). However regular cigarette breaks are apparently essential. We are tired, and a bit pissed off with the tour operators, we had some food, a beer (650ml costs 50-90 cents here) and went to bed.

Easier day on the 21st; apologetic guide, 8:30 start and an easy drive on highway for 3 hours to Shigatse, where accomodation is excellent (hot bath and TV etc), visited Tashilunpo Monasty where some 2.I.C lama (Panchan, Great Precious Teacher) hangs out, though the exact identity of this guy is a bit contentious since Chinese took over the selection process and dissappeared the previous selectee. We wandered the streets and grabbed a drink at a little Tibetan restaurant, where we could not prevent the hostess from refilling our shot glass sized vessels every time we took a sip - end result 15 minutes for finish our beers.

Next day we travel to Gyantse, again an easy drive of only 2-3 hours, and a spectacular city. With a hill fort on a hundred metre tall rocky knob (conquered by brits with four casualties to 300 tibetan dead in 1904, now a poorly maintained chinese museum with great views). Signs around the place say something like Tibetan jump cliff, which we thought was a none-too-subtle suggestion until we found a memorial to Tibetan 'martyrs' who leapt to their deaths rather than surrender to Brits. This wasn't part of the tour instead the tour visited Pelkor Chode Monastery and the Kumbum Stupa, really just another monastery; Budda, budda, budda, oh and yet another budda. The fort was far better, dating back almost a thousand years and having bizarrely laid out rooms, some with doors just a metre high, and some entertaining chinese additions (tibetan torture maniquins). But we did have some entertainment at the Monastry watching a couple of tibetan chicks in some sort of devotional race around the monastry doing full length prostration+prayers advancing one body length at a time over the course of an hour or two.

The next day was a 5am start leaving Gyantse at 6am to get to Lhasa by 12.30. Our attempts at trying to convince our driver to start later were useless. Another example of the tour not being for our convenience. The early start obviously effected the driver also because he almost fell asleep at the wheel. At first we thought he was sticking his head out the window to check on some tire issue. Rob spent the next hour into Lhasa watching him carefully ready to grab the wheel if he fell asleep. Him get no tip.

Our accommodation in Lhasa has been brilliant. We basically have a suite with living room, double bedroom and all the mod cons excepting hot water. We had the afternoon to ourselves so organised our train tickets, an epic event as train station was 5km out of town and in our eagerness to save money we spent 3 hours walking to a net benefit of maybe a dollar each. So now we were going to Xi'an rather than Chengdu. Wasn't in our initial plans, but there wasn't a train leaving for Chengdu on Saturday and Xi'an isn't far out of the way and was recommended by other travelers.

On our first full day in Lhasa we visited Jokhang Monastery and Barkhor Square (basically a big market) which was packed with Tourists, Tibetan JAM (Just Another Monastery). Extremely important to the Tibetans, but pretty horrible really with the combination of a hot weather, huge numbers of people, a confined poorly lit and poorly ventilated space, reeking yak butter candles coating everything in black grime all combining to make us eager to be out of the place. We also visited Potala Palace which is a stunning fort/palace perched atop a rocky knob in the middle of Lhasa where the Dala Lama used to reside and where the tombs of the past Dala Lama's are. This had some very impressive shrines and statues, a couple of which contained several tonnes of gold. Sorry but no photos allowed in any of these monasteries unless you pay the exorbitant extra fees to the Govt who we think makes good coin out of the picture books they can sell as a result. We met up with some Dutch friends from our Everest trek and then went out drinking till 3am. Lhasa has a pretty good night life, and is apparently also a major Chinese sex tourism spot, something we discovered after passing a couple of shops full of hairdressers who were unusually dolled up. A weigh in on the street reveals that Robert has lost 7kg since trip start.

We didn't bother doing the activities on the second day (more Tibetan JAM) as we had pretty much had enough of them already and preferred to sleep in after the previous night. Instead we went out to see the water fountain show at the People's square in front of the Potala palace which was tres cool, a large flat area covered in different fountains controlled to pulse and operate in computer controlled sequences with coloured lights and music. A definite must see if visiting.

The train trip out of Tibet to Xi'an just served to reinforce what an amazing landscape this is. Traveling at altitudes between four and five thousand meters in a train equipped with oxygen supplies for the passengers for hundreds of kilometers through vast flat wide basins and river valleys. Almost no trees and at higher altitudes barely any grass, and ultimately permafrost. There are odd marauding herds of Yaks, molesting the tundra and followed around by Tibetans in tents. The small surrounding hills are still some of the largest mountains in the world! There was also a lake we passed by that was maybe one third the size of lake Taupo at over 4500m. 36 hours on this train really isn't that bad, as the track is very smooth and the train is air conditioned and quiet with sleeper cabins and does up to 200km/h on faster sections close to Xi'an. It only cost $110 each, though the bastardly bastards at the security check in (for a train????) wouldn't let Robert take the knife he bought for $8 (Marked down from the $76 the stall owner initially tried for).

All in all, we really recommend this excellent trip. Though it would have been nice to have been with one of the other tour companies who actually care what their customers think (talking to others we know that ours was a particularly bad company), and who don't have a monastery fetish - variety is nice, though we think this monastery monomania might be either Tibetan chauvinism or a subtle attempt to push awareness of Tibetan issues.

Since leaving Nepal food has improved greatly, tastier, and with meat!! Beer is even cheaper than Nepal, though accommodation is slightly more expensive. China (as represented by Tibet) has been a revelation. These fellas are spending a huge amount of money on developing infrastructure, roads, trains, cities, the stuff they are building in Tibet looks like it is designed to support a population of millions more, even though I believe China's population isn't expected to grow that much more. The weather was hot sunny and dry, it may just turn out to be one of the best places in the world for solar power (they have many market stalls selling panels) which could be very important for the economic future of China and the otherwise unused Tibetan plains. By comparison Nepal looks massively mismanaged, underdeveloped and poor, though funnily while Nepal is dirtier, it doesn't seem to smell so much of shit as Tibet did. Oh well, after the last weeks extravagances now we have to get used to budget accommodation again.

Next week: Terracotta Barbie