High up on the Tibetan Plateau, Part 2
February 28, 2008
Our second day in Tibet was to be the longest drive. It took a good 8 hours to get to Lhatse and from the start I was not feeling up to the drive. I had my first real bout of home-sickness and thought about all the people that have filled my life with joy back home in the states. I closed my eyes and thought about Austin and then opened them back up to watch the Tibetan mountains slowly crawling past us. It does not look like I expected it would up here and one could easily mistake this place for the desert mountains of Arizona or New Mexico. It is very dry and there are not the fields of snow I expected. The landscape is rugged, but in an arid sort of way. I thought that there would be lush mountainous terrain with glacial rivers and foliage and an abundance of wildlife, but this place feels more like Mars than Colorado. There are several places I have seen in the world that remind me I am on a rocky bubble of a planet amongst other, less hospitable bubbles in the solar system, and now Tibet is one of them.
Once we finally reached Lhatse and poured out of the Land Cruisers, I felt the altitude hit me. My breathing was not nearly as effective and I felt slow and lethargic. If we had not climbed up to the Everest Base Camp, I would have some trouble with the radical elevation changes that were taking place, and sure enough, the rest of our group began to get sick one by one. By the time we left the next morning, over half of the group looked like they had barely slept and a handful of people were throwing up regularly.
Our next destination was Shigatse, the second largest city in Tibet. It is home of the Shigatse Fort and the Tashilhunpo Monastery, which used to be the home of the Panchen Lama. As we pulled into town I borrowed Jacob’s iPod and listened to Strangers, a song that has been one of my favorites for several years now. I decided not to bring along any music to Asia, which is like Keith Richards opting to lay off the drugs for 6 months and the first few weeks in India I was going through a serious withdrawal, but now I find that I listen with new ears whenever I do get the chance. I am excited to get back to all my musical gems but I do not regret my decision at all. I found myself using music to escape in the states and that’s the last thing that I want to do with my brief time abroad.
We toured the monastery in Shigatse as a group, wandering amongst massive Buddhas and weaving through the monks. I was in awe of the devotion that they felt for their faith, but couldn’t help wondering what it must have been like before the Chinese hit the scene. There were about 5 times as many monks in each monastery then and the religion infiltrated every aspect of every Tibetan’s life. The highlight of the monastery was a 26 meter tall statue of the Future Buddha sitting benevolently, waiting for the Earth to need his presence. Once we finished our tour the group broke up and Jacob and I decided to go see the old town and the fort. We met a little old man who, in broken English, tried to explain the history of the city and the fort. He made us smoke a cigarette with him and we all stood looking up at the massive, rebuilt facade gasping for air through the harsh smoke.
The next stop on our tour was Gyantse where another monastery was waiting for us. The main hall had been damaged by a fire some years back, but fortunately most of the ancient documents had been spared and were stacked 20 feet high around all the walls in all the little rooms. My favorite chamber was the one which housed the protector god and had a number of terrifying masks along the walls. A lone monk was in the room playing a drum and some cymbals while reciting prayers in Tibetan. In the dim light the effect was hypnotic.
The next building over was the Kumbum Stupa which has 100,000 images of the Buddha. 100,000! I walked around the first floor stepping into each chapel and marveling at the intricate drawings on the walls and the statue of the Buddha in each one. With my limited knowledge of the tenets of Tibetan Buddhism I had always assumed there was only one Buddha, but apparently there are many, and each one warranted a good long look. But soon the bitter cold and the shear scale of the place got to me and I skipped the next floors to go straight to the top. The view was quite breathtaking of the little city huddled next to the hills with a fort perched above in the distance.
It was here that our guide told us about the Tibetan sky funerals which are held for all Tibetans. The body is taken to a mountain-top where the family watches a monk cut it up into little pieces and feed it to the vultures. I thought about it as we drove down the dangerous looking icy road and the image has not left me yet.
We went to the little tea house that we were staying at for the night and the lot of us began to enjoy the company and the beer. We played some group card games and a raucous drinking game that involved clapping hands and remembering everyone’s nicknames. If you’ve ever seen Shanghai Noon with Jackie Chan and Owen Wilson, think back to that scene in the bathtubs and you’ll know how ridiculous we must have looked. Just when we thought things were winding down for the evening, the woman who owned the tea house drunkenly came into the bar and began to dance with us. She beckoned us into the other room and we joined up with the rest of the Tibetans who worked there to sing and cheer and dance and celebrate the end of the New Year’s festivities. The night was getting very late (or the morning early) and the owner, now very drunk, requested our silence so she could sing us a song. He voice warbled, but never wavered, and the melody was both tragic and wistful. Our guide translated the lyrics for us after she finished:
The fields of Tibet were green,
But then they became red
And now I long to be free
But I’m trapped by the white mountains.
The people of Tibet are an oppressed people, but also unflinchingly optimistic. Our guide, who is 26, got into some trouble for openly opposing the occupation of his homeland and was put into prison along with his friends where both his arms were broken. His parents had to pay substantial bribes to get him out and he has never seen his friends since.
The next morning was again a slow one and once we got moving again we made our way into Lhasa. The landscape had changed dramatically and now we were passing big beautiful lakes and forcing our driver to stop frequently so we could stop and take pictures.
Upon hitting Lhasa we were all amazed by the amount of sprawl. There has been an influx of Han Chinese in the city since the completion of the railroad from the rest of the country (it is scheduled to continue on to Shigatse in the next year or two). Our hotel was a five star affair and we were all amazed at our new, luxurious amenities. The showers, for example, had two heads and little sideways jets too. We were all beyond clean the next morning.
Of course the main sight to see in the city is the the Potala Palace, and it is an impressive hulking mass presiding over the city. We were all in awe of its scale as we climbed the stairs to get inside and once we did we were again in awe of each and every room. There were past Dalai Lama’s tombs made of gold and inlaid with precious stones, there were priceless works of art, there were cozy little sitting rooms, and there were many many pilgrims paying their respects. During the Cultural Revolution, one of the Chinese generals even had his troops defend the place from would-be defacers to preserve its beauty.
Next we went north to the Sera Monastery and watched the monks debating out front. It is a form of examination and the monk being questioned would pace back and forth in front of the teacher punctuating his statements with dramatic claps of his hands. The assembled monks were a hodgepodge of faces and I spent a long time looking from one to the next, watching some listening intently and others barely able to keep their eyes open. School is always school, I guess.
Another place that we visited was the Jokang Temple, which had more beautiful artwork and the most precious statue in the whole of Tibet, the Jowo Sakyamuni. Up on the rooftop I looked out over the Barkhor circuit, a throng of people walking continuously in a big loop around the temple through a marketplace. I would soon join them and feel the energy of the hawkers and barkers surging through me but just then I was content to look across to the Potala Palace on the hill. The view was spectacular and I knew I would miss Tibet.
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