The Roof of the World

Chapter 14 - Journey to Lhasa

The journey from Chengdu to Lhasa was awe inspiring and strange. We loved to watch the landscape progress from forested mountains in Sichuan Province to barren hills and plains in Shaanxi and Gansu Provinces. We passed through the cities of Baoji, Lanzhou, Xining and Golmud. In Qinghai Province we reached the Tibetan Plateau in what used to be Greater Tibet before the Chinese carved it up into and absorbed it into other provinces. The current area of Tibet is a shadow of its former size- a common story with the rise and fall of nations.

We travelled in a soft sleeper (a slightly more comfortable cabin of 4 beds) with a TV for each bed and oxygen tanks built into the walls. We shared the cabin with a Japanese journalist called Aki and a chinese Public Security Agent (PSB) who went by the name of 'Franky' and used the cover story of being an ethnic chinese from Malaysia. At this point you may think the altitude was getting to our heads - maybe, but first consider the evidence.

To begin with, Franky claimed to have boked his ticket with the same company, yet his name wasn't on the list of passengers booked with Sim's Cozy (which he claimed to have done), and we didn't see him at Sim's Cozy guesthouse. Throughout the journey he asked very probing questions to all foreigners including hotels, itineraries, and uploading pictures on the internet (still innocent at this point...), and he seemed especially interested in Aki the journalist (Aki had confided the he was looking for a good story in Lhasa but naturally wouldn't tell us what or where... reason for further interest from a autocratic repressive government i.e. the Chinese Communist Party). He took pictures of every foreigner - even the ones he didn't know or speak to, and as the train pulled in to Lhasa I caught him taking a picture of me with a camera hidden up his sleeve. He changed his story once, refused to be personally photographed, and acted very suspiciouly. There are many other details but I'll stop there. Was it a build up of circumstancial innocent actions or intelligence gathering on foreigners in the most repressive part of a repressive country? The jury is out!

Back to the journey... we passed a large lake called Qinghal Hu, Tonggula Mount at 5072m - the highest point of the train ride, and Cuona Lake before reaching Lhasa after 2 days of travelling. Aki had fun filming the journey including me stuffing oxygen pipes up my nose when the headaches kicked in! He has promised to send us a copy of his documentary so watch this space! The chinese James Bond was still up to his tricks, but we paid more attention to the crowd of Tibetans with white prayer scarfs who had come to greet the travelling monks who had shared the carriage next to ours.

Chapter 15 - Lhasa and around

Lhasa is a city of 450000 people. It is said that now there are more Han Chinese than Tibetans living here, however, the official chinese websites say otherwise. On our first day we applied for a Nepalese visa at the consulate and met Thato who offered us the Friendship Highway trip at a decent price. We accepted - thereby giving us a week to see Lhasa before the trip. We had an afternoon stroll around the Barkhor area of Lhasa, which takes in the Mosque (Lhasa has hosted a sizeable muslim population for many years), Ani Tsangkung Nunnerey and the Jokhang Temple. The first restaurant we went to and our favourite was called Tashi 2, a family run Tibetan restaurant - we both had yak steak and chips, which was very tasty indeed!

The Tibetan's devotion was proved on a daily basis in the form of full body prostrations in front of and inside the temples. What astonished us the most about Lhasa and especially the Barkhor district was the variety of pilgrims (in terms of ethnicity and dress) and their sheer devotion. Tibetans are surprisingly diverse: some were dressed in green and black shawls and cowboy hats or with a long black braid with an attached red braid pinned to their heads - these people were Khampas (a name traditionally associated with robbers; also the people who gave the Chinese a serious run for their money during the uprising of 1959) from Kham in Eastern Tibet, a people with a fearsome reputation.

Once we got to grips with life in Lhasa and of course the effects of altitude (headaches, shallow breathing, lethargy) we started the monastery visiting in earnest. Jokhang is the second most important after Potala Palace. The scale of reverence we witnessed there was amazing. Ramoche monastery is the third most important yet it is very small and discreet.

Sera monastery is well preserved, we will always remember this one for the intense debating sessions that the monks perform between 3 - 5pm every afternoon. One monk stands and launches into a philosophical ranting followed by a question. At the moment the question is delivered the monk rolls his prayer beads around his arms and performs an almost kung fu clap as hard as he can with a fearsome expression on his face. The recipient of these powerful interrogations must find a suitable response to apease his opponent, who will continue to fire questions. As we walked around the monastery's buildings the clapping sounds of hundreds of monks debating could be heard in the background echoing off the walls.

Drepung monastery reminded us of Palden Gyatso, a monk who was imprisoned by the Chinese and tortured time and agin during his 33 years of imprisonment. He describes the destruction of the original monastery by Chinese artillery in 1959 in his book: "Fire Under the Snow". We could still see the ruins amongst the modern reconstruction.

Potala Palace is definitely a highlight of Lhasa. It is perched on a steep hill in the centre of the valley. A visit to Potala is a trip down history lane. We passed the tombs of previous Dalai Lamas made from copper coated with hundreds of ounces of gold, inlaid with gemstones (although they were all lacking the diamonds that the sign posts claimed were still there! I guess the People's Liberation Army simply liberated them!). It's a shame the 14th Dalai Lama; the head of the Gelugpa (Yellow Hat) order of Tibetan Buddhism, spiritual leader, and rightful sovereign of the Tibetans, cannot reclaim his seat. Such is war and politics - the most powerful always wins!

Ganden and Samye monasteries are both daytrips from Lhasa. Of the two, Ganden is the most dramatic, perched on a mountainside overlooking a wide valley below. Here we made the acquaintance of Nick and Sam (British and Australian) and chatted about life, the world and its problems (travelling gives you plenty of time for that!) and had a laugh as we walked the 'Kora'- the clockwise route around the monastery. In one of the temples Laure and I showed a picture of the Dalai Lama (on Laure's digital camera) to a female pilgrim. She called her relatives over, including her aged mother and they bowed in reverance towards the image on the camera. The elderly pilgrim had tears streaming down her face, probably because it might have been the last time she expected to see His Holiness in this life. She bowed to us and thanked us profusely. In Tibet, pictures of the 14th Dalai Lama are banned, and to own one risks prison (and probably torture). Despite this fact, some Tibetans invited us into their houses and we noticed their display of pictures of His Holiness on their walls.

The trip to Samye was an adventure and a half. We went with Marcel and Daniela, a Dutch couple who we had met on the train to Lhasa. The day started with a heated debate about prices and returning buses. The driver had been very evasive about the details. Nevertheless we went along with it. The Samye monastery has a different style of architecture to the other monasteries we had encountered. We had time to appreciate the temples, have luch and go on a hike up a nearby hill for better views.

The driver had told us that the bus would return at 2pm. We were back on time only to find our bus was not leaving and that the other buses were full. He had lied to us. All of the bus drivers and their friends deceived us and treated us disdainfully. We finally got onto a bus due to leave for a ferry crossing next to the Tsangpo river (after which, we could catch another bus back to Lhasa), despite the driver shaking his head. Two thuggish looking men approached the bus wanted our places (it was packed and we were standing). They got aggressive but we refused to give our places to them. The bus started moving and the two thugs climbed onto the roof! There they remained for a 30km journey over rough ground. Laure and I expected trouble at the ferry point, so we made a plan- Laure would run for the boat while I would fend them off before making a dash for it myself. it almost but didn't come to this. They found some other friends at the ferry point and surrounded me and demanded I pay them for the bus journey. Not wanting to get my wallet out infront of them, I said I would only pay the driver. They blocked the bus exit while I attempted to pay, and Laure cleverly paid the driver through the window while they were distracted by me. I put on the meanest face I could muster and exited the bus with my fists clenched. Like this we bluffed our way to the boat and started making friends with the monks and the rest of the crowd.