Here a yak, there a yak, everywhere a yak yak
Trip Start
Jun 21, 2006
1
10
14
Trip End
Aug 30, 2006
Lhasa - Nam Tso - Shigatse - Everest - Nepal,
China
Wednesday, August 2, 2006
Leaving Lhasa, with a wave off from Junna, we headed to a monastery 2 hrs NW. This monastery was perched on a mountain at an altitude of 4500 metres and so walking from chapel to chapel was a real mission. The remote location made it tourist free and so it was a pleasure to explore, especially watching the 400 monks have lunch - a truly audible experience and in some of their chanting one monk had a thundering low voice.
We were to stay in Tidrum, a three hour drive away
EBC
. The great thing about Tibet is that even a mundane journey becomes a true experience because of the crazy tracks (I only wish I could drive but try as I will Dar Lam won't budge on his position - No!), the remote Tibetan villages dotted around in such obscure places in real harsh environments but mostly because of the vast mountain scenery. In Tidrum we stayed in a nunnery, which was basic to say the least. The toilets were located at the top of the village, much too the inconvenience of Ben who was still suffering the effects of the yak chowmein, and so at 4350 metres you had to will yourself up those steep steps. They were also very much communal and I found out when a nun came and sat down next to me to join me and Ben discovered as a local kid took a keen interest in his frequent visits! Tidrum has some hot springs which are more like the village bath. After explaining that we're British and so must keep our shorts on as we only get naked in extreme circumstances of drunkenness, we left the locals to their hot naked soapy fun and relaxed in the springs.The road to Nam Tso lake was even more spectacular as we got up into the big boys over 6000 metres in height. We saw the train that runs for 48 hrs from Beijing to Lhasa. Its the highest railway in the world, something the chinese are most proud of, and will only add to the influx of people to Tibet and certainly contribute to an extinction of Tibetan identity and diminished autonomy.
Nam Tso it the worlds highest (saltwater) lake and a significant holy site in Buddhism - but most of all its just plain spectacular with its bright blue colour and surrounding snow capped peaks. The views are made even more spectacular because of the thousands of bright colourful prayer flags blowing in the wind
EBC 2
. Accommodation is in a tented village of Tibetan style round tents right on the water front. We set off to explore and moments later were pounced on by Junna who'd journeyed up that same day! We took in the sunset from a peak overlooking the lake, and exhausting walk at 4800 m, and made it down just as darkness set in bringing out the array of bright stars and extreme cold of the night. Sleeping at the altitude of Nam tso (well above the summit of Mont Blanc) left me very dehydrated with a constant dry mouth and gave me a slight headache in the evening but we were fortunate to have acclimatised properly - others had to descent that evening because of severe sickness, one such guy was on our flight from Chengdu and had followed our route, certainly allowing sufficient time - it really does hit randomly. We woke early to the bitter cold of darkness to catch the sunrise over the lake and were off by 8 am. This day was to be a travelling day and we spent around 9 hours in the jeep. Our driver achieved the impossible feat of slowing down time by playing a single cassette for the entire journey (by the end we were all fluent in Tibetan pop song lyrics!) but this was counterbalanced by more amazing scenery (yes i know, I'm running out of superbatives to describe the scenery - just wanna get across that its SHIT HOT!) We went over two passes over 5000 metres and yet nomadic people still live up there with their tents and herds of yaks - even saw people hand making yak butter, something I only thought happens for the benefit of Michael Palin during his documentaries
EBC 3
. Was a weired days journey as we saw the landscape change from that of what I always thought Tibet looked like but then suddenly it looked more like Spain and even northern Africa as we travelled between sand dunes in extreme heat.The towns of Gyantse and Shigatse aren't far from one another so we took the morning to explore Gyantse's monastery. It was nice but a lot had been destroyed during the cultural revolution or degraded over time. It was interesting as it was from a sect distinct from the normal Tibetan Buddhism with the Dali Lama as its head. Its head, the Panchen Lama (a smart guy according to monks and so in addition to yak butter and money people give pends), was actually selected by the Han Chinese in Beijing in an attempt to mediate control over the religion! After his death in suspicious circumstances, the new incarnation was immediately imprisoned where he remains today making him the worlds youngest political prisoner at aged 11! Ben and I are increasingly please that we did China first as we loved everything about the people whilst we were there but seeing the Tibetan perspective it becomes harder to respect them because of the disrespectful and wrong acts their government does, such as building a dirty great statue right outside the Potala Palace.
En route to Shigatse we stopped at a ruined fort. There wasn't a lot to see and beggar children came out in their hordes. It's always hard to know what to do when approached by such children as there's no question that they have nothing but to give just encourages a future generation of beggars - its evident that people have given in the past as they sang and posed for photos that they hoped would get them some money.
Everest in the distance
Shigatse is Tibet's 2nd largest town and its major attraction is its massive monastery with elaborate tombs of previous Panchen Lamas and the worlds largest gilded Buddha. It was mostly left intact following the cultural revolution and so all the colours of the chapels have been preserved making them perhaps the finest in Tibet. We stayed on past the mid afternoon closure to watch the many monks eat and pray - what was better was the preparation of their yak butter tea (yuk!) in industrial quantities.
Shigatse is split between the Tibetan half and the Han Chinese area, where no Tibetan would want nor afford what is on sale. Me thinks this will be the Chinese way of a quiet systematic assimilation of Tibet.
The journey the next day down to the town of Lhatse was as uneventful as the town itself. For the first time in Tibet we were mostly on paved roads or roads undergoing construction - travel in this region in the future will be much simpler. In Lhatse we just killed time waiting for a checkpoint to open - therefore Ben and I played loads of pool in the sweltering sunshine with balls that weren't all together round and a table that was far from flat! The next leg involved some hairy off road moment, where the land cruiser was pulling angles that made you hang on tight for your life, and all this in, by the end, relative darkness
Land cruiser
!The next day started with a steep ascent to a pass over 5000 metres. On reaching the top we got our first view of Mt Everest off in the distance. The morning clear skies persisted long enough to see the summit but as we got nearer to the mountain the peak was obscured on and off in a shroud of cloud.
A real even of the day came with a clash of Tibet and Chinese relations. A Chinese driver ( the first we'd seen in the region) approaching from the opposite direction didn't make way on the dirt road and then refused to budge, forcing our driver to skid to a halt. The Chinese guy then played smart, turning off his engine. Dar Lam (our driver) wasn't having any of it. The arguing quickly turning to pushing and then their rocks in hands and full blown flight broke out. Dar Lam could have had him for sure but we broke it up and let them cool off. The Chinese arrogance quickly faded as more and more Tibetan approached. After more arguing and rocks the Tibetans won the day (to the chorus of Paul shouting "get back to China!").
We left our land cruiser at the foot of Mt Everest. Ben and I hiked for 2 hours to reach base camp, which got progressively tough as the air got thinner to reach our destination at 5200 metres
Nam tso
. After been thoroughly thrashed when taking on some local kids at football, my lungs were burning and it took a full five mins to catch my breath! The view of the mountain was very special but never did we get to see it in its entirety, as it was always party blocked by wisps of cloud. Our accommodation for the night was a "hotel" (think tent with stove) run by an 18 year old girl and her 9 year old brother - great pancakes though! At night the temperature plummeted and so I was wearing all the clothes I had with me this trip! We all huddled around the stove (fueled by sheep and yak shit) to keep warm and when it came to sleeping I became the filling of a giant blanket sandwich!The morning was a disappointment as we were caught in cloud, not able to see even the glacial field immediately below Everest. Oh well. We descended and pushed on to the town of Tingri, a few hours from the Nepalese border. The route should have followed the Friendship highway but our driver had other ideas taking us to remote valleys and precariously crossing rivers - I think he was just doing it for the fun of the off road driving!
Tingri was another town with nothing going on. We tried to stock up on food for the final day to Nepal but finding only tinned yak or wheat we had to put up with another day of crackers and jam, the stable diet of the traveler of Tibet! Our final day in the land cruiser was an entire morning of switchbacks as we descended onto the Indian subcontinent.
