tashi delek

...which is hello in tibetan. we spent a long 3 weeks in the chinese province of tibet and it was some tough traveling. good, but physically draining. we spent several days in lhasa before heading across the country to mt kailash. backing up a little bit, though we took the "genocide express" up into lhasa from xining and our friend emily cautioned us that she got really sick and was puking in the bathroom due to altitude sickness...c and i, however, slept through the night and woke up expecting to go over 16,000 feet passes, but we had already been over them and had no affects. hooray! once in lhasa we were tired and our room on the 4th floor took the wind out of us every time we had to climb the steps, but after a couple days that subsided, too. lhasa is so interesting. of course, the chinese are shipping han chinese as fast as they can into the region and they now outnumber the tibetans by over 2 to 1. they've built roads, railroads, nice infrastructure, a nice airport and have "chinafied" everything they could in that gaudy neon lights and chinese pagoda style entrances as much as possible. for example, outside THE most tibetan building ever, the potala palace, which is all crimson and white with some black accents, they have added a green and yellow pagoda entrance way and big chinese lion statues on either side. it looks so out of place. and, across the street, there is a huge, phallic like military monument to the "peaceful takeover of tibet" that has to be guarded 24 hours a day to eliminate vandalism...go figure. everywhere we went along the trip east to kailash where tourists would stop (are allowed to stop) there was a similar monument across from the monasteries. there's so much to say about this trip...the tibetan buddhist faith seems to be alive and well despite the constant armed military presence in lhasa and all of the many, many checkpoints along the roads. every day there were hundreds of pilgrims doing prostrations in front of every buddhist monument/monastery (most of which were rebuilt after being destroyed in the cultural revolution...luckily they spared the potala palace) and everywhere in lhasa there were buddhists circumambulating whatever they could whilst spinning prayer wheels. smoldering incense and juniper could be smelt throughout the city and a constant humming of chants/mantras by people moving around you, heard. the visuals are spectacular...minus the chinese tour groups snapping photos of tibetans despite their attempts to shield their faces. it was obvious the chinese and tibetans don't get along so well and the chinese shop keepers are just trying to make a living, but have been given many incentives by the government to relocate there. such as, they get tax breaks, licenses to open businesses, a relaxed 1 child policy, relocation allowances and more...why wouldn't they want to make a better life for themselves...they do not know the whole truth, that's for sure. so the tibetans boycott the chinese shops and i did my best to do the same, but because the chinese outnumber the tibetans, it's difficult. another lovely fact is that the chinese have instilled a mandarin or cantonese only policy at the tibetan universities. no classes or degrees can be done in the tibetan language so they make it difficult for the tibetans who want a higher education...especially since they don't speak the chinese language (mandarin) in the first place. ugh.

kailash was another story. being up in the mountains at such high altitude was tough. we were both really tired and struggled up drolma la (tara's pass) it was 15,800 plus feet and i was suckin wind the entire way up. the crazy thing is that people...really dedicated people...do the entire trek in prostrations, like an inchworm crawling their way along the rocky, and sometimes marshy, path. we at least had to go faster than them, but at times that was even hard!! we both had trouble sleeping at such heights and had really wild, vivid dreams, but little other side effects of ams other than slight headaches. we did well physically, but were just sooooo tired. also, we were soooooo tired of eating instant noodles cause that's about all they had to eat in such remote areas. nepal sure has their trekking routes stocked for tourists. this was much different. 52 kilometers in 3 days...usually at least 8 hours a day...plus, 3 days of looooong driving across the country to get there through crazy, washed out roads. the chinese are paving a lot of the stretch, but it was intermittent with poor roads in between. we had a great driver in an old 4x4 land cruiser who carefully guided us through some of the worst road i've ever encountered! we have some video and i'll try to post it soon...along with pics.

so, needless to say, upon returning back to lhasa, our final 3 days were spent chilling at a great coffee shop owned by a guy from ohio, sipping lovely cafe drinks and eating delightful pastries...we are only human and need some westernization every so often! : )

oh, one other great point to mention...so, the dalai lama is forbidden in tibet...no pictures, no mention in any of his buddhist sect of monasteries or in his potala palace...nothing. also, no tibetan flags are allowed anywhere. but with the dalai lama, christy has a video of him teaching on her ipod. one night she was talking with our tour guide, tenzen, who is a devout buddhist and a really sweet, gomer pyle like, 32 year old man. we felt safe with him and didn't worry about the spies or being turned in by him, so she asked if he'd ever seen his holiness on video or heard him speaking. of course he said no and his eyes lit up. she set him up on the foot of our bed with the ipod (which i bet he'd never seen in the first place) and he watched the 10 minute video riveted...still as a statue, except for the tears rolling down his cheeks. at the end, he took the headphones out and gave the ipod back to christy. i asked him if he liked it and he said, of course! it was such a beautiful sight to watch him watching his spiritual leader...the feeling that overcame me was so overwhelming and inspiring and what tenzen felt certainly dwarfs that...truly one of the highlights of my trip.

another day, christy went to pabonka monastery, but i stayed back in town for some mental health. she had about 7 small photos of the dalai lama in her wallet and put them on the altars and as donations...which is illegal, but she thought the monks could hide them and keep them safe. for the rest of our time in tibet she was nervous the authorities were going to come and get her...convinced the hidden video cameras had caught her in the act! she made it out, though, unscathed, and now we're in bangkok doing spa and medical stuff...oh, and 3 movies! it's certainly down time before we head to delhi to meet up with an old peace corps friend of mine who's flying in from albuquerque to meet us for a trek up in sikkim. after this trek though, it's sun and beach city from here on out...relaxing and scuba diving and imbibing the ocean breeze and all it has to offer!

lots of love; hope to hear from you...xo, j