Tibet Part 1: the long journey

With little more than an emailed promise that electronic tickets would await us at the airport, Dad and I set off on our trip to the roof of the world. I didn’t mention the destination in the previous blog because I am superstitious that when you pre-emptively blog something it doesn’t eventuate. We had arranged, for visa reasons, to go on an organised, 2 person, 5 day tour up to Lhasa. Each step of the way was an adventure – mostly because we are control freaks, used to organising ourselves and knowing where we are, how to get between our destinations, what is happening next, etc. But our tickets for the first leg were there, and we left the choking smog and traffic of Beijing and flew off for Lanzhou, in central china.

At Lanzhou we were met by a man with a bit of cardboard with our names written on it. It really is a very odd feeling to go against all the stranger-danger stuff you are brought up with and to get into a car with someone you have never met, especially in a strange country. We were in Lanzhou to change to the train for the remaining 2000 kms to Lhasa. Town was an hour drive from the airport, along the yellow river valley. I would have said it was more brown than yellow. Even in the valley next to the river the area looked like a desert, occasionally broken up by derelict looking mines and industrial sites, and with powerlines strung between poles on the tops of hills that were little more than sand dunes. Lanzhou is one of the most polluted cities in the world, so presumably the industry isn’t as derelict as it looked. We stopped and got supplies for the train, checked out the river, ate lunch, and quite happily left.

Our train berth was the luxury of a ‘soft sleeper’ cabin, which we shared with a couple of Italians. We left in the late afternoon, and got a couple of hours of daylight as we followed the river west through more desert-scape, with plenty of major engineering projects: highways, dams and of course the train. There were televisions on the train, a flat screen for every bed, which showcased the engineering marvel which is the Tibet train and the wonderful things the Chinese are doing in Tibet. I love communist propaganda. We also had a Chinese government issued guidebook for Tibet.

Dawn brought around more desert-scape. I won’t suggest we were woken up by the sun, it may have been a ‘soft sleeper’ but it was a train. But as the train continued to climb, slowly the landscape changed: the first snow capped mountains appeared (and I quickly ran out of batteries on my camera); the valleys became grassed then lush, with a beautiful broad blue, meandering river. We saw strange rabbit like creatures at their burrows, white fox-type things, wild herds of horses and antelopes, and lots of birds of prey hovering. And as we progressed into Tibet the area became more populated with little villages nomads appeared, with herds of goats, sheep and dzo (domesticated yaks). They did provide oxygen, but we didn’t need it. Having said that, we did take them up on the photo opportunity. The train goes up to 5,200 m, but the most strenuous activity is walking to the dining car so you don’t run out of oxygen too quickly.

At Lhasa station we were once again met by strangers who knew our name, and whisked to the best positioned hotel in town. We were on the second floor, which was the top apart from the roof terrace, and had excellent views, but climbing two flights of stairs was a real struggle at 3,650m. But to understand why it was special, a bit of background on the Tibetans…

Tibetan Buddhism is a blend of Buddhism with the local animistic religion, Bön, that existed prior to Buddhism being introduced in the 9th Century. One of the key aspects of buddism is of course karma, and tibetan buddists spend much of their spare time on pilgrimage to holy sites across Tibet to gain karma. When they get there, they spend hours going to the temple and they spend hours in circumambulation, in a clockwise direction, of the holy site. In the outer areas of Tibet, this means walking around holy mountains and lakes. Every monastery or temple has a kora, which is the designated route for circumambulation. It is most auspicious to circumambulate 108 times at dawn and dusk, with prostrations. But I think most only do it 3 times, with a few prostrations at the entrance to the temple.

In Lhasa the key sites are the Jokhang temple and the Potala palace. And our hotel was on the Jokhang kora, the barkhor, which was a mass of people and market stalls. We were woken on the first morning at 5 am by priests with full head gear, and lots of drums. This turned out to be a one off, and we never found out what it was for. By 7am the crowds would start to gather and the stall holders would set up. The pilgrims buy incense for the fires burning at each corner of the kora, and give money to the monks and beggars.

photos and more to follow...