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Road Trip Tibet
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The Lhasa to Base Camp Run
At dawn, atop Khamba-la Pass at
4,794 meters (15,728 feet) on a ridge overlooking the icy Yamdrok-tso
Lake, shivering almost uncontrollably I setup to shoot. In the trembling
viewfinder I framed the lake cradled within the snow-capped mountain
range beneath what seemed a frozen mercury sky, pressed the shutter
release – but no click. The button would not depress. Was the mechanism
of the Canon 30D frozen? No. My finger was. The assigned flesh and
bone wouldn’t execute on signal from the brain.
Just three or four minutes out
of the heated Land Cruiser, frostbite was creeping into the exposed
appendages of my hand. I finally managed to push the button, then
I slung the camera over my
shoulder, jammed my hands into the pockets of my jacket and started
back through the snow in the direction of the vehicle.
That’s when the yaks (and/or dongs)
dropped in to see what humans were doing on the ridge. The two frost-proof
and extraordinarily nimble bovines descended from even higher altitudes.
Despite the fact they smelled pretty bad, they seemed a little too
self-satisfied, a little too comfortable in the climate, and perhaps
a little too showy, decked out in the pastel ribbons and bone rings
gifted to them by reverential high-altitude local human residents.
Nevertheless, the image of the two shaggy horned beasts with sky,
lake and mountains behind was too good to miss. So I trudged through
a cold so cold it burned, pushed another 100 meters beyond the beckoning
warmth of the 4x4, and about six feet below the yaks I forced my
creaking legs into a crouch for a few more shots.
I got a few before my shooting
finger again seized up. So I thanked the exceedingly unimpressed
yaks and beat it back to the vehicle. Inside was little immediate
comfort. My hands felt like they were bound in blocks of ice and
my fingers had taken on a sort of nice gradient shade of blue.
I was out of the vehicle for only
about 10 or 15 minutes total, but now back rapping on the keyboard
in my toasty Beijing apartment, the tip of my smallest finger remains
numb.
But it was worth it. What an extraordinary
place.
Prelude to Passage
The first leg of the trip began
in moderate climes. Two days before the frigid mountaintop I was
in Chengdu, capital of Sichuan, a transit point referred to by some
as the “Gateway to Tibet.” The place is also known for prosperity,
spicy street-side snacking and an unfairly excessive allocation
of good-looking women. After the flight from Beijing, I stuck around
Chengdu for about 40 hours. I was there not only to have a look
around yet another booming Chinese metropolis – and confirm the
reported lopsided abundance of attractive females – but also to
get some paperwork in order.
There is talk they may soon do
away with this requisite, but as of this writing the Tibetan authorities
still require foreigners to obtain official approval to enter. Said
approval materializes in the form of two pieces of paper sporting
the standard red seals. Cost: 500 yuan.
This process can be carried out
directly through government agencies, but I recommend paying a few
extra yuan and handing the assignment off to a travel agent. In
Chengdu, a veteran of this routine, Sam of Chengdu Sam’s Guesthouse
and Travel Service, efficiently expedited the paperwork in two days,
had his associates shuttle me from and to the airport, and booked
me a seat on a previously declared “sold out” flight into Lhasa.
To reach Lhasa, one no longer must
fly, nor must they face the grimly enduring and perhaps precarious
alternative of a smoke-filled cross-country sleeper bus. The new
Lhasa-bound Qinghai-Tibet Railway now routes through Chengdu, as
well as via a more northerly route, and in 48 hours one can ride
the rails from Beijing to Tibet’s capital, and visa-versa. For those
who love trains, this run offers hard and soft seats, and hard and
soft sleeper cabins. The line, the highest on Earth, also offers
some spectacular views as it traverses the Roof of the World along
the Tibet Plateau, a slice of geography once thought impossible
to lay rails across.
But for those more irascible types
who become easily impatient with cramped quarters and long travel
times, it’s best that we fly. So after a two-hour jet from Chengdu
and a one-hour shuttle bus into town, I disembarked in Lhasa – not
long ago an extraordinarily inaccessible and mysterious place, in
which previously I would not have been welcome.
Monks and Monasteries
Although while relying on the thin
high-altitude air one must climb 125 steps to finally get inside,
in Lhasa the obvious must-see is the one-thousand-room, 13-story-tall
Potala Palace. In the early 7th Century, Tibetan king Songtsen Gampo
installed a more modest palace on the present-day site of Potala
as a gift to his bride, Princess Wencheng of the Tang Dynasty (618-907).
That structure remained essentially unchanged until 1645, when additional
construction began under the directive of the Fifth Dalai Lama.
By 1648 the Potrang Karpo (White
Palace) portion was complete, and by 1694 the Potrang Marpo (Red
Palace) addition was in place. In total about 7,000 workers and
1,500 artisans contributed to the project. Renovated and enlarged
by the 13th Dalai Lama in 1922, Potala Palace is perched 130 meters
above the Lhasa valley, and today the structure extends 170 meters
in height and spans an interior space of 130,000 square meters.
Prohibited from taking interior
photos, as I toured this dark sacred place made smoky and pungent
by the ceremonial burning of yak butter lamps, my thoughts turned
to the gold. There’s tons of the stuff in there. Just the tomb of
the Fifth Dalai Lama (1617-1682), at about three stories in height,
is coated with 3,700 kg (8,200 pounds) of gold. I figured the pricey
decorations for this guy’s final resting place, plus the tons of
precious metal heavily applied to and stored within other chambers,
were not dug out of the ground by the monks and masters of the day.
But I guess the hard-laboring peasants got a big spiritual kick
out of the deal.
For those who can handle a lot
of steps at high-altitude – and who may not be much smarter than
the writer – right after Potala Palace they can jump in a taxi and
in 15 minutes begin ascent to a more humble but still higher sort
of spiritual site. Tucked into the upper folds of Mount Gambo Utse
and spanning 250,000 square meters, Drepung Monastery was put into
operation in about 1416. In greater days gone the place accommodated
more than 7,000 monks and the spiritual directors held sway over
vast earthly holdings.
This interesting place is rustic
in the extreme, and in certain quarters aromatic in a very un-yak-butter-candle
sort of way. The gentle residents of Drepung are mostly friendly
and the younger monks seem to get a big kick out of digital cameras.
And in the shadow of a mountain peak, from within a darkened chamber
at the highest point of the compound, after a string of monkly conversation
I heard the unmistakable whine of an electric blender in action.
I thought: “Monastic Margaritas?”
Getting Gone
But two days in Lhasa is about
all one needs to get a feel for the place. The otherworldly high-altitude
terrain is just a grueling back-road run and a few frostbitten fingers
away.
Beyond Yamdrok-tso Lake, the place
presided over by the aforementioned yaks, some jangling hours down
snow-packed rocky mountain roads – and past scenery so spectacular
it would be pointless to attempt description in the space allowed
here – is the outpost town of Gyantse. Formally an important trading
center on the routes between India, Sikkim, Bhutan, Tibet and China,
here the formidable fortress of Gyantse Dzong masters the mountainside.
Here, too, is the ornate and exotic Pelkor Choede Monastery. In
operation since 1440, the place comprises 108 chapels on four floors.
After touring the monastery, intruding
on some chanting monks, downing some roadside noodles and for a
while presenting a visual oddity of humanity for the locals to ogle,
we headed for the final stop of the day, Shigatse. If the reader
visits Tibet’s second largest city, be forewarned that at the better
hotels in this town hot showers and in-room heating are not necessarily
part of the deal – no matter what the Nepalese desk clerk tells
you before he’s got your cash.
Heading out of Shigatse the next
morning we enjoyed a long stretch of pristine highway. Then, after
a first document check at a PLA stop and a second at a police checkpoint,
we hit the dirt roads again and began to climb. Finally we rounded
a bend, reached a peak and there on the horizon, seemingly magnified
by the thin clear air, was the Himalaya Range and our final destination,
The Big Rock – Everest.
After an appropriate duration of
gaping and clicking cameras, with the sun setting and a freezing
wind gusting up, we climbed back in the Land Cruiser to begin the
long descent. We got about 10 meters before the tire went flat.
After the Tibetan driver, Jamdun,
and I briefly argued about who would be to blame if we ended up
stranded – me for before the trip suggesting that the second spare
tire be relocated so as to provide more interior passenger space,
or him for actually removing the damn thing from the vehicle entirely
– we got to work with the one spare tire we had. Racing the rapidly
falling sun and declining temperatures, at pit-stop speed we changed
out the bad rubber and that crisis too did pass.
And so that evening we made our
way for another five hours down winding mountain roads, past three
recently capsized trucks and an equal number of disheartened former
drivers, to spend a cold and not too sanitary night bunking in a
truly remote and primitive village. At dawn the next day, after
48 hours on the road and more than 700 kilometers since leaving
Lhasa, we rolled into Base Camp at the foot of Mount Everest.
And to the volumes already written
about that remarkable structure of nature … what could I possibly
add?
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