Into Tibet

It seemed that all our efforts to gain the permit for Tibet had been unnecessary, including the hefty price as we never got checked for them before boarding the plane. Still, better to play it safe - we might need them yet for all we knew.

We had landed outside Lhasa, the capital city which is one of the highest cities in the world, standing at an altitude of 3650 meters. Because of this altitude, the air is much thinner and it is very easy to exhaust yourself here with very little exertion. Altitude sickness is something you have to be careful of which can take the form of headaches and nausea. The advice given to new arrivals is do nothing for the first couple of days and just acclimatise.

We got a shuttle bus into town and walked with as little exertion as possible as we searched for our hostel. Having not found it where we thought it should be, we stopped for a spot of lunch and, as is traditional here, tried a cup of yak butter tea. If the name doesn't put you off it, the reputation usually does but I rather liked it, though Nic agrees with the general consensus among the masses. Lunch over, we found our hostel and settled in.

The next two days were simply spent walking leisurely around town. On one of our walkabouts, a monk hit me with his walking stick because I didn't give him any money but we are quite sure he wasn't a real monk, rather someone dressed up just to get money. He even had the cheek to come back up a second time five minutes later. The town is full of monks, as you'd expect and pilgrims and devotees who prostrate themselves in front of all the holy buildings in town. We also learned very quickly that you only ever walk in a clockwise direction around anything but most especially of all inside and around monasteries and temples. Although learning this very quickly, it took us a lot longer to actually remember to do it.

The first holy building we went into was the Jokhang Temple which is considered the holiest building in all of Tibet and sits bang in the centre of the old town. We timed this a bit wrong and entered while literally thousands of pilgrims were trying to make their way around it. Inside this temple, like all the others, are glass cabinets lining the rooms, each with a different deity in it. There's thousands of deities, most of the them grotesque demons. The pilgrims all carry large clutches of money (the smallest denomination though) and a flask of melted yak butter. They push and force the money into any little crack possible either in the building or as a direct offering to a particular deity, and then pour some of the butter into candles which are burning in every little chapel in the monastery. The whole interior is gloomy, the walls painted a deep maroon colour and covered in very detailed murals in green, gold, yellow and blue. The air hangs heavy with the scent of the yak butter candles which coats everything with a thick layer of dark grease. There are lots of monks who look after the monastery, tending to the candles, sweeping up all the money with brooms, and at certain intervals chanting and beating drums. Once you're inside all the stimulus starts to affect you and when you leave you are most definitely operating at a slower pace than you were when you entered. Once we had seen all there was to see inside, we took a walk out onto the roof for a good look back down below. This experience would prove fairly consistent with all of the monasteries and temples we visited in Tibet.

The Potala Palace, the former residence of the Dalai Lama before fleeing into exile was also a must see while we were there though the administration makes it as difficult as possible for the idle tourist to see it. We had to queue early in the morning on the day before we wanted to see it to get a ticket. This ticket then had a time on it that we were to came back at. We also needed our passports to get these tickets though goodness knows why. After our morning queue we headed out to see the Summer Palace, the Norbilinka, which is where the Dalai Lama stayed during the summer months. The summer Palace was much less like the palace of a head of state and more like a grand country retreat for a very well off, but normal person. It was a very bright and cosy place and the gardens outside the front were particularly pretty, though the gardeners seem to have forgotten about the back gardens. The tour took us through a selection of rooms including his bedroom and bathroom and reception rooms. It was noticeable absence that there was absolutely no mention of the Dalai Lama himself, and certainly no photo of him - his image is banned in Tibet.

Although China will disagree, Tibet still feels like an occupied country and China still acts like an oppressive occupier. No other city in China has felt quite as different as Lhasa does and this is obviously because of the Tibetan people. It is a positive sight that Tibetans in Lhasa are not an invisible minority, drowned in the sea of Chinese immigrants. Walking along the street, the Tibetans still feel like they have the upper hand in numbers. In a bid to stamp their authority, the Chinese government has put a massive concrete square opposite the Potala Palace, where there used to be a lake, and have installed a giant obelisk with the Chinese crest in gold at the top of it. And why not? They deserve some credit for 'liberating' the Tibetans from the oppressive regime of the Dalai Lama, as they refer to it, don't they? One thing they haven't liberated the Tibetans from though is the men's habit of urinating wherever they are outside if the urge comes. They are only as discrete as turning away from onlookers. Scurrying off to find a back corner somewhere is quite a waste of time by their standards. On an up note though, the whole naked baby bum thing is decreasing here but we've put that down to the Tibetan influence, not the colder temperatures.

Although only just settled in to Tibet, we already had to divert our attention to how we intended to leave for Nepal. There is a very well trodden, or rather driven, 4X4 route that leads up and across the Himalayas, passing Mount Everest base camp on the way. This was what we wanted to do but because of the prohibitive cost of hiring a car, driver and compulsory guide (read - minder) for the five day trip, we needed to find some other people to share the car with. Thankfully, nearly every single backpacker in Lhasa has the same agenda and the same need to find a Jeep Buddy. We had made only the loosest enquiries and in one tour shop left a message in their note book that everyone writes in, in case someone might contact us, interested in sharing. We really intended to start looking with earnest a day or two later. As it happened though, a Swiss couple had read this hours after we'd written in it, and by a chance gap in the email blackout we found an email from them. By the end of the second day we were all set and ready to go find a jeep together. But first, Nic and I had tickets to get into the Potala.

The Potala Palace is absolutely massive. It's one of those buildings that doesn't look all that big in pictures, but as you keep looking at it, and seeing it day after day you start to realise it is simply huge. Its built on top of a hill, and its exterior walls extend done the hillside helping give this impression of enormity. The tour would not take us to see how much space was actually behind these walls or if they were perhaps only one room back, but instead remained in the top couple of levels - where the Dalai Lamas lived and where the temples all are. Like the other places we visited, the building is tended to by monks but the Chinese authorities have declared that these particular monks are not allowed to wear robes. They had also decided that people must tour the palace in an anti-clockwise direction, counter to Buddhist ideals but they seem to have relented on that and the tour now starts in room forty something and finishes in room one. The monks have also managed to get some overalls worked up for themselves with a similar fabric to the robes, and just a hint towards them too in the cut of the cloth.

As usual, the majority of the visitors are Chinese tourists. I thought this was a positive sign, perhaps these people would return to 'China-proper' with their eyes opened a little wider. But when they all stood in the Dalai Lama's personal room of contemplation and all took photos out the window at the big Chinese obelisk across the way, I suspected the point had been missed. The Potala was good, and had some particularly impressive gold tucked away in it's rooms. The most impressive of all was a Giant gold stupa, housing the body of the 5th Dalai Lama, the leader who unified Tibetan politics and religion and became the first Dalai Lama to be the head of state. This Stupa, is made with 3720 Kg's of gold and thousands of precious gems and diamonds. Almost as valuable as the piles of money being thrown in front of it. Usually, at each stupa, is a monk who will bless a special item if you give it to him and he then holds it against the stupa for a minute so that the appropriate deity can also bless the artifact. Queues of pilgrims had their special possessions blessed by everything and anyone that was available, but what was quietly amusing was that it was often things like their hat or a carrier bag - the items in the bags presumably benefiting from a 'ten for the blessing of one' kind of promotion. Again, there was not a single mention of the present Dalai Lama, only his predecessors.

We were having a good time in Lhasa, and ticking off the sights and making further enquiries with tour shops regarding the price and availability of jeeps for the four of us. Nic and I had yet one more visa problem though. When we had got our visas renewed in Leshan, mine had had 30 more days from the date of expiry, whereas Nic's had 30 more days starting from that day. This meant that there was a difference of about 5 days between our two visas. We wanted to find out if we could extend Nic's visa to match mine to give us as much time as possible in Tibet. If we couldn't, we were going to have to cut and run pretty sharp for the border as the days were counting down fast. When we went to Leshan, we chose that office because they are the easiest to get what you want. By contrast, Lhasa is renowned as the worst. The guide books say don't bother. We had to try though so we popped round to the bureau to ask for one more extension, caps in hand, full of smiles and very supportive of the nice shiny obelisk in town. Extraordinarily, we got it. We could now book our jeep.

After a brief fright when it appeared the price had jumped up by 2000RMB, we found an agent who agreed to stick to her old price. First she needed our passports and our Tibet permits so they could get sent away for approval. Here came the moment of vindication that made the whole Tibet permit hassle worthwhile. When she saw it she laughed and said it was totally useless. All we had was a very expensive piece of photocopied paper. Any travelers reading this beware - Leo Hostel. On the plus side, she was absolutely amazed we had managed to get a visa extension for Nikki so all in all it was only half bad.

Everything now arranged, we had a couple of days left to see what else was about, and also to buy some heavier jackets for our expedition up Everest. We found what became our favourite monasteries of them all, Drepung and Nechung, a cycle out of town and then a short walk between the two. Nechung monastery is home to the Nechung oracle. Dorje Drak-den, the principal protector divinity of the Tibetan government and the Dalai Lama. He possesses the body of a medium so that the Tibetan government, led by the Dalai Lama can consult him regarding matters in which they seek advice or sometimes healing.

The ceremony which would last for several hours involved the medium having a huge hat of feathers which it would take two monks to lift, placed on his head. He would then enter a trance by a combination of shouting and throwing himself around the room before he would settle down and become ready for consultation. The Dalai Lama consulted the oracle regarding his fleeing to India, and later so did the medium who followed on behind. The temple was really quite small, but with the usual gloomy and incense filled air. At one corner is the little chapel where the remaining dozen or so monks chant and worship Dorje Drak-den. In a cabinet are three statues depicting him - he is one of the grotesque demon types. The air in this room felt even thicker because most of the offerings brought to these statues are bottles of alcohol. There was a very strange sense of presence in this room too so we concluded this was where the sittings took place. We later learned it was the lovely and bright room up stairs that felt a million miles from everywhere else in the temple. The artwork on all the walls inside the temple took a more sinister turn as well, depicting demons tearing human bodies apart and feasting on brains and such like - not what we thought Tibetan Buddhism was about.

We also visited the Drepung Monastery, at one time the biggest monastery in the world. Statistics record that before the Chinese occupation, there were over 10,000 monks in residence in what is effectively a small town. Today there are only about 600 monks wandering the paths and alleys between all the buildings that either house sleeping quarters or temples and chapels. We spent a full afternoon exploring the complex before becoming paranoid that everywhere we went, two policeman seemed to follow, one who looked quite friendly, the other particularly sinister. Was it possible they saw us enter by the road that all the monks were treading rather than the one with the ticket office on it and the tour buses? Not wanting to incur bad Karma we made an equivalent contribution to the biggest Buddha statue hoping the money would go straight to the monastery that way and not near the administration.

We had seen everything we had time for and even bought ourselves a couple of jackets for Everest from one of the countless shops selling very good replicas of all the expensive brands. It was now time to hit the road, or rather the track with Nicolas and Valerie.