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Chapter Five: Seven Days in Tibet—well almost. If you ever want to fly to Tibet, take my advice: don’t. Or at least don’t fly there from an elevation of less than about 9,000 feet.

The reason is simple: high altitude sickness. This is a sickness that strikes at elevations of about 9,000 feet and above if you reach that altitude too quickly. And too quickly means quicker than a couple of weeks. Flying, of course, takes a couple of hours or so. Much, much too fast—if you are not already used to the high altitude, that is. Tibet is a high plateau and Lhasa, the capital, sits at about 11,500 feet. Flying there directly from being used to life in Beijing, as I and two fellow Fulbrighters did, is therefore a bit of a risk. High altitude sickness can be fatal and is sure uncomfortable in the meantime. Mild symptoms include headache, lethargy, dizziness, difficulty sleeping, and loss of appetite. Don’t ask me about the severe symptoms. Moreover the symptoms can appear within 24 hours or only after a couple of weeks. The only real cure is to descend to a lower elevation as quickly as possible. I heard after my return from Tibet that during the same time that my friends and I were there a young woman of 17, who had gone climbing in Tibet with friends, collapsed and died at the top of a mountain some 17,000 feet high. Well, deo gratias, none of our party died, though one of us, Gary, left and flew back to Beijing after three days and the remaining two of us, Robin and myself, flew back after six. Our original plan had been to stay for eight. Gary suffered the worst. He had a slight cold before we went and the cold, instead of disappearing as it normally would, just got worse. He found it hard to sleep, and the cold began to sink down into his chest (perhaps the beginnings of pulmonary edema, which, dear friends, can be fatal). As for myself, well I vomited the first night and couldn’t eat any dinner at all. But this may have been

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due to the diamox I was taking, which is a medicine that some people recommend as a way to beat high altitude sickness but which has nausea as one of its side-effects. The others had decided not to take the diamox and they felt OK. So I stopped the diamox at once and felt much better the next few days. It was only later in our trip, when we left Lhasa and ascended to higher elevations, that I began to feel ill again. But we’ll leave those juicy bits till later. I’ll only add here that Brad Pitt (or his character in the movie, Seven Years in Tibet) reached Tibet on foot and over a period of weeks. Sensible lad.

Lhasa airport is actually an hour and a half’s drive from Lhasa—allegedly the nearest place where there was enough flat land and few high mountains nearby to make an airport safe. On arrival in Lhasa we were met by our Tibetan guide and our driver (all arranged in advance, of course, by the travel agent). The tradition upon arrival in Tibet is to have a white silk scarf put round one’s neck. This is a sign of good luck or something. Anyway it was all rather nice. I still have the scarf too.

Our driver’s vehicle was a spiffy, new, four-wheel drive, Toyota Landcruiser. Apart from the road from the airport to Lhasa and a few others near the capital and in the few cities that there are, all the other roads in Tibet are dirt roads with many a ditch and stream running across them. So a four-wheel drive or a truck is an absolute necessity for getting around. The trip to Lhasa was pleasant and eventful enough. Elements of Tibetan life at once presented themselves to us, including the prayer flags hung up everywhere, especially at points of particular prominence or interest. A huge painted Buddha on a roadside cliff was also pointed out to us and we stopped to take photos (yea, typical tourists). This is clearly a place where everyone stops on the way from the airport because, lo and behold, a friendly Tibetan peasant with a beautifully decorated yak in tow suddenly appeared.

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Taking photos of the yak was, of course, irresistible and I had taken several before

realizing that the peasant wanted 5 yuan (60 cents, maybe) for the privilege. Of course, I paid.

A little further on we stopped for lunch and had yak meat (who said the Tibetans were vegetarians? Wasn’t that Brad Pitt in his movie?). We were also introduced to the comforts of your typical Tibetan restroom. The urinal is the backyard where the dogs and the rubbish are; the place for the heavy-duty stuff is a smelly cupboard (it’s about that size) with a hole in the ground and, maybe, a bucket of water for a bit of ceremonial washing after you’re done. NO TOILET PAPER. You have to bring your own. After this intake and evacuation of food and drink, we proceeded on our journey. Not far outside Lhasa there is the largest army camp in Tibet: lots of soldiers and weapons (oh, and there were not a few fighter jets at the airport when we arrived). These are not meant for hostile use, you understand. It’s just the traditional way the Chinese show their affection for their neighbors. We were duly impressed as we passed by. Lhasa upon arrival is not itself, however, an impressive place, apart from the justly famous Potala Palace, the home of

A lot of the city is new,

the Dalai Lamas, which sits on its own acropolis overlooking the town.

with odern

uildings and

isplay

mbplazas put up by the Chinese inanother dof affection. Ofcourse, lots of the old, rickety,traditional Tibetan buildings had to

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be pulled down for this purpose. But that’s progress, as they say. There are some parts of the city that still have the traditional buildings (the sort Bard Pitt wandered round), but only the Tibetans live there. The Chinese live in the more modern parts. Ungrateful Tibetans, don’t you know, not wanting to move with the times and get into modern accommodation and the chance of a decent toilet.

Our fir

these

st day in Tibet was a compulsory rest day. If you don’t have several weeks to accli

, two

he .

wonder e ed

ow to

p to the palace. We took our time and ma

matize, you’d better have a day to do so at least. So we crashed in our hotel rooms. And crash is the right word. Our rooms were on the second floor of the hotelflights up the stairs (no elevators!). Climbing one flight at an elevation of 11,500 feet was exhausting. Climbing two was a killer. In all the three days we were at the hotel, I never got to the first flight without gasping for breath and having to rest a few minutes. Much worse than Santa Fe (they have elevators there even though it’s only 7,000 feet). We went out for dinner in the evening at a rather good Tibetan cum Western restaurant. Tothers enjoyed themselves. I, as I said earlier, vomited. But enough of such earthy details

The next day was our visit to the pièce de résistance, the Potala Palace. We ed, at first, whether we’d ever be able to climb up there, but our guide said w

would drive up round the back and get almost to the top by vehicle. However, that provonly to be half true. Because, half way up we had to stop. The way forward was barred. The reason, as our guide learnt later, is that the parking area at the top, and indeed the palace as a whole, is becoming shaky on its foundations and can’t sustain much vehicletraffic any more. Why is it becoming shaky? Because the Chinese authorities are diggingcaves into the hill below the palace and this is unsettling the edifice. Why are they doing that? Well, it’s more affection, don’t you see? They want to find out how stable the edifice is, and what might undermine it, so that they can make sure that they know hmake it doubly safe for visitors and that no one is injured by anything happening unexpectedly. Well, that’s my guess. What’s yours?

Anyway, we had to walk the rest of the way ude it more or less. On the way we stopped at the highest rest room in Lhasa and

maybe in Tibet too.

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It is a small building over the edge of the cliff. The required hole opens out an extensive vista below, lit up by incoming daylight, where one can see all the gifts that visitors have left in appreciation of their visit. The Potala Palace is a warren of rooms, of which only a few are open to view (thank goodness). Mainly one sees rooms set aside as temples with a whole plethora of statues of Buddhas and other sundry gods and goddesses whom our guide took great delight in explaining to us.

Unfortunately I think we disappointed him with our poor memories. I can hardly

remember a thing about which god does what and what signs distinguish him from the others. Our guide was a very pious Buddhist and did obeisance at various places on our visit as well as chanted every so often. He also seemed to know all the pretty girls in town. He was forever stopping to chat to one or other of them. We wondered why he wasn’t married. Too pious for your average modern Tibetanette, perhaps? He was educated in India, at a religious Buddhist school for young Tibetans. He certainly knew his stuff. He could go on for hours about all the religious things we were seeing.

In addition to the temples, the palace also has the tombs of several Dalai Lamas. Very splendid edifices they are, covered in gold and precious stones. Stupas, they call them, which is just a name for an upside-down vase-shaped object. But they can be as big as a building, as with the one at Gyantse.

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Our guide told us about all the thirteen deceased Lamas (the present one is the fourteenth). I especially remember the sixth. He was discovered to be the next Lama late in life. The death of the fifth, who built the Potala Palace, was hidden for a long time so that the workers working on the palace wouldn’t give up in grief if they found out before they finished. Ordinarily the search for the new Lama is started as soon as the old one dies, so that the new Lama is usually a young boy or child when found. This, however, was not the case with the sixth who, as our guide said, had grown up and discovered the pleasures of the flesh in the meantime (Lamas and Tibetan monks don’t marry). He accepted the position of Lama, of course (who wouldn’t), but never slept in the palace. He only slept in the houses of the Tibetan girls who took his fancy. The girls who were thus honored by the presence of His Holiness (that’s the title of address for the Dalai Lama) painted the roofs of their houses yellow—so that His Holiness would know where to go (or not to go?) the next night. My friends and I wondered a little later if our guide wasn’t the incarnation of the sixth Lama; he certainly seemed to know as many girls. We didn’t see any yellow roofs, though.

Anyway amidst our wandering round rooms that, after a while, began to look like each other (an impression that only confirmed itself on our travels—see one Tibetan palace or monastery and you’ve seen them all), we saw the rooms used by the present Dalai Lama, when he’s in residence, which is never these days. The rooms are nicely laid out with carpets and religious decorations of course, but there’s no toilet (I mean of the modern kind—the Dalai Lama uses holes like everyone else).

There is a toilet in the summer palace, though, which was the highlight of our tour the next day. My judgment about the Potala Palace is that while the inside is certainly worth seeing, it looks best viewed from the town. It then has its imposing grandeur and its striking mix of black, white, and red colors.

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After lunch, which my friends enjoyed more than I (I was feeling better but not for adventurous food), we went to the Jokhang temple in the middle of Lhasa. It’s one of the oldest in Tibet (1300 years old) and one of the holiest too. They like their candles in Tibetan temples and have them burning everywhere. The pious go round adding to the oil in the larger containers or lighting their own candles.

Heartwarming, I thought. However, when we had viewed the necessary rooms and sights we had a welcome rest sitting on comfy chairs at a tea house on the roof. The Tibetans are very thoughtful in providing tea house rest stops for visitors; when you’re not used to the altitude, a nice long sit down gazing restfully at the surrounding edifice and decorations is very welcome.

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Our attention was then attracted to the stalls surrounding the temple. A lot of what was on sale was tourist stuff, but some of it was of genuine interest and value. Robin in particular enjoyed herself there—supporting the local economy as she insisted. I was more fascinated by the people. Wonderful faces these Tibetans. Really distinctive and full of character.

Of all sorts too. I saw a Moslem sitting at one stall and said Salaam Alaykum to him (peace be with you). He responded in the required fashion (Alaykum Salaam) and then asked, through the interpretation of our guide, whether I was American and what did I know was happening in Afghanistan (this was October 2001; the Americans hadn’t started bombing but everyone was expecting they would sooner or later). I said I didn’t have any idea. I still don’t actually. China has a large Moslem population in its Western

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provinces—near Afghanistan in particular. They get restless from time to time with rule from Beijing, and then engage in the occasional act of violence. Beijing itself has been the target in the past. Violence is not confined to Western Muslims, though. A number of peasant farmers, equally frustrated by Beijing, have made bombs (easy to do with fertilizer, so I am told), and blown up buildings and people. But that’s a topic best left for another day.

That evening I did eat, but safe Western style stuff. The next day Gary was not feeling so good and elected to spend the morning relaxing at the hotel. Robin and I went with the guide to Drepung monastery just outside Lhasa. Built in the 15th Century it was the largest of Tibet’s monasteries. According to my guide book of China, there were 7,000 monks there in 1959. Today, one cultural revolution later, there are about 700. Our Tibetan guide did not reveal any numbers to us. I was told later by an Englishman on the plane back to Beijing, who had been to Tibet several times, that most of the destruction of monasteries and so on in Tibet was carried out (with the tacit approval of the Chinese) by disaffected Tibetans, in particular of the communist persuasion. Be that as it may, one has to say, at any rate, that the rule of the Dalai Lamas and the thousands of monks in Tibet does not seem to have been exactly a model of decency and respect for human rights.

The Dalai Lamas are the heads of the Yellow Hat sect who acquired superiority (religious and political) in Tibet when, in 1641, they got the Mongols on their side and beat down the Red Hats, their rivals (the Red Hats were also supposed to have had rather loose morals—you know, women and all that). The head of the Red Hats, if I mistake not, is the Panchen Lama (of whom there are now two: one inside Tibet sponsored by the Chinese and one outside sponsored by exiles; each Lama, by the way, is the reincarnation of the previous one, so clearly the art of determining who is the incarnation of whom is in a little disarray these days). Anyway, the Dalai Lamas were effectively autocrats sitting on the top of a pyramid of lesser autocrats sitting on the top of peasants toiling in the fields. The Chinese have not been slow to point this out to the curious. At any rate the lot of the peasants I saw in Tibet did not suggest that the Dalai Lamas had spent much time

Tibet is poor and undeveloped. The

during their centuries of rule to improve things.

)

sants

Chinese are, to their credit, trying to modernize it (road building is proceeding apaceand, according to our English informant on the plane, the peaadmit their lot under the Chinese is better than it was under the Dalai Lamas.

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Of course, that does not necessarily reconcile them to Chinese rule. As an African politician once said in reply to a Westerner who asked why the Africans wanted to exchange relatively beneficial colonial rule for miserable rule by African megalomaniacs, “Yes, they may be bastards, but at least they are our bastards.” (I wonder if they are still saying that in Zimbabwe these days?)

My own guess, for what it’s worth, is that it would be a bad thing if the Dalai Lama e of

ubject), had its share of temple o

ver returned, as a political ruler at any rate. Reincarnational theocracy is a formgovernment that has nothing to recommend it except its being unique. On the other hand, it’s not exactly a good thing for the Tibetans that the Chinese are there either. Based on my own desultory observations, I would say that while the Chinese are convinced that Tibet belongs to China they are not quite as convinced that the Tibetans do. Or rather they are about as convinced of this as the Dalai Lamas were that the Tibetan peasants belonged to Tibet. Plus ça change, plus c’est la mème chose.

The Drepung monastery, by the way (to return to my ss, tombs of previous Dalai Lamas, assembly halls for the monks, and yaks (phot

still 5 yuan).

t also had a small temple into which women were not allowed. The temple had someth

s

Iing to do with warding off envy and, as our guide explained, women are

particularly susceptible to that vice. I wasn’t entirely sure of the logic of all this, but I wacertainly not going to let any feminist qualms prevent me from going in. It was nothing special anyway as I explained to a miffed Robin afterwards.

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The monastery also boasts an historic wall painting of Chairman Mao dating from the Cul

tural Revolution. The painting has been thoughtfully retouched by the Tibetans since.

That afternoon, when Gary had rejoined us, we visited the Dalai Lama’s summer palace

ds

in Lhasa. It is in a nice picnic park which the Lhasans were using to the full (I tried my hand, unsuccessfully, at the traditional “win a kettle with a rubber tyre” game), and has its own delightful garden. It was built for the present Dalai Lama in 1950 and was remarkable from our point of view for its modern bathroom. Well, its 1950s bathroom. At least it has a flush toilet and faucets in the bathtub. In one of its court yarit also featured a solar-powered kettle.

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The park was festooned with flags and decorations celebrating 50 years of the non-violent liberation of Tibet. October 1st is also National Day in China—celebrating the occasion when Chairman Mao declared the beginning of the People’s Republic of China. Our trip to Tibet had deprived us of viewing the wild celebrations that take place in Beijing on that occasion, so we were naturally grateful for the chance to enjoy the celebrations for the liberation of Tibet.

The next day was Wednesday and by this time Gary, whose condition had failed to improve (despite having his head, like the rest of us, ceremoniously banged on a gong by a monk in the Jokhang monastery for good fortune), was feeling so miserable from the effects of altitude that he was ready to quit and fly back to Beijing. It was also the day for our departure from Lhasa into the hinterland. We bade Gary goodbye as he waited for the bus to the airport and quickly realized on our trip to Gyantse that he had made the right decision (Gary, by the way, improved rapidly once in flight and is now his usual energetic self). That trip would have knocked him out for sure. The road was dirt and none too flat most of the time. It also ascended from the 11,500 feet of Lhasa to the 15,000 feet of the Ganbala pass. Robin and I were not immediately affected by this increase in altitude and were able to enjoy the prayer flags fluttering on the top of the pass and the ubiquitous photo-op yaks (still 5 yuan). On the way down we were treated to splendid views of the Yamdrok-Tso lake, noted for its brilliant turquoise color on a good day.

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Picturesque Tibetan villages, untouched by Chinese modernization for the most part, also met us on the way.

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We also met a group of Tibetan nomads living at the foot of a glacier. They had the usual yaks to photograph, but they also had themselves to photograph (10 yuan this time). Their bright and striking features, despite or because of exposure to the weather, were irresistible even to an amateur photographer like myself.

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Another pass, not quite so high this time (but 14,000 feet all the same), brought us eventually to Gyantse, one of the least modernized of Tibetan towns and home of the Pelkhor Chöde Monastery with its over-sized Stupa (see earlier picture). It was our stop for the night (in the best hotel of course—that was all the travel agent could arrange, you understand).

The monastery, which we visited the next day, was the usual thing with the usual temples and decorations—or what was left of them. Most of the buildings were destroyed after the Chinese liberated the country. The site was impressive enough, though, and looked even more striking from higher vantage point of the old military fort some half a mile away.

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The fort was not on our itinerary, strangely, but we had no difficulty persuading our guide and driver to take us there. For Robin and I, suffering as we were from a surfeit of Buddhist monastic sights, the fort was a welcome relief. Our guide abandoned us to our own devices here and, true to form, started chatting to the young ladies at the ticket office.

The fort boasted a museum with the absolutely wonderful name of “Memorial Hall of Anti-British.” I couldn’t resist soaking up all it had to tell me in equally wonderful English about the several exhibits.

These exhibits consisted of a few weapons, some Tibetan some British, and paintings of the famous battle that took place at the fort when the British, under Major Francis Younghusband and General James MacDonald, stormed it on their way to pay their respects to the Dalai Lama in Lhasa. The Tibetan defenders, outnumbered and with primitive weapons, managed apparently to beat off the British for some time and inflicted not a few casualties before they were rather unceremoniously killed off themselves (dash it all, can’t have the natives getting uppity like this; teach them a good lesson). Anyway the Tibetans are rather proud of their unlikely feats against so superior an enemy, hence the memorial and hence the anti-British.

The fort itself boasts a grim looking dungeon and other not so savory places, which the Chinese have helpfully decorated with a life-size representation of a recalcitrant peasant undergoing torture at the hands of the agents of the feudal Dalai Lama. But the wonder of the place from our point of view was the superb views to be had from the top of the tower.

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Much puffing and laboring up long flights of stairs (Gyantse is at an elevation of 12,000 feet) brought us to our reward—a view of what must be the archetypal geography of Tibetan settlement: a large fertile plain, with a fast river running through it, surrounded on all sides by barren mountains, and affording the occasional craggy outcrop for defense.

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In fact, apart from the absence of the sea, it reminded me very much of typical ancient Greek settlement too, not unlike the way Athens and the plain of Attica must have looked before the modern Greeks covered it with concrete and pollution.

Well, that for me was the high point of our trip outside Lhasa. Despite feeling fine at the fort, and capable too of a bit of shopping afterwards, I could not face lunch. The afternoon was spent driving over ever rougher roads than before to our next stop at Shigaste. I was content just to sit and watch the countryside go by, which was becoming as familiar as Buddhist monasteries. The thought of spending another day looking at monasteries (our task for the next day in Shigaste) was ceasing to be appealing. My stomach was complaining too. Gyanste and Shigaste are only about 1,000 feet higher than Lhasa but that was evidently enough to start knocking me out. I crashed in the hotel room, not even bothering to undress, and declined the invitation for dinner (even though I had not eaten since breakfast). Robin, who was surviving better than I, did go to dinner and even wandered about the town afterwards, which the guide book did not advise on account of the packs of dogs that roam the place at night (as they also do at Gyantse).

Dogs are very common at the monasteries, by the way, where they seem to spend their days in sleepy indulgence, being fed regularly by the monks. They are not too friendly to tourists, though, who clearly don’t have the approved Tibetan smell. Hence the warning against night-wandering. Robin survived her jaunt all the same, but had indulged in a beer at the restaurant (not advised at high elevations until you are used to the altitude), and spent most of the night nursing a fierce headache. I was as sick as a dog the next morning (though clearly not as a Tibetan dog), and could think of nothing but going back to Lhasa and getting a flight to Beijing. Robin agreed. Our driver and guide duly obliged, though it meant they lost two days work (we partially made up for that, we hope, by giving them a nice tip), and we were on the plane by 3pm that afternoon. The airport, which is about 300 feet lower than Lhasa, was already something of a relief, and the pressurized cabin of the aircraft brought an even more effective escape from the effects of altitude. Beijing, which we reached in the evening, was a welcome sight.