Tibet (I)

Richard W. Frank

Tibet (I)

The Potala Palace in Lhasa

I knew that I had been in Tibet for too long when I caught myself one sunny afternoon leading thirty nomads in the chorus to Hammer's "Pumps and a Bump." Ten days to nowhere in Western Tibet bouncing around on a truckload of dried yak dung, they had invited me to sing after doing more than their share of screeching the local favorites. We went through Kid Rock, Dolly Parton, James Brown, and Celine Dion. Despite 45 years of hardship the locals never seemed to tire of a Westerner in seven layers of clothing, warmed with several cups of chang (the local brew) shimmy to "Sex Machine." Public humiliation is a great way to bond with the locals (and get some free yak butter tea).

"Huanghe Beer make Worldwide Friends" -bottle label

And that was the real reason that I had spent nine long months penny pinching on a rock in Alaska, blown through L.A. barely seeing my family, and spent countless hours on Chinese buses and trains from Hong Kong.....Tibet: Land of Snows, Shangri-la, Roof of the World. A land of extreme beauty and a calm emptiness, sublime and sacred. A place when growing up had been much more an idea than a reality. Somewhere with mountains, Buddhas, and little else. In 1998 when I tried to get in from Chengdu in Sichuan Province, I still knew little more than Lhasa was where the Potala was. Over the winter in Alaska I poured over maps and history books, made grand plans, and fell under the spell of Mt Kailash.

Mt Kailash-the holiest mountain in Asia and one of the hardest to get to. In Hindu myth it is Mt. Meru, center of the universe, and Tibetan pilgrims walk hundreds of miles to make thirteen circuits around its base. Hindu pilgrims enter a yearly lottery to pass over the military no-mans land from India. It is the source of four of the subcontinent's four most important rivers- the Ganges, Bramaputra, Indus, and Sutlej. She stands over 6,714m tall overlooking holy Lake Manasarovar (4,500m) 40km away. The difficulty of reaching one of the most remote places on the planet was almost as appealing as the thought that the sins of a lifetime are forgiven to those who circumambulate it. Hey, can't beat that!

"When the iron bird flies and horses run on wheels, the Tibetan people will be scattered throughout the world and the Dharma will come to the land of red men." -Guru Rinpoche, 8th Century AD

Before making the effort I knew few concrete facts about Tibet and Buddhism, especially the Mahayana masala of shamanism, Tantrism, and the Hindu tendency for dozens of gods, was relatively unknown to me. I had read (but not understood) the Tibetan Book of the Dead in college. Beasty Adam Yauch, Richard Gere, the Dalai Lama, and several mediocre movies had raised the idea that there were people somewhere far away being oppressed, much the same as the anonymous Africans after Live Aid. Knowledge and understanding were a world away.

"Fortune, that favours fools" -Ben Jonson, The Alchemist

A monument at the high pass between Golmud and Lhasa

Our arrival in Lhasa was marked by screams and blows from our driver as our bags were unceremoniously dumped on the damp pre-dawn street. The forbidden city-destination of missionaries, explorers, adventurers, and fools for time out of mind-looked in the darkness much like any other Chinese town. The streets were lined with buildings in the "white tile and blue glass" school of architecture so beloved by the Han. The taxi ride to the Banak Shol Hotel revealed the success of the Chinese latest means to control Tibet-massive immigration. The 2.5 million Tibetans are being swamped by Han lured by better pay and tax breaks to settle this "wasteland." Lhasa is almost 80% Han now, but I never did see one smile. The harshness of the altitude and the climate combined with their innate sense of superiority to the "barbarians" does not lead them to feel very welcome or make any attempt to assimilate. But they do make mean dumplings...

To Tibet (II)

Spacious accommodation hidden in the rear of a sleeper bus to Lhasa

Taking a very necessary break

Arriving in Hong Kong (at the same time as a typhoon) I wandered the streets of Kowloon soaking up the familiar pitch and cadences of foreign speech and breaking in my boots. After securing a three month visas (careful not to mention Tibet) I sped to Xi'an to see the Terracotta Warriors that I had missed on my last visit to the Middle Kingdom.

Park life in Xi’an

Can’t beat free!

Kouloon bay by day and night

But China was only a means to an end this time, and before I knew it the dry Gansu deserts were passing my carriage window on the way to Xining, the Changtang plateau (once home to 10 million political prisoners and lots of nuclear waste), and over the Tianshan mountains to Lhasa. The sixty hour bus ride gave us a crash course in the altitude and cold to come. We got stuck at the highest 5,100m pass popping aspirin and groaning under our dirty blue bus blankets. Why the heck didn't I head for Thailand?

Trucks backed up for hours after an accident at 16,000ft

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