Tibet (II)

Richard W. Frank

Tibet (II)

As I was musing (dozing) in the taxi, Marae my Aussie travel mate nudged me. I looked through the window at the hulking edifice of the Potala in the moonlight. I had made it! Sven Hedin got nothin' on me. I spent a week in Lhasa making the rounds of monasteries which left me able to climb stairs without sounding like a freight train and made me realize why there are no Tibetan restaurants blanketing the world (the cuisine sucks).

"Power is nothing if it is not the power to choose."-Joseph Weizen

With October beginning, I was getting antsy to get to Kailash before the winter snows closed the 5,630m (18,500ft) Drolma-la pass. I posted several notices on hotel boards filled with people going on Land Cruiser trips to the Nepal border (lightweights). I posted on the off chance that someone else had the daft notion of hitching for a month in Ngari-Western Tibet. To my surprise Toni, an Australian girl was headed that direction on the way to Kashgar. The vast majority of people (still only about 200 or so yearly) spend at least six hundred US$ for 18 days transport to the mountain. A fistful of permits are also required (along with a strong bottom). Several missing-persons posters were plastered everywhere proclaiming that a few people manage to fall off the ends of the earth hitching out to Kailash. Food for thought but not enough to deter someone as bullheaded as I.

The Chinese actively discourage individual travelers from visiting Tibet. In order to get in one is supposed to be part of an organized tour group-the better to be herded from one "safe" sight to the next. Backpackers are harder to control, ask questions, actually meet locals, and stay too long. In Golmud, the border town on the Changtang Plateau, one is supposed to pay Y1600 ($200) for the 30hr bus, entrance permit, and a mythical three day Lhasa tour. In Xining a group of us decided to try to evade this extortion and take several two day buses from Xining. Marae and I paid Y800 to be wedged in a sleeper bunk and were the only ones to escape rather large fines. Permits be damned, I thought, resolving to try to get to Nepal without making any unnecessary contribution to the Party.

"Miles to go before I sleep;

And miles to go before I sleep!"

-Robert Frost

Reassured by my good luck so far, Toni and I set out to hitch to Ali, a small town 350km NW of Kailash and a major army garrison. We reached Lhatse on the "Friendship Highway" to

Nepal (the easy bit) before heading off on a dirt track to oblivion. There are two roads to Ali: the southern route (1200km) skirts the northern edge of the Himalaya and is prone to flooding, the northern route (1700km) heads up to the Changtang Plateau before heading down to Ali crossing several mountain ranges in the process. These dirt and mud "roads" are some of the highest and roughest in the world. The area is so remote, China built a road across a bit of India nearby, and it took several years before the Indians noticed it. The next month would be spent entirely above 4,500m with frequent passes above 5,000m. The lux Land Cruisers take a long four days on the Southern Route to get to Kailash. The sturdy Chinese Dong Feng trucks take the longer Northern Route because of the lesser chance of flooding. Pretty much the only way to get around hitching is the northern route because rich tourists on the southern are not well known for offering rides to scummy and dusty hitchers. Bastards.

Monks are not fans of Mao

The world’s dirtiest baby

The Tibetan countryside, I found to my surprise, looked less like the Land of Snows and more like the barren high desert of the American Southwest. There is much more water here as the landscape is dotted with numerous lakes made an impossible turquoise by the altitude. Fully one half of the world's population is downstream of the Tibetan Plateau. Try telling one of the nomads that these waters make life possible for locals in sweltering Bangladesh and the eastern China.

"Truck drivers are increasingly reluctant to give foreigners lifts and more people turn back than actually make it." Lonely Planet, p257.

No sooner had I packed away my stove from morning coffee and gruel on the roadside outside Lhatse than a two truck convoy offered us a ride in four sleeps all the way to Ali. Damn, I'm good. Not believing our luck we strapped our bags atop the overloaded trucks and piled in. Reality set in quickly though when in a manner defining explanation our trucks became stuck in a muddy field facing each other like charging bulls not 50m apart and not 30km from Lhatse. D'oh! As we sat in the cab of Toni's truck questioning the average intelligence of a Tibetan trucker, Junior-Toni's driver-extricated his truck and to our

disbelief drove through the hole five seconds later and got us stuck even deeper. Profanity did not help the situation any, but it felt darn good.

A very cold Israeli fellow hitcher on the road to Nepal

To Tibet (III)

Sixteen hours later we were on the road again. Our new companions were from Eastern Tibet and a lively bunch despite their obvious dimness. Godfather was my driver and was a roly-poly Brando- when he talked in his hoarse voice I translated: "May your first child be a masculine child." Close enough.

Taking the high road

Stopping for tea

On the morning of our third day Toni and I were told to climb on the truck, lay on an inverted table, be covered in sleeping bags, and ordered not to breathe. The police checkpoint in Raga was the most difficult to get through, and our boys wanted the Y800 we promised on arrival in Ali. It was bitterly cold in the predawn light, but we had the pleasant feeling that we were doing something illicit and sticking it to the Man. Permits, we don't need no stinking permits. I have always been of the belief that it is preferable and easier to beg forgiveness rather than ask permission.

"Brevity is the soul of wit."-Polonius, Hamlet

The five day trip turned into eight as we fell into the pattern of fixing tires, sitting twelve to eighteen hours of breaking my butt, slurping butter tea and instant noodles, and spotting black spots of distant drokpas (nomads) amongst the brown dusty hills like some tribe of unwashed Julie Andrews. A quarter of Tibetans are still nomadic and was a frequent sight tending their yaks, goats, or sheep in the most hostile of environments. But what a fitting place to be a nomad, as I was to find out. There are no trees to block visibility making orienteering a simple matter, ample water, and hardy grasses that support livestock and make for comfortable campsites. There are no real trails; one just picks a direction and head off. Now if it only got a bit warmer…

"Stopping here [Yanhutso] is probably not a good idea. It is a depressing little place populated by alcoholic Tibetans, mad dogs and broken beer bottles." Lonely Planet: Tibet, p262.

Getting ready to hide from the PLA

Scenic Yanhutso

Back to World Trip #2 Back to Tibet (I)