Got into Tibet yesterday morning, the view from the plane was amazing. Snow-capped mountains, vast lakes. The plane made a landing between all the mountains, that was a little hair-raising but it was a very smooth flight.
We got a bus into Lhasa city that took about 2 hours (after waking up at 4am that morning, I fell asleep the entire way) and then proceeded to the popular backpacker hostel in the LP guide. Unfortunately we didn't realise that there was a huge festival happening today, so all the rooms and beds were booked out. After lots of phone calls, we managed to find a room in a hotel that was built about 2 months ago. The hotel is gorgeous.
On the bus ride, I met this great British backpacker called Tom, so we recruited him into our journey to the EBC. So that meant we had 4 ppl for our ride up there, then Mark met another guy at his hostel, a Canadian called Alex. That was great, we had enough ppl to organise a landcruiser ride all the way to Mt Everest base camp! After some discussions we settled on traveling for 9 days and visiting all the major sites in the Tibetan area. It's going to be an absolutely amazing trip. We set out this Wednesday and come back the following Friday. Since we are going to get so much done on this landcruiser trip, Fiona and I can head into Mongolia about a week earlier than planned. Everything has worked out so well.
So today was this huge festival at the Drepung Monastery. It actually started at 2.30am but we got there at 8.30am with a huge throng of Tibetans out to celebrate the yoghurt festival. It was so amazing to see this part of Tibetan culture. The Tibetans are such devout ppl, it was eye-opening to see how they practised their faith. We had to climb 30 minutes from the road to the monastery and then probably about a further 20 minutes through rocks to see this huge fabric with a picture of the Buddha on it. On our way into the monastery there was a huge crush of ppl and a rather narrow stairwell up. Everyone pushed en-masse up the steps and into the main entryway, it was rather dangerous given that one fall on those steps would mean being crushed, but the Tibetan ppl looked out for each other, it's so hard to explain but it wasn't the pushing and shoving that I was used to in China. At one point I was pushed off-balance and one of the Tibetan monks grabbed a hold of me and basically led me up the steps, holding me in a vice so that I wouldn't fall. She was so amazing but before I could turn around to thank her, she had disappeared into the crowd.
For our ride back into town, we hitched with the army! The stopped their pickup truck on the road and I waved to one of the army officers and asked in Chinese if we could get on. So all 4 of us, (Fiona, Mark, Tom and me) clamoured on with some other locals into the truck. That was pretty funny.
On to why I love Tibet so much. The ppl here are absolutely wonderful. They smile and are so friendly. The kids constantly shout out in greeting. We are living in the Tibetan quarters which has given us many chances to mix with the locals. One of my favourite moments yesterday was when we were roaming around the backstreets and stopped to watch a Tibetan dance performed by a girl on the street. I took a photo of these 2 cute little boys and showed them the picture on my digital camera. The squealed in delight and wanted to take more photos. They were adorable! The other kids in the neighbourhood soon clustered around wanting their pictures taken too. The adults then got into it, wanting to see pictures of their own kids. Even passer-byes were stopping to see the photos of the kids in their neighbourhood. I had a blast and got so many fantastic photos!!
The photos here in Tibet are priceless, especially of the locals. The colours, vibrancy and energy really shows up in the photos. Even the ppl are colourful with their ruddy cheeks and bright costumes.
I am having a fantastic time here in Tibet right now, so glad to be here.
Aug 15, 2004. Sunday. 4.22pm. Lhasa, Tibet
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