Launched in Tibet

Now you'd probably expect me to say I was launcing off to Tibet or heading into Tibet... but the reality is that I'm back in Chengdu after an amazing 10 day journey into the Tibetan cultural area. First, we need to distinction between the Tibetan socio-cultural region and the current geo-political boundaries. If I were to make it into the gro-political area it would be refered to as the Tibetan Autonomous Region (TAR). I didn't make it there.

In the last episode I believe (I can't read my past blogs. A Chinese message comes up whenever I try to review my past blogs. So there may be gaps or repetition). I mentioned heading off to find my friends family that lived in a village. After a decent 9 hour bus ride from the planes of China to the mountains, we stopped in the town of Maerkhang (Tib. Barkham) just as the thunderstorm opened up and dumped buckets. This was repeated over the next three days and the rivers turned into muddy brown torrents. There wasn't a person on the bus who spoke English, but two of them invited me into a vehicle to go into the town and helped me find a room. One thing that is unclear to me is whether rooms are filled at hotels or they aren't authorized to take foreign travellers.... after finally finding a place to sleep (3-4 star hotel, costing around $40) I went walking. As I walked past this small shop I heard a person call out, "Hello." I could have kept walking but decided to walk in this shop selling Tibetan wares. I could have believed that he was a merchant trying to get money from a tourist (which he was). Then we started to communicate via a mixture of his few English words and my very view Tibetan words. (The lingua franca is Chinese.) A friend of his was in the room, she called a friend of her's who had just returned from studying for 3 years in Vancouver, B.C. and spoke excellent English. That woman showed up and called a brother of her's... they were cousins of the family I was looking for. That is how many things went on during those ten days.

I wound up staying in a small village near Barkham until my friend's brother showed up. It turns out he is a well-known clergyman with one of the Buddhist schools, Harbin Rinpoche. He showed up with 80 Chinese members of his congregation, plus other monks. He invited me to travel with them on a pilgrimage they were taking to a very distant region. It turns out that this special event that was happening is the very event that prompted me to make plans to travel to Tibet. But since Katok Monastery is so remote (and the Monlam only occurs once every four years), I'd given up on the idea of going there. Now, here it was right in front of me as an opportunity. BUT it meant that I'd have to travel with a very large group of people... around 100 with only a few of them speaking English. The ones who did speak English were from Hong Kong, most of them were from the southern Chinese town of Shenzhen, just north of Hong Kong. I decided to go....

Throughout the whole trip people, and the organizers of the trip in particular, didn't quite know what to do with me. It was inevitable that I'd be the last one in the hotel lobby waiting for them to place me; or being the last person placed in the vehicle because they just didn't know what to do with me. I just had to have faith that I'd be taken care of. They were very kind and friendly people to me. Another fabulous lesson in how important it is to be kind to visitors, strangers, and others who are wandering around in this world. If we merely extend a hand, even though we don't share a language, there are incredibly rich experiences possible.

As we headed "in country" I was placed in a Toyota mini-van with my friends mother, her sister-in-law, and a friend. All of them spoke the local Tibetan dialect (Gyarong), but not a lick of English. Sign language kept us going and they always made sure I was taken care of- especially around any food. Sitting in the back in a van that didn't have the best of suspensions was a lesson in challenging travel. (Not as bad as the trip back though when I was sitting in the last row of a 21-person tour bus. THAT was when I was launched in Tibet. There were time when I'd be pitched 2-3 feet up in the air when the bus hit one of millions of bumps and potholes. Then I tried wearing a seatbelt and that was a lesson in pain. Finally, I'd stand in the aisles for hours at a time and using my skiing skills in absorbing bumps.)

The roads in the region were good... for about 10 feet. Many of these roads would have been closed by the Forest Service due to dangerous conditions. Here, tour buses, heavy equipment, motorcycles, cars, and yaks use them... simultaneously. Passing on corners is de rigeur for travel here. They use their horns often. They honk going around corners when passing to let any oncoming traffic know that they are coming at you head on. Given all the rough conditions and dangerous driving I did not see a multiple vehicle accident until we returned to pavement with the road divided by lines. That was 7 days after we started. The wild driving I mentioned in Chengdu is only continued in the mountains and amplified by the very challenging roads.

We had days when we travelled 10-14 hours- bone weary when I rolled into some sort of bed. One night I stayed in the worst room I've ever "rented" (about $4 for the night). I was put up in a room with two of the drivers in a four person dormitory room. Dogs barking, trucks and cars roaring through the night, bars on the one window. It was a gray, darb town enshrouded with clouds and mist. The food was questionable. Only on the return trip did I see how beautiful Garne (Garze) was. This regionally important town on the Sichuan-Tibet Highway has enormous mountains surrounding it and a wonderful river that ribbons it's way through the flat river valley. (The Sichuan-Tibet Highway must have been like what the old Alcan (Trans Alaska-Canadian Highway) was like in the old days. The towns are probably what the frontier towns of old were like to.

When we finally made it to Katok for the three-day festival, I was put up in this tiny three room small house with a bunch of the fellow travellers. We had enough room for our sleeping bags. There were thousands of people there for this event. It is one of the oldest monasteries in Tibet and this particular festival has always drawn thousands of religous followers. I hope you have an opportunity to see some of the images from those days. I will post them on a site when I return to the U.S. and you can see some of the images.

For those of you who know something about the sites in the region (or if you'd like to find them on a map), the places I/we visited were:
-Variocana's cave (near Barkham)
-Tsamne Monastery (near Barkham and rivaling any ornate Catholic Church I've ever seen. There were gold gilded statues, handmade Italian lamps, Brasilian Rosewood trim, Indian marble, a main sanctuary that was enormous: maybe 300 feet long, 150 feet wide, and 3 stories high. It had three floors to it. Truly a sign that things have changed in Tibet, allowing for such a structure to be rebuilt).
-Ganzi
-Baiyul (2 times, the first time I stayed with Harbin Rinpoche and his mother at a family friends house. The first 7 hours of sleep I'd had in a week).
- Sertar. This is the site of a resurgence of Buddhist practice by the deceased teacher Jigme Puntshok. I was denied entrance and waited for three hours outside the gates while the rest of the group went in. I had to reflect on one of the issues that pre-Communist Tibet was criticized for: that they kept themselves isolated from the rest of the world. It would be an interesting conversation to have: why keep a Westerner out? The Chinese are allowed in, but not me. (I also know of many other Westerners who have been denied entry.) It is their culture to preserve and manage as they see fit, but I wonder what it serves to have someone, who is a supporter of their way of life, to be denied entrance.
-Katok Monastery. Had an audience (with an intimate group of 100-250) with the person who leads the community: Moksar Rinpoche. It turns out that the teacher I travelled with committed to supporting the 400+ monastic commuity when the previous teacher, Chagdud Tulku Rinpoche died. It is a huge responsibilty.
-Tagong Monastery( where they have a very large gold Jowo statue). This monastery is a very old one also. Surrounding the inner sanctuary of this Jowo statue is something that reminded me of Leavenworth Washington, or Sisters and Brownsville Oregon. The theme of Tibetan religous community with accompanying shops and daily performances was the focus.
-Kangding. The last stop before returning to Chengdu. This is one of the most amazing physically striking towns one can imagine. Enormous walls of the mountain climbing straight up with a river rushing through the middle of town: it was probably a class 4-5 river at that point. The road drops through hairpin turns for many, many, many miles. The pass was at 5000 meters and the road continues down until hitting the Chinese plains. The longest and most dramatic drop that I've ever experienced. (If I had ever taken the road from the Altiplano in Bolivia to the lower regions it would problably be comparable.) The rivers in this region are numerous and an eco-tourists dream place. There is an increasing middle and upper class and it is only a matter of time before North Face, Columbia and Trek (I did see some people touring the roads) are seen throughout the rock faces and rivers.

Now, here I sit in Chengdu with the reality that the intestinal problems I've had and the upper respiratory problem I'm currently facing may mean that I will need to alter my plans. When I used to climb, there were times when the question faced would be whether to push on and reach a summit or accept that it was time to turnaround. I'm at that point right now. The food has often led to an unstable intestinal state and now my lungs are hacking. Then there was the reality of the difficultness of traveling on the roads in the Tibetan region. A friend of mine, Candy, said it was hard traveling there. I thought she meant mostly the altitude. The height didn't bother me... I acclimated slowly, went high and slept low. Didn't even need to take Diamox. We have no comprehension in the States about how hard it is to travel on these roads and there are people who do it as a part of their daily life.

So, what to do now? All I know is that I'm resting in Chengdu for a few days AND I'm pretty certain that the bus travel into the Tibetan reaches is over for me. Maybe I'll go see the Panda Bears. Until I'm rested and this cough lessens I think the next two days will find me here, at the Dreams Hostel (they have a website and I think my room is actually showed).

One closing thought: people have asked me what the changes are since I was here 26 years ago. One of the main ones is the connectivity. Even in the most remote regions in traveling it seemed that my Chinese companions had access via cell phone. The teenagers were text messaging their friends and the business men were conducting business (in China they have an average of 7-10 days off per year).

Be well and I'll let you know where I'm heading next.

Joseph