Tibet Traumas

Location:
China

Land of Lamas

By Penny E. Schwartz

“We’ll share the memory of this day until our deaths. No one else will ever know what it was like,” my son, Michael, puffed out as we labored our way up a steep, rock-strewn mountainside on the edge of the Himalayas. Indeed, death was very much on my mind as we negotiated the treacherous terrain up and ever upwards. Our entry into Tibet was as traumatic and spectacular as that glorious yet tortured country itself, giving us a hint of the rigors and rewards of the 10 days ahead.

My adult son and I had set out on the bonding experience of a lifetime, joining forces for a Tibetan tour that he had arranged via the Internet and invited me to share.

After a week in Nepal, we drove in a large Land Rover from Kathmandu through tree-studded northern Nepali countryside. The green of the hillsides and the blue sky sheltering the mountains were so intense, we felt that our senses must be heightened by the thinning air.

Accompanying us was a gaggle of Nepali men from the travel agency that had arranged our Tibet expedition. We enjoyed their company, delighting in their frequent giggles and overt camaraderie as we discovered how frequently Nepali men openly display affection for each other. They drape arms around each other’s shoulders or hold hands during conversations.

The time passed quickly, and after a stop for vegetable-filled Nepali omelets at a mountain lodge in Dhulikel, we arrived at the Nepali border town of Kodari.

Before a ramshackle assortment of low-slung buildings, we sat and waited as the vast amount of official rigmarole kicked into gear. Finally, K.P Maskey, the head of our tour agency, announced that we were free to proceed. He seemed quite pleased that he had obtained permission to drive through the no-man’s zone to meet our Tibetan guide and driver at the Chinese border town. We were happy, too, because we would not have to transfer our heavy suitcases and several plastic bags of food and provisions to a transitional bus.

A line drawn on the concrete denoted the official border between Nepal and Tibet. Stepping over it, we climbed into our van for the remainder of the border crossing. Eager moneychangers proffered wads of Chinese yuan into our van and negotiated rates. We changed a small amount of money, then took off. Abruptly, we stopped again and were informed that we would have to “walk a bit” as the road had been “washed out.”

Unloading all our belongings from the van, we came up against a steep mountainside. Apparently, the way into Tibet lay up that path. Suddenly there was a commotion in the vicinity of our bags, as porters vied for the apparently lucrative job of carrying them. The victory went to one tall, thin Khampa, a member of a Tibetan ethnic group known for their ferocity. He sported the characteristic red threads wound through his long, black, braided hair.

Hoisting both of our enormously heavy suitcases onto his back, he secured them with a strap that encircled his forehead as we watched in awe and disbelief. Several of the men from our travel agency agreeably picked up our other assorted packages, and we all started scrambling up the hill. At an altitude of some 6,000 feet, I was scrambling the most, especially since I was wearing sandals. At one point, when the porter set the bags down to rest for a moment, I was able to retrieve my sneakers from my suitcase to make my trek a little more manageable.

The scene as we ascended the mountain was surreal. Up and down the path, male and female porters carried an array of boxes, bundles, and bunches of hay and sticks, and all manner of merchandise on their heads and backs. Everyone was huffing and puffing, even the hardened Tibetan porters. I was struggling to stay connected to the path, often using my hands to pull myself up the slope. The whole scene seemed like something out of a reality TV show or a disaster movie.

Even in my pain, however, I noticed that the Tibetan women were wearing gorgeous hammered silver belt buckles of a very large size cinched above their colorfully striped aprons. Kicking immediately into shopping mode, I made a mental note that I must have one of these treasures for myself.

When we finally arrived at the top of the hill, I was amazed that I was still alive and feeling reasonably well. But we were not there yet. We still had to walk a great deal farther to the Chinese border check-in station, where our Tibetan guide met us and submitted our paperwork. On this final lap, I passed a young girl wearing a large belt buckle, which I admired. She gestured as if to give (or sell) it to me, but, intimidated and lagging behind the others, I hurried onward, immediately regretting my folly in passing up a shopping opportunity.

As we waited endlessly to be cleared through the border, I started to feel quite sick, dizzy and faint. When we finally surmounted the red tape, we joined others from our party in a nearby restaurant, where some noodle soup, Tylenol and a half a Diamox altitude pill soon revived me.

The rigors of the day were not over, however, as we spent the night in one of the shabbiest hotels I have encountered on my travels. Michael and I tacitly agreed that we would place the tin wash-up basin in the corner of the room for use as a midnight bedpan rather than make the trek down the hall to the concrete slab that passed for a bathroom. And the bedpan did get a lot of use as the Diamox acted as a powerful diuretic. Indeed, our bonding was beginning, solidified by the fear of death and midnight potty stops.

The next morning, we began our drive across the western part of Tibet, shepherded by our Tibetan guide, Rindin, and our driver, Dorje. As we crossed the wind-swept plains toward Lhasa, we encountered villages of cold, weather-beaten, wrinkled souls who clustered around our Land Rover whenever it stopped. People were not begging, just curious to see us and whatever else was inside. They were the dirtiest individuals we had ever encountered. The children had weeks’ worth of mucus encrusted under their nostrils and appeared not to have washed in weeks. Yet their smiles never left their faces.

To call this roadway “The Friendship Highway” is indeed a misnomer. In fact, even the word “road” would be too strong. One continuous rut that extends for hundreds of miles along the Tibetan plateau would be a better description. Driving it is akin to taking an E-ticket ride engineered for the most bounce to the ounce. On several of our driving days, I was sickened into submission by the hours of constant jostling, unable to read, write or do anything but listen to soul-searing Tibetan music on the tape deck and munch on Pringles from our store of snack food.

The small village of Tingri, with its desolate beauty, captured our hearts. While the immediate landscape was flat on every side, a line of Himalayan peaks, among them Mt. Everest, jabbed the horizon.

We took our evening and morning meals in a delightful restaurant run by a Tibetan family. As Mama prepared and cooked fresh momos (dumplings) in the small, dirt-floored kitchen, we sat upon rug-covered benches in the “living room” and slurped our thugpa (noodle soup) out of bowls set upon brightly painted trunks. In the middle of the room, the family’s teenage daughter stoked the stove with kindling as she heated tea in a large, iron pot.

Our driver, Dorje, whose hands and mouth were never idle, was soon engrossed in conversation with family members. The next time we looked, he was busy pulling apart garlic cloves and setting each in a dish of water. We were never quite sure what he was doing but enjoyed enormously his enthusiasm for every task. At each stop we made for food or lodging, he could be found hobnobbing with the locals. Whether he had known them before or was making new friends was never clear to us, nor could we speak to Dorje since he knew no English.

We spent the night in Tingri in a clean new guest house named The Snow Leopard, which contrasted happily with the dismal, depressing hotel we had inhabited directly after our horrendous hike up the hill. What hadn’t changed, however, was the location and state of the so-called bathroom, an outhouse affair with slits in the floor and piles of decaying feces beneath. I became so appalled by what passed for Tibetan bathrooms that I much preferred the lack of privacy (but clean air) of the open roadside to any designated potty stop.

In Tingri we again shared a bedpan-potty in the corner of our room and rendez-voused once during the night when we slipped outside to stargaze in the crisp, clear night air. In Tingri I also found a small, cheap-looking silver belt buckle, similar to but not as nice as the ones I had seen the Tibetan women wearing on the hillside.

Soon we reached our first monastery, Thashilumpho, the home of the long line of Panchen Lamas. The monasteries projected their own particular aromas of burning butter, either yak or vegetable “ghee,” that worshippers brought for offerings. Pilgrims scooped the butter out of its plastic package with a spoon or cut it into slices from a loaf, which they then dropped into cup-shaped butter lamps that burn continuously night and day.

The aura inside the monasteries was serene and peaceful. The only taxing thing about them was the necessity of climbing staircase after steep staircase to reach the various chambers. This effort always left me huffing and puffing as Michael and Rindin forged on ahead.

The libraries enchanted me immediately. Fabric-wrapped, rectangular-shaped manuscripts filled the shelves. From each manuscript projected a tongue of material, so that the library wall appeared as row upon row of colorful fabric markers.

The guttural hum of monks chanting in certain of the chapels was a siren song that called to us. In one monastery, we watched in utter fascination as a young monk chanted while clapping a cymbal and beating a drum to punctuate his utterances. At another, an old woman leaving the chapel greeted us with a joy-filled “Tashe Delek!” (Tibetan greeting) that warmed our hearts. Her rapture was evident on her face.

At Tashilumpho we encountered our first whisper of the Dalai Lama’s divine presence in a small chapel where he had once prayed. Here we left some small Chinese bills as an offering. Rindin also made a donation to purchase for each of us a prayer scarf stamped with the sign of the Panchen Lama, whose monastery this was. This was our first encounter with the religion that the Chinese government has tried so energetically to destroy during most of the years of its occupation of Tibet.

A visit to Samye Monastery, the oldest in Tibet, provided a most relaxing day. We journeyed across a river in a “ferry,” a large, open motorboat in which all the pilgrims stood or sat on the wooden floor. On deck, we watched, fascinated, as pilgrims from Eastern Tibet chanted prayers while tossing colorful prayer flags and scarves into the water. On the return trip, several friendly older women offered us oranges from their store of food, which we gratefully accepted and enjoyed. How we wished we could converse with them, but smiles and nods had to suffice.

Not relaxing for me was the anticipation of the hotels where we would spend the nights. At one point, I threw a fit at the prospect of staying in a dismal, dingy and dilapidated room in the city of Tsetang. I drew my line in the sand, insisting we upgrade to a nicer accommodation. Since Michael had been willing to stay in the disagreeable room, I paid for the upgrade myself. Happily enjoying a clean room and nice bath later that evening, Michael agreed that my money had been well spent.

Our pilgrimage across Tibet ended in Lhasa, “the Forbidden City” of legend and lore. Happily ensconced in a hotel with indoor plumbing on the edge of the Barkhor (pilgrimage circuit), we were easily able to make the “kora,’ the clockwise walk around the holiest temple in Tibet, the Jokhang. “Let’s kora!” Michael would say, and off we would go, no matter the time of day.

The Barkhor serves as a social and religious as well as a commercial circuit. There we met sweet-tempered monks, sweet-faced children and sweet deals as we bargained for butter lamps, cymbals and prayer scarves. While I didn’t mind paying a bit more than I had to for these items, Michael was a hard-core bargainer and became enraged if thought he was being taken advantage of. This only became a problem for me when Michael overheard my own feeble attempts at bargaining. When I finally found the belt buckle of my dreams, Michael became nearly apoplectic when I spent $20 for it. “You could have gotten it for $5,” he muttered and explained to me for the umpteenth time the strategy of making a low offer and walking away. I never did master the technique but watched in admiration as Michael secured for himself a set of monk’s cymbals for a price remarkably below what the vendor had asked for.

On our very first circuit of the Barkhor, we wandered through an alley and came upon a courtyard filled with aging pilgrims. “Tashe Delek!” they greeted us, grabbing our hands and beaming with pleasure. Their joy was palpable and the courtyard seemed to vibrate with their energy. We beamed back, incredulous to be in that faraway place, in a culture so alien to our own, yet feeling at that moment at one with the world and with each other. Indeed, no one but Michael and I will ever share that moment.

Further Information

Travel tips: Only accept native Tibetan guide

Must see/do at this place: Countyside, monasteries, Friendship Highway

You should avoid here: Taking the train from China