Co-editors: Seán Mac Mathúna • John Heathcote
Consulting editor: Themistocles Hoetis
Field Correspondent: Allen Hougland
The
Tibetan Government-in-exile An
Annotated Chronology of Tibet in the 20th Century
Bicycle
trip over the Himalayas Tibetan
Cultural Region Weblink Directory It was the 26th
March 1986 and a Full Moon was due. I had arrived in Nepal
two days earlier from India after spending almost three
months in the country. During the afternoon, I was sitting
on the steps of a Shiva temple in Durbar Square, near of old
royal palace in the centre of Kathmandu with my friends Lee
and Chris, when a middle-aged American approached us and
asked "You guys feel like going to Tibet?". We asked what
the details were, and he told us he could arrange it for
$50. We said we would think about it, as going to Tibet,
which we thought then was a closed country under Chinese
occupation, had not been on our original travel plans when
we had left England in December 1985. I didn't have that
much money, and initially, l was not into the idea. Along
with my two other travel companions, we banged our heads
together and decided that we just had the money to get there
and back. Tibet had only
been open to foreign travellers since 1984, and the route
over the Himalayas via the village of Tatopani had only been
clear for travellers to cross into Tibet, since the
beginning of 1985. So we would be some of the first
backpackers to be lucky enough to get there. We had a
feeling that we would not have a easy time: We had heard
that the Chinese policy on individual tourism in Tibet
seemed to be one of extorting as much cash as possible from
travellers - but no so much as to scare them off. Before very
long, we had taken it one step further: we would go to the
Pakistani embassy in Kathmandu and get visas: We had decided
to go into Tibet, then cross into China and come back to
India via the Karakorum highway in the Pakistani part of
northern Kashmir. I personally knew that this was an
ambitious plan considering my lack of funds. Anyway, we
decided to go to a hotel in the north of Kathmandu and hand
over our passports to these dodgy American's who were
obviously doing some kind of deal with corrupt officials in
the Chinese embassy (It was our understanding that you could
not get a visa for Tibet in Nepal). We decided to go for it.
In the meantime there was a really nice hill station outside
Kathmandu called Nagarkot, which was said to have panoramic
views of the Himalayan mountain range on a clear day,
including Mount Everest (known by the Nepalese as
Sagarmartha or Brow of the Ocean). We decided to spend a few
days there, leaving Kathmandu by bus on April 1st for the
short journey to Nagarkot. We ended up
spending two days there - it was really cold, but it gave us
a taste of what to expect in Tibet. Its not a village or
anything (the area was first developed as an army base), but
more a collection of guest houses and hotels that stretch
along a cultivated ridge for a couple of miles at 6,397 ft
(1950 m). One morning we did get up and we saw the Himalayan
mountains for stretching as far as the eye could see,
including Mount Everest. We all felt very excited about
travelling through the Himalayas to Tibet. The visas were
sorted out by the Chinese embassy on April 7th. When we went
to pick them up, someone who spoke Chinese, claimed they
indicated we were going into Tibet at a completely different
point to the one stated in the visa. We then went to
the Pakistani embassy and collected visas for for the trip
through Kashmir. Initially, we were planning to go a
difficult route from Tibet to China and into Pakistan, along
a road that follows the Himalayan mountain range via the
holy Mount Kailesh, which is roughly where Nepal, India and
Tibet meet. Hindus believe the God Shiva lives there. It it
also a major pilgrimage centre for Hindus and Buddhists. As
Asia's most sacred mountain, Tibetans revere Mount Kailesh.
It stands completely alone with no other peaks near it.
Pilgrims travel to this remote area in far western Tibet to
complete the circuit around the base of this sacred mountain
(to do so is said to erase the sins of a lifetime), and to
the holy Manasarovar Lake. The four great rivers of Tibet,
India and Nepal have their origins near Kailesh; the
Tibetans consider these rivers and their sources sacred. As
we were walking out of the Pakistani embassy, we bumped into
the ambassador, who laughed when we told him of our route to
Pakistan. "You'll never make it" he warned, "there's very
few people who live there, let alone means of transport or
food". We were later to find out he was right, which was
confirmed when we arrived in the village of Lhatse, on the
way to Shigatse in Tibet. The only way to travel along that
route is in the back of lorries - and then you don't know
how far the lorry is going. And if they leave you in the
middle of nowhere, it might be days - or longer - before
another lorry comes along. There are no hotels or shops, it
it was clear that not only was it virtually impossible to do
the journey, any attempt could easily lead to a
life-or-death situation. We quickly abandoned the idea and
settled on making our way to the Tibetan capital,
Lhasa. The best way to
get there was by bus from Kathmandu up to a village called
Tatopani, which means "Hot Water" in Nepali. It is the most
famous hot water spring in Nepal, situated right across the
border between Nepal and Tibet at the end of the Arniko
Highway. The road was built originally by the Chinese - must
to India's distress - in the 1950's. We left
Kathmandu at 5 am on April 18th 1986 and caught the 8-hour
bus to Tatopani, arriving early one evening. We decided to
get acclimatised here as it just short of the Tibetan
crossing. Kathmandu is at 4291 ft (1500 m) above sea level,
with Tatopani at 5019 ft (1530 m). However, before you get
to Lhasa at 11,811 ft (3600 m), you have to cross the Lhakpa
La pass which is at 17,126 ft (5220 m). We had heard
stories of people being struck down with altitude sickness
because they attempted these journeys to soon, so we decided
to take it easy. This illness is known as Acute Mountain
Sickness (AMS) and you are likely to be affected by this as
you pass over between 11,000 feet (3400m) and 13,700 ft
(4200 m). For travellers to Tibet, this includes the section
of the road after Nyalam, and the Khama mountain pass before
Lhasa. Thus, we spent about five days in Tatopani, exploring
the surrounding mountains during the day, including the
Shiva temple in a cave across the Bhote Kosi river from
Tatopani, and chilling out in the evenings. I read somewhere
later that it was the deepest gorge on earth. This l can
certainly believe, as it is surrounded by some of the
tallest mountain peaks of the Himalayas, including Mount
Shisha Panma at 26,398 ft (8046m). The first place
we stayed in was a Nepalese house, with a goat in the
downstairs room and chickens in the rafters above us in the
room where we slept. We went to bed laughing about whether
the chickens would drop their crap on us whilst we slept.
They didn't. It later turned out that the mice attacked our
rucksacks, succeeding in making about four holes in mine -
drawn by the cheese, bread and muesli in the bottom of
it. Tatopani is a
very nice village, but very cold at night. The worse part of
the night would be having to go down the stairs into a dark
room (containing the goat), and make you way to a door which
led to the top of the river bank. There is no sewage system
in Nepal, so every village and town that has a river uses it
basically, as a toilet (hence, the risks of hepatitis etc).
I had seen people using the Bagmati River in Kathmandu
either as a place to wash or as a toilet. We were advised
again and again by travellers never to drink water from
rivers in the mountains, unless you are on ground high
enough to know that there are no villages above you.
The hot-water
springs in Tatopani are down a narrow footpath near the
river. Here you could wash as much as you liked - when you
liked. It was nice first thing in the morning to have a long
hot wash with the other villagers, some of whom would also
be washing their clothes there. The waters there were said
to have healing properties. I once saw a Tibetan monk at the
springs washing a leg with what looked like some form of
dermatitis on it. It was certainly the first place that l
had seen cannabis growing everywhere - by the sides of the
roads, and everywhere up in the hills, and when we down at
the springs one day, a local Nepalese man pointed out this
fact and exhorted us to smoke it. But, it wasn't the sort
that was good enough to smoke, so we didn't bother.
Knowing that we
were going to a very cold country, neither of us had
sleeping bags - who needs to take one to India or Nepal
unless you are trekking ? We had met someone who had told us
that a silk sleeping bag within a proper one would keep us
warm. So we took this advice, and bought the silk in a
market in Kathmandu, then took it to a sowing shop, where
the sleeping bag was quickly made for about 10 rupees.
Cheaper than buying a sleeping bag, it kept us warm in
Tatopani, which was very cold at night, compared to the
humidity of Kathmandu. As something very cheap and
practical, l would advise anyone who travelling to Tibet to
get one made when they get there - especially if you arrive
in Kathmandu first. We knew that
food would be short, so we bought some muesli and cheese and
some other basic food stuffs to keep us tied over. We had
also heard in advance from other travellers not to expect to
get regular food supplies in this part of Nepal or Tibet. We
had no maps (although l did buy a Tibetan phrase book in
Kathmandu), little money, and no knowledge of Tibet. I
didn't know what to expect when we left Tatopani and crossed
the border. The food was awful in Tatopani, the only basic
foodstuff available was an omelette or dahl bhat. We
all seemed to be losing weight quickly ! I did meet two
interesting people in the village though. I was walking out
of a cafe after just eating my omelette, and there walking
up the road towards the border post were two Tibetan monks
and a Nepalese man. Seeing they were very friendly l
approached them with the Nepalese greeting Namaste !
The Nepalese man explained to me that one of the monks was a
Rinpoche (Precious One), an incarnation of a famous
monk. He was a Lama of a Monastery (or Gompa)
secretly returning to organise people and guide his monks
living under Chinese occupation. I wished him well, as l
knew that he was risking his life simply by spreading the
word of Tibet's leader, the Dalai Lama, through the
monastery. Meeting the
Lama in Tatopani made me realise how little l knew about the
political situation in Tibet. However, being reasonably
knowledgeable on history (the only subject l ever did well
at school), l had a basic outline of Chinese rule in Tibet.
I had long been interested in Buddhism, ever since my friend
Tom Spiers, gave me the book The Dhamapada in 1983,
which left a profound impression on me. Apart from that, the
closest books had come to reading about Tibet and its people
was when l came across Magic and Mystery in Tibet by
Alexandra
David-Neel
(Unwin Books, London, England, 1965). She was the first
European woman to travel to Tibet in the 1920's, and she had
met the 13th Dalai Lama in Sikkim whilst he was there on a
state visit. He encouraged her to learn Tibetan first, and
after studying it, she became a Buddhist, and later a Lama.
Her book is now recognised as a classic and a unique insight
into the Tibetan people before the Chinese invasion. I had
also read The Bardo Thödol (The Tibetan Book of
the Dead) which was originally translated by Lama Kazi
Dawa-Samdup and edited by W. Y. Evans-Wentz (Oxford
University Press, London, England, 1927). Dawa-Samdup had
also met David-Neel when she first travelled to Sikkim in
the 1920's. What l was to
see in Tibet, after leaving Tatopani, shocked me and my
friends - the destroyed monasteries, the smashed culture,
and the widespread colonial settlements of Han Chinese,
whose population is now said to be bigger than the
indigenous Tibetans. As there is a large Tibetan population
in Kathmandu, its quite easy to find out, and see the
consequences of the Chinese occupation, with over a 100,000
Tibetans living in exile. Thus, from this point of view,
Lee, Chris and myself were very fortunate in being some of
the first Western backpackers to Tibet in 1986, as noted by
Chris Taylor in Lonely Planet guide to Tibet
(1995): Tibet lost its
independence in the last century - first, it was invaded by
Britain in 1903, and after the British withdrew, it enjoyed
independence until it was invaded and annexed by China in
1950. The Chinese Communists claimed it as an ancient
province, and justified their actions by saying that it was
"saving" Tibet from feudalism. Thus, when the Chinese army
invaded Tibet on 7th October 1950, the Tibetan army, a
poorly equipped army of some 4000 soldiers, was in no
position to resist a force of some 30,000 Chinese troops,
who attacked Tibet from six different directions. Neither
India or Britain - traditional friends of Tibet - opposed
the Chinese invasion; in fact, shamefully, they convinced
the United Nations (UN) not to debate to issue at all for
fear of incurring China's wrath. Only the CIA
provided covert help to Tibetans eager to take up arms
against Chinese rule. But this was because the CIA also
supported the nationalist Chinese forces based in Burma and
Taiwan, as part of its secret covert war against Communist
China in the late 1940's. From bases in Nepal, the CIA
provided radio transmitters and arms to armed resistance
groups who would later be ruthlessly crushed by the Chinese
army. When the Dalai Lama had been forced to flee Lhasa
(disguised as a soldier) on 17th March 1959, the CIA sent in
agents to help get him out, who included the son of the
famous writer Edgar Allan Poe. With their help, the Dalai
Lama and his entourage made it safely across the border into
India. I met a Tibetan
in Nagarkot who claimed that when the Dalai Lama fled from
the Norbulingka Summer Palace, he was hit by Chinese bullets
- which just bounced off him. In fact, although l found out
later, that no such incident had happened, it indicated to
me that Tibetans believed that the Dalai Lama was protected
by magical powers. In fact, l have heard it said that some
Tibetans believe that Tibet's karma was bad and that's why
China invaded the country in 1950. Apparently, this had been
foretold by bad omens (such as a earthquake) and other
prophecies (similar statements were made at the time of the
uprising in Lhasa in 1989). I have also heard the argument
that if China had not invaded Tibet, then a significant
number of Tibetans would not have been sent into exile, and
thus help spread the message of the Buddha to the world, all
of which l can believe. The Lonely
Planet guide to Tibet - which l was pleased to see takes
a healthy stand against Chinese rule - was handy to check
background information on some of the places l visited. It
also describes the Chinese occupation as the "worst
misfortune the inhabitants the 'Land of the Snow' have been
forced to endure". In the last fifty years or so, it is
estimated that as many as 1.2 million Tibetans have died as
a result of the Chinese "liberation" - many of them (notably
monks), executed or dying of hunger in concentration camps.
Some 100,000 ended up in forced
labour camps
- the alleged source today of many of China's manufactured
exports. Furthermore, some two-thirds of Tibet were absorbed
into China, notably the northern Amdo province, which was
the birthplace of the present 14th Dalai Lama of Tibet. The
number of monasteries in Tibet was reduced from 6254 to
around 10 - many of them looted and destroyed by the Chinese
army. This l could believe, as l saw with my own eyes as we
drove from Nyalam to Shigatse (and along the road to Lhasa)
many ruined monastery's and forts (Dzong's) on distant
hilltops. I kept a diary
every day when l was in Tibet, and when it came to writing
this story of my journey there, l bought a couple a books on
Tibet to get some more background information to include.
Once again, the Internet proved invaluable: Not only was l
able to check a multitude of sites dealing with travel to
Tibet (including overpriced bicycle trips), it has been the
main source of pictures used in this essay (as l didn't take
a camera to Tibet). I also checked out websites dealing with
Chinese repression in Tibet - Amnesty
International,
Human
Rights Watch,
the
Tibetan government-in-exile,
International
Commission of Jurists,
and most of the official Chinese government websites, which
all give a completely distorted version of Tibetan history.
Much of what l read in the Lonely Planet guide to
Tibet: Thus, on April
23rd, we left Tatopani on small bus crammed with people and
totally overloaded, and made our way up into the clouds to
Tibet. The next stop is a couple of miles up the road at
Kodari, where the Nepalese customs post is. After having our
passports checked, the bus made it's slow journey up to the
so-called "friendship bridge" over the Bhote Kosi river that
divides Nepal and Tibet, and begun the long journey to the
Chinese controlled Tibetan Customs post about five miles up
at Khasa (Zhangmu). The view as we
got higher was amazing, the further we drove up the road,
the more nervous l got - especially when l noticed that the
road - which is taken away on regular basis by landslides -
was nothing more than just a mud-track. Eventually, we
turned a corner to be confronted by armed soldiers and a
banner that declared "Welcome to the People's Republic of
China". The bus came to an abrupt halt and we were taken out
and into a Customs hall, surrounded by smiling Chinese
officials to have our bags checked. They didn't really check
them. They just looked inside our rucksacks, like they were
in a hurry and then smiled at us and they passed them back.
Maybe there's a bus leaving in a minute l thought. There
wasn't. I noticed that all the Tibetans on the bus had been
taken to one side, as the three of us had out bags checked.
When we came out, l saw that all the baggage belonging to
the Tibetans was piled up on the side of the road. You could
tell they were going to be there for hours. We were in
Khasa, a small village perched on the side of the road that
goes through the Himalayas. But where to stay ? and how do
we get out of this place to Lhasa ? We had heard that there
was at least one bus a day going to Shigatse, the nearest
Tibetan town - but how do we catch it ? None of the Chinese
seemed friendly and if any of them spoke English, they
didn't to us. We noticed that there were Chinese men -
possibly businessmen - driving range rovers out of the
village towards Shigatse. We decided that the only way the
three of us were going to get out of this place was to just
hire one of these cars, and then pay what we thought was a
fair fare in cash at the other end. My own
experience in India had shown me that if you roughly know
the price of something, sometimes just pay and walk off -
especially if you have little money. You just can't afford
to pay the sort of prices that some people demand,
especially when then refuse to barter with you. Generally
speaking, l only really came across this in Tibet. The
Chinese were the worst. We did try asking a couple of range
rover drivers how much it would cost to drive to Shigatse
and the prices they quoted us were just outrageous. So we
decided to book a room and go on the attack in the next
couple of days. The following
day, l saw for the first time, a mountain bike. I was a keen
cyclist long before l went away to India in 1985. We were
walking around Khasa one afternoon when we came across these
four Americans pulled up along the side of the road, one of
them, l think, had a puncture. I got talking to a Chinese or
Japanese American who said his name was "Robert". I was
amazed to see cyclists at this height making the hazardous
journey across the Himalayas. I asked him why they were
doing it, and he told me that they were being sponsored by
the National
Geographic
magazine to go into Tibet and take pictures. I didn't think
about it at the time, but later, after meeting "Robert"
again in Lhasa on May 30th, l thought to myself, how good a
cover that would be for CIA agents getting into
Tibet. The following
morning on April 25th 1986, we got up and managed to hire
the first range rover we saw. We didn't bother asking about
how much it would cost, we just piled in and told the
Chinese driver one word: "Shigatse". It would be a two day
journey to the second biggest in Tibet. From Khasa to Lhasa
it is 520 miles (837 km), and a journey that can take up to
four days. The next place along from Khasa is a another
village called Nyalam which is at 12,467 ft (3800 m), where
the temperature really drops. I already knew that nearby
(some 10 miles or so) was a temple associated with Milarepa,
the famous Buddhist mystic and song writer, who lived in the
late 11th and early 12th centuries. But there would be no
time to visit it, although l saw it in the distance on the
way back to Nyalam later. After arriving,
we were taken to what seemed like a prefabricated hut (l
think it was a hotel for truckers), and given a room with
three beds for the night. Before we left the driver, he
indicated by pointing at his watch and making gestures with
his fingers, that we would up early the next morning at
around 4/5 am for the journey to Shigatse. The room had
one broken window at the end of it, and l remember looking
out through it after dusk and seeing the snow falling down,
and for the first time Tibetan nomads with their Yak herds
grazing outside the tents where they were living. I was
amazed that nomads could live at this altitude, but then
again, as l was to find out, the Tibetans are a hardy
people. In our room, the beds had two huge duvet's, under
which we slept almost fully clothed in our silk sleeping
bags. Our bodies shaking, we crashed out. It seemed that
l had only just shut my eyes when there was a loud banging
on the door. It was still pitch black, but when we looked at
our watches it was about four-thirty in the morning. We got
up and made our way bleary eyed to the range rover. As we
drove out of Nyalam we seemed to started leaving the
Himalayas behind us. Up ahead was the Lalung Leh pass which
is at 16,569 ft (5050 m) high, followed by the Lhakpa La
pass at 17,126 ft (5220 m). We got there after a few hours.
After driving
for hours upwards you suddenly come up to the pass and cross
over onto a large flat plateau, known as the Lhakpa La pass.
Here we saw the first Tibetan prayer flags and small
Chörten's (or Stupa's), which contain the remains of
Lama's, and incense sticks burning. From here, if you look
from left to right, you can see virtually the whole
Himalayan mountain range - including Mount Everest - very
clearly. We didn't stop for long, just enough to exercise
our feet and have a quick chat and marvel at the view.
Before very long we were on our way to Shigatse via Tingri
and Lhatse. We thought that
we had hired the range rover to ourselves, but to our
disgust, the driver stopped and picked up a Chinese soldier,
despite us urging him not to do so. From this moment we fell
out with the driver. The other thing that really pissed us
off was when we drove near to Mount Everest between Tingri
and the Shegar checkpoint (where our passports were checked
again), and saw it towering above all the over mountains
about 130 miles (80 km) miles away. It had a name long
before the British called it Everest: the Tibetans and
Sherpa tribes call it Chomolungma (Mother Goddess of
the World). We wanted to stop the car and get out and sample
the view - but the driver would not stop. We all started to
lose our temper with him and l could see this driver was
going to get short shrift when we stopped at Shigatse.
The
Tashilhunpo monastery, Shigatse, Tibet.
We arrived in
Shigatse (12,700 ft/3900 m) late one afternoon on April 26th
1986. We pulled up in the centre of the town at a crossroads
near the impressive Tashilhunpo monastery. I remember
looking out of the window of the range rover and seeing some
Tibetans from the Kham tribe in eastern Tibet, who wear
distinctive red tassels in their long hair, sitting on their
horses, one of whom had a huge sword around his waist. They
were looking on when the range rover pulled up, and we got
out, unloading our rucksacks onto the dusty road. We had
already planned how we would deal with the driver, and l
went up to him and passed him the money for the journey
through the window. We gave him roughly what the bus fare
would have been from Khasa to Shigatse. The guy freaked out.
He obviously thought that he could get a $100 or more off
the three of us (or something similar) for the journey. We
simply paid him the money and walked off, leaving him
shouting at us. I noticed the Kham horsemen looking on
amused. Thus, we began
a 16 day stay in Shigatse, not leaving the town until May
13th. The town is in the centre of a small, heavily
populated river plain near the Yarlung Zangbo (Brahmaputra)
River. After Lhasa, it is the second most important trade
centre in Tibet, as it is on the ancient caravan route that
once linked Tibet to Nepal and Kashmir. The town is the
traditional seat of the Panchen Lama (which means "Great
Scholar"), who once ruled about 4,000 monks in the monastery
of Tashilhunpo (founded 1447). The monastery was founded by
a disciple of Tsongkhapa Genden Drup, later recognised as
the 1st Dalai Lama. We stayed in
the Tibetan quarter at the Tenzin Hotel, which is opposite
the ruined Shigatse Dzong (fort). When l first saw
it, l thought it was a just large hill covered in rubble
(like the Dzong at Lhatse). We were shown old
photographs that showed the Dzong. It was quite clear
that the Chinese had just blown it off the side of the hill,
just like all the others. It was once the residence of the
Kings of Tsang and later the governor of Tsang. Pictures
dating before 1959 (when it was destroyed), show an
impressive structure similar to the Potala Palace in Lhasa.
We spent many
days on the roof of the Tenzin Hotel from which you can get
a good view of the town. It's also a good place to meet up
with other travellers and exchange stories about Tibet. I
think it was this hotel that had the worst toilets l have
ever seen in my life - simply a bare room with five or six
holes in it. Everyone just piles in, drops their pants and
sits above a hole. The first time was the worst, as since
its the only place to have a shit you just have to get on
with it. Below you, and visible through you legs, is another
room - packed with a very large mountain of excrement. It
was some poor persons job to clear this out - and l bet is
wasn't the local Chinese - It seems the plumbing system did
not come with China's "peaceful liberation" of Tibet
! After arriving
in Shigatse, l quickly started to regret not being able to
speak Tibetan - as none of them could speak English. The
only words l really learnt were the basic ones such as the
Tibetan greeting Tashi Delek, Kale Shoo
(good-bye) and Thoo Jaychay (thank you). Shigatse was a
town notorious for it's rabid dogs, packs of which would
roam the outskirts feeding off anything they could eat. We
were given simple advice - keep you distance but be armed
with a study stick and be prepared to kill if you have to.
Thus, l was amused to read the warning in the current
Lonely
Planet
guide: "Watch out for Dogs !" One of the worse diseases
you can get is Rabies, and that's the last thing you can
afford to catch in a remote area of Tibet at least 300 miles
from the nearest airport. I didn't have travel insurance so
l was very wary of these animals. On one occasion l saw them
eating a dog by the side of the road. Chris got into a tight
spot with some of them one day, but quickly managed to
dispatch one with a swift kick to the head. Apparently the
Chinese had gone around slaughtering them from time to time
(on justifiable public-health grounds), but this caused
great upset to the Tibetans, who of course are strong
believers in reincarnation. Although l
never became ill in Tibet, l would recommend travel
insurance in case you do. A German friend of ours became ill
in Lhasa with hepatitis. The first problem you have if you
don't have insurance, is how to pay the bill at the hospital
when your admitted. Our friend was taken to the People's
Hospital in Lhasa, where we visited him. The standard of
health care was very good, but foreign nationals were
charged up to six times what the locals were. If you don't
have travel insurance (or sufficient funds on you on) you've
got problems if the illness is serious. If you need to be
flown home (as our friend was), then it's left to your
embassy to get you out. The best way to avoid these problems
is to always follow advice - whether it's about altitude
sickness or hepatitis - and common sense - don't drink out
of rivers (or wash) which people use for sewage, or worse,
industrial waste. And of course, be careful of what you eat
! The Tenzin
hotel is quite big with large dormitory style rooms. It had
a friendly atmosphere and there was good food available
nearby. Nearby is then the Tashilhunpo monastery - then the
seat of the 10th Panchen Lama, and outspoken critic of the
Chinese regime, who died in suspicious circumstances in 1989
(i.e. the Chinese are thought to have poisoned him). In
1964, he declared that one day, Tibet would be free and the
Dalai Lama would return in glory as their leader. He was
effectively put under house arrest, and kept in Beijing,
visiting Tashilhunpo only under strict Chinese control.
The monastery
is surrounded by a huge wall, and immediately to enter the
main gate you get a grand view of the complex. It has a
large building - clearly visible from some distance - on
which huge paintings (or Thangkas) are displayed on
religious days. I was astounded when l entered the Maitreya
Chapel, thought by some to be one of the most impressive
sites in Tibet. Inside is a huge 86 ft (26 m) gold-plated
Maitreya, made in 1914 under the auspices of the 9th Dalai
Lama and completed in 1918 by over 900 artisans and
labourers. After walking in through a small door you are
confronted by a the huge feet of Maitreya who is sitting
serenely in the lotus position, with a huge turquoise ring
on one of his fingers. It is decorated with more than 300 kg
of gold, and covered with precious stones. On the walls are
more than a thousand images of Maitreya against a red
background. In this
monastery, l also saw the buildings where monks lived in
isolation, reputedly for periods ranging from six months to
a year. Here they learn the skills of mediation. In one
building you could see some windows were partly blacked out,
others were completely shut out to the daylight. The monks
inside have no contact with the outside world, and the rooms
are built in such a way, so that food and water can be left
without any contact being made. Along with Lee and Chris, l
wandered around exploring the monastery largely
uninterrupted. It is relatively intact compared with other
Tibetan monasteries, having survived most of the repression
of the cultural revolution. I also walked most of the
Tashilhunpo Kora with Lee - which is a circular path around
the monastery, and takes about an hour to complete - armed
with a stick to deal with the wild dogs. Even here, l notice
that the Lonely
Planet
recommend you "keep some stones at the ready". The presence
of rabid dogs prevented us from completing the trip.
Everywhere in
Shigatse, l went l found Tibetans warm and friendly - eager
to invite you in to their houses and give you a cup of the
initially foul-tasting butter tea. When l first went to
India, at first l found their tea (chai) hard to get
used to - very strong with loads of sugar in it. But l
developed a taste for it and ended up loving it. But with
butter tea it was a lot harder. Watching the making of
butter tea doesn't endure you to drinking it. The tea is
mainly made from the butter and milk of a Yak. This is all
mixed in huge dollops in a large pan to produce the tea
which Tibetans drink feverishly. I didn't develop a habit
for it, and l found it difficult when l was in a front room
of Tibetan house, being constantly offered a refill on the
cup every time l drank out of it. But that's the Tibetans
for you - for they are a polite and hospitable people.
One thing l
noticed that drives them into a state of ecstasy, was if you
produced a picture of the Dalai Lama. This we had been told
in Kathmandu. One of us had such a picture, and when
Tibetans saw it they would pass it around and bless
themselves with it. I later regretted not bringing a huge
bag full of photos just to hand out to them - though l later
discovered it was very dangerous for a Tibetan to be caught
in possession on such a photograph. I know now that the
Chinese police would have probably given us a beating if
they had found us showing Tibetans our picture of him.
Anyway, it was given away to a Tibetan family who were very
friendly towards us. We also went to
a Chinese disco (or rather gatecrashed one). Walking through
Shigatse late one night, we heard disco music coming from a
modern building which looked like a college near the
monastery. But it was surrounded by a high fence with a huge
gate. We soon climbed over it and barged our way in and
upstairs to the "disco". I noticed that it was full of young
Chinese youths (who never seemed to socialise with the
Tibetans). We walked into this huge sports arena just as the
Bony M track The Rivers of Babylon was playing. Both
sides of the hall had tables running up along the walls with
thermos flasks in them (containing tea). The men were
dancing with the men and the women were dancing with the
women. As we walked in, they all just looked at us with a
"what the hell are you doing here" stare. We promptly turned
around and walked out, laughing to ourselves as we jumped
back over the fence again. I also
attempted to get my rucksack repaired in Shigatse, which had
been badly holed by the mice in Tatopani. I found a Chinese
woman working on the street with her sowing machine,
repairing some clothes. I showed her all the holes in the
rucksack, and we agreed a price. Later that day, l went back
and picked it up. I should have checked that she had done
all the repairs. She hadn't. I immediately took it back to
her, and as l approached, l tried my best not to be angry. I
showed her the holes she hadn't stitched up, and she
repaired them. When she handed back the rucksack, l just
walked off, leaving her shouting at me. What a cheek l
thought, her thinking l would pay twice for the same
job. In India and
Nepal, there is little or no contact with women. In
contrast, l found Tibetan women to be very friendly. Once,
walking down a street in Shigatse, two women walked passed
me who were selling Turquoise stones. One of them grabbed my
hand and pointed to the beautiful jewellery made up of the
stones she was wearing around her neck, and as rings on her
finger. I politely turned down the request to buy some, as l
knew l didn't have enough money. On May 13th
1986, we left Shigatse for Gyantse a two hour bus drive away
(55 miles/90 km). After a short bus journey we arrived in
this small town distinctive for it's huge Kumbum
Chörten (one of the largest in the world), the Pelkor
Chöde monastery and it's own Dzong (fort) on a large
hill - last destroyed by British artillery in 1903. The
buildings date from around 1440. At 13,000 ft (3950 m) its a
bit higher than Shigatse. It's also the least
Chinese-influenced of Tibetan towns, and said to be worth a
visit for that reason alone. The Kumbum
Chörten is an impressive structure that rise over four
symmetrical floors and is surmounted by a gold dome that
rises like a crown over four sets of eyes that gaze serenely
out in the cardinal directions of the compass (see
pictures). You walk in a clockwise route up through all four
floors of the Kumbum taking in the chapels that line the
walls. It is quite clear that the Chinese have destroyed
parts of the Kumbum Chörten and the once 14 monasteries
that made up the Pelkor Chöde monastery. The central
image within the main chapel is of Sakyamuni, who is flanked
by the Buddha's of the past and the future. Around the
chapel are murals which display many of the
Bodhisattvas. The Kumbum
Chörten (extreme left), Gyanste, Tibet. We stayed for
four days until May 17th. The Chörten was very
impressive and l spent a whole day up in the Dzong (with
Lee, Chris and a German friend, Günter), after a local
Tibetan gave us the keys to to get in. The top of it also
has panoramic views of the Nyang Chu valley, and it is the
best place to view the Kumbum Chörten and the Pelkor
Chöde monastery. The Tibetans may have been able to see
the British army led by General Younghusband advancing from
some distance (like with the Chinese later), but they never
had the weapons these modern armies did. Apparently the
Dzong fell after just one day of siege leaving 300 Tibetans
and 4 British soldiers dead. The Tibetans had regarded the
Dzong as impregnable, and there was said to be a prophecy
that if it was captured then Tibet would be defeated. The
British promptly marched on Lhasa without further incident.
Gyantse is a
very small town - more a village really. We stayed at the
Tibetan Gyantse Hotel, which had an excellent kitchen, where
we eat our first decent food since leaving Kathmandu.
"In
1986, a new influx of foreigners arrived in Tibet. The
Chinese began to loosen restrictions on tourism, and a
trickle of tour groups and individual travellers soon
became a flood . . . For the first time since the Chinese
takeover, visitors from the West were given the
opportunity to see first hand the results of Chinese rule
in Tibet".
"When
the Chinese allowed the first tourists into Tibet in the
mid-1980's, they came to a devastated country, Most of
Tibet's finest monasteries lay in ruins; monks who under
a recent thaw in Chinese ethic chauvinism, were once
again donning their vestments, cautiously folded them
back to display the scars of "struggle sessions"; and the
Tibetan quarter of Lhasa, the Holy city, was now dwarfed
by a sprawling Chinatown. The journalist Harrison
Salisbury referred to it as a "dark and sorrowing
land".
On
religious days huge paintings (or Thangkas) are
displayed, as shown in the picture. Inside one
of the Chapel's is a huge 86 ft (26 m)
gold-plated Maitreya, made in 1914 under the
auspices of the 9th Dalai Lama and completed in
1918 by over 900 artisans and labourers. It is
decorated with more than 300 kg of gold, and
covered with precious stones.
Picture from http://perso.club-internet.fr/pchanez/Images