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By Lowell Bennett - All Rights Reserved - Published Articles / Images |
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► PDF of this Article as Published (Abridged) |
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In advance I here must confess that the big beast referenced within the following writing as a ‘yak’ may possibly be, strictly speaking (in the Tibetan view), not quite a yak, but, a ‘dong.’ The dongs, I am told, are sort of ‘sacred.’ They get to freely roam the mountains adorned with colorful ribbons and rings as applied by the spiritually-inclined and possibly very bored locals. The yaks, if not already converted into curry and/or steaks, are assigned to pull heavy things. And they otherwise get the lousy end of the deal. In clarifying what to me at the time seemed an insubstantial difference in the appearance of the bovines, Jamdun, the Tibetan guide, explained, “I understand you confuse about yak … not know it a dong. Same thing for me. To us, all Westerners look same, too.” Road Trip Tibet At dawn, atop Khamba-la Pass at 4,794 meters (15,728 feet) on a ridge overlooking the icy Yamdrok-tso Lake, shivering almost uncontrollably I setup to shoot. In the trembling viewfinder I framed the lake cradled within the snowcapped mountain range beneath what seemed a frozen mercury sky, pressed the shutter release – but no click. The button would not depress. Was the mechanism frozen? No. My finger was. The assigned flesh and bone wouldn’t execute on signal from the brain. Just three or four minutes out of
the heated Land Cruiser, frostbite was creeping into the exposed
appendages of my hand. I finally managed to push the button, then I
slung the camera over my That’s when the yaks (and/or dongs) dropped in to see what humans were doing on the ridge. The two frost-proof and extraordinarily nimble bovines descended from even higher altitudes. Despite the fact they smelled pretty bad, they seemed a little too self-satisfied, a little too comfortable in the climate, and perhaps a little too showy, decked out in the pastel ribbons and bone rings gifted to them by reverential high-altitude local human residents. Nevertheless, the image of the two shaggy horned beasts with sky, lake and mountains behind was too good to miss. So I trudged through a cold so cold it burned, pushed another 100 meters beyond the beckoning warmth of the 4x4, and about six feet below the yaks I forced my creaking legs into a crouch for a few more shots. I got a few before my shooting finger again seized up. So I thanked the exceedingly unimpressed yaks and beat it back to the vehicle. Inside was little immediate comfort. My hands felt like they were bound in blocks of ice and my fingers had taken on a sort of nice gradient shade of blue. I was out of the vehicle for only about 10 or 15 minutes total, but now back rapping on the keyboard in my toasty Beijing apartment, the tip of my smallest finger remains numb. But it was worth it. What an extraordinary place. Prelude to Passage The first leg of the trip began in moderate climes. Two days before the frigid mountaintop I was in Chengdu, capital of Sichuan, a transit point referred to by some as the “Gateway to Tibet.” The place is also known for prosperity, spicy street-side snacking and an unfairly excessive allocation of good-looking women. After the flight from Beijing, I stuck around Chengdu for about 40 hours. I was there not only to have a look around yet another booming Chinese metropolis – and confirm the reported lopsided abundance of attractive females – but also to get some paperwork in order. There is talk they may soon do away with this requisite, but as of this writing the Tibetan authorities still require foreigners to obtain official approval to enter. Said approval materializes in the form of two pieces of paper sporting the standard red seals. Cost: 500 yuan. This process can be carried out directly through government agencies, but I recommend paying a few extra yuan and handing the assignment off to a travel agent. In Chengdu, a veteran of this routine, Sam of Chengdu Sam’s Guesthouse and Travel Service, efficiently expedited the paperwork in two days, had his associates shuttle me from and to the airport, and booked me a seat on a previously declared “sold out” flight into Lhasa. To reach Lhasa, one no longer must fly, nor must they face the grimly enduring and perhaps precarious alternative of a smoke-filled cross-country sleeper bus. The new Lhasa-bound Qinghai-Tibet Railway now routes through Chengdu, as well as via a more northerly route, and in 48 hours one can ride the rails from Beijing to Tibet’s capital, and visa-versa. For those who love trains, this run offers hard and soft seats, and hard and soft sleeper cabins. The line, the highest on Earth, also offers some spectacular views as it traverses the Roof of the World along the Tibet Plateau, a slice of geography once thought impossible to lay rails across. But for those more irascible types who become easily impatient with cramped quarters and long travel times, it’s best that we fly. So after a two-hour jet from Chengdu and a one-hour shuttle bus into town, I disembarked in Lhasa – not long ago an extraordinarily inaccessible and mysterious place, in which previously I would not have been welcome. Monks and Monasteries Although while relying on the thin high-altitude air one must climb 125 steps to finally get inside, in Lhasa the obvious must-see is the one-thousand-room, 13-story-tall Potala Palace. In the early 7th Century, Tibetan king Songtsen Gampo installed a more modest palace on the present-day site of Potala as a gift to his bride, Princess Wencheng of the Tang Dynasty (618-907). That structure remained essentially unchanged until 1645, when additional construction began under the directive of the Fifth Dalai Lama. By 1648 the Potrang Karpo (White Palace) portion was complete, and by 1694 the Potrang Marpo (Red Palace) addition was in place. In total about 7,000 workers and 1,500 artisans contributed to the project. Renovated and enlarged by the 13th Dalai Lama in 1922, Potala Palace is perched 130 meters above the Lhasa valley, and today the structure extends 170 meters in height and spans an interior space of 130,000 square meters. Prohibited from taking interior photos, as I toured this dark sacred place made smoky and pungent by the ceremonial burning of yak butter lamps, my thoughts turned to the gold. There’s tons of the stuff in there. Just the tomb of the Fifth Dalai Lama (1617-1682), at about three stories in height, is coated with 3,700 kg (8,200 pounds) of gold. I figured the pricey decorations for this guy’s final resting place, plus the tons of precious metal heavily applied to and stored within other chambers, were not dug out of the ground by the monks and masters of the day. But I guess the hard-laboring peasants got a big spiritual kick out of the deal. For those who can handle a lot of steps at high-altitude – and who may not be much smarter than the writer – right after Potala Palace they can jump in a taxi and in 15 minutes begin ascent to a more humble but still higher sort of spiritual site. Tucked into the upper folds of Mount Gambo Utse and spanning 250,000 square meters, Drepung Monastery was put into operation in about 1416. In greater days gone the place accommodated more than 7,000 monks and the spiritual directors held sway over vast earthly holdings. This interesting place is rustic in the extreme, and in certain quarters aromatic in a very un-yak-butter-candle sort of way. The gentle residents of Drepung are mostly friendly and the younger monks seem to get a big kick out of digital cameras. And in the shadow of a mountain peak, from within a darkened chamber at the highest point of the compound, after a string of monkly conversation I heard the unmistakable whine of an electric blender in action. I thought: “Monastic Margaritas?” Getting Gone But two days in Lhasa is about all one needs to get a feel for the place. The otherworldly high-altitude terrain is just a grueling back-road run and a few frostbitten fingers away. Beyond Yamdrok-tso Lake, the place presided over by the aforementioned yaks, some jangling hours down snow-packed rocky mountain roads – and past scenery so spectacular it would be pointless to attempt description in the space allowed here – is the outpost town of Gyantse. Formally an important trading center on the routes between India, Sikkim, Bhutan, Tibet and China, here the formidable fortress of Gyantse Dzong masters the mountainside. Here, too, is the ornate and exotic Pelkor Choede Monastery. In operation since 1440, the place comprises 108 chapels on four floors. After touring the monastery, intruding on some chanting monks, downing some roadside noodles and for a while presenting a visual oddity of humanity for the locals to ogle, we headed for the final stop of the day, Shigatse. If the reader visits Tibet’s second largest city, be forewarned that at the better hotels in this town hot showers and in-room heating are not necessarily part of the deal – no matter what the Nepalese desk clerk tells you before he’s got your cash. Heading out of Shigatse the next morning we enjoyed a long stretch of pristine highway. Then, after a first document check at a PLA stop and a second at a police checkpoint, we hit the dirt roads again and began to climb. Finally we rounded a bend, reached a peak and there on the horizon, seemingly magnified by the thin clear air, was the Himalaya Range and our final destination, The Big Rock – Everest. After an appropriate duration of gaping and clicking cameras, with the sun setting and a freezing wind gusting up, we climbed back in the Land Cruiser to begin the long descent. We got about 10 meters before the tire went flat. After the Tibetan driver, Jamdun, and I briefly argued about who would be to blame if we ended up stranded – me for before the trip suggesting that the second spare tire be relocated so as to provide more interior passenger space, or him for actually removing the damn thing from the vehicle entirely – we got to work with the one spare tire we had. Racing the rapidly falling sun and declining temperatures, at pit-stop speed we changed out the bad rubber and that crisis too did pass. And so that evening we made our way for another five hours down winding mountain roads, past three recently capsized trucks and an equal number of disheartened former drivers, to spend a cold and not too sanitary night bunking in a truly remote and primitive village. At dawn the next day, after 48 hours on the road and more than 700 kilometers since leaving Lhasa, we rolled into Base Camp at the foot of Mount Everest. And to the volumes already written about that remarkable structure of nature … what could I possibly add?
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