Tibet Part 1

Time has been flying and all of a sudden another month of my travels is completed. For the last four weeks I have been traveling with my 19 new overlanding friends through Tibet and into China. I have been struggling to find the best way to share my experiences due to the sheer volume of things to talk about. My emotions during my time in Tibet continually seesawed between the highs of the stunning scenery and amazing people to the lows of witnessing a culture that is struggling to save itself from destruction. In order to fully do justice to both sides I am going to split my writing into two posts. First, the stunning scenery and wonderful people I met along the way.

My mode of travel for the last month has been a Tata transport truck named Daisy that has been converted to carry passengers and all the gear required to turn the remotest piece of land into a fully equipped camp. My fellow passengers were an awesome mix of 19 people of all ages, from all over the world. Our truck was run by two Brits, Helen and Matt. They drove the truck, performed repairs on the side of the road, kept us on schedule and made up plans on the fly when things went horribly wrong. We were also joined by a Chinese guide and a Tibetan guide who dealt with the mountains of red tape, helped us to communicate with the locals and toured us around the local sites.

Our journey began by crossing the Friendship bridge that connects Nepal to Tibet and then climbing endlessly upwards out of the river valley and onto the Tibetan plateau. The entire Tibetan plateau is situated at extreme altitudes so we spent our three weeks there battling the lack of oxygen and extreme swings in temperature. The scenery of Tibet is among my favorite in the entire world. Barren plains and hills with massive Himalayan mountains towering in the background set against the intense blue skies and rolling clouds. I could stare out the window for hours and never tire of the constantly changing backdrop.

Among the many highlights of the journey was visiting Mount Everest. On the Nepalese side it took me 12 days to walk to the base of the mountain. In Tibet it took one day of getting jostled around in the back of the truck on a rough gravel road and a one hour walk to reach the mountain. The scenery along the way was spectacular with snow capped peaks all around. We had a perfectly unobstructed view of Everest itself and as an added bonus we slept near the mountain in big tents heated by a central stove.

Tibet was full of stunning sunsets and my favorite nights were the couple of nights we pulled off the road in remote areas and camped. The nights were freezing and I awoke with thick layers of frost on my tent in the mornings, but the experience of the landscape far outweighed being a little bit cold. Our camps were always a source of interest for the locals and many would stop and check out what we were doing before continuing their journeys.

The other great part of Tibet is the people. It is so relieving to see the degree to which the Tibetan people have maintained their identity despite years and years of policies to destroy it. You can be in the middle of a modern city, but still see people in traditional dress with their hair braided and wearing these beautiful embroidered felt boots. We visited a number of monasteries and temples where people bring offerings of butter and money. There are monstrous cauldrons full of butter with wicks burning inside. The monks are constantly having to scoop butter out to keep the cauldrons from overflowing. Around the perimeters of most monasteries you will find huge groups of people walking clockwise loops called a Kora. One of my favorite things to do in Tibet was to join these walks and just experience the atmosphere. It is always peaceful with only the sound of prayer beads that everyone seems to carry clicking and then low hum of people singing mantras. The Tibetan people are incredibly friendly and even though there weren't many people who spoke English we could always share a huge smile.

When we arrived in Lhasa there was a big festival going on so there were literally thousands of people performing Koras. There are even people that do the route completely by prostration, i.e. laying your body flat to the ground, get up, take on step and repeat. A truly amazing site. Our guides told us that all foreigners were banned from the main places where the festival was taking place, but suspecting that this wasn't true I went anyways. The result was that I wandered around with not a single westerner in site for most of the day and got to experience the festival celebrations alone. These are the kinds of experiences where you just happen to be at the right place at the right time that make traveling so special.

My favorite experience of the trip stemmed from an untimely truck breakdown at a pass that was 5400m high. We were due to spend the night camping about an hour up the road at a much lower altitude. Since the truck couldn't be fixed immediately our leaders decided we would stay where we were and make the best of the situation. We really couldn't have asked for a more beautiful spot to break down with rolling hills and a lake nearby. As we got our camp set up having to carry all the gear down the steep road embankment a hail and snow storm rolled in enveloping us in its wrath. This sent most people on the truck into various states of panic so our Chinese guide managed to arrange for our group to sleep at a nearby teahouse instead of in our tents. Slowly people started hitching rides back to the tea house until there were only five of us left to stay behind with the truck and wait as our leaders tried to change out a fuel injector pump that had no seemingly logical way to be removed.

We had to repack up the entire camp in the cold miserable weather and haul all the gear back up the steep hill to the truck. Normally this would be a simple task, but at 5400m we were all gasping for breath. Then once it was dark and without any progress with the removal defeat had to be admitted. We were able to negotiate with a minibus driver who had an empty bus to take us back to the teahouse. Ten people that didn't want to spend the night at altitude then set out with the minibus driver for an all night drive to the next town where we were due to arrive the next day anyways. With all of the unhappiest people gone there was ten of us left at the teahouse and we had a great evening together laughing at our predicament. We all slept crammed in one room that had some beds, but not enough for everyone. Every inch of the room was covered by a body as we worked out the logistics of sleeping arrangements.

The next morning we returned to our truck and cooked breakfast on the road while we waited for some mechanics to drive 200km from the closest town. By 2pm the truck was finally fixed and we set off on what turned out to be a 16 hour ordeal to get to our next destination. We drove through the bitterly cold night with no heat in the back of the truck and arrived at our hotel at 6am the next morning.

When I finally got into the hotel room I didn't even open my backpack.
I crashed straight into the bed and didn't even bother to change out of my filthy thermal layers that I had been wearing for two straight days and nights. It is sort of strange to count a truck breakdown ad your best experience, but I guess that is the fun of overland travel. You have no idea what is going to happen from one minute to the next.

Our 6am arrival also coincided with us hitting our first Chinese city so I will save my stories of China for a different post. Due to the rocky relationship between China and Google I cannot use any of my Google applications while in China which means I can't upload any photos for awhile unfortunately.