David and Edel

One of nature's greatest spectacles!

After getting off the 47-hour Lhasa-Chengdu train we got a bus straight down to Emei Shan again, to try to be on the top of the mountain for the July 22 (..yes, I’m a bit behind on the blog) solar eclipse the next morning. Chengdu would have been in the path of a total eclipse as well (though not quite as centered as Emei) but we hadn’t really seen any blue skies there – there’s a constant haze in the air, apparently covering the whole province judging by the last few hours on the train back from Tibet. Then again, the last time we were on Emei a couple weeks back it was completely covered in fog the whole time, though we hoped that at 3100 meters above sea level at least the odds should be slightly better for cloud-free views. I’d been a bit afraid of huge crowds descending on the mountain for the day of the eclipse, but we did manage to get a room booked for the night at least. In the morning we got the bus up the mountain before sunrise – with the eclipse scheduled for 9am – and there wasn’t even that many people there for the bus. The bus was extremely slow though, overtaken by all other buses it seemed, and it was well past 8am when we finally got to the cable car stop at 2500m. It was also completely foggy – just like last time, and the queue for the cable car was enormous. I stayed for a couple minutes to judge the speed of the queue, then set off climbing. Edel stayed behind in the queue, and half an hour later when it got dark could witness a thousand people all say “aaaah” at the same time, then try to take photos using flash straight into the glass window of the darkness outside. I hurried on – if I got a few hundred meters higher in time maybe I’d be above the clouds. I met a few people going downhill which seemed a bit odd – come to think of it there were no signs of the eclipse yet..should have been slowly getting darker from about 8am as the disc of the moon moves in to cover more and more of the sun. Then of course, it was so foggy I couldn’t even tell which side of the sky the sun was.. A couple minutes past 9am when I was a hundred meters shy of the mountain top on a path through some forest it got dark, very suddenly, then light again 5-10 minutes later. One of natures greatest spectacles, a once in a lifetime experience, over. The next eclipse this long will be in June 2150.. Sweaty and exhausted I climbed on a bit slower – at least I hadn’t missed it because I didn’t make the top on time which would probably have been more annoying – the summit was covered in the same thick fog as the rest of the mountain, same as two weeks before. When Edel caught up after the cable car half an hour later we couldn’t even really see the big golden statue and temples at the top through the thick milky soup.

Incense burning on top on Emei Shan.

Determined to make the trip worth it we spent some interesting time at the top with first class people spotting – the crazy western pagan sun-worshippers sitting and chanting in one of the temples (blocking the way for the real Buddhists trying to make the clockwise circumnavigation), the disappointed-looking space enthusiasts who had flown in from all over the world with big expensive gyroscope-stabilized telescopes, and the even more disappointed-looking tour groups all wearing identical “Mount Emei Eclipse 2009” T-shirts… All westerners – Chinese tourists didn’t actually seem to bother at all with the eclipse which surprised me. We shared a bus down with some of the tour group people – they didn’t say a word the whole way down..felt really sorry for them. At the lowest stop we hopped off the bus to walk some of the paths we had missed when we climbed the mountain two weeks earlier – some very nice bamboo forest on the lower slopes and many more little temples and monasteries hidden in the forest. Next morning we caught a bus for Chengdu and train for Xi’an, will cover this in the next post.

Prayer wheels by Namtso lake at 4700m.

We flew in to Lhasa in Tibet at 3700 meters, and spent the first day taking it easy to get used to the altitude. Lhasa today looks like any other modern booming Chinese city, and in most areas there’s little to remind you that you’re in Tibet at all if you’re not in view of the Potala palace. The exception is Barkhor, a Tibetan quarter where the old buildings have survived, and we checked in to a hostel nearby together with our two Austrian travel buddies for the next 8 days. Even nearly 60 years on the area still feels like occupied territory, soldiers in riot gear with automatic weapons on the street corners, roof-tops, and marching up and down the Tibetan quarter. We walked around the souvenir stalls and markets of Barkhor in the evening before starting proper sightseeing the next day. Outside the Jokhang temple in Barkhor pilgrims from all over Tibet were prostrating and praying, a few even prostrating themselves the whole length of the kora around town. Barkhor was fairly crowded with tourists (we had failed our usual policy of always timing off-season), probably 90-95% Chinese domestic tourists plus a few westerners – similar to what we saw in Leshan and Mount Emei and again same as there many of the Chinese tourists like travelling in big groups all following a person with a flag and megaphone.

In the Jokhang monastery in Lhasa.

We started the second day with visiting the Potala palace, former home of the Dalai Lama and Tibetan government as well as monastery, now turned into a kind of museum with about 50 of the 1,000 rooms open to tourists. Visits by foreigners is one thing that’s gotten stricter since our guidebook was printed – you’re allocated a timeslot of 60 minutes to cover the inside together with your guide (entrance to any Lhasa monastery, or simply being anywhere outside Lhasa, requires an official guide since the Olympics), and there’s an airport-style checkin with bag x-rays and no water bottles allowed. The palace was built in the 1100’s, and unlike most of Tibets monuments survived the Cultural Revolution quite well – the Norbulingka summer palace for example was converted into an army store-house. The monuments and sculptures inside, in memory of various lamas or Indian scholars or the present or future Buddha, are amazingly impressive – some covered with several tonnes of leaf gold, but the place feels like an empty shell with big tour groups rushing through and the caretaker monks not allowed to wear their robes etc. I felt a pang of sadness when we passed by the Dalai Lamas small bed-and-study room, recalling his memoirs where he talked of being an undisciplined young student as a child, climbing around on his mentors telling them to recite instead. They’ll never allow him to return. Outside in the gardens surrounding Potala, as a final humiliation, they’re pumping out Chinese music on loudspeakers everywhere and you can rent a duck-shaped paddle-boat to go on the lake.. Many pilgrims still do come and complete a kora around the palace (and at least they don’t have to pay full entrance fee to go inside) – the walk in front of the palace passes by a big “People’s Park” concrete square built just across the road, with a monument celebrating the moment of Tibet’s “liberation”, when hundreds of thousands of Tibetans were liberated from their earthly existence.

Outside Drepung monastery.

After Potala we went to the Jokhang monastery in Barkhor. More atmospheric than Potala, with pilgrims (some looking like they travelled for weeks over the mountains to get there) scooping yak butter into the big butter lamps burning inside the monastery or leaving small bills of money by each statue. It still had the big noisy tour groups as well though. Next day – more monasteries! First the Drepung which sits on top a hill 8km from Lhasa, it was once the worlds largest monastery with 10,000 monks – a few hundred are allowed to study there today. Things have improved in general in Tibet starting in the 80’s with many monasteries now being restored or rebuilt after having been flattened during the Cultural Revolution, and are now allowed to take in a small percentage of the number of monks who used to live there – provided they denounce the Dalai Lama and devote part of their study time to political party propaganda.. From Drepung we walked down the hill to Nechung monastery. Visiting so many monasteries they do risk blending in to each other after a while, but this one does stick out. Spookily decorated with demons and horrors of another world, it was once home to Drakden the state oracle of Tibet.

Monks debating in the Sera monastery.

Next day: Sera monastery – here we saw monks debating in a courtyard in the special traditional style including a handclap to punch in each argument. It was a bit of a tourist spectacle as they were surrounded by people snapping away on their cameras, but of course I was one of them. Here’s a picture 🙂

Next day we took a short break from monasteries to go to Namtso lake 230 km from Lhasa – the lake lies at 4700m altitude and the highest pass on the way was 5150m – we did feel the altitude a bit on the way. The lake is absolutely stunning, incredibly blue as it reflects the bright Tibetan skies. We spent an hour or so taking photos and walking by the lake, and huffing and puffing our way up a hill filled with prayer flags nearby for even bigger views. Lunch by the lake was interesting, possibly the worst English we’ve seen on a menu so far, combined with some for us somewhat unusual ingredients..”Sliced Pork’s Guts“, “Cooled Pork’s Forgive“, “Roofs with vine gal sauce“, “Saeef snshewnufs” (maybe something with cashewnuts?). We went for the vegetarian option this time.. On the way back we got stuck in some road-works with a mile-long queue and our driver decided to test the off-road option with just one big river to cross – luckily a government vehicle had already “tested the waters” and gotten itself stuck about 2 meters after leaving the river bank. The water was up to the windshield and three people were stuck sitting on the roof – looked quite dangerous as the river was way too fast to swim even if they knew how to. A crowd had gathered on each side, with ropes and helpful ideas – we were on the opposite bank so could do nothing – our driver and guide sat down with some tea to watch! Eventually the three were rescued in the scoop of a big yellow digger, then they set out to rescue the car. This was done using of a method of lifting the car very high with the digger then dropping it front first into the river several times.. It didn’t look particularly effective, but did provide us with some entertainment for the hour or so we were waiting for the road to open. Once it finally did open the first vehicles to be let through were a hundred-long convoy of military trucks going the opposite direction..

Yak by Namtso lake.

At the top of the Gyantse Kumbum.

Next day we started early to begin making our way towards Everest base-camp over the next couple days, stocking up on snacks in the “Family of supermarket common people” store next-door before setting off in the jeep. We passed another big bright-blue high-altitude lake Yamdrok Tso at 4800m, before climbing through several 5000m passes. In general we were surprised how green it was this high up in Tibet – when we were up around 5000m in Bolivia and Peru on the last trip there was almost nothing but desert, but here there is grass, flowers, yaks and herds of sheep looked after by hardy nomads. We stopped in a town called Gyantse on the way, to look at another monastery and climb their gigantic Gyantse Kumbum stupa. There’s around 100 small chapels inside the stupa as you climb the many levels to the top, where you are level with the Buddha eyes looking out over the landscape. Gyantse also has a hill-top fort with an “Anti-British Imperialist Museum” from when they invaded in 1904 (46 years before China), but it was unfortunately closed. From Gyantse we continued on to Shigatse, making a short stop on the way at a water-powered mill making barley flower for the national dish tsampa. After a night in Shigatse we continued on to Everest Basecamp (EBC) the next day, passing several more high passes. One – Lhakpa La at 5270m – is the highest we’ve been anywhere to date. A later pass had good views towards Mount Everest and several more 8000 meter peaks – long serpentine roads after this point started to remind a little of Spiti valley in India three months ago, though the roads or the drops to the side were never as bad here. Actually all the roads until the turnoff to EBC from the “Nepal Friendship Highway” had surprisingly been paved. But while the roads are good what takes time are all the military checkpoints along the way…

Edel at 5000 meter.

We stopped in a tent camp four kilometers from EBC in the evening to spend the night – our first time sleeping above 5000m. I’d been slightly nervous about this – when we hit 4000m the first time on the last trip, in Potosi in Bolivia, we had a miserable first night..the slight feeling of suffocation just when falling asleep as there’s just not enough air in the air..but slept really great this night – must have been well acclimatized by now. The night was cold outside, and with a fantastic clear star-filled sky. We tried yak butter tea in the evening – very unlike anything else that bears the name tea.. It’s salty and so fatty that it feels like you just put on lip balm after a sip. One cup is quite enough, though it wasn’t as horrid as the guide-books had made it out to be. Gave tsampa a test also – it’s the national dish made from barley flour mixed with anything that’s wet..water, beer, or most often yak butter tea, then rolled into balls and eaten with the hands. Quite nice, a little bit peanutty in taste..

Cloudy view towards Everest from the base camp.

North face of Mount Everest.

Next morning we started before sunrise to walk the final stretch to the main basecamp – while the altitude gain is less than 200m it was quite a bit of work. Once there the view towards Everest clouded over immediately..though we waited around in the cold long enough for the clouds to part as the sun rose higher. Absolutely amazing views from a small hill filled with prayer flags by the basecamp, looking up on the worlds highest mountain with another 3-4 kilometers to go to the top. On the way back we stopped at Rongbuk monastery, also the worlds highest at 4980m, where the monks enjoy living with the view towards the north face of Everest towering in the south. Next: more monasteries. Back on the road returning to Shigatse we made a detour to the Sakya monastery. Originally the town held two monasteries, but the northern one which was founded in 1073 was completely destroyed during the Cultural Revolution..the ruins can still be seen across the river from the roof of the now restored southern monastery. This one is from the 1200’s, Mongolian in style so stick out from the other monasteries we’ve seen.

Monastery yak butter lamp.

In Shigatse in the evening after dinner (dahl baht – found a place with Nepali food!) our two travelling companions Sascha and Remy got stuck in a police raid in an internet cafe! The police took about half of the people in there with them.. Internet everywhere in China is filtered of course, blogspot and facebook etc. blocked always and BBC blocked depending on what news stories they’re running at the moment, and maybe access is extra sensitive in Tibet. The main monastery in Shigatse – the Tashilumpo – was to have a big ceremony with the Panchen Lama in two days..could be the reason security was extra tight? We definitely saw a lot of police and military on the streets anyway. The Panchen Lama line has had it difficult, with the 10th one in prison and tortured for over a decade in the 60-70’s after criticizing the conditions in Tibet, and when some years after he died in -89 the Dalai Lama identified his reincarnation this boy and his family immediately disappeared and he was replaced with a Chinese choice..he still hasn’t been seen and the boy is often called the worlds youngest political prisoner. The Panchen Lama that would be visiting the monastery the day after us was of course the Chinese choice, and he’s not generally seen as genuine by the Tibetan people – however the military will make sure at least some people go to see the ceremony… Apart from the tragic background the Tashilumpo monastery (our 9th in Tibet) was very impressive – one building housing a 26-meter golden statue of Maitreya, and atmospheric with monks tending yak butter lamps and pilgrims donating butter and small notes. It always kills it a little for me when I see the monks counting money though..carrying around big buckets of notes or sit around in the chapels counting them.

Once back in Lhasa we had time for a final stroll in Barkhor and a yak burger before leaving on the 47-hour train the next day. Had gotten pretty fond of yak meat at this stage, having tried it in almost every form; yak steak, yak burger, yak dumplings, yak sizzler and yak enchiladas (try to come up with a food-combination further-apart than Tibet-Mexico!). It’s good meat, tasty and without too much fat (..very much unlike the yak butter tea), but I always have to tell myself that the particular restaurant we’re eating in probably didn’t buy it from one of the open-air butchers we see on the street everywhere, sometimes with someone sitting there waving a stick+cloth to keep the flies away, sometimes not..

The city of Chengdu in China felt very modern when we arrived; streets without garbage, taxis that run by the meter, seat-belts, mini-skirts – all the hallmarks of great civilization :). Also, like when we arrived in Malaysia from Indonesia on the last trip; suddenly we found we’re not famous any more! No-one takes any notice of us when we walk on the street, no-one trying to hassle us or us sell us anything every few meters. We checked in to Sim’s Cozy Guesthouse in Chengdu which is probably the most helpful place we stayed anywhere – seemed like they had a folder prepared for anything anyone ever asked them. For example we needed to get Edel’s camera fixed and asked if there was a camera shop nearby – while asking us which brand she opened a folder, looked up the address and printed us a Google Map, plus called the place to check if anyone there spoke English! The guesthouse also had lots of little stickers prepared with “please take me to x bus-station/monument” written in Chinese for all sights in the area as neither cab drivers nor anyone else usually speak a single word of English. A couple of times when we tried to take a taxi, even with pointing to the destination on a map and having the address written in Chinese we still couldn’t make ourselves understood..the stickers came in handy.

Dafo's ears are 7 meter long!

We organized a Tibet trip through the hostel as well, together with a couple Austrian travellers we met, and then had a week to spare while all the permits were getting sorted out. The first couple days of this we spent in Chengdu enjoying the good food and visiting some Zen temples Sichuan cooking is very heavy on chilli and oil, and another potent spice called a Sichuan pepper which numbs the whole mouth if used on it’s own but they usually just put in a lot more red chillies to “take the edge off”. We had hotpot one evening with meat, bamboo, mushrooms and vegetables to cook at the table – picking the least fiery option but the pot was still completely covered in red chillies. So nice it almost made me cry..

Qingyin Ge pavilion in the foothills of Mount Emei.

From Chengdu we headed down to Leshan and Mount Emei for a few days. Leshan is the home of Dafo, a 71 meter stone Buddha carved out from the riverside sandstone cliffs between 713-803AD. There is also a nice monastery overlooking the river, though with plenty more temples, monasteries and pagodas to see along the way when climbing nearby Mount Emei next we were perhaps starting to risk getting templed out (..not a good idea before going to Tibet!). Again we had trouble communicating with the cab drivers, and I was miming paddling a canoe to explain we wanted to go to the boats to go look at the giant Buddha. Emei Shan is a 3100 meter mountain covered in bamboo and forest, and possibly almost as many temples as there are trees – it’s been a Taoist and Buddhist pilgrimage site for two thousand years. We meant to climb it over 2 days, catching the bus in the morning to the starting point at 640m – you can actually take the same bus almost the whole way to the top though, and a cable car the rest of the way, but much of what is nice is the forest, monasteries and views as you climb up. Except it turned out we didn’t really have any views – the mountain was covered in thick white fog, thicker and thicker the higher we got. The first part of the trail, between the two lower bus stops, was pretty crowded and littered with souvenir stalls – most of the tourists Chinese and travelling in large tour groups each following a person with a flag and a megaphone.. Higher up past the Wannian Si monastery it was more peaceful and we had the path practically to ourselves.

Foggy forest on Emei Shan.

Stepping into the fog on Emei Shan.

The path the whole way up the mountain is laid out with stone stairs – seemingly endless particularly when the distant end of each flight disappears into the fog. We met the odd person on this section as well, and many of them started talking away to us in Chinese – it seems half assumed you must know at least a little bit, after all, it is the worlds biggest language! When buying lunch after Wannian Si in a tiny place with four plastic chairs I ordered by pointing at some ingredients and hoping from the best. In the evening when we got to the Xixiang Si monastery at 2070m where we planned to spend the night we could order from a menu though. Other facilities however were more basic..the toilets were very “social” – a long line of squat toilets with partitions only half a meter high, dropping straight to the mountain slope below. Showers were a bit social too – partitioned but not fully – when I looked up after rinsing the soap from my face an old Chinese man was standing there just looking at me..he started talking away in Chinese to me of course. Breakfast the next morning was also eventful – we were raided by a hoard of macaques! I heard two other western tourists screaming – the monkeys were attacking on two fronts through the doors and trying through the broken windows on the other side. One woman working in the kitchen was feeding them, while an older man was chasing them away with a slingshot….no wonder they’re messed up! On the way back to the room our path was blocked by one of them – I walked towards it and tried to frighten it off with a loud step, shout and hands in the air. He called my bluff. Making a fast mock attack running towards me with canine teeth bared..I retreated.

Macaque on breakfast hunt.

We weren’t bothered by them later on the path though, and they didn’t take any food from us, but we did see many signposts along the path warning about them. Other interesting signposts repeated everywhere along the path were “Socialist Viewpoints about Honor and Disgrace“, and a list of “Ten Do’s, Ten Don’ts” that included “Don’t operate illegally“, “Don’t discount illegally” and “Don’t put disorderely“. We didn’t see a single map over the network of trails on the mountain though…you might get horribly lost and wander the forest for days but at least you’ll know the socialist principle that “hard work and struggle is an honor“!

Edel finding a temple in the fog.

Our second day started just as foggy as the first – once we got to 2540m we decided to cheat and take the cable car the last bit of the way to the Golden Summit as there were few views anyway. In the delightful mix of broken English and nationalistic exaggerations that we were getting used to seeing everywhere by now the ticket promised it to be the “most greatest cable car in the world“. At the top the fog was so thick that we couldn’t even see the enormous golden statue of the Puxian Bodhisattva and his six-tusked elephants even while standing right at the very base of it. It was quite atmospheric in a way though, the golden and silver temples at the top revealing only their silhouette until you walked really close. When we eventually took the worlds most greatest cable car down again the fog actually cleared for a moment for the first time in two days, just as we left the summit!

Giant Panda eating bamboo.

Back in Chengdu with one day to spare before Tibet we visited a Giant Panda Breeding Research Base to see some cuddly teddies munching bamboo. There’s only just over 1,000 left in the wild, and this center has had some success in boosting numbers. Observing them at the center, clumsily nearly falling down from trees, and reading about them in the breeding programme being frightened of and attacking their newborn (which is almost as small and helpless as that of the marsupials) you kind of wonder how they survived at all..even before there were people around to cut down half their habitat in a couple decades they would have needed to survive things like tigers.. Fantastic they did make it this far though, as they’re just adorable. Other iconic Chinese animals haven’t been so lucky, the Chinese river dolphin or Baiji, the “drowned river princess” of countless ancient legends, went extinct last year as the waters of the Yangzi river stop being able to support life.

Pandas in the Giant Panda Breeding Research Base north of Chengdu.

After leaving Chitwan we went to Kathmandu to try to organize somehow getting into Tibet. All information we had found so far, from guidebooks, the internet and other travellers, had been contradictory. You can travel Tibet independently, or you can only go as part of a group tour, or you have to book something that’s officially a tour, but once you reach Lhasa the group splits and everyone can travel independently from there. And you should definitely have your Chinese visa before you get to Nepal, or you have to organize everything in Kathmandu, or the Chinese embassy in Kathmandu cannot issue any Chinese visas only a special Tibet travel permit. One person even told us that the Kathmandu embassy would cancel any Chinese visa you already have in your passport if you apply for a Tibet permit there!

A selection of all of these are true at any moment, and all have probably been true at some point. Rules get stricter any time there’s protests or around sensitive dates like anniversary of uprisings or the Dalai Lama’s birthday.. Any hope of independent travel is gone since the 2008 Olympics (..what a great idea that was). What is true at the moment seems to be that the Kathmandu embassy only issue 15 or 21 day special Tibet travel permits, and will indeed rip out any Chinese visa that you already have in your passport without giving you your money back. The Kathmandu travel agents we talked to confirmed this, but told us that you can travel on to China from Tibet on the permit, which seems to be true, and that you can get a new Chinese visa easily once there, which doesn’t seem to be true..searching on the internet it seems you get stranded without visa and need to quickly catch an expensive flight to Hong Kong and back to get one…

The other option would be to travel to China first, then get to Tibet from there – in this case we wouldn’t get the visa we spent 5 days in Delhi applying for destroyed (the visa we made sure not to mention Tibet on the “proposed itinerary” for; if you do you’re unlikely to get one). For going to Tibet from China as a foreigner you need a different Tibet travel permit, and also an “Alien travel permit”, and possibly a “Military permit” – the first one is valid for Lhasa only, the second for Everest Basecamp and the “Friendship Highway” to Nepal, and for visiting monasteries around Lhasa – the last is needed if going far west to Mount Kailash or other special areas – many areas are of course offlimit no matter the permit..and you need to have a fixed detailed itinerary outlined before applying for any of them..listing anywhere unusual means you’re less likely to get the permits. And you cannot apply for them yourself, it has to go through an official travel company that your booking the trip with, and once inside Tibet you need to have your guide with you always (apart from some areas inside Lhasa).

We calculated that even spending 800 euro on the flights from Kathmandu to Chengdu in China and then backtrack to Tibet would probably be better than organizing the trip from the Nepal side, loosing our visa and probably have to make a quick exit from China to Hong Kong to get a new one. Ironically the flight makes one technical stop – in Lhasa! We’re sitting on the tarmac for an hour in the place we’re trying to get to but aren’t allowed..before flying on to Chengdu and spending a week organizing permits to get back to where we just were! 😡

Al least in the old days all you had to do to reach Tibet was several weeks of extremely hard trekking over the mountains…

Temple at the Taumadhi Tol square in Bhaktapur.

Our other hobbies in Kathmandu included enjoying the western comforts; pizza, cappuccino and ice cream, though the city isn’t as nice in general as Pokhara. Big and polluted – the deep valley makes the fumes from the traffic hang around for long, and gasoline and diesel is illegally “cut” with cheaper kerosene by the tanker trucks and pumping stations making exhaust fumes many times worse..it’s a while since the mountains around the valley could be seen with the eye. One day we hopped on the bus to go to the Bhaktapur traditional village in the Kathmandu outskirts. It’s a Unesco world heritage site with all the houses built in traditional pink brick and carved wood decorations. There’s enough temples, courtyards and palaces to spend a nice day strolling around, although being so close to the capital it’s heavily touristed and some children on the street actually greeted us with our full tourist names: “Hello Money“!

The views from the flight to Chengdu a couple days later were fantastic – Tibet from the air and when crossing the border we managed to spot Mount Everest sticking up from the clouds.

The Boudhanath stupa in Kathmandu.