6/19/07

New Video - the gorgeous landscapes of Gyantse, Tibet - scroll to the bottom of the photos to view...

Today we left Lhasa and followed the course of the river up to the bridge crossing the Tsangpo River, reputed to be the highest river in the world. There we briefly stopped at a prayer flag strewn rock formation overlooking the river that is one of the many Sky Burial sites that I mentioned yesterday. Bizarrely enough, there was a vendor there selling Tibetan trinkets and a woman trying to get money for photos of her yak. After a hairpin turned ascent up the Khampa-la pass (over 16,000 ft altitude), we made it to the summit where there is a gorgeous view of the turquoise color Yamdrok-tzo lake which you can see in the panorama shot (which hopefully looks a little better at home on our widescreen TV). The Chinese are rebuilding the road over the pass so you can only reach the summit before turning around for an alternative route to Gyantse. The top of the pass was pretty crazy with huge tour buses being literally attacked with Tibetan vendors - pretty hilarious. We walked around a bit in the cold and wind looking at the lake and trying to politely ignore the vendors but it was all to much so we hopped in the SUV and headed back down the switchbacks to the valley to continue on to Gyantse.

We followed the river again eventually stopping at the equivalent of a Tibetan truck stop for a marginal lunch of oily fried rice. We met a French couple who were on our same route but eventually heading up to Shanghai where there son works. The woman, who spoke just a little English, came back from the bathroom and Cindy asked how bad it was. She grimaced and shook her hand back and forth, kind of a Tibetan “come si, come sa” thing. Cindy decided to wait.

We took another break in the middle of nowhere in the middle of an incredible panorama of stark, sandy mountains, deep blue skies with puffy white clouds and the winding river. We pulled off the road and walked through a kind of bizarre swampy grassland filled with goats and sheep and some horses. Tenzin and Jayang sat down with a local Tibetan Sheppard for a cigarette break while we marveled at the beautiful but desolate surroundings. A bit further on down the road, we lost the pavement and moved onto the dirt on a bumpy and dusty road. Good thing we have four wheel drive! Again the scenery was awesome as you can see in the shot of the sand dune with the cloudy, blue skies. Off in the distance, we saw what we assumed was the outskirts of Gyantse which ended up being a small little village. As we slowly drove through, we looked around for any signs of a hotel or guesthouse and things looked pretty grim. Luckily, that ended up just being a village and we continued on. And on. And on. We kept thinking that off in the distance we could see Gyantse but each time it ended up being some other little place. Finally, we crossed a bridge and returned to a paved road - yay, no more bouncing around in a dusty car. Well that ended up being the road that goes left to Gyantse and right to Shigatse where we are off to tomorrow. After another 45 minutes, a closed bridge and a bumpy, unpaved river crossing, we pulled into Gyantse.

The hotel was reasonably nice and fairly clean, always a plus, and we ended up going out for dinner and beers on our own. Tenzin sent us to a typical restaurant that caters to people like us who can’t read Tibetan and it was filled with foreigners including the French couple from earlier today. The food wasn’t bad and we ended up watching a movie on the laptop that night for western entertainment.

6/20/07
After breakfast, we headed off to see the Pelkor Chode monastery which was founded in 1418 and houses the world’s largest tiered stupa which is a very impressive building. The shot of the man’s back and boots walking into the monastery we really like just because all over our Buddhist monastery journeys including Bhutan, Sikkim and here in Tibet, the local dress is really cool and not something you really see in the west. How they manage in the winter when it snows, we don’t know…

Inside the main temple of Pelkor is a beautiful, four headed “Sakyamuni” Buddha towering over a room filled with other Buddha, Guru Rimpoche and various other statues, thankas and, most impressively, the really exotic looking books that you see in a couple of the pictures. These books are incredible, written often in Tibetan if translated or Sanskrit if original. The “books” have covers of carved wood and inside very wide and short pages that are beautifully inscribed with the exotic looking alphabets mentioned. Often they are illustrated as well and also have gold leaf painted on top of the characters. Many of these of course were destroyed during the Chinese Cultural Revolution and various other wars and incursions, but many survive or at least the original wood-blocks that printed them do. In general, the monasteries have monks who meticulously repair and repaint the tomes and then wrap them in silk brocade and store them safely. The picture of the ones stacked in cases and covered in yellow silk with red and blue ornamentation are a very typical scene in all of the monasteries. The picture of the old prayer books gives an idea of how antique and large they are (they actually come in a variety of sizes, some small and some huge.)

After the monastery, we walked out into the courtyard to visit the massive, tiered and gold topped Kumbum Stupa. As I mentioned before, this is supposed to be the world’s largest stupa and is really incredible. On each of the tiers, there are small temples covering all four sides of the walls, a total of seventy-seven temples in all (not all of which we visited ;-) Steep, wooden ladder steps lead up to each successively smaller level and you can actually walk all the way up on top of the circular part (not the gold top) where there are four sets of Buddha eyes staring out over the valley. If you read the Bhutan blog and saw those photos, you can see how similar the architecture of the roofs and doors are. Looking out into the valley, you can see the ruins of the old fort (dzong) in the distance which you can actually see in the shot of the small neighborhood. The one shot of the statue and paintings from inside of one of the seventy-seven temples gives an idea of what they are like inside. Some are really richly detailed with paintings and mandalas on the wall and others are a simple statue, all with offerings of scarves and money. A quick stroll through the neighborhood next to the monastery provided some nice views of typical Tibetan village housing. As you can see from the one picture, cow dung is one of the preferred cooking fuels and is abundantly spread on any available wall to dry into a flammable chip. When you live on the Tibetan plateau, there isn’t much in the way of wood…

On the drive to Shigatze, we stopped by a small business that makes Tsampa which is the basic staple of the Tibetan diet and consists of ground barley wheat mixed with water and usually a bit of butter, fat or something to make it a little more palatable. The picture is of a typical, non-electric mill that is driven by water running under the building. Huge circular grindstones are spun by paddles under the building and toasted barley berries are ground into flour which covers everything in side with a fine powder (including my camera!). The proprietor, a funny little portly man, gave us toasted barley to eat (which is actually pretty good as a snack but I wouldn’t want to live on it) and, after we donated some money for our tour, he gave us a bag of Tsampa as a gift. We are not sure what we are going to do with it but Tenzin assured us that there is no better Tsampa than Tibetan Tsampa. Afterwards, the man deftly showed us how to pour some of the barley flour in a bowl, mix in a bit of water and fat and then stir (only with your index finger) before rolling the mush around the bowl (only with your thumb) and turning it into a little, round dough ball which he immediately popped into his mouth for lunch. Pretty fun!

Next stop, Shigatse, home of the Panchan Lama’s Monastery (he is the second “in command” if you can call it that, next to the Dalai Lama.

The hotel is set back from the street, after you go through the entrance, there is a big parking lot, then the hotel itself is there. This is a decent hotel, with electric kettle for tea in the room. Everything was in good working condition, except they did not have internet access at the hotel itself. The business center is an internet cafe just outside the entrance of the hotel, however, it was closed. The restaurant had big murals of mountain scenes, one side of the wall had many (supposedly 100 or so) horses. Dinner was buffet style.

We were met by our two 4WD drivers Tashi and Robu at the hotel this morning, and headed off Gyantse. The 6 of us split into 2 cars or 2 and 4, with our guide sharing the car with the smaller party. Following the Kyi Chu (Lhasa River) to Tsangpo, then ascend to Khampa La (15700'). This took more about 1 hour, then we were looking down at the turquoise water of Yamdrok Lake. It was really pretty. There were many locals with big Tibetan dogs, wearing a fur collar, posing for photos (for a small fee like 5RMB). There were also yaks all dressed up, you can pay for a little ride! When I first saw a photo of montaingirl on travbuddy and dogs at Yomdrok lake, I thought these dogs had real long fur! But these are special collars they put on the dogs to make them look more impressive. I took some photos and also posed with a dog and a yak and its owner. A word on toilet facility here, I have it on good authority from Kristin who had seen LOTS of them on this trip, that the 2RMB entry fee for the port-a-potty toilet here was real deluxe and more than worth it! We will have more to say about toilets later...

Then we headed back the way we came. Because the road past Yamdrok Lake to Gyangze was under construction and closed. Our guide had brought picnics for us, and we had a view of the valley below while we had our lunch. There were many holes around where we sat on the mountain side, supposedly rats or  something similar lived there, but we didn't see any of them.

We decended the pass and headed west. The roads here were still paved, and they had an interesting system for controlling the speed of cars via checkpoints. You get a piece of paper saying when you were at such and such checkpoint, and you can NOT be at the next point before a certain amount of time had passed. So if you drove too fast, you had to wait before you got to the next checkpoint! It's not practical to have highway patrol with speed radars here, so I thought this was a clever system.

At one such stops along the way near a small town, I got out to stretch, and decided to do some yoga. Before I knew it, a bunch of kids had gathered around to watch me, giggling and probably saying what a strange woman I was. Then I took out my small digital camera and snapped a photo of them. They got all excited, and wanted to see it and also wanted to have their photos taken. So I would snap a photo, and showed it to the kids, and they would all giggle and laugh. Then I took out my polaroid camera, and took some more photos of the kids. We even managed to arrange them into a group shot. The wait was over, and we went back on the road before I was completely overtaken by the kids.

We made another stop by a river, where  we saw incense making in progress. This was in fact an incense making factory. They would buy the wood for making incense from far away (not many trees in this part of Tibet!), and they used water power to drive these primitive but effective machines to pound the wood to pulp! The pulp pile would grow and grow to taller than a person. Then they would take the pulp and form them into sticks and dry them by the river bank.

We took a "shortcut" through some village and were in 4WD country. After a while, we saw these huge sand dunes! We stopped and walked on top of the sand dunes, amazed at where all this sand came from. I heard several theories, some said they were carried over the Himalayans by the wind, others said the sands were always here in Tibet, but left over from when it was in the bottom of the ocean! Whatever the source, there were a lot of sand dunes in Tibet and they were very beautiful.

We arrived at the city of Gyangze just before the sun went below the mountains, with its last rays hitting the Dzong  at Gyangze, it was such a great view. We stopped the car on the side of the road, and I attempted severala photos. This was where I dropped my sunglasses, by the time I realized it the next morning, the people who found them in a car behind us had left for Lhasa. Bye bye sunglassses. Luckily Kristin had a spare pair which she generously loaned me so I would not be blinded by the strong lights in Tibet!

We also had a great view of the walls of the Palkor Choide Lamasery before heading into Gyangze.
Gyangze was historically the 3rd largest city in Tibet (after Lhasa and Xigaze). After dinner at the hotel, we took a walk around town, there was not that much in terms of evening entertainment. Although many shops were still open. A woman from a candy store talked to me and she was from the coastal province of my ancestors.  It's a long way for someone to move to Tibet to make a living.

We ask Dong Dzu if the highways are a good thing for Tibet. He reckons it is a very good thing but not really for the local people in the small villages as they are used to dirt roads. They use the highway just as any other dirt road meaning they will chit chat on it or just walk on it, this has led to a decreasing number of locals in the small villages due to fatal car accidents.