Tibet

by Neil Harris

After much conscience searching I chose to go to Tibet. What would I find? Before flying to Lhasa from Kathmandu we were warned that a French couple who flew in with the latest Lonely Planet in their baggage were turned away, so that had to go (it contains a foreword by the Dalai Lama). So freedom of speech was off the agenda then!

Prayer Flags

We landed at Lhasa Airport. The group I was with (getting an individual visa is tricky at present) had to line up in the order of the group visa, then slowly progress through immigration. When my turn came the officer proved to be friendly; he was interested that I had been through Lhasa two days before as an emigration stamp in my passport showed I had exited China when I had flown TChengdu to Kathmandu via Lhasa. The baggage search proved cursory, only a couple of bags being chosen, but they all had to go through an X-ray machine.

The lack of oxygen was immediately apparent at the c12500ft altitude (c. 65-70% of the oxygen at sea level), as we walked to our coach. I was surprised by how much vegetation there was, trees everywhere, golden fields of barley, not what I had expected.

First stop Tsetang: the countryside looked Tibetan as did the houses. However, Tsetang had a Han feel about it, especially the shops. The hotel was a typical Chinese 3 star, the condoms in the bathroom (a feature of many Chinese hotels) indicating Chinese businessmen using the hotel. Some expect extra services, as evidenced by the bar on the same floor as my bedroom.

The next day we were to visit Samye Monastery. This involved catching a local flat-bottomed ferry to cross the vast Bramaputra River (here known as the Tsangpo). We shared with locals; all Tibetan. A short local bus ride on the other side and we were at Samye monastery. There was an event happening. Officials (many Han), monks and ‘hard hats’ were sitting on benches listening to an official (Han). Apparently a recent restoration was being celebrated. In Tibet you are never quite sure if a monastery has been rebuilt, as much was destroyed in and around the Cultural Revolution. For photographs in the various prayer halls a hefty fee is charged; it varies but may be up to £10. This, alas, goes to the Chinese government, not the monastery.

The sound of Tibetan music (to my ears not very tuneful) was coming from outside the main monastery, so I investigated. It turned out some monks were performing a local dance (the Dro) in celebration of the ‘refurbishment’... to much interest from the locals. Lunch was taken in the monastery restaurant; pleasant enough food, but very basic facilities, so basic that I had to listen to an elderly Tibetan straining over the adjacent ‘hole in the ground’; the barrier between us was only knee high, and as for the smell... Basic facilities are the norm in Tibet away from tourist hotels and restaurants, some do not even make the grade as basic. Outside the monastery there were a number of solar stoves with attached kettles. They use the power of concentrated sunshine to boil water as solid fuel is in short supply, very ecologically sound.

The ferry ride back was enlivened by an adjacent ferry carrying monks and locals in party mood, perhaps brought on by local hooch; giggling accompanied the slipping and sliding as they got off.

Potala Palace steps

Next stop was Lhasa, reached via a tunnel, as the capital city and the airport are in adjacent valleys. The Potala Palace had featured on my ‘must see’ list for a long time. Would I be disappointed? First impressions are of a modern city in the Han style. The main shopping street has a similar feel to Oxford or Regent Street; however, the Tibetans still a have few areas where their life style is maintained, especially around the Jokhang.

The Summer Palace (the Norbulingka), where the Dalai Lama, unsurprisingly, spent the summer months was the first site we visited. The Chinese would have you believe that main state rooms are as left by the DL when he fled to India in 1959, with fifties furniture and some personal effects. Given the intervening Cultural Revolution, this seems unlikely. To visit the Potala Palace requires a booking; as a group you are allocated an hour slot. The climb to the entrance, perhaps 300ft, quickly tests your lungs and your legs. The chances are that after visiting Tibet you will come back a fitter person. The inside of the palace is a ‘no photo’ zone, and again we are led to believe that it has largely remained in aspic since 1959. The next major site is the Jokhang; the most revered building in Tibetan Buddhism. As a foreign tourist one is allowed to queue jump the pilgrims lining up to file through, passing myriad prayer halls before climbing up to the roof. This is a great place to view the prostrating pilgrims on the western side on the building where there is a large square. It is patrolled by the Red Army (rebranded into the People's Liberation Army in the 90s), groups of five young soldiers armed with rifles and riot gear perambulate around (no photos or your holiday could be quickly curtailed) showing the locals who is in charge in no uncertain terms. Tibetans circulate around the Jokhang, this kora is normally done three times in a clockwise direction, the most popular route is around 800m and lined by shops and stalls selling souvenirs aimed as much at locals as tourists. This is the real Lhasa now submerged under the Han yoke. Thanks to Michael Palin, Sera Monastery is now a Lhasa ‘must see’; around 5km outside the city, it is famous for debating monks. Most afternoons, monks assemble in groups in the debating garden to argue the finer points of Tibetan Buddhism. This is often done loudly with attitude. Tourists may outnumber the monks, though.

New Llasa

Around 70 kms from Lhasa is Ganden Monastery, the road to it snakes up from the plain in a series of hairpin bends. It has a reputation for causing trouble; there is even a ‘Police Station’ on site. The setting is spectacular, a great place to complete a kora around the monastery.

After Lhasa we headed west along the road that runs to the north of the Himalayas, eventually going into Nepal through the Chesum Gorge. The road has been built by the Chinese, no expense spared. I was reminded of The Life of Brian:

‘What have the Romans done for us?’

‘Well there's the roads...’

‘OK, apart from the roads?’

‘There's the schools...’

Life for the average Tibetan was horrendously hard before the Chinese arrived. Most were effectively serfs, while a small minority had a relatively good life as the land owning aristocracy. It seems to me that Tibetans have gained materially, but lost spiritually. The idea that they have lost freedom under the Chinese is probably a little false. How much did the average Tibetan have beforehand? I am not a fan of the Chinese takeover, but it is not as one-sided as many in the West would like you to believe.

A number of high passes have to be negotiated on the way west to Gyantse (Tibet's third largest city at around 8000 souls), the highest, Karo La, is over 5000m (c16400ft), alas it was sleeting with poor visibility as we arrived. There is an outside pool table (perhaps the highest in the world) here, although sleet had stopped play. Karo La was the scene of the highest recorded battle in British history during Younghusband's expedition to Tibet in May 1904.

Gyantse also features on Younghusband's CV. The fort, atop a lung bursting hill, was stormed by his army in July 1904 leading to the award of a VC for a British Officer. The fort (or dzong) is not in the best state of repair but affords great views of the valley. The barley harvest was being brought in, the staple that has kept Tibet fed for centuries. Pelkor Chode monastery is the other sight visible from the vantage point, the highlight of which is the Kumbum, a nine-floored pagoda-like building that contains 76 chapels. To reach the monastery we had to walk through the old town, still recognisably Tibetan with dung drying on walls, perhaps indicating a basic lifestyle. Again, the main street was new with Han owned shops for the most part; the feeling that Tibetans were being marginalised was reinforced.

The next day we headed to Shigatse, stopping at a farmhouse on the way. This was a good insight into how rural Tibetans live. Set around an internal courtyard, an extended family lived here. The farm would have been largely self-sufficient in days gone by. The scenery was more fecund than most would expect of Tibet; barley fields are present where the land permits cultivation, trees are quite numerous. It was not the desert I was expecting, although further north, where few live, rainfall drops off to leave little but parched plateau.

The main site in Shigatse is Tashilhunpo monastery. It contains bejewelled tombs of previous Pachen Lamas and a very photogenic courtyard outside a large prayer hall. Shigatse Dzong is not all it seems though. At first sight it appears to be an ancient imposing fort, but it was actually rebuilt between 2005 and 2007 by the Chinese. The original was dismantled, stone by stone, by hundreds of Tibetans as a punishment inflicted by the Chinese in 1961.

Gyatso Pass Public Toilets

The next day involved a long and arduous drive west, the scenery helping to pass the time, plenty of geology in the raw, along with the odd high pass. The highest being Gyatso Pass at 5248m (c. 17,200ft). It was covered in a thin layer of snow. This did not stop a few trinket sellers from setting up shop. This pass marks the start of Qomolangma National Park (or, in English, the Everest National Park). There is a public toilet here; the cubicles (a slight exaggeration) had snow drifts in them. Could this be the highest in the world?

It was now downhill to Tingri, a grubby little village that afforded a basic hotel for the night. Its selling point is views of Everest: alas, too much cloud prevented us seeing it, although we got views of Cho Oyu, at 8201m the sixth highest mountain in the world. Late September at around 14,000ft in Tibet, this close to the Himalayas can be very raw. There was a biting wind with thunder approaching.

A very early start the next day saw us drive to Nepal via the spectacular Chesum Gorge, before that though we had to go over another 5000m pass, alas in the dark missing the views to Everest.

We hit gridlock in Zhangmu, the town on the Tibetan side of the border. The problem being trucks going in two directions on a narrow road through the town, this made narrower by cars parked with no regard to obstruction of traffic: surprisingly unorganised for China. We ended up walking the six miles to the Friendship Bridge that marks the border; luckily this was largely downhill.

One of the main reasons that China wants Tibet (the historical grounds quoted by the Chinese seem rather flaky as they choose the point in history that suits them) is its potential for resources. Tibet has oil and other valuable minerals, the reason the railway was built all the way to Lhasa. Will they ever give it up? In one word, no.

First published in VISA 98 (Aug 2011)

Ten Days in Tibet

by Helen Krasner 

I had wanted to go to Tibet since I was ten years old. That was when I read Heinrich Harrer's bestseller, Seven Years in Tibet, in which he tells of escaping from a prison camp in India, walking across the Tibetan plateau in winter and finally being one of the first Westerners to reach Lhasa, the Forbidden City - where he eventually became friend and confidant to the young Dalai Lamna. I had childishly yearned to follow in Harrer's footsteps. But times change. In the 1950s, the Chinese invaded Tibet, bringing roads and machinery and other trappings of "progress", destroying temples and monasteries and changing the age-old culture forever. In 1959, the Dalai Lama fled to India where he set up the Tibetan Government in exile. Tibet was closed to foreigners for many years and my vague plans for walking across the Himalayas to get in were hardly practical. But, since 1986, tourists have been allowed in on a limited basis and I finally scraped together the cash needed by Chinese-inflated prices for a trip to "The Roof of the World".

"Are you going trekking?" I was asked continuously when I told friends I was going to Tibet. No, I told them, it was a cultural tour. I hoped that I was right and that Tibetan culture still existed. At first, at least, I was not disappointed. On the drive to Lhasa from the airport, we stopped at a small temple, where I was surprised to see photos of the Dalai Lama on display; I believed they had been outlawed. The Tibetan tour guide shrugged. "When the police come they take them down; when they go, the monks put them back," she told us. Perhaps things were not as bad as I'd heard.

But in Lhasa? It is slowly becoming more Chinese, with wide roads, modern buildings and a huge square in front of the Potala Palace (built in 1994) epitomising the Chinese mania for hugeness and open spaces. Only the centre of Lhasa, the Barkhor, is still Tibetan. There were weird and wonderfully dressed pilgrims from all four corners of Tibet prostrating themselves in front of the Jokhang temple; stalls selling lumps of turquoise, yak fur coats, prayer wheels and carpets; and everywhere the smell of slightly rancid yak butter and a steady hum of the devout chanting "Om Mani Padme Hum" ("Hail to the Jewel in the Lotus").

Yet, even in the Barkhor, the Chinese army are everywhere in evidence, stationed every hundred yards or so, watching. I had heard that Tibetans live in fear, afraid to talk politics or fraternise with foreigners. This was confirmed by a political discussion with an English speaking Tibetan outside the Norbulingka, the summer palace. He confirmed that Tibetans trust nobody but close family; the Chinese pay informers well and people are poor. They can be jailed for little or no reason. Nevertheless, he assured me, "I believe that ninety per cent of Tibetans have courage." When alone, they do not use the Chinese language and do what they can to keep their religion and culture alive.

But they can do painfully little. Chinese Immigration increases yearly, with high salaries and bonuses promised to those Chinese who will relocate to Tibet. All education is in Chinese and jobs for Tibetans are hard to find. My conversation with this brave man - who was taking an incredible risk - ended when a van appeared. Hearing all this is a great shock, even if one has read about it.

In our few days in Lhasa we visited the Potala palace, ransacked by the Chinese but now restored, the two largest monasteries - where the monks are now back and practising their religion - and a number of other sights. We ate Tibetan food and drank the famous butter tea - quite palatable if you think of it as soup rather than tea and, I'm sure, excellent in winter. We talked with people and bargained for trinkets and took innumerable photos, for it is an incredibly photogenic country. Then, on the fifth day, we piled on to our bus for an overland trip back to Nepal, via Gyantse and Shigatse, Tibet's other two cities.

Tibet is a land of superlatives, with the highest mountains, deepest gorges, driest climate - the list is endless. Virtually the whole of the Tibetan plateau is over 10,000 feet. Llasa, at 12,000 feet, is in a valley, though this did not prevent mild symptoms of altitude sickness - suffered by almost all visitors. Our trip took us over a pass, down multi-coloured mountains to a huge turquoise lake, up through a number of over 17,000 feet passes, past villages, nomad encampments and farmers with their yaks. We were on the main road, the "Friendship Highway"; it is a dirt track often blocked by rubble and landslides. Fifteen miles an hour was our best average and I was reminded that Tibet didn't even have the wheel until the Chinese came. We took photos of Everest from three different places. It was dry, dusty, exhilarating, exhausting, but never boring.

On the last day, we drove through a gorge with sheer drops into endless nothingness, where both the river below and the tops of the mountains above were almost invisible. We dropped over 10,000 feet in twelve hours from dry dusty desert to humid rain forest and our bodies and lungs protested. 150 people had died building this road. It is narrow and dangerous and frequently impassable due to landslides. It is incredible simply by being there at all.

We spent our last night in Tibet in Zhangmu, seven kilometres from the border. The town clings perilously to the side of the mountain, its roads permanent mud from the rain every afternoon. Its people are both Nepalese and Tibetan, its atmosphere felt like neither, I thought - and yet....

Next day, we crossed the Friendship Bridge to Kodari, the first village in Nepal. Kodari is a dusty collection of huts, a village whole sole raison d'être appears to be to serve the relatively few travellers across the border. Its people are poor, its buildings decaying and it has nothing to recommend it - except freedom. The change in atmosphere from Tibet to Nepal was almost tangible - the feeling of relaxation, the lack of fear, in a poor country which was being allowed to grow or decay at its own rate, in its own way. I felt horribly guilty about having enjoyed ten days in Tibet.

 I have changed my mind since last writing for VISA. One can learn from travel with open eyes and an open mind. I would like to think that going to Tibet has changed me and that this fact can do the Tibetan people some good. My Tibetan informant had told me how people in Lhasa could seem so happy: "They're happy to see you because they know that Westerners who come here are sympathisers." I wish I could do more than just sympathise.

First published in VISA issue 26 (autumn 1997)