(Apologies on the minimalist look of this page as it's still Under Construction. I plan on adding a few pictures taken during the trip so do check back again - it will be worth it, I assure you)
"Lhasa is a medieval-seeming place, just like Europe in the Middle Ages, complete with grinning monks and grubby peasants and open-air festivals and jugglers and tumblers" Riding the Iron Rooster, Paul Theroux
September 12, 1998 Saturday
And so began the journey. 5:30am when the first rays of sunlight chased away the shadows of darkness and I was sitting in a bus load with fellow travellers (there must be about 20 of them) ricketing and screeching through Kathmandu Valley.
The view was fantastic! Lolling mountains in the distance, terraced padi fields and best of all, fresh clear air..ahh, how I miss all these!
Enroute to Kodari and Zhangmu
Right from the beginning, the journey takes on a perilous tone. Quite often, we have to maneouvre round tight narrow bends on one side of which would be the cliff and on the other would be a few hundred feet drop into crashing white water.
I see simple villagers whose only contact with foreigners are probably the busloads that thunder past their ramshackle zinc huts.
The big adventure of the day even before we reached the Chinese bordertown - Zhangmu. A landslide prevented our 2 vans from moving further. We poured out of our vehicles into light drizzle, put on our backpacks and prepared for a long trek. But instead of going round the bends, the guide thought it was probably a better idea to scale a 100m tall cliff. Indeed. Disbelief even as I was climbing it, I prayed that I wouldn't slip on those loose gravel and stones. With 8kg on my back and another 3kg in front, every step soon became a laboured and heavy one. Several times, Stewart had either to push me up from the back or extend his arm to pull me up.
Upon reaching the main road, it was put forth that we attempt to climb another 100m or so up again. It seemed like a terrible idea to me. A few French in the group started protesting violently while others in the group shrugged nonchalently and soldiered on. I dallied hoping for some help from above. He must have heard me for we soon heard the rumbling of lorries down the road. Hallelujah! Our guide managed to stop one and a few of us bundled into the mean and tough looking lorry gratefully.
......We finally arrived in Zhangmu (2300m) before 5pm when customs would close (horrors!) All of us were clammy from the light rain (and perspiration perhaps) Thankfully, we checked into the official and supposedly the hotel in Zhangmu which by the way didn't have hot showers yet little bottles of bath foam and shampoo stood proudly on the dressing table.
[Gilles (Swiss), Pablo (Argentine) and I were scavenging for some grub in the sleepy town when we bumped into a French traveller who had taken great risks to backpack solo from Lhasa southwards towards Kathmandu. Regaled by his hitch-hiking tales and how a homosexual driver tried to hit on him, we had a most delightful Chinese dinner on our first night in Tibet. "The roads ahead aren't too bad..." he had said and I actually believed him]
September 13, Sunday
Horrible clanking sounds could be heard as our bus squeezes by
a hair's breadth between perilous sharp rocks and huge 
lorries packed alongside.
Other such 'impossible' escapades were due a large part to our
Tibetan driver's maravellous skills at the wheel. With bated
breath, we would grip the railing infront of us as the bus
attempted another feat whether it was over muddy running streams
or impossibly narrow dirt paths. More than once, a collective
sigh could be heard from the 16 passengers on yet another
'escapade'
That day, we drove for nearly the entire day. The highlight
was probably LaLung La at 5050m. The
view was breathtaking! The entire region was bereft of vegetation
at that altitude. Literally a desert, only small and prickly
shrubs survive and dust abound. All around as far as one's eyes
could see were snow capped mountains. It is little wonder then
that Tibet is called the 'Land of Snowy Mountains'.
Here, prayer flags mostly tattered and worn looking adorn the
5020m pass as a silent beacon to Tibetans' lost hope and
desolation. 
Decidely wobbly at this altitude, even minor exertions proved strenous. Incredibly thin air with only 59% oxygen.
We reached Tinggri at 8pm. Altitude sickness had definitely hit me. I scarcely drank the soup with egg I had ordered at the Tibetan's communal kitchen before nausea threatened to overcome me. There was only one thing to do - sleep. Curled up in my sleeping bag in a tacky green room (which I shared with Claudia, a German journalist-to-be), I dreamt of strange lands and lamas....
September 14, Monday
I was really sick last night. I felt much better this morning as my body got used to the altitude. For breakfast, we had chapati (Indian origin wheat pancake toasted on a hot stove) with marmalade and moistened with my first cup of tea with yak milk. Banish all perceptions of what tea should taste and look like and perhaps one could like the Tibetan brew then. The tea was slightly cloudy with yak milk with a thin layer of oil skimming its surface and it tasted saltish. At the end of breakfast, my cup of tea remained remained pretty much the same as when the Tibetan host had served me.
Everest View Guesthouse in Tinggri was in more ways than one the closest I ever got to a Tibetan home. The people there do not have the luxury of bath except once a year. A well is used from whence all sources of water were drawn from. Life was as simple as one could imagine. Cows saunter into the courtyard in the morning to be milked, hens clucked about and grimy but rose-cheeked children ran carefree blissfully ignorant of what the 'civilised' outside world holds.
After a few hours of labourious driving, we finally reached Lhatse (4050m). Perhaps it was due to the lower altitude or the Diamox that Manfred (German) proffered ("You look really sick yesterday," he said), my altitude sickness was nearly gone.
Later on in the day at some stopover, I came close to what Jodie Foster must have felt on being mobbed. Except that my hordes of shoving 'fans' were little Tibetan kids and that they didn't want my autograph but the pencils I had in my hands. I had heard that children there needed writing materials and rather than encouraging tooth decay I'd rather further their puisuit of education. "Qian1 bi3! Qian1 bi3..," they had shouted.
I wished I had bought more 'qian1 bi3' (pencils).
Lhakpa-La (5220m) Every molehill seemed like a mountain to climb. But what fabulous views! The fluttering prayer flags on top the sacred pass that blows the mantra 'Om mani padmi hum' to the winds, the scattered stupas from stones built by pilgrims and around is the vista of gentle rolling mountains.
All in, we did about 11hours of driving today. On several occasions, I had thought we were going to tip over the precipice and roll turtle-like into a ditch. And even though I heard that our driver was a trained mechanic, I'm not so sure he or our Tibetan guide, Lhakpa, could have gotten us out of the catastrophe then. .....
At long last, we reached Shigatse. To say that we were glad that hot showers were available was an understatement. Perhaps a shade lesser than 'euphoria' but close enough. At the risk of sounding spoilt, what a change the Chinese style hotel was to the limestone Tibetan accomodation in Tinggri!
September 15, Tuesday
Based in Shigatse (3900m), we
made a day trip to Gyantse, just 2-3 hours drive awaly. Our first
visit was to the Pelko-Chode Monastery. Founded in 1418, vivid
and lifelike murals don the dark chapel walls. There was a sense
of awe in the darkness illuminated mainly by the hundreds of yak
butter devotional lamps. One could also see the yellow hats of
the Gelugpa sect and thick red robes folded on the rows of
"praying cushions". In an inner chapel, sat Sakyamuni
(Present Buddha) flanked by the Past and Future Buddhas on each
side. Thousands of other bodhisattvas line the 10ft high wall
ceiling to floor. The atmosphere was heavy as we made our way
clockwise around the 3 Buddhas. Then, in what must had been a
centuries-old daily tradition, the monks filed into the main hall
and started donning the yellow robes. Their low resonant voices
reverberated off the darkened walls.
Within the compounds of the monastery laid the Gyantse Kunbum. The stupa was 4 floors high and was surmounted by a gold dome that rose like a crown over 4 sets of eyes that gazed serenely out in the cardinal directions of the compass. On each level were rooms that open into tiny chambers that house dieties from all facets of Tibetan Buddhist folklore and beliefs. The interior walls were usually lined with thousands of bodhisattvas or life-sized big toothy, goggling demons that Tibetans see as protectors.
A monk sat at its entrance collecting 15Y per camera for photographers. I was a little disconcerted to learn that he was not a Tibetan but a Chinese from Beijing. Was he a spy? (Speaking Chinese does have its advantages sometimes)
Some of us in the group made use of the remaining time to enjoy a great Tibetan 'feast' at the Tashi Restaurant in Gyantse. I was embarrassed to say that I believed we were overly indulgent in what we had ordered when there were starving Tibetan children and women looking hungrily from the door. Well, at least the momos (stuffed dumplings with either meat or vegetables) that were left were not wasted.
September 16, Wednesday
We spent the morning sightseeing Shigatse's Tunshilhunpo Monastery and the Bazaar.
An incident happened at lunch today. I was eating my dish of eggplant and rice when I noticed a bunch of hungry looking Tibetan children just outside the glass plane which I was facing. They were looking at every morsel that went into my mouth. After awhile, I motioned to the kid out there that still remained a sizeable portion of tasty eggplant left. Timidly, he slipped in with his bowl, emptied what was left in my bowl of rice and poured all the eggplant into his bowl as well. It is extremely sad that such poverty exists. And why were the poor almost always the Tibetans? And those living in remote villages with so little comfort, when even an old wooden pencil is regarded as a prized trophy?
I think the Cultural Revolution was a Big mistake. To the Chinese, no doubt, as it sets the country back by at least 20 years but to the Tibetans even more so. Annexure of any country and the subject of its people, customs, beliefs and culture to the victor's is wrong...even it means 'development' to the subjugatee.
Even then, 'development' but at what cost? The mining by the Chinese of minerals and precious stones has created landslides. Besides causing danger to the villagers, nature has been disrespectfully raped and plundered.
And I had not even begun on the destruction of priceless ancient relics. Mao's dictum as set out in the well-known essay 'On Going Too Far' is perhaps indicative on the extent of destruction - "To right a wrong it is necessary to exceed proper limits, and the wrong cannot be righted without the proper limits being exceeded." In this regard, temples were not closed but used for keeping pigs, monks were defrocked and sent to work on vegetable farms while some temples suffer the fate of having their columns and bricks taken apart and made into barracks.
September 17, Thursday
We woke up in Lhasa today (at last!) after what was another marathon drive yesterday of 270km, a good part of it on paved roads, thank God.
The better part of the morning was spent at the Potala. The aura of awe probably fled with the Dalai Lama to Dharamsala. The Potala was like a museum - unliving and an empty shell. The crowds of tourists, every praying hall and room with a pricetag for taking photographs, artifacts of the the last Dalai Lama such as his reading glasses and an old Philips radio in glass showcases or cordoned off didn't much help the feeling.
In the afternoon, we visited the Norbulingka - the Summer Palace. Pretty with its gardens, it was a welcome change to the gloomy darkness of the Potala.
I wandered around the bazaar at Jokhang in the evening. It was strange to see flourishing commerce and fervent religious worship blend seamlessly and harmoniously all in one place. Tibetan traders beckon eagerly. They sell anything from the usual prayer wheels, turquoise and coral necklaces to chains of yak cheese (3Y) and lopped off tops of human skulls (for holding water in religious rites, I was told in Theroux's book) At the same time, pilgrims and monks circle round the Jokhang in a clockwise direction, some chanting prayers; some prostrating themselves full-length on the dusty floor with mittens and thick paddings on their hands and knees. The atmosphere was electrifying, I thought. The babble from the market, the shuffling pilgrims and the occasional blare from a horn enveloped one. That these people could still preserve their heritage in such unforgiving climate despite Chinese pervasion is surely a tenacious one. Perhaps the Snowy mountains are Tibetans' guardians afterall.
September 18, Friday
On our last day in Lhasa, the highlight for me was the nunnery we visited. It was the most down-to-earth and real monastery/nunnery that I had seen. What was striking about the place, not least because it was the only nunnery I had come across among all the monasteries were that the nuns were friendly towards curious foreigners. A young nun in her early twenties attempted to strike up a conversation with us with English that she had picked up from her contact with travellers which was truly remarkable. There was also a little bit of fun when the nuns allowed some of us girls to put on a traditional Tibetan robe which resembled a little of the Japanese kimono with its layers and a sash tied tightly around the waist. We wished them well....
Om mani padmi hum - the om is the most powerful and mystical element in the mantra, a combination of three Sanskrit sounds that sum up the three-in-one nature of the universe. These prayers are so sacred that just writing them or carving them in stone (the sacred om is frequently seen hacked into cliff-faces) is regarded as much more pious than putting up statues.
