Day 112 - 21 November 2009: exit Tibet

I am told that the temperature reached -27°C last night. Thank God we weren’t camping. We make a start to our journey, but either it is still under -20°C or we have been sold the wrong diesel, because the diesel is frozen in the pipes. We make our way back to the town we stayed at last night to get more diesel to help unfreeze the diesel already in the tank.

The conditions we are experience seem to be getting to everyone, including Lu, the tour leader. She has found some rubbish in the toilet cupboard, which we are told we are not allowed to use anyway. She suggests that all thirty of us are going to be cleaning the truck tonight. Considering it’s not even very comfortable sitting in the truck with 30 people, this would be defying the laws of physics.

We get going at about 11a.m., but the truck is tortuously cold all day. We decide that we can skip lunch to hasten our progress, but we have a tyre blow out late in the afternoon.  We pull over in a geographically interesting spot, where there's a small cliff / peak for the Meg, Dave, Joost and Brian to climb. Surprisingly Brian is first up, but he does live in Colorado.

It takes a couple of hours to get the tyre changed, but we get to a hotel at Golmud at about nine at night. This time Lu tells us that UK to Oz are paying. I shout out ‘no, we want to pay!’, but my sarcasm is not particularly appreciated by anyone. The hotel rooms are warm, which is the most important thing, and there’s a bath in the, um, bathroom. On the ground floor of the hotel there’s a hospital, which is becoming a theme or sorts.

As for the truck clean, she says that we will do it the next day as it is too late in the evening. In the event, the two or three people whose turn it is on the rota get it done anyway. She later leaves her customary note regarding our departure the next day by the reception and it says nothing about the truck clean, so I guess the boys and girls have been let off by sir.

The crossing into China proper is not marked by a border crossing as such, but we have had to make various checkpoint stops all through our time in Tibet, with all of us lining up in the order that we are listed on our group visa for doing passport checks.

For dinner, Kevin had suggested that we get a taxi to the town centre, but we are not confident that a taxi driver here would understand the words ‘town centre’, so Laurie and I go for a random walk to find a restaurant. We look for a while to try to find one that has a menu in English, or at least a picture menu. Having failed in this, we go in somewhere we can see them cooking. We go in and I point at something that looks like a chicken kebab and we sit down in a booth. After a few minutes a waiter comes to us and we it seems clear that we haven’t ordered as far as he is concerned. We decide the only thing to do is to go for pot luck, so we point out two lines on the menu and wait with both hope and fear.

The first thing that gets delivered to us looks like noodles, but after tasting it we decide it is stringy mushrooms and it is served fridge cold. The second dish is squid. I don’t normally like squid, but it was so spicy that it covered up the squid taste. Overall, we feel have been lucky.

I ask for some tea to go with the hot water that is always served by pointing at the cup. I get delivered what I think is sugar, but turns out to be salt.

On the way back to the hotel, we stop at a shop to buy some packaged food as we are supposed to be bush camping for the following three nights. Strangely, we can get a noodle dish in a restaurant for as little as 5 Yuan (50p / 75c), but end up paying 50 Yuan for a meal’s worth of yak jerky, sausage and a chocolate bar.

Click to go to Tibet Pictures

Day 111 - 20 November 2009: camping in -17C

This is Tibet: -17.5C

The temperature is -17°C by the time we rise for a 7a.m. departure. The whole group is suffering severe numbness in our feet. Helen and Shay are both shivering and possibly hypothermic, and Shay is sent to the cab of the truck, the only part that has heating. The interior of the passenger hold of the truck is frosted allover the ceiling, nevermind the windows. It stays that way for the whole day, barring a brief sunny interlude. 

Cooking in these conditions is impossible. We stop at a town for an early dinner and we all agree that we cannot go on camping in these conditions either. There is a hotel behind the restaurant, which we are told is a former hospital. It is very basic, e.g. no running water and the toilets are of the outhouse hole variety, but they do provide us with a thermos of hot water and tea. Also, there are electric heaters and blankets, so in the circumstances it is luxury. Having paid UK to OZ for all accommodation and transport on the itinerary (excluding our eventual flight from Bali to Darwin), there is some disquiet that we have to pay for tonight’s hotel ourselves (50 to 60 Yuan per person).

Restaurants in this part of the world are often a family’s front room, and the food is simple, e.g. beef & pepper noodles is my favourite, and usually tasty. It helps having our Chinese guide with us, as he can translate the menus and order for us. Laurie and I have been regularly eating in restaurants like these, paying between 15 to 25 Yuan per meal. Not having Kevin with us does risk us ordering without having any idea about what we it is that we have asked for, and there have been some not entirely enticing surprises. However, whenever we eat as a group with Kevin like tonight, we seem to pay a little extra. I have definitely become a severe cheapskate on this journey, but every pound or penny saved may count in the long term. However, it good to be a room somewhat heated by a coal / wood burning stove.

Day 110 - 19 November 2009: freezing

Having lost a couple of days because of the delay with the vehicle licence and JC’s driving licence, we cut the itinerary to head for Beijing as early as possible, which means bush camping for a week straight. Today is a drive day on roads on snow covered mountains.

We stop to camp by a railway track and we are 4800m (c. 15,000ft) above sea level. It’s still light when we stop and it beginning to get very cold.

The cook group tonight were going to attempt to cook chicken, but it is too cold. Those not cooking feel sorry for the people trying to cook outside, but not enough to vacate the wind shield safety of the truck. After hours attempting to cook, we are finally fed gravy soup with near raw potato and vegetables.

We attract the attention of the local police although we seem to be in the middle of nowhere. They tell us that some of our tents are too close to the rail line, although we are at least 15m from the elevated fenced off track. We are told by Kevin, our Chinese guide, that we are not allowed to take pictures of the rail track. When I ask why, he just says ‘no why!’. The Police are with us through the night and at one point they shine a light into my tent, which I am sharing with Laurie to help keep us warm (and also I had accidentally torn her tent when pitching it...). I zip it up in their face.

Earlier in the day, Laurie had gone for a pee in a typical Tibetan toilet, i.e. a hole in the ground. Here she spots a man watching her from below in the drop zone.

We had planned to go to Mapham Yu Tso, the highest fresh water lake in the world. However, we are told the road to it is covered with ice, so we decide not to go. UK to OZ were going to pay for this, the entrance fee being 80 Yuan a head, so we are told the money saved will be spent on us later, although this won’t include any hotels in the coming days.

Day 109 - 18 November 2009: Lhasa

This morning I find a note from our driver telling us that we had to be on the truck tomorrow morning or ‘good luck catching us up’, to which someone had added in similar handwriting ‘you f***ing c****’ (without the asterisks). The mood with the truckies is not particularly good at the moment to say the least. To add to my own irritation, I am then accused of being the person who made the forementioned appendage to the note. I add to it saying ‘does this look like the same handwriting’?

Twenty of the group went on their Potala Palace tour today. Brian and Laurie express their annoyance at having paid 200 Yuan more than the gate price, but nobody is particularly supportive of their complaints. The bafflingly be-doctored Louise says she is quite happy to pay the extra ‘to help the local economy’, by which logic she would be quite happy to get mugged. I suggest that she could give her money to me, as I probably have less money than the owner of the ticket agency who they paid and I would definitely spend it on the local economy, mainly in its bars.

no Fall fans in Tibet....but a Meat Puppets one (see bag)

a bar / restaurant in Lhasa

very old vs very new: Potala Palace in the distance

Laurie and I had lunch in another ‘locals’ restaurant, i.e. a cheap place which is a basic room and chairs. It’s easy to get good inexpensive food here, and I am surprising myself by successfully negotiating these meals with chopsticks, not that I have any choice.

Day 108 - 17 November 2009: Lhasa & Potala Palace

supermarket staff warm up for their day ahead

The first stop today was a group expedition to Jokhang Temple, dating from the 7^th century and a very popular stop for Buddhist pilgrimage. I lose the group while taking pictures at the front where there is a sizable queue. I thought that they might have taken a walk around the temple, which is both a holy walk for Buddhists and a bazaar. Being bored of Bazaars, although this one is somewhat bizarre, I walk quickly around in a failed attempt to find the group. Back at the front, I find out that they had done some queue hopping with the help of Dawera and had gone in after waiting for me for a while. I saved 85 Yuan by not going in anyway (c. £8).

Instead, I go to Potala Palace. A group tour had been organised for the next day, but I declined that offer as they wanted to charge 300 Yuan (£30) and I wasn’t sure that it would be worth it. We were told that the ticket price was actually 100 Yuan, but that if we didn’t book in advance we were unlikely to get in. I think the extra 200 Yuan probably goes to the booking agency, which Kevin is connected to. When I get to Potala Palace, I find signs that do say that the normal process is to collect a voucher one day in advance, but I am let in buying the 100 Yuan ticket at a ticket counter inside the complex without being asked for a voucher. There are no pictures allowed in the temples, so there’s no surprise surcharges, but it does mean that I don’t have much to show you from inside.

The palace is an imposing sight from outside, but inside it has the air of a quiet market village, although the only thing sold here are bottles of water and some snacks by occasional wandering vendors with small carts. However, the various temples are the most intricately decorous and ostentatious ones that I have seen yet. There is also access to view the residential rooms of the Dalai Lama. I would say they are like a stately home, except more basic and I couldn’t help feeling that the Dalai Lama’s bedroom would be a children’s room in an old British National Trust house.

There are more Buddhas than I could bother to count and some very fine ornaments in the temples, including the gold or silver tombs of all the thirteen deceased Dalai Lamas, unless of course you say that, as each one is the re-incarnation of the previous one, there has only ever been one. Anyway, they all look gold in the darkened rooms.

I actually enjoyed visiting the monasteries and temples at Shigatse and Gyangze more. At Shigatse, we saw an active monastery, whereas this one is more of a march through darkened rooms of relics. This is not just a tourist site. There are fewer visitors than I thought there would be, but at least half of them are here as Buddhist pilgrims, coming here to pay homage and pray. I don’t want to seem derogatory towards Buddhism, but I find the obsessive worship of objects here quite off-putting. It is definitely worth visiting as a site of historical importance, but I am glad that I only paid 100 Yuan to get in.

Potala Palace

view from the palace grounds

 

another view from the palace

giant news video in square below the palace

 

After visiting the palace, I go back to the hotel and meet up with Laurie so that I can go back to the square in front of the palace to get a guitar picture (see: a journey around the world in E minor). However, there are police and army guards here, and I knew that playing a guitar would be viewed with suspicion. I get the pictures quickly and am zipping my guitar back into its case by the time a guard gets to me, so he doesn’t say anything and passes on.

It is unlikely the guard would have spoken English anyway, so what he would have said or done I don’t know. I had thought that for some reason there were more people who spoke English in China than there were people in native English speaking countries. This seems to be wrong, at least in Tibet, although much of Lhasa is populated by Chinese. Brian incredulously questions their education system when I raised this in conversation, as if they have a duty to speak our language because we don’t speak theirs. I was a little surprised that the hotel staff didn’t speak any English, but I would guess this will change when we get to places like Beijing, where there are more university educated people. So far the best English speakers we have found have been the staff in branches of Dico’s, the Chinese KFC – though there are plenty of actual KFCs in Chinese cities too.

I should note that the hotel we are staying at in Lhasa is the best we have experienced on the trip so far. We have double beds and TV in sizeable rooms. The bathrooms have western toilets, although  they could do with some more robust cleaning and/or redecorating. The second floor, the one below us, is locked off by sliding glass doors covered by a red curtain. We strongly suspect we are staying at a brothel, or ‘massage parlour’ for the aesthete. This is despite Kevin picking this hotel because it is a government sponsored tourist hotel.

I visited a supermarket today. Here I am enthusiastically aided by a group of young female staff, who keep pointing at things that they suggest I might like to buy. I mime the shaving action to get them to lead me to some shaving cream. I buy a packet that they point at, but I find out later that this is more like soap. This may do for the less follicly chinned locals, but wasn’t really what I was hoping for. One of the young ladies leads me to the checkout to make sure I get the discounted members price, although this is probably only a saving of one Yuan. Still, the gesture is appreciated. This being somewhat of a midlife crisis trip for me, the fawning attention of young ladies doesn’t go unappreciated either.

In the evening I go to a bar with Laurie. It’s nice sitting in a cosy enclave, but the Bacardi Breezers are 25 Yuan and a shot of vodka is over fifty. Having got used to paying eight Yuan for a large bottle of beer, or five in a shop, this seems expensive to me now.

Helen, the Scots widow in our group, got her foot run over by a taxi today. Crossing the road here is like a game of Tetris, especially where taxis are concerned. Red lights don’t seem to make any difference to drivers or pedestrians alike.