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Tibetan
travelers shoulder the ... 01/23/2003
Lewiston Tribune
Date: 01/23/2003
Section: Outdoors
Page: 1C
Word Count: 1369 word
Keywords: Travel
Photo Caption: ABOVE:A
Tibetan yak
man tends to his animal.
LEFT:Jeannie Harvey of Moscow leaves the Ganden
Monastery, one of the most important centers for Buddhist
learning.
BELOW:The trail leads down the ridge to the valley
below.
Photo Credit: Photos courtesy
of Phil Druker
Tibetan travelers
shoulder their packs for a journey on the Yak
Express
Phil Druker
I was sitting about 1,000
feet below a 17,000-foot pass above the Tibetan plateau. Clumps
of purple dwarf rhododendron surrounded me. Just as I was ready
to doze off in the warm July sun, our two yak
men started whistling and shouting at their four yaks,
which were carrying our gear and food. Ta Ku and Bac Do were
ready to head up the ridge toward the pass.
So I stood, took a deep breath of thin air, asked
my wife, Jeannie, if she was ready to hike on, shouldered my
daypack, and followed the yaks.
We were on Day 2 of our five-day trek that took us
50 miles through Tibet's mountains on a journey that connected
two of the country's most important monasteries.
Actually the trip began four days previously in a
crowded travel office in Lhasa, Tibet's capital city. We wanted
to take a trek with yaks,
we said.
Organizing trips in Tibet,
however, is no simple matter. To travel in Tibet
requires a permit, and to get a permit, you are supposed to have
a guide. We knew there were ways to avoid the rules, but given
the amount of time we had and where we wanted to go, we didn't
want to risk problems with the PBS -- the Public Security Bureau
-- China's not-so- friendly version of the FBI.
The only easy way to do this was to negotiate with
Dorgee (which means lightning bolt in Tibetan), the travel
office manager. He had us over a barrel, however. He knew we
wanted to make the trip, he knew he had the only legal trekking
service in town, and he knew we had a limited amount of time.
After a couple hours of friendly discussion, we settled on a
price.
Fifty dollars per person per day seemed like a lot
by Tibetan standards, but for a cook, a guide, two yak
men and four yaks,
this was a great deal by American standards. What the heck, we
figured. We'll travel in grand style.
The trip started at Ganden Monastery, one of
Tibet's most important centers of Buddhist learning. Sadly, the
monastery, which sits on a 14,000-foot ridge overlooking the
Lhasa River valley, was destroyed during China's Cultural
Revolution in 1966. The Red Guard, not content with merely
destroying and looting the relics, statues and scriptures housed
in the vast complex, brought in artillery to shell the
buildings.
Unable to destroy Tibetan faith in Buddhism and
realizing monasteries attract tourists, the Chinese government
began providing money to rebuild the monastery in 1985. The main
buildings now house bright new statues, and monks are slowly
repainting murals on the walls.
Our cook, Dassan, found some yak
men. But their yaks
were grazing high in the mountains. They wouldn't be able to get
them ready for us until the next day, so we made camp not far
from the monastery in a flat, grassy area where the monastery
monks were having a picnic.
The monks showed us some of their games, one of
which looked like a Buddhist Monopoly game. They also taught me
how to gamble. We would vigorously shake the strangely marked
dice in a cup and slam the cup to the ground with a shout. Much
to the monks' mirth, I always lost, but my losses didn't amount
to much -- a few pennies. As we gambled late into the night, the
Milky Way shone brightly across the sky and the 20,000-foot
peaks glowed in the starlight.
The next day, the cook had our breakfast of fried
eggs, bread and tea ready not long after daybreak. Then our yak
men arrived with their four yaks.
We packed our gear, and they sent my wife and me on the route up
the ridge while they loaded the yaks.
As we hiked up the ridge, lammergeiers -- huge
white and black vultures -- wheeled overhead. We assumed they
knew something we didn't about the fate of this trip.
Before long our yak
men, their yaks,
our guide and our cook caught up with us. It seemed no matter
how fast we walked, or even tried to jog, they could walk
faster.
The day's trek took us through a little village --
the last settlement we would see for four days -- where farmers
grew barley and rapeseed, and along ridges that offered great
views of Tibet's mountains.
Mid afternoon, we set up camp near a roaring stream
and just below an enclave of nomad tents. As soon as we stopped,
children from those camps appeared. After setting up camp, the yak
men herded their yaks
up the mountainside so they could graze. Meanwhile, Dassan made
dinner of soup, stir-fried vegetables and canned meat, and tea.
We brought bottled water to drink, but he used the
stream water for cooking. Since the stream rushed right through
the nomad camp, it made a perfect source of typhoid, but Dassan
did a great job of boiling the water on his propane-powered
stove. As night began to fall, the yak
men ran up the ridge and herded their yaks
back down to camp.
Yaks,
which look like shaggy cows and can carry about 100 pounds each,
thrive at high altitude, so they form a central part of Tibetan
nomad life. They raise these sure-footed animals for their milk,
wool and meat. Yak
dung gets used for fuel, and yak
butter makes candles and tea. They use yak
hides for all sorts of leather products and even stretch them on
wooden frames to build boats.
At night, the yak
men hobbled their animals near our tents, and we quickly got
used to falling asleep to the sound of the yaks'
gentle grunting and the soft ringing of the bell strung over the
lead yak's neck.
The trek took us over two 17,000-foot passes,
through alpine meadows glorious with wildflowers, rhododendrons
and azaleas, past high mountain lakes and under 20,000-foot
peaks.
One afternoon, we scared up a herd of more
than 400 blue sheep, which are a little smaller than bighorn
sheep. When the herd moved down the ridge and started to cross
our trail, the Tibetans exuberantly ran after the wild flock;
amazingly they ran so fast they almost caught some of the
stragglers.
In the evenings, we tried to learn a little
Tibetan, but without much luck. Our guide spoke some English,
but he quickly got bored with our halting efforts to pronounce
words correctly. The best I could do was learn how to say,
"no problem," which amused the yak
men to no end when I said this after we reached the high passes
or got to our campsite for the night.
Whenever we came to a stream, the yak
men first made sure the yaks
got across, and then offered to carry us on their backs. I don't
think they ever understood why we didn't let them do this. The
cook, however, who easily weighed 180 pounds, happily climbed on
Ta Ku's back, and Ta Ku gave the hefty cook a piggyback ride
across each stream as if he were a mere child.
At night we usually camped low -- well, relatively
low -- about 15,000 feet. One night, however, we camped near a
16,000-foot lake and that night we slept fitfully, periodically
awakening gasping for air at that high altitude.
On the fourth day, we started our descent, which
took us steeply from alpine tundra through subalpine
rhododendron thickets and finally to a forest of mixed hardwoods
and juniper. As we neared the small villages below, the trail
became broader and we met horsemen carrying firewood.
Birds filled the brush and we bored our guide as he
waited semi patiently while we attempted to identify birds.
The last day of the trek ended with a ride on an
oversized rototiller tractor that took us down an incredibly
rough road, over tenuous bridges made of crooked wood poles
covered with rocks and dirt, and through mud holes that
threatened to swallow the tractor. As our road descended, the
countryside became more arid, until we entered a valley bordered
with sand dunes.
There, our trek ended at the golden-roofed Samye
Monastery, where Tibetan Buddhism was founded 1,200 years ago.
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