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Tripping
to Tibet ... 08/08/2002
Lewiston Tribune
Date: 08/08/2002
Section: Outdoors
Page: 1C
Word Count: 1264 word
Keywords: Travel
Photo Caption: Our group
crossed the Mekong River Gorge twice. The road we traveled can
be seen heading west.
A young herder stands on a pass near Lhasa, Tibet. It snowed on
this pass, which is at 16,000 feet elevation, on the first day
of summer.
It's a tight squeeze past a stuck truck on a Tibetan road, which
is typical of the country's infrastructure.
Jeannie Harvey photo
Mount Everest's North Face dominates the background as prayer
flags flutter in the breeze.
Photo Credit: Phil Druker
photo
Tripping to Tibet
Phil Druker
For most of
my life I've dreamed of going to Tibet. In the early 1950s, I
can remember listening to Lowell Thomas on our family radio as
he reported the news from Tibet when the Chinese army took over
that high mountain country. I asked my mother if I could go
there, and she said no.
She wasn't being unrealistic. For most of the 19th
and 20th centuries, Tibet was closed to foreign travelers, and
when the Chinese communists took over the country, they
prohibited travel to the area until the mid-1980s.
Now, travel is permitted in some parts of Tibet
(about a quarter of the country is still "closed" to
foreigners), but to travel there you are required to get a
permit, and to get a permit you're supposed to have a guide.
All this seemed plenty daunting, but we got cheap
airfare to Hong Kong, and from there we booked an inexpensive
flight to southwest China. As we headed north toward Tibet, we
traveled by bus through the region the Chinese government touts
as the "real Shangri-La" (which, of course, is a myth
based on the 1933 novel, "Lost Horizon").
We found an agency that offered a seven-day,
800-mile trip over a "highway" opened to foreigners
just last year. It provided a Toyota Land Cruiser (THE vehicle
of choice for Tibet's bad roads), a driver, a translator and the
necessary permits.
Our driver had done the trip a few times before.
His name is Tashi (which means "good" in Tibetan). Our
translator/guide, whose name was Rungchung ("nature"
in Tibetan), had never been in this part of Tibet before.
Our 1983 Land Cruiser was supposed to have
four-wheel drive, but we pretty quickly discovered the front
driveshaft was disconnected. Still, we were able to get through
the muddiest parts of the trip by pushing the rig and by
strategically placing rocks under its bald tires to solidify the
quagmires that sometimes posed as our road.
Roads in Tibet generally are bad -- in fact the
roads in Tibet make northern Idaho's logging roads look like
nice highways.
We generally traveled from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. and
took about an hour for lunch. Still, 150 miles was the farthest
we traveled in any one day.
We climbed eight passes -- a couple more than
17,000 feet -- and three major mountain ranges, which I had
never heard of before. On one pass we counted 98 hairpin
switchbacks. The first day of summer we crossed a 16,000-foot
pass covered with a foot of new snow.
We plunged into river gorges the size of Hell's
Canyon to cross some of the world's longest rivers: the Yangtze,
the Mekong (twice), the Salween and the Bamaputra -- all
Columbia River-sized roaring, muddy, monster rivers.
One day, we traveled from 14,000 feet to 17,000
feet, down to 5,500, and then back up to 12,000 feet.
We traveled through semi-tropical forests full of
bamboo and temperate areas where farmers grow barley and rape
seed in terraced mountainside fields. We passed through pine and
rhododendron forests. In places the mountains were colored deep
purple with blossoms on the dwarf rhododendrons.
We stayed in towns with mud streets and in
roadhouses without toilets (don't ask about the toilets in
Tibet).
And we visited fascinating Tibetan Buddhist
monasteries. Most were originally built more than 1,000 years
ago, but many were destroyed or defaced during the 1970s and
China's Cultural Revolution. Now, the Chinese government is
allowing Tibetans to rebuild and repair many of the monasteries
it had helped to damage.
We traveled dusty roads, muddy roads and rocky
roads. We saw horrific accident scenes and wrecks. We were
delayed by bulldozers and 10-ton trucks stuck in the roads.
But after seven days, we finally arrived in Lhasa,
Tibet's capital city, located in a valley nearly 12,000 feet
above sea level, and surrounded by arid 20,000-foot peaks.
We stayed there a few days, visiting the sights and
the fabulous Pot-ala Palace -- home for the exiled Dalai Lama.
And we worked on organizing a trek to Mount Everest Base Camp.
Finally, we found an agency that could get all the
permits we needed, a good Land Cruiser, a driver, and a guide,
so we were off for another seven-day drive. Again, we crossed
some 17,000-foot passes, traveled past immense lakes and visited
some fascinating monasteries.
We speak just a few words of Tibetan, but a
surprising number of Tibetans speak a little English.
In the monasteries, the monks often asked us where
we were from. When we replied that we come from America, they
invariably smiled and said, "America good." And then
they would show us around their temple. People in Tibet truly
appreciate America's long-standing support of the exiled Dalai
Lama.
We suffered a bout of food poisoning; still we
traveled on. Finally, we reached a 16,800-foot pass that
afforded a view of the great Himalayas and Mount Everest. But
the monsoon had spread north from India and clouds obscured the
peaks. When we arrived at the monastery a few miles down valley
from the Everest Base Camp, rain was falling hard.
We got a room in the monastery's guesthouse and
then visited the monastery, where the monks were chanting
scripture. The head monk invited us in, and we sat listening to
their hypnotic chanting. After an hour, they stopped and we
left. It was raining harder still.
The guesthouse is set up for foreign travelers, and
its dark restaurant is heated with split pine hauled from Nepal.
(Usually, buildings in this part of Tibet are heated with dried
yak dung.) They served fried rice and yak meat stew.
Yak meat is much like beef but sweeter and richer
-- so it tastes like yak. But it tastes much better than the yak
butter tea that Tibetans drink in great quantities. This tea is
a buttery hot broth made with boiling water and yak butter --
it's a high-calorie drink that warms your tummy and greases your
lips, but it smells like wet yak fur and it tastes no better.
The most I ever could drink was a few sips.
When we went to bed it was still raining steadily.
We tried not to feel disappointed that our long trip to Mount
Everest might not yield even a glimpse of the big peak.
That night was a tough one because the thin air at
16,000 feet made sleeping difficult. We slept for a while, then
awoke, startled and gasping for air. All night long rain, snow,
or sleet poured down.
But the next morning, blue sky greeted us, and by 9
a.m. Mount Everest's famous North Face broke through the clouds.
We could have driven the five miles up to base camp, and hiking
in the thin air seemed a little daunting. Still, I wanted to
hike the trail that passes the monasteries and climbs over the
glacial moraines that the first climbers of Mount Everest used
back in the 1920s.
As we hiked, the clouds and the mountain teased us
with better and better views. The huge summit soared over its
neighboring peaks as white clouds swirled around it. Only 12
miles lay between the 29,000-foot summit and us. But that summit
was also another 13,000 feet above the gravel, wind-blown flats
of the base camp where we stood.
The next day, we headed back to Lhasa. The morning
was fairly clear but by the time we left, thick monsoon clouds
were swallowing the view of Mount Everest, and we had a cloudy,
sometimes rainy three-day trip back to the capital city.
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