Monthly Archives: September 2011

Reaching for the sky

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20110910-065005.jpgYou don’t need to travel here to realise that modern China is about growth and immense scale – but seeing it for yourself really does bring it home.

The Great Wall seems to have set the tempo. If a book ‘The Great Wall for dummies’ existed, the first fact it would tell you is that it was not one contiguous wall, but many individual sections, broken up by mountains and other impassable landscape. (The second thing it would tell you is that it’s only as visible from space as motorways, which are wider – and there’s no chance of seeing it unaided from the moon, as has been claimed.) However, saying that The Wall doesn’t go over mountains somewhat understates the effort involved in constructing it. Remember, this is the land of Everest – the sheer, near-vertical rocky ascenders would certainly be called mountains back home. The gentle stroll we were expecting up to and along the wall was anything but – see the photo for a sample of it.

It feels a bit like there’s an attempt to prove that humankind owns and hence dominates the natural world no matter what nature has thrown at us. Take electricity pylons for example. Conventionally you’d expect them to follow the path of least resistance – alongside the rivers that cut valleys through the rock. Not here. Some planner has taken a contourless map and a ruler, and just gone for it, meaning that certainly around the major cities the surrounding mountains have glistening silver monuments to modernity adorning their peaks. I pity the construction workers; nothing short of a helicopter could have been used to shift the materials into place.

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Even in calm, prayer flag laced Lhasa, the scale of construction is huge. Opposite the hotel where we were staying is a mammoth building site, where they’re constructing the latest shopping mall in China’s enthusiastic embrace of capitalism. Laura thinks I’ve become obsessed by what I’m about to tell you – but let me assure you, it’s nowhere near her addiction to bells (and fountains).

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My fascination? They’re using A LOT of water. I don’t mean ‘oh, I left the tap on’, or even ‘let’s run the industrial sprinklers for hours every night’. This is an order of magnitude above: install a whole new set of water mains running above ground for miles across town from at least two different sources. These mains are massive – six or eight welded steel pipes of say eight inches in diameter, running into the distance along the pavement, complete with car-ramps, troughs in the roads so they can cross – and, being spot welded around us while we were there, pedestrian-friendly steps over them. This maze of pipes ends up in four huge water towers, one at each corner of the construction site, into which we could see torrents of water gushing day and night, only to mysteriously vanish again through a network of pipes into the ground around the construction site.

Perhaps they’re creating the world’s largest underground swimming pool? Who knows. This wasn’t what I was thinking of when I said that migration and modernisation was diluting the local culture!

Even the Great Wall has its accoutrement to modernity – a toboggan run from the top down to the car park in the valley below, which we dutifully took in the name of research.

I’m not even going to mention the Ilisu Dam.

The irony is that as I write this, the busy road from Lhasa has turned into a bmx-style dirt track, with our bus becoming a temporary rollercoaster. For all the prosperity in modern China, it remains a country with extreme contrasts – gleaming urban skyscrapers against a backdrop of massive rural poverty. It may well be the world’s next superpower, but it is one whose GDP is the same as that of Namibia, at $6,000 a year. Multiply that up by 1.4 billion people and you have something colossal – but then when you think of a landscape that stretches from the Himalayas to the Straights of Japan, you realise just how spread out everything is and in reality just how little has been tamed let alone dominated by humankind.

Simon

The bus

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The wheels on the bus go round and round, but the people on the bus go squish and sweat. We have bus envy. Yesterday’s bus had seats with pockets, leg room, and – the holy grail of sunny travel – air conditioning. Today’s is a little more rustic, and the bad news is that this is our transport for the next week all the way to Kathmandu. We won’t quite have the ordeal being experienced by some cyclists we passed while ascending a pass at 4600m, but it’s fair to say we’re underwhelmed by the comfort. Of course this is more than made up for by the adrenaline thrill of hairpin bends and blind corners. I won’t go into a vivid description of the safety conditions on the roads in Tibet for fear of alarming relatives back home. We’ll be ok!

Today’s journey has seen us trundle through the Lhasa valley, following the river downstream to where it joins another and heads off to India. We stopped at a ‘water burial’ site, where the tradition is for the dead to be cast into the river, much like we’ll see at Varanasi in India. Amid the usual prayer flags, an interesting sight on the cliffs alongside the water – white paintings of ladders, to indicate that the dead should climb up to a heaven. Our Norweigen friend Gardar points out that ladders are of course bidirectional, and so an arrow would be a worthy addition!

On we go, past farmers baling their barley into lots of neat little stacks – like a small teepee, with the barley on top fanning out in a cone to keep the rain off. They must make lovely temporary housing for passing wildlife. The bus screeches to a halt as we’re surrounded by Yaks being herded down the valley by a nomad – and later a flock of sheep with their shepherd.

As we reach the pass, a gorgeous turquoise lake comes into view, glistening in the sunshine as far as the eye can see – and reflected in it’s surface, we can see snow capped peaks of a mountain range. Not the Himilayas yet though, we’re told. This lake is a mere 640 square kilometres in size, 240km long.

At each photo stop, there’s an assortment of locals – nomadic peoples who rely on passing tourism to supplement the meagre income they get from farming. Photogenic mothers, dogs with red fluffy scarves around their necks, and of course at least one yak. All, understandably for inclusion in a photo for a fee. We went through a pass at 5020m next to a stunning glacier, and found probably the highest outdoor pool table in the world, with a few locals playing a tournament on it. Amazing!

One last thing for today – prayer flags. It has to be seen to believed. I’m sure you’ve seen the photos of some colourful prayer flags draped across some rooftop, but I’d never realised quite how extreme they get. Every accessible mountaintop, electricity pylon, and pass has thousands of them, in places so dense that they look like a giant fluttering patchwork quilt hanging in the sky. And along with the flags, prayer confetti to release in the wind – oh, and along with that, all manner of rubbish from passing visitors. Beautiful from a distance, up close it can seem somewhat like legal littering, with more manmade rubbish than the last day of Glastonbury (which is bad, if you haven’t seen it!)

One day of the road trip down, five to go. Only a few hours tomorrow, compared to the seven we’ve done today.

Simon

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Lhasa and the versatility of the yak

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Lhasa and the versatility of the yak

I’m writing this on the winding mountain road from Lhasa to Gyantse. It’s a seven hour journey and we’re only a couple of hours in but have already seen some stunning lake views and prayer flag strewn mountains.

During our stay in Lhasa we visited the Potala palace, the Jokhang temple, the Sera monastery and attempted some more geocaching (unsuccessfully-too many people around).

The Potala palace, former home of the Dalai Lama and Tibetan government, is a stunning 13 storey red and white building set in the hillside overlooking Lhasa. Tours around the palace are time-limited due to the number of visitors but inside you can see endless rooms of Buddhist statues and the tombs of the 5th-13th Dalai Lamas.

The Jokhang temple in the centre of Lhasa is the most revered temple in Tibet. Around the temple is a pilgrim circuit known as the Barkhor. Buddhist pilgrims walk this market stall-lined circuit with prayer beads or perpetually spinning prayer wheels in hand. Prayer wheels come in a variety of shapes and sizes, all containing a scroll with a prayer written on. The idea is that the spinning of the wheel releases the prayer into the world. Whilst most pilgrims walk the Barkhor circuit some, wearing aprons and with paddles strapped to their hands, launch themselves to the ground in an act of prostration with every step.

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At the Sera monastery you can watch monks debating the finer points of Buddhist philosophy. On our visit, rather than the usual debating, some young monks were being examined. This appeared to consist of (from what we could gather since we don’t speak Tibetan) the young monk stepping up to a microphone in the middle of a hall of seated monks and answering the questions posed by three elders. The young monk paces back and forth in constant motion while answering and clapping his hands together in an exaggerated manner after every few words, presumably to strengthen his point. Occasionally when the young monk is taking too long to answer or has perhaps said something controversial the watching monks all jeer in unison. Not all that unlike the houses of parliament. All I can say is I’m glad my viva wasn’t like that!

All of the Bhuddhist sights are beautifully decorated with colourful fabrics covering walls and ceilings and thousands of statues of different Buddhist deities and their various manifestations. They are also filled with the atmospheric burning incense and yak butter candles.

Yak butter is an incredibly versatile thing; being used for candles, yak butter tea, and probably all of the things you would usually use butter for. Yaks themselves in fact appear to be used for everything, I can tell you now that yak steak, curry, stew and enchiladas are all very tasty, as are yak cheese and yoghurt. Yak wool is also in common use, or failing that you can buy a nice warm looking yak skin jacket or hat. Yak dung can be dried in the sun (complete with hand print if you so desire) then used on walls or roofs for insulation/structural integrity/decoration. Yak dung can also be used as fuel for your stove. I think it’s safe to say that no part of the yak goes unused – as James on our tour (who even ate yak lung) said “the yak is the Swiss army knife of the bovine world”.

We ended our time in Lhasa with a visit to the local nightclub. It was actually a pretty good club, it appears that the done thing is to buy your beer in bulk at the beginning of the night, I’m talking about 30 bottles to be shared by the group, and find yourselves a table as a base for the night. Occasionally in clubs or restaurants in the UK you may get people trying to sell you a rose. Well in Tibetan nightclubs you can buy electric glowing roses and hearts, giant stuffed teddy bears or even candyfloss! What was quite nice was the tier of fruit we had for the table. I also managed to make friends with a Tibetan girl who made it her task for the evening to keep taking me (and sometimes the others in our group) to the dance floor. The only dodgy thing about the place were the squat toilets with mirror doors…

And we’re off!

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This morning we start our tour proper, piling into the minibus and racing around Tibet for the next week. We’re not sure about Internet – so this could be it for a while (which is probably a good thing since we seem to be addicted to connectivity).

We’ll let you know what we find in due course…

5th – Gyantse
6th – Shigatse
7th – Sakya
8th – Everest Base Camp. Woo!
9th – Zhangmu
10th – Kathmandu

Simon & Laura

From Lhasa with love

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Lhasa might not be a million miles from Beijing (it’s 1500 or so according to my GPS) – but it’s certainly a world apart. Tibetan prayer flags adorn the streets, the people smile at you and are inquisitive, and the Chinese army are on every street corner.

We got here a few days ago, and have been enjoying soaking up the atmosphere while also getting used to the lack of it in a physical sense. Lhasa is at 3600m, which is high enough that you can feel the reduced oxygen – we’ve both had headaches since arriving, and Laura’s having trouble sleeping (and this time it isn’t due to all-night partying!) The advice is to drink plenty of water, rest – and to take Diamox, which aids the body’s absorption of oxygen while enough red blood cells are being created to help out. Fortunately, comfy hotel beds and a pretty chilled out traveller-friendly city makes this a nice spot to rest, although it would be slightly nicer if our hotel room overlooked the delightful courtyard garden at the back rather than the building site and car-horn-aplenty main road at the front.

I’d love to include a set of photos of the various army and police checkpoints around the city – certainly an occupying force by any conventional description. Unfortunately, we’ve been warned they don’t take kindly to this, and they have guns. So I’ll describe it instead. As you walk down the street, you come across four types of military onlookers:

The patrol – normally five soldiers, marching in unison, with white gloves, full body armour, and often riot gear. Between them they tend to carry a few rifles, a shotgun, and what appears to be a tear gas grenade launcher. Oh, and one has a shiny red fire extinguisher strapped to his back, since self-immolation is a common form of protest. Strangely though, they do give way sometimes when the street is crowded.

The box of troops – imagine a small plastic greenhouse, with all the windows shut, surrounded by hazard tape, sitting on a street corner. Now fill it with soldiers in camouflage gear. I’ve heard of guerrilla gardening, but this is something different! Given the sun is very hot here (due to the altitude), it must be like a sauna in there. Maybe there’s a hidden ice-cold plunge pool nearby.

The stage standers – I find this one particularly bizarre. Take a small stage block, say 50cmx50cm, by a mere 20cm high. Paint it bright red, and put a beer garden-style sunshades above it (we’re pretty certain the writing says some pro-Chinese slogan rather than just ‘probably the greatest beer in the world’, but could be wrong). Now stand on it, from your lofty (remember, 20cm!) vantage point and stare into the distance while standing to perfect attention. We’ve been trying to see if they’ll respond to a cheesy grin as we walk past, but so far haven’t succeeded.

The silhouettes – every now and again, against the beautiful skyline of soaring mountains and a brilliant blue sky, you see the outline of a couple of soldiers under another beer garden umbrella. Presumably they’re admiring the rooftop scenery.

Despite the very visible army presence, this place clearly does have a lot of love. Everywhere you go, there are warm smiles from the locals, and wandering the lovely street market stalls in the Barkhor area surrounding the Jokhang temple, there’s none of the pressured selling we experienced in Beijing, just friendly hellos and questions about where we’re from.

More on the sights, food and, well, yaks later – we’re off to find our first Tibetan geocache and hopefully grab a nice chocolate brownie and a cafe down the road.

Simon

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