August Journal

In which I reach occupied Lhasa

August 2nd, 2005 Kashgar
    Yesterday, the first of August, I stumbled out of bed and spent 15 minutes trying to get the hotel to return my 100 Yuan deposit. Perhaps they resented me opening a secret triangular chamber adjoining my room. I walked quickly to the bus station, and got on the bus with many other foreigners, including some I’d seen before. After the obligatory screaming session, which was on this occasion conducted at very high pitch, the bus rolled out. I sat by two American girls dressed in Tibetan gear. After being alone and silent for so long, it was a bit weird being near all these foreigners. The way these girls talked continuously about everything that was happening to them was strange and amusing to me. Their water tasted like celery, the seat squeaked, a boy was gathering rocks. First the bus passed through the irrigated flatlands near Kashgar, then a total desert, then climbed slowly up into huge mountains. The geology was particularly interesting to observe here. I could see huge sections of sedimentary layers curled back into semicircles. After about five hours, the bus stopped at my destination, Karakul lake (3,500 meters). The lake is set in beautiful, mosquito-infested surroundings. Huge ice mountains towering above 7,5000 meters surrounded the lake. The bus was met by a crowd of locals offering yurt space for various sums. I jumped on one guy’s motorbike and we sped off. The yurt was constructed of thick, matted wool stretched over a collapsible wooden framework. At 20Yuan per day, the terms were acceptable. The yurt-wife offered me yogurt and bread. I set off to walk around the lake.
    It felt good to be up in the mountains again. I found several interesting red and yellow stones. For most of the walk, the mosquitos were at an acceptable level, but at one point, I entered some sort of interplanetary mosquito convention. The sky was blacked out. I looked down at my sleeved arm and saw several hundred affixed there. I had to run away. After several hours, I arrived back at the yurt. A few Dutch guests had arrived. The wife and her children were busy with yurtish tasks, such as sewing mats, boiling water, gathering dung and scrubbery for the fire, and so on. I walked up in the rock hills and read my stupid sci-fi novel. I walked back to a secret smaller lake, then returned to the yurt to eat several bowls of wonderful noodle soup with veggies. I talked with the Dutch family, who were headed up the Karakoram to Pakistan. At night, a Korean elementary school science teacher again gave me occasion to reflect on the failure of Natural Selection to tidy up the little issue of snoring. At last he subsided, and I slept well under the colorful blankets. In the morning, I was offered souvenirs. For breakfast, we ate a salty, milky tea with stale bread mashed up in it. One of the daughters wore an embroidered conical hat. I chatted with the Korean, who expostulated in broken English a strange theory on the origin of the Turkish nation, which I didn’t quite understand. The woman released the family’s sheep, which were quite adept at bounding up and down the rock faces. The Korean, farting constantly, walked back to the highway with me to catch the bus.
    While waiting, I had a chat with an interesting German girl whom I had seen in Urumqi and Kashgar. She wore all black and big boots like me, as well as a black turban. She taught German in Xian. She was someone after my own heart, interested in geology, linguistics, vegetarianism and Buddhism. She wanted to emigrate to New Zealand. I detected that deep, ponderous Germanic intellect in her. At first, I couldn’t quite guess her gender. She rode hard seat to Kashgar. Such are the poignant, lost friendships of travel. You meet someone, interact intimately, and know you will never see each other again. On the bus ride back, the bus stopped near a clot of yurts. We got out, and a group of Kyrgyz women descended on us, selling embroidered bags, jewels, tapestries and so on. The German girl and I agreed that it was all very nice, but basically just more crap. She had collected interesting stones, like me. The bus dropped us off back in Kashgar, and I walked to a hotel near the bus station. There, vast interstellar voids and chasms of abysmal incompetence were revealed unto me, too detailed to detail here. I walked out of the hotel at last.
    On the street, a Brazilian girl I had met in Turpan recognized me. We chatted about our relative plans. She’s flying to Chengdu tomorrow, thence to Lhasa. We are both headed to Nepal and India. She wants to study meditation there. At one point, I kind of moved to go, but she cornered me against a metal railing. We talked about Sai Baba, kundalini, and so on. She had been traveling with other people I’d met in Turpan. I could tell she was one of those women who always need to be with someone else. We walked over to the Sunday market, which was actually much busier than when I had visited it. The Brazilian spent a long time haggling over knives and dried fruits. While I was standing around waiting for her, I kind of felt like I was being used, but I decided to just wait and see. Actually, it turned out to be quite interesting to walk around the Uighur old town with her around sunset. To me, it just reminded me of Cairo-old men with long beards, crumbling buildings, veiled women, street vendors, cunning children, fruits for sale, animals in the street-but to her it seemed to be some sort of exotic, romantic oriental land. I guess that is what it should seem to Western tourists. She especially loved the horse taxis. At one point we stopped to rest, and some Uighur women came over to chat. Soon a crowd gathered, interested in her digital camera. I photographed them together. Some men smoked tobacco in a curious fashion. They rolled a long cone out of newspaper, bent it into a pipe shape, filled it with tobacco, and lit it to smoke. I hung out with the Brazilian woman near Kashgar’s central mosque for a while, then we went our separate ways.

August 3rd, 2005 Yarkand
    This day I began to travel along the South Silk Road, from Kashgar to Yarkand, a harmless four-hour bus ride through the desert to the East. For part of the trip, I could see huge snowy mountains to the South. It was odd to be in a hot desert, looking up at vast realms of ice and snow. Yarkand is a dusty, sleepy town, with a Uighur old town and a Chinese new town. There are no tourists here, so many people and even entire families stop dead in the street when they see me and just stare. I found a nice hotel room and set out to explore the old town. All the buildings are made of Earth, and transport took the form of donkey carts, bicycles, and motor trikes. Unlike in many Islamic zones, women rode or drove all of these conveyances. I ended up walking a huge loop through the countryside, taking hours to find my way back. A flock of sheep momentarily blocked a truck. I think to call someone a sheep must be one of the lowest insults. Dogs and swine seem noble in comparison. Some of the Uighur women drape their heads with a brown cloth. Others wear very brightly colored dresses with twinkly sequins. Unlike the Han-ren, these women get to be great fat babushkas when they get old. When I visited the local mosque, lots of men were there praying, unlike in Kashgar. It’s such a shame the Chinese won’t let them have their call to prayer. The Chinese immigrants are free to blast out looped-up sales chatter from their storefronts.
    I think few travelers pass along the South Silk Road, because it doesn’t really lead to anywhere and the distances are so vast. But there are several reasons why it interests me. First is the total emptiness and isolation of the Taklamakan desert. Also its mysterious lost Buddhist heritage. And not least of all, the wonderful names of the towns along the way, several of which I list here:
Koxlax
Zepu
Yawatongguzlangar
Lop
Tongguzbasti
Waxxari
Yandaxkax
Tunguztarim
Dagdaxman
Kalmakkuduk
Bextograk
According to one account I found on the net, Yawatongguzlangar consists of a few broken-down old sheds, inhabited by a single old man. Yet no cartographer dare omit Yawatongguzlangar from their Taklamakan maps. Marco Polo claims to have passed this way, and mentions Lop in his narrative. Information on Bextograk is slim. Finding an English bookstore in Waxxari could prove troublesome. I have nothing to read in the long days of bus-riding ahead, except for the Life of Milarepa. Fortunately, it is still pretty good, even after the 27th time. I can always hope, however, to find a beat-up copy of the second volume of Gibbon’s Decline and fall of the Roman Empire poking up from the sand.

August 4th, 2005 Hotan
    The bus ride to Hotan featured some awesome empty desert. The dusty earth blended with the dusty sky. In some parts, there were not even any slight hills or prominences, only whirlwinds and dust devils. I think these were like solitary desert spirits. Sometimes the bus stopped in small oasis towns, but we couldn’t even get out to stretch our legs, because as soon as the bus halted, it instantly filled up with women and children selling drinks, eggs, rolls, and fruit. At one point, I counted more than 20 vendors crammed into the narrow aisle of our bus, and the bus was a small one! Out in the desert again, the road was washed out in several places by rapid streams of water, and our bus had to detour over a temporary bridge. The driver made all the passengers get off when he drove over these temporary bridges. It was odd to see these rivers rushing out into the desert, where they must evaporate into nothingness. What a strange type of river that finds no sea, or even lake.
    Hotan is a dull, dusty town with wide streets. The economy is based on melons. No foreigners come here, so people really stare and laugh at me. In the center of town is a colossal statue of what appears to be a drug deal in progress, although it might also represent Chairman Mao shaking hands with a Uighur dwarf. I had planned to stay here for a while, but the place really doesn’t interest me, so I bought a ticket onwards. I want to walk around in the desert, but all the cities are in oases. On my way back from the distant Eastbound bus station, around sunset, a big dust storm blew up, creating a dramatic atmosphere. My mouth filled with grit. I walked around in the Uighur market. I think all the veiled ladies, donkey-cart traffic, piles of rotting vegetables and feral plastic bags would have affected me much more, if I hadn’t spent so long living in Cairo.
    Sometimes in Kashgar and Hptan I’ve seen massive Datura stramonium growing by the roadside.

August 5th, 2005 Keriya
    I’m on my way across the South Silk Road. For some reason, the bus to Qiemo does the trip in two days, with an overnight stop here in cosmopolitan Keriya. When the bus pulled up at one PM local time, I found a room, then set out to try and find the desert. I walked east for about an hour, crossed a wide and rapid river, then found the desert. Weirdly, it had been pouring rain for most of the day. I walked out into the desert for about an hour and a half, in a southwards direction. The sand was very fine and soft, almost like a grey dust. There were lizards, and a few plants that devoted a large part of their budgets to defense. It was a cloudy, overcast day, fine for walking in the desert. I made my way up a big dune way out there. It was a bit confusing, but I could easily follow my tracks back to the road, until it started raining again. Back in town, I searched for a Chinese restaurant where I could explain that I didn’t eat meat. Being good Muslims, the Uighurs base their cuisine on charred corpses. They don’t seem to speak any Chinese, except for the numbers. Two times I explained in Chinese how I didn’t want meat, and they pretended to understand and urged me to sit down. Two minutes later, the burned, mangled remains of some animal appeared before me. At last I found a Chinese place, with its clock set defiantly to Beijing time. This town also has a huge statue of a drug deal involving Chairman Mao and an ethnic dwarf. I really hate the way people stare at me here. It’s that dull, sullen bovine staring that makes one’s skin crawl with vexation.

The fun-filled Taklamakan Desert

August 6th, 2005 Qiemo
    All this long day I rode east across the desert. The farmlands gave way to scrubbery, then to totally lifeless desert of endless dunes. Who knows what our cargo of pigeons, strapped to the roof, thought of all this. Perhaps they enjoyed the long hours of emptiness, pretending they were flying. After about eight hours of travel, someone brought out a 100 note from Ecuador and showed it to me and others. I showed them my little Egyptian notes. Then I busted out a 9-11 deception dollar, which really confused them. It had a picture of Bush in the middle, whom they recognized. They had quite a discussion about it. Finally we arrived in Qiemo, a pleasant, quiet town in an oasis. I was so hungry that I stuffed two huge breads into my digestive tract. Some guys invited me to drink beer from Dixie cups with them in a small tent.

August 8th, 2005 Qiemo
    Last night I was so tired that I went to bed at dusk, and thus arose before dawn today. When the bus station finally opened, I secured a ticket onwards to Ruoqiang for tomorrow. I gave my clothes a thorough washing, their second in 38 days, and hung them on the roof to dry. Then I set off to try to find the desert. I walked East for over two hours, through pleasant countryside of fields and tall poplars before dunes appeared on the horizon. A large but shallow river blocked my way, so I took off my boots and waded across. I could see the huge, towering dunes ahead, and a great range of snowy peaks off to the South. As I crossed the water, I felt a wonderful sensation of unfoldment and burgeoning creativity that comes from entering into a great solitude. There were very tall dunes of yellow sand and a deep blue sky. I climbed up the tallest dunes and walked way out in the desert for a few hours. It was interesting to observe how the wind swept away my footprints, and the unusual, voluptuous texture of the mud as I crossed the river. Only when you get away from land with plants do the living, creative forces of sand, stone, water and rock become apparent. At one point, a whirlwind like a living swastika swept across the dunes, and seemed to be a caretaking spirit of the desert doing routine maintenance on the dune sculptures. I also came across some weird protrusions of mudstone in the sand, and an isolated lake of deep blue. Not even lizards could live out there, but I did spot a fly.
    Back in Qiemo, I discovered the Chinatown. There are lots of Hanren here, for some reason. I even saw one eating bread, perhaps a hopeful sign of cultural assimilation. I think bread must taste very dull to the Chinese. I think no foreigners must ever come here at all. When I bought some beer at a roadside stall just now, about twenty men gathered around to observe the transaction. I bowed and tipped my hat to them.

August 10th, 2005 Ruoqiang
    Yesterday featured a pleasant eight-hour bus ride across to Ruoqiang at the Eastern edge of the Taklamakan. Two hours were for breakdowns. There were two other laowai on the bus and I chatted with them. They were a Canadian couple teaching in Nanjing, near Shanghai. The said it was horrifically polluted there. The bus was a decrepit sleeper, and the aisles soon filled with extra illegal passengers and sacks of melons. We stopped to change spark plugs in the middle of a total void, and some cops appeared and gave the driver a ticket for having ten extra passengers. Ruoqiang is a dull, totally lifeless town. It’s very quiet and sleepy here. Outside the oasis is a gravel desert with mountains to the South. I had dinner and beers with the Canadians. The husband said he lost 80 pounds traveling in India because of amoebic dysentery and giardia.
    This morning I waited three hours for some other passengers to show up for the jeep across the mountains to Qinghai province. None showed, so I checked back into my hotel and set off for my usual entertainment- walking into the desert. Here the desert is composed of smooth gravel on a bed of crunchy grey sand. I started heading towards the mountains in the South, across a totally flat void of grey gravel and sand. After about an hour and a half of walking, I got out past the tire tracks of machines. A bit further out, I began to find big, beautiful chunks of green jade. I picked up a lot of these. I even happened across one piece the size of a head, too big to carry. I dust storm blew in after I had been walking for three hours, and I could no longer see the mountains. I started to lose track of the bits of the oasis I could still see in the North. It was very odd to be in this totally flat and featureless place. There was only the dim horizon all around, and the gravel underfoot. A few small ridges of sand, about 10” high, were visible in the distance. I decide to turn back before becoming totally lost in the dust storm. A few hours walk returned me to town. I researched jade on the net. Now I have to sort out which chunks I want to keep and lug around with me for the next 3.5 months.

August 11th, 2005 Magnai
    Yesterday morning, the Canadians and I got on the SUV going to Qinghai province. The eight-hour trip was quite agonizing, as four people were crammed into the back seat. My leg started to die after a few minutes, and I had to spend most of the trip in excruciating contortions. The so-called road was just jeep tracks across the desert, or the dry riverbeds of mountains of dust. The SUV dropped us off in the totally desolate mining town of Magnai Zhen, which was probably the most depressing place I’d ever seen. We had to wait there for a few hours, and the place began to look better after a few beers with the Canadians, enjoyed in the dark, coal-stained, fly-ridden shack serving as a shop. At last we made it over to Magnai, a totally isolated and dusty town in a cold, high desert. When we arrived there, the police arrived and forced us into their van. They took us to the only hotel permitted to have foreigners. The hotel demanded an absurd 120 Yuan for a room, and refused to negotiate. The cops told me I HAD to stay there and HAD to pay the 120 Yuan. They took about 30 minutes to copy down the info from my passport. I refused to pay, and walked back out into the street, sending the police and innumerable legions of hotel staff into a panic. They agreed to 50 Yuan, and I felt quite victorious. The hotel ladies mandated a certain restaurant, in which we were required to dine. When we were done, they told us to go to sleep, and were appalled when we showed signs of walking off into the town. We ignored them and went to a funny Chinese disco, where we drank lots of beers and talked until very late. Back at the hotel, the ladies were furious, and stamped their little feet. We asked them if they were our moms, and went to bed. It was interesting to travel with those Canadians for a few days. It’s always so weird to meet people who you really like, get to know all about them, then part, knowing you’ll never see each other again. Observing the psychological dynamic of a marriage is always interesting too. There always seems to be some mixture of love, dependence, and constant nitpicking involved. Now, I’m sitting in the quiet, cool, empty bus station, waiting for my bus to Golmud at 15:15.

August 12th, 2005 Golmud
    The 14-hour bus ride across Qinghai province to Golmud was fairly relaxing, although the high altitude made it impossible to sleep. The landscape was awesome, and you could see for incredible distances off across the grey desert. From the crest of a small hill, I could see the highway stretching off into a long ribbon, diminishing into a thread, and vanishing well before the horizon. All night, the stars and Milky Way were magnificent. There were an unusual number of shooting stars as well. We arrived in Golmud before dawn, and I found a hotel and slept until noon. Today I wandered around Gomud, which is actually a fairly decent place, with a big, interesting market. The only problem is the enormous distances between things in town. The whole city could easily be edited down to a quarter of its size. As in many Chinese cities, the streets are enormous. There are two lanes in each direction, a big breakdown lane, two lanes worth of trees, a big bike lane, more trees and vegetation, and a vast sidewalk to traverse on each side, before you get to the buildings, most of which are deserted, or unfinished construction sites, or just fields of rubble and plastic bags. I couldn’t find any of the famous touts offering rides to Lhasa, although I walked up and down town all day. Tomorrow, I’ll have to try just talking to the bus driver. Going the official way costs almost 2,000 Yuan of permits and fees. Supposedly, you can sneak in for about 400-800 Yuan illegally. Chinese people can pay about 200 Yuan. Getting to Lhasa has always been a bit of a struggle, and many Western explorers were turned back in the early years. Soon there will supposedly be a new railroad linking Golmud to Lhasa. When I woke up this morning, the phone rang in my room. It was the hotel front desk, asking if I wanted to go to Lhasa. I said no, which I hoped was the right answer. I feared they would make me go the official way, or call the police. We’ll see what happens.

August 14th, 2005 Occupied Lhasa
    O my, what a day. When I checked out of my hotel yesterday morning, I went over to the bus station to scope the sitch. I noticed a row of busses with the Lhasa glyph and approached them. I talked to the driver and negotiated a fare of 850 Yuan to Lhasa, which was a bit higher than I’d hoped, but still way better than the official price. After waiting four hours for the bus to fill up, we finally rolled out. I was nervous about getting caught and fined. At the edge of town, the bus pulled over and the driver gestured for me and a Japanese kid to come over. He rolled back the carpet and removed some planks from the aisle floor of the bus, revealing a low crawl space underneath the bunks. We climbed down there and the driver replaced the planks and carpet. It was very dark down there, but actually quite comfortable, or at least more so than the shopping-cart sized bunks above. Little pinpricks of light came through from above. The driver said “NO SPEAK ENGLISH! NO SPEAK!” with bludgeon forcefulness. It sounded like he might have been caught before with jabbering laowai under the floor. The bus got underway. Lying there in the dark, I tried to remember what I’d done each day in the past. I tried to remember all the poems I knew. After about half an hour, the bus stopped at a checkpoint. I could hear the side compartments of the bus being opened and inspected. A heavy tramp of boots sounded on the planks above. I lay dead still and didn’t breathe. After a long eon, the bus started up and we pulled away. We stopped once more a ways on, then hit the highway. After being down there for about an hour and a half, the planks were removed, and the grinning face of one of the drivers appeared in blazing light. We crawled out and brushed ourselves off. All the passengers were smiling hugely. We felt like heroes, but we still had about 1,000 km to go before Lhasa and safety. The newly constructed and very impressive railroad went alongside us almost the entire trip. Most of the way, it was supported on a huge steel I-beam raised on giant concrete pylons. I was quite surprised to see how massive the whole project was. I rode up in the top back of the bus, where there is a big flat mattress. Two monks sandwiched me on either side, and a Tibetan family was in front. The altitude gave me quite a headache, so I couldn’t sleep all night.

The Potala, former residence of the dalai Lamas.
Note Chinese crap at base.

After about 21 hours of travel, the route came down into a farmed river valley. We drove through a Chinese city. Was this Lhasa? Then, my neighbor monks pointed out something visible down the street. The Potala! We’d made it. I was so relieved. Feeling extremely dazed and confused from altitude and lack of sleep, I barely managed to find a hotel, some food, and stagger into bed. After a six-hour nap, I arose and walked around the city. I walked around the Jokhang, the holiest shrine in Tibet, and the center of Lhasa. All around that area were vendors sitting behind enormous heaps of souvenirs –jewelry, skulls, turquoise, coral, pictures, thankas and lots of other crap. The sign above one shop read TIBETAN HANDICRAP. Inside, a man was quietly painting a thanka, or Tibetan religious image. I wandered around the interesting little side streets and alleys around the Jokhang, then over to the Potala palace, which looks magnificent. Like Kashgar, Lhasa has a fine old town in the center, surrounded by a gigantic wasteland of Chinese city. Lhasa must be at least 70% Han Chinese, although large areas of the city are 100% Chinese. The presence of so many Chinese people here is really offensive. For example, I walked the Potala kora or pilgrim circuit today, and the entire route was lined with Chinese people selling plastic clothes from little stalls. Looped up, pre-recorded sales pitches and horrible Chinese music blasted out of megaphones and loudspeakers. The pilgrims couldn’t even get to many of the prayer wheels, because the Chinese had parked their trikes there and were playing cards and smoking. The poor Tibetan pilgrims seemed to have emerged from a distant century in the past. They moved around those Chinese obstructions as if they pertained to a wholly different but superimposed universe.
I walked down to the river. It looks like there are some great mountains for climbing right close to Lhasa, but it will be a few days before I am acclimatized enough to attempt them. Lhasa is at about 3,700 meters (12,000 feet). Right now I can walk around just fine, but getting up from a chair makes me almost pass out. The river that flows by Lhasa flows into the Brahmaputra, which merges with the Ganges in distant Bangladesh. Reflecting on this, I seem much closer to India now.

Tibetan pilgrims prostrating themselves before the Jokhang, holiest shrine in Tibet.
Note the clueless Chinese tourist at left.

August 15th, 2005 Lhasa
This day I walked all around Lhasa, exploring lots of little temples in the Tibetan part of town. I started following a kora around the traditional edges of old Lhasa. At one point, a Tibetan woman and her daughter took me under their wing. The mom carried a big thermos of melted yak butter to add to the temple lamps, and the daughter carried a huge wad of one mao notes to donate to the shrines. They took me to several obscure little temples in the backstreets, unlisted even in my guidebook. We visited an interesting nunnery, at which some nuns were printing off scriptures in teams of two, and others were doing some sort of raging ceremony involving drums, cymbals, horns and chanting. In a low basement shrine, a nun meditated by herself. The Tibetan Buddhist nuns always seem like especially interesting and intense people. I think it is perhaps more of a sacrifice to be a nun than a monk. I continued on the kora to some rock carvings on a hill in front of the Potala. There I saw and photographed an enormous patch of the fearsome hallucinogenic plant Datura stramonium, the hugest I’d ever seen. Some of their leaves were the size of dinner plates. I continued around to a little temple on an island in a lake behind the Potala. It was dedicated to Nagas or water spirits and contained some awesome and intricate murals. One had particularly great images of decaying corpses being devoured by animals, next to couples in bed having sex. Next I walked back to the center of town and visited the Jokhang, the holiest shrine in Tibet. It cost 70 kwai to enter, and was actually quite disappointing. Unlike all the other temples I visited today, there were no pilgrims, only grotesque tourists. The Chinese barked in their horrible language, screamed into cell phones, and took flash photographs. The Westerners were equally bad- “O LOOK HONEY, NOW WHAT YOGA POSE IS THAT STATUE DOING? DOWNWARD DOG?” As usual, the most expensive thing was the least interesting and worthwhile. I had a beer in a restaurant overlooking the Barkhor Kora (around the Jokhang) and chatted with a Chinese kid who was visiting Lhasa from Sichuan. He claimed to love Tibetan Buddhism, but spun a prayer wheel the wrong way.

Tibetan pilgrims circumambulating the Jokhang.
Note colorful rocks affixed to head.

August 16th, 2005 Lhasa
After the rain stopped this morning, I took a bus to Drepung monastery, about 10 km West of central Lhasa. It was once the largest monastery on earth, with 10,000 monks. There I perused vast piles of dusty Buddhist kitsch, such as statues and texts. There were actually lots of monks there. Maybe 100 of them were sitting in the great Assembly Hall, chanting sutras. They produced a very mystical clamor. I spent hours wandering around the endless temples, shrines and colleges. I planned to walk the monastery kora, but I wasn’t feeling well. The mountains surrounding Drepung are covered with huge, elephant-like boulders.
I walked down to the nearby Nechung Temple, which was smaller and considerably more interesting. It was the residence of the state oracle, where the Dalai Lama used to come before making important decisions. The oracle would go into some kind of state of demonic possession. The murals here were particularly gory and awesome. All along the top were depicted flayed human skins, disembodied flying eyeballs, and strings of intestines. In the middle, insane monsters and serpent beings were having sex while on fire. Below was a boiling sea of flaming blood, from which human limbs emerged. All this was painted in exquisite, almost microscopic detail, and covered an area at least 10 feet high and 100 meters long. Inside the temple part, the statues were receiving offerings of baijio, in addition to their usual fodder of yak butter and one mao notes. Certain shrines reeked of the stuff. Lots of incredibly dirty children were begging outside of the temple. I’ve yet to encounter an explanation for all this frightening demonic imagery. It reminds me of biker tattoos in the USA. Perhaps the Hell’s Angels contacted the same level of reality as Tibetan Vajrayana Buddhists. Come to think of it, most of the demons have enormous, protruding beerbellies, identical to those displayed by bikers.

Feeling unwell, I made it back to my hotel and fell asleep. I woke up with an extremely evil case of the flying shits. I’m familiar with this specific variety and know I’ll need antibiotics to get well again. That will be my expedition for tomorrow.

August 19th, 2005 Lhasa
Two days of antibiotics and laying in bed seem to have cured me. I paid a visit to the Lhasa hospital to get some drugs. I love how cheap and efficient medical care is outside of the USA. No waiting, no lines, just a lot of wandering aimlessly down long corridors looking for someone who speaks English. The whole thing cost 40 kwai (Yuan) or about 5 USD. You could probably get a heart-lung transplant for about 50 bucks. I read books by Iain Banks while recovering. Feeling better today, I set out to visit the Sera monastery, a bit North of Lhasa, but was driven away by the 50 Yuan admission fee. All the other foreigners I saw also refused to pay it. I hate how the Chinese institute these insane admission fees to things in Tibet. Instead, I did a few koras of the monastery, the walked over to a much older monastery called Pabonka. That’s right PABONKA. It was built in the 7th century on top of a huge boulder. Inside, a bevy of monks were doing their mystical chanting. There were some good Vajrayogini thankas on display as well. The monastery was up in a little valley in the mountains surrounding Lhasa. A lot of these mountains have very curious boulders perched in precarious positions. Perhaps they are “glacial erotics” but I think they must have been set up by Titanic earth spirits in the early days. Other boulders stick up like giant smooth tongues.
Back in Lhasa, I had some fun walking around the Barkhor Kora and bargaining for fake Tibetan jewelry. Usually I’m quite bad at bargaining, but today I had a great time. Perhaps this was because I was relaxed from a nice hot shower. My biggest triumph involved a “coral and turquoise” necklace. The price started off at 850 Yuan, but I ended up paying 40 for it. The woman followed me a good way around the kora, pursuing the deal. About 20 Tibetans gathered around to observe the final transaction. When they heard what I’d paid for it, they nodded their heads in a serious, assenting fashion, which made me feel I’d bargained reasonably well. I also got an om mani padma hum bracelet for 25 Yuan, and a bunch of other stuff. I suppose I’ll have to mail it back to the rents.

View of Ganden monestary.

August 21st, 2005 Lhasa
Yesterday I went to visit the great Gelugpa monastery at Ganden, about 40 km upriver from Lhasa. Unfortunately, this involved getting up at 5:30 AM. I always feel like I’ve done serious damage to myself and the day by getting up before sunrise. Anyways, the monastery is located way up in the mountains above the Lhasa River at 4,500 meters. The bus was filled with Tibetan pilgrims spinning prayer wheels and carrying yak butter for offerings. Once we finally snaked up the switchbacks to the monastery, we got off and did the kora. This involved awesome views out over the river and various weird rituals such as squeezing between rocks, tying flags to shrubs, burning juniper dust, pounding rocks in little depressions, and of course chanting. It was interesting to see how the rocks had been polished up like glass by so many pilgrims rubbing against them. The monastery itself had some of the most interesting art and pilgrims I’d ever seen. I especially liked listening to the monks chanting in their mysterious, shadowy assembly hall. Also, there was an awesome bedroom for the high Lama, filled with wonderful statues. I wished I could sleep in such a chamber. The most impressive pilgrim was a hale but ancient old man in purple robes with very long pure white dreadlocks. It was nice to see Tibetan families going out to make their pilgrimages together. Lots of restoration work was going on at the monastery. After exploring the monastery for a few hours, I climbed a high mountain just South of there. The altitude forced me to walk soooooper slooooowly. Eventually, I discovered that I could walk without resting by breathing in with one step and out with the next. Back in Lhasa, I took a very long nap.
repairs to ganden

    I’ve been very impressed by how sublimely imperturbable the Tibetans are. For example, when I was doing the Potala kora, I noticed that none of the pilgrims were at all bothered by the offensive Chinese salespeople blocking the way. It seemed like they were just two peoples in two different worlds. Similarly, on the bus ride out to Ganden monastery, a Tibetan woman and her baby sat next to me. The baby was looking out the window of the open bus, when suddenly someone in the seat behind slammed the window shut, smashing the poor babies soft, bald little head. When it started to cry, the mother just calmly extruded a boob and let it nurse, quieting it instantly. I think I would have screamed violently at the oaf in the seat behind, and felt justified in doing so. While this self-contained imperturbability is quite admirable, I think it also tends to encourage laxity, incompetence and corruption.
    Today I started off with an attempt to climb the big mountains across the river from Lhasa, but was driven back by heavy rain. I’ll try later. Much of the South bank was devoted to Sauronic Chinese gravel mining and military bases. I felt the presence of THE MACHINE. I spent the rest of the day walking around Lhasa. I decided to head out to explore some places on the Brahmaputra tomorrow.
    For some reason, I’ve been getting incredibly intense feelings of déjà vu these past few days. I was talking to a Spanish teacher in my hotel dormitory room, and suddenly got the feeling that I remembered this exact situation, complete with some context involving numerous people and places I couldn’t quite remember. It’s also happened to me several other times. I suspect that the high altitude may be triggering the neurological glitch responsible for déjà vu. Some might propose a mystical Tibetan explanation.

August 22nd, 2005 Lhasa
    This day I succeeded in climbing the big mountain South of Lhasa. I waited until noon to start out, when the sky was clear and sunny. Lots of little sheep, goats, cows and yaks were up there as well. I also found some mysterious ruins in a high pass near the top. I saw many tall walls of stone and earth. Perhaps this used to be a monastery. I could see all of Lhasa spread out below. Lots of greenhouses were there.

View over Lhasa, looking East.
view of potala

The Potala is visible in this view over Lhasa.

August 25th, 2005
I’ve just gotten back from a small expedition up the Yarlung Tsangpo valley. The first stop was Mindroling monastery. I was mostly attracted by its name, which suggests continual rambling thoughts. The bus dropped me off at a desolate roadside at the mouth of a large side valley. It was early morning, and raining slightly. I could tell the other passengers thought I was really crazy to get off there. I walked 8km up to the monastery, through pleasant farmlands and beside green mountains. Far ahead, I could see fresh snow lying on distant mountaintops. Below the monastery was a small village with lots of cute piglets snuffling about. The Mindroling monastery itself wasn’t very interesting. New statues were being painted. There was a huge central Buddha statue, surrounded by a sea of weird animals and mythic beings. Supposedly, the monastery used to have a giant, 13-storey pagoda, which the Chinese were considerate enough to dynamite. Taiwanese paid for the construction of a new pagoda, or chorten, which was actually quite interesting inside, with bright new murals and many levels of shrines and statues. I walked back to the main road, accompanied part of the time by a strange old monk, carrying a sacred text wrapped in a crimson cloth.
samye

I hitched a ride to the Samye monastery ferry crossing in one of those ubiquitous big, blue Chinese trucks. Samye was the first monastery in Tibet, and it was built to represent the cosmos as a giant circle. It’s on the North side of the river, and a one-hour ferry ride takes pilgrims across. The river is very wide here, and filled with many shoals and sandbanks. The views of the surrounding mountains were beautiful. I explored the monastery for a few hours. The central building, called the Utse, was filled with monks busy in ritual chanting, bonging gongs and ringing bells and making little sculptures out of tsampa and yak butter. The inner chapel had a wonderful and spooky dark inner kora with faint ancient murals. The main image was of a giant Sakyamuni, flanked by divine maidens. Off to the North was a small side chapel where the SCARY gods lived. Their faces, too terrible to behold, were draped with cloth. As usual with these ones, they got offerings of Baijio. Aside from the Utse, there were many other shrines, chortens and temples, which I visited with many pilgrims. Lots of families were going on pilgrimage together. Good, wholesome, Tibetan family entertainment. Where American families go to watch a baseball game, Tibetan families replenish the butter lamps before monstrous idols. One temple had an unusual semicircular kora. Another was the former residence of the state oracle, before it moved to Nechung near Drepung in Lhasa. It was filled with masked scary gods. Some were so horrific that their whole bodies were covered in drapery. Only their extra long, groping arms stuck out towards the pilgrims. One god had the body of a dagger impaling a corpse. I sacrificed 5 mao to it. Of course, all these types of gods got lots of Baijio. All of these little temples have a little combination wooden couch/desk where the monk sits, surrounded by all his necessary paraphernalia. He chants texts printed on long strips of paper and occasionally bangs a nearby gong. On the little desk, along with the texts, is a pile of money donated by pilgrims, a thermos of tea, a supply of yak butter, bottles of Baijio (if it’s a scary god temple), and often an incongruous bottle of Pepsi. It’s such a cozy looking little station.

View of Samye monestary.

After paying my repects at all the shrines and temples, I walked up a holy hill to the East. This was a spot where Guru Rinpoche vanquished the native demons of Tibet and converted them to Buddhism. I took a few photos, including one that looked something like a Tibetan stone version of a Victorian mansard roof house. I watched the sun set out in the desert, then walked back to the monastery guesthouse. The pilgrims were all singing and drinking lots of beer. I could hear many groups of them picnicking all over. Once it got dark, a big dance started up in front of the Utse. The dancers formed a big circle, half men, half women. The men and women took turns singing. In the center was a table covered in beer bottles. Servers served the dancers beer and Pepsi as they danced for hours. All the pilgrims and monks stood around and watched happily. It was actually very touching to witness this simple, powerful and ancient form of entertainment. No machines or devices were necessary to it. There was something almost sad about it, which I can’t quite describe. It was like something very delicate and ancient had somehow survived into modern times, and was now joyfully offering an imperturbable defiance. Like a very old tree still putting out new leaves. A Korean girl and I were the only non-Tibetans there. The singing and dancing went on late into the night.

    The next day I went downriver to Tsetang, a large Chinese town at the mouth of the Yarlung valley, the “cradle of Tibetan civilization.” Supposedly you need all kinds of permits and guides to visit, and the PSB will fine you 500 Yuan if they catch you. Despite all the dire warnings in my guidebook, I made it just fine with no problems. First I visited the Trandruk monastery, which had an awesome display of frightening masks and costumes, then the famous Yambulagang, the legendary first building in Tibet. It’s a tall white tower on a spur of high rock. It looks a bit like a European castle. I made it back to Lhasa a little before sunset.

August 5th, 2005
    Yesterday, I mailed a package of crap back to my parents. It included a bunch of fake Tibetan jewelry, my knife from Ganze, my Life of Milarepa, and a lot of posters. Today I visited the Potala and got a visa for visiting Nepal. The interior of the Potala has some cool giant 3-D mandalas – circular mini-palaces filled with rutting gods. The tombs of the Dalai Lamas were mildly diverting. One contained 4,000 kilos of gold. There were lots of cats and Chinese tourists about. You could only visit the central red section of the Potala. I’m quite curious what’s inside the rest. There were also lots of Chinese PLA soldiers working in the Potala, doing repairs and maintenance. It was weird to see them painting the Buddhist designs on the walls. The guys at the Nepali consulate were the friendliest immigration officials I’d ever seen. They even asked me how I liked my hotel in Lhasa. A sixty day (!) visa cost 255 Yuan. I also visited the Tibet museum, which was surprisingly interesting. The best things were a book made of birch bark from 800 AD, and an extensive exhibit of anti-counterfeiting propaganda. For some reason, the subject of counterfeit notes is fascinating to me. The display even had counterfeit 2 and 1 Yuan notes! These were so crappy that they could only have been passed off in the remotest regions, where currency was unfamiliar. There were also some fine pictures of the mass punishment of counterfeiters. They were all tied up and kneeling in lines, waiting to be shot.
    I’ve run into a bit of a strange problem. From working in Yilong, I managed to save more than 8,000 Yuan, about 1,000 USD. You are not allowed to change RMB into USD, and I really have no idea how to get that money out of here in a useful form. I wanted to buy a gold coin, but couldn’t find any for sale. Only loads of cheap crap. According to the Nepali consulate, you can change RMB into USD in Kathmandu, but I don’t want $1,000 worth of Nepali Rupees in hand. I really hate dealing with money in all its forms. Earning it sucks. Spending it is degrading.
    Have I mentioned the amazing amount of Datura stramonuim that grows in Tibet? It really is the most remarkable plant here. All else is just little clumps of scrubbery, but the Datura grows tall, thick and healthy. The stems are much thicker than the daturas I’ve seen growing in the USA, but otherwise it’s identical. Of course, Datura is one of the most fearsome deliriant hallucinogens on Earth. Ingestion of a sub-lethal dose induces insane, massive hallucinations of spirits and ancestors which even experienced psychonauts cannot realize are illusory. Visual distortions have been known to last for months afterwards. Is it only a coincidence that the most prominent plant here is Datura, and that all the local religious imagery features such wild, flaming demons, monsters and skeletons? Could the pre-Buddhist Bonpo shamans have neglected to sample this prominent plant?

August 27th, 2005
    I spent all of today running around Lhasa trying to dispose of my 7,900 Yuan. I bought a turquoise for my mother and some other minor crap. In various sketchy transactions, I managed to buy 275 USD. One of these was quite funny. I was at the large central Bank of China behind the Potala. They refused to exchange my RMB, because I lacked receipts. Just as I thought they would. I noticed a Tibetan woman at the next window trying to change two USD $100 notes. They refused to help her either. So, I bought them off her right there in the middle of the bank. All the bank tellers and security guards thought this flagrantly illegal public transaction was quite amusing. I also bought a small blob of gold for 1,500 Yuan. It’s weirdly heavy and beautiful. The jeweler used bolt cutters to chop it off a bar, then fused the bits together with a welding torch. It weighs twelve grams. I’ve still got too much RMB though. Maybe I’ll be robbed.

August 29th, 2005 Shigatse
Yesterday I finally made the move and got out of Lhasa. Lots of the streets were closed off there by police because of some kind of 40th anniversary of the “autonomous” region being declared in 1965. A huge ugly Chinese stage was erected in front of the Potala. Lots of cops and police swarmed everywhere. Even today I was denied entrance to the Tashilhunpo monastery in Shigaste, which was guarded by soldiers. So, I decided to walk up a mountain instead. I’m sure it turned out to be way more fun anyway. My favorite thing to do is to head out in the morning with some bread and water, walk in the mountains all day, come back into town to have dinner, a beer, and write in my diary. I chose a big mountain just East of Shigatse, across a tributary of the Yarlung Tsangpo. It was a very beautiful, clear morning, the first I’d seen in weeks. Once I gained some elevation up onto a ridge, I observed an antlike speeding procession of SUVs passing far below, doubtless carrying the top fascist officials on their way to some function. The noise of some sort of pomposity in progress filtered faintly up to me at my exalted altitude. I gained the peak at noon and ate some crackers. The view was sweet. I could see the broad, braided Brahmaputra to the North, and tall mountains all around. Far to the South and West, a few massive snowy peaks were distantly visible. I decided to walk out along the ridge, continuing East. Plump lizards lived up there in tiny holes under rocks. There was also an interesting minute alpine ecology of mini plants, including one that resembled brain coral. It grew in fuzzy, brain-sized clumps of tiny round bits. Somewhere along the high ridge, I encountered two guys digging up roots of some Lilly-like plant. I found that the altitude didn’t affect me that much, although I was probably above 4,500 meters or more.

Two views from the mountain over Shigatse.
view east from shigatse

Eventually, I reached the end of the ridge, and climbed down to an eroded desert-like landscape with very thorny plants- always a sign of intense grazing activity. I met a shepherd who had an awesome sling for herding his sheep in certain directions. He would swing it around his head and send small rocks whistling through the air with deadly accuracy, causing them to impact into the boulders, scaring the sheep in certain directions. I noticed with interest that he could hurl the rocks so fast that they exploded into dust on impact. I’ve got to get one of those. After a long walk through the desert, I made it back into town around six. Now, I’m sitting at night in the central square of Shigatse. Lots of Tibetans are dancing together everywhere. Someone is playing the flute. The other principle form of entertainment consists of gathering around in large groups to observe the fascinating process of me writing in this book. Seven people are observing as I write this now. Fortunately, my skills at ignoring people are becoming quite sharp.

August 30th, 2005 Gyantse
This morning, I took a meecrobus over to Gyantse, the historical third town in Tibet, home to the famous Gyantse Kumbum. It’s also well known for its lack of Chinese flooding. First I visited the monastery, which is surrounded by a high wall. The Kumbum was indeed awesome. It is an enormous chorten or stupa stuffed with ancient images of gods, goddesses, Buddhas, Tibetan kings, heroes and demons. It looks something like a giant wedding cake on mescaline. The pilgrim spirals through many levels, visiting myriad shrines along the way. It dates back to the 1400s and some of its statues are really exquisitely beautiful. I particularly loved the attendant deities, some of whom were sexy demonesses, contorted into voluptuous poses, and showing bared fangs and wild eyes. The extent and intricacy of the murals was also really amazing. One level showed yogic poses and mahasiddhis. Before leaving the USA, I’d read some book in which an Italian traveler named FOSCO MARIANI visited the Kumbum way back, maybe in the 20’s or 30’s, so I was happy to finally get to see it myself. No fee was collected to visit.

View of Gyantse Monestary from the Dzong.
The Kumbum is the pyramidal structure visible at the center.

In the afternoon after a nap, I visited the Gyantse Dzong, or hilltop castle. All over Tibet, ruined castled perch on steep hilltops above villages and town. This example was pretty awesome, with good views of the monastery and surrounding countryside. I could see the sunlit fields and mountains, as well as various thunderstorms in progress up the valleys. Apparently, the British machine-gunned a few hundred Tibetans here in 1904 as part of some imperialist venture. My Lonely Planet guidebook tries to pass off this massacre as somehow a good thing, claiming the Chinese have a “fantastically warped perspective.”

    Meanwhile, my plans for the future have fallen into place. Basically, there is no public transport for foreigners West of Shigatse. Apparently, you have to wait days for a lift. While that wouldn’t be a bad way to go, I’ve decided to buy a mountain bike in Lhasa and bike down to Katmandu. This way I can go wherever and whenever I want. This idea appeared suddenly in my head, and I knew I would do it. It’s weird how I make decisions like that. For example, about two years ago, I spent about 5 seconds thinking about moving to Egypt, then knew I would. It’s like a gate in my destiny opens clear. The Chinese expect that all foreign tourists hire their own personal SUVs to carry them around. Not exactly my style.
    Last night in my hotel dorm room I had a good chat with three other foreigners, a Swede, A German, and a Dutch guy. They argued a bit about if the Euro made things more expensive. The people who lived in countries where the Euro was used insisted that it did, while the Swede was adamant that it did not. Weird how they all spoke fluent English. We all agreed that while the Chinese are wonderful people, Tibet really brings out the worst in them. For example, their addiction to inefficient, multilayered, Byzantine bureaucracy, their cultural chauvinism, their staggering aesthetic deficits, total lack of environmental consciousness, fixation on pompous displays at the expense of real action, idolatry of bits of official looking paper, and their absolute certainty that their way, the Chinese way, is the best and only way. O, and their penchant for demolishing any structure over 20 years old.
    Perhaps this is the place to berate the Chinese for their total failure to grasp certain concepts related to that essential liquid known as beer. Now listen up! News flash! Beer is not like bottled water or canned meat that can be left behind a glass window all day in the sun, gathering dust. It’s a living thing that must be kept cool. What is it about this fact that you fail to understand? Would you like to be left in the sun for months at 14,000 feet? Second. Beer contains alcohol. 2.5% is not sufficient. Third. Beer is consumed from a reasonably sized receptacle. A Stein is ideal, although any other container of similar capacity will do, such as a teapot or mug. A one-ounce shot glass is grotesquely inadequate, and shall never be used. Persons found violating this precept will be shot. Fourth. Beer is a substance promoting relaxation, informality and good-will. It is not necessary to raise a toast every time you take one sip. All drinkers shall be provided with a bottle from which they may pour and drink at will. Finally, the idea of purposely heating up beer to drink is so unutterably repellant as to be inconceivable. Anyone caught perpetrating this atrocity will be condemned to a diet of bitter melons for twelve years.
    Living in Tibet has some weird effects on my health. Like all Tibetans, I now seem to have the constant ability to hack up thick clots of yellow mucus. My lips are always sunburned, which makes eating anything salty or spicy very painful. I have great difficulty remembering my dreams, and weirdest of all, I am constantly smitten with intense déjà vu. This isn’t just the feeling that I’ve been here before, or done or thought this previously, but a very powerful although indefinable sudden rush of knowledge, like I’m just catching dim edges of a whole set of complex memories involving multiple specific people, events and intentions. As soon as it has rushed by, I have no idea what it’s about. I’m just left with the feeling that something very weird has happened again. This is particularly odd, as I can remember thinking just a few months ago how I never experience déjà vu anymore.

August 31st, 2005 Lhasa
    I’ve always loved the 31st day of August, for it seems like the final, ultimate, most luxuriant and decadent extent of summer. Back in the States, this is the time when the vegetation is so tall and rank that it starts to collapse under its own weight. Cicadas whir in the hot nights. Folks sit up on their porches, drinking and talking until late. Meanwhile in Tibet, I spent most of the day bussing back to Lhasa, where I bought a mountain bike and some supplies. The bike has awesome rapid-fire shifters, but is of course too small. Whatchagonnado. I bought some wire mesh and am constructing some panniers, although no pain will fill them, sadly. I also bought three extra inner tubes, a hex key, wrench, pump, and some plastic sacks for my crap. I’m getting so excited to go. My Chinese roommates from Shanghai, with their disposable oxygen cylinders, think I am insane, as well I am.

September Journal

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