Photo Highlights: Phase 2

Ah! I'm leaving for India in three and a half days, and SO MUCH has been left unsaid about my journeys through Tibet... This is my plan: I'm going to continue writing on this blog as summer-pertinent thoughts strike me, and put up some more pictures. However, a documentation of my experience studying for a semester beneath the Bodhi tree can be found on my regular blog, Tilting at Windmills. So stay tuned.

Below I'm posting the photo highlights of the 12 days I spent traveling through the Tibetan Autonomous Region on an organized tour (the entry I wrote about this time is called Snapshots from the TAR).

John and Nicki, the two Londoners we traveled with, on the highest train in the world en route from Xining to Lhasa.

The monks debate at the Sera Monastery.

The Sera Monastery, in Lhasa. Tibet, how are you so photogenic??

Tibetan Michael Jackson breaks out the dance moves.

A Chinese surveillance camera over the Potala Palace.

A smiling nun washes the dishes.

The solar eclipse. We are on the roof of our hostel, wearing mock-mountaineering goggles we purchased on the streets of Lhasa. Note the cloud cover.

Miles and I in the back of a truck with our fabulous guide Lumbum.

Lhasa being spectacular just before sunset. I was eating delicious chicken masala on a rooftop when I took this picture.

Bridles, anyone?

An awesome-eyed cat I found on the streets of Lhasa.

Miles with a ridiculously small puppy, also found on the streets of Lhasa.

These peace pilgrims were prostrating all the way from Kham to Lhasa.

The pass we drove over on the way to Namtso Lake. This is about 16,000 feet.

Namtso Lake, the highest lake in the world, in all it's glory.

I could make a career of yak portraiture.

For some reason the restaurant we ate at at Namsto had a couple of yak heads sitting outside. They lied about the oxygen.

SWEET TEA in the nomad tent.

This is where we spent the night.

There are always prayer flags on the high mountain passes.

We put goggles on some small children that were playing on the streets of New Tingri.

Everest, or Qoomolongma, at nightfall. Thank-you Miles for being my tripod.

On our way to the Nepali border. We drove beneath this waterfall. In a bus.

Drom, the terraced metropolis on the Nepali border.

Lettering

Right now I'm learning the Tibetan alphabet (I'm enrolled in a Tibetan class for the upcoming semester, when I'll be studying in Bodh Gaya). Whilst the crisp breeze of August-in-Oregon-masquerading-as-September slips through my screen and ruffles my exercise book, my pen traces a beautiful script that would be foreign... but isn't quite.

You see, as I trace this alphabet, I can clearly hear the voice of the vice-principal of the Home of Hope: "Ga, Kha, Ka, Gna..." He is patient, but is somewhat frustrated that I don't immediately master the difference between "kha" and "ka." I struggle to write these letters down on a white board, but the proportions are all wrong. Children are laughing outside the office, and I wonder what I might teach them this afternoon. My hair is dusty. Those laughing children are writing outside with sidewalk chalk more gracefully than I could ever hope to.

"Ja, Cha, Ca, Nya..." The vice-principal's voice was far more encouraging than the one that speaks from my Fluent Tibetan CDs.

There's something about these letters, though. I've been in Eugene for almost a week, and I've almost seemlessly entered home-mode. It's late August in Oregon--time to pick peaches and reunite with old friends, time to ride my bicycle, climb the Cascades, and sleep out under the stars. But the letters jolted me. I feel like I'm tracing mountain tops, and I can smell insence in the space between words.

Tibet is so, so far away from here.
But maybe I brought something of that country back, if I listen.

Photo Highlights: Phase 1

Below are just some of many, many pictures I took during my first four weeks in Tibet. I spent the majority time in the Amdo region of Tibet, teaching English at the Tibetan Home of Hope.

This is the first picture on my camera: Miles consuming his first meal in Beijing. He is terrible with chopsticks, but will become an expert in a mere seven weeks. We spend the night following this meal on the airport floor, and are awoken by the giant squeegee machine at regular intervals.

Is this punishment, or learning? We could never quite tell...

These twins were trouble-makers. I helped a little bit with the creation of this play structure.

Shoe cleaning!

The old-faced mountains I fell in love with. You can just see the monk-caves.

We are wearing traditional Tibetan clothes. I'm not sure what Zak is looking at.

Once again we are daunted by the sheer quantity of food.

Shadow puppets.

Lanjo looking characteristically tough. He is the youngest kid, and, according to Tashi, was "found in the garbages." He collected more bullets than anyone.

Attack!!!

Playing with chalk was a good way to break the ice.

Operation Tibetan Frisbee Team commences.

Spectacular "Niochh." Kind of tastes like it sounds. Like a mysterious sneeze.


During our hike to see the other side of the valley. We walked from prayer flag to prayer flag.

This is the meal that was given to us by the random Tibetan family in the mountains. Note the gold-flecked liquor.

Our last day at the school. We are physically restrained during our first attempt to leave, and, when we finally make it down the driveway, we are followed by a mass of singing children. As we walk through the gate and down the road, we can hear cries of "SANK YOO TEACHER!!!" fading into the distance.

Home?

Helloooo Eugene.

I have not slept in over 40 hours, but I've eaten a lot of food, and (yet again) I find the smell of home to be overwhelmingly right.

Things happened during my last couple of days in Beijing. Most notably:

1) Miles and I ate at a Tibetan restaurant, which was odd, to say the least. Some of the decor was spot on (i.e. kata, loungish benches beside the tables, a preponderance of yak meat), but enough of it was alien to make the experience uncanny (i.e. really weird paintings, sweet tea that wasn't sweet tea, staff in formal Chinese garb). We got uncomfortable when the waitress asked us if we knew anything about Tibetan history, but, instead of delving into the political mire that surrounds Tibet, she took us to a small room at the back of the restaurant. It was full of overpriced knicknacks. To this Chinese waitress, Tibetan "history" can be encapsulated in pretty merchandise. To me, this was too telling for comfort. Additionally, we ordered what turned out to be yak skin for lunch, so I left the restaurant with an unpleasant taste in my mouth that was both figurative and literal.

2) We slept on the Great Wall of China. Due to a bit of disorganization (read: lost in Beijing as per usual, insane bus stations with ten zillion people screaming, taxi driver that would pout like a kid when we wouldn't let him rip us off), we got there at nightfall. Our taxi driver kindly lent us his flashlight (he probably did rip of off after all...) so we could find the Mightly Wall Itself. For some reason fireworks were exploding around us like popcorn on acid as we made our way up the ridiculously steep wall, and, that night, China was as hot as a shower stall. I dodged screaming bugs the size of small songbirds and heaved myself upward until finally we reached a suitable guard tower for sleeping. It poured during the night and flashed periodic lightning, and we awoke to find ourselves inside a cloud. The wall wound mysteriously through the mist, and I felt like I should go conquer Sauron or something.

There was some some flying and stuff, and now I am back, where it's kind of weird how things aren't really that weird at all. I suppose it's nice that I can flush my toilet paper, but I'm still processing exactly what happened to me over the course of the last seven weeks. And I'm a bit delirious.

More to come.
Expect pictures soon.
Off to the trampoline with my blankets...
I will think about this as I watch the stars wink through oak leaves.

Atticus Atlas and the Taxicolor Getaway*

This is the weirdest internet cafe ever. My screen is so big I feel like I'm piloting an elaborate spacecraft, this room is huge, and there are mirrors on the walls. Also, the floor is glass and, beneath the glass, there is this plastic garden of fake grass and flowers. Imagine levitating above an easter basket, piloting a space ship, and trying to check your e-mail.Strange.

So Beijing. Of course any description of a city like this is limited--I am but one individual filtering and interpreting an unimaginable teeming throng of bicycles and hutongs and office buildings and shishkebob stands and streetsstreetsstreets and peoplepeoplePEOPLE. However, I have managed to plot my own course through this city, and below is my attempt to iron it all neatly into language for you, my loyal readers.

It began just a few days ago. Upon our arrival to this great capital, Miles and I immediately tracked down the Beijing Frisbee community and showed up for summer league. Mostly recovered from an injury but extremely out of shape, I heaved myself across the Frisbee field with a gregarious bunch of expats, Chinese onlookers ogling us through a chain link fence. Afterward we went out to dinner, and it was utterly bizarre to be walking with a stereotypical gaggle of ultimate players (complete with baller shorts and off-color humor) through the streets of Beijing.

The days following have lifted their petticoats and sprinted by--they don't mind the humidity and they leap over puddles when the monsoon-esque rains occasionally fall. I am often lost and walking in this brusque city, but then I encounter an expansive park that booms with cicadas and smells slightly fermented like late summer, a street artist writing calligraphy on the cement with a giant brush dipped in water, or a couple of random Americans playing guitars and harmonicas at a subway stop for no reason.

The food has been an adventure. Yogurt here comes in re-usable ceramic pots and is sipped through a straw (this is delicious, but, for the record, yak-yogurt still wins). Friendly shop-keepers grill spicy lamb skewers on virtually every street corner. (They often tend their flames with hair dryers. One day I may forgive Miles for ordering what were undeniably ears on a skewer.) In the Night Market they sell snacks that range from scorpions to starfish. After a desolate quest for a Peking Duck restaurant (we were lost for over an hour) we discovered that we are not cut out to eat at venues with starched tablecloths and signature dishes that smear sea cucumbers across large white platters.

I would also like to mention the clocks. By far the most exciting element of the Forbidden City was the Hall of Clocks--apparently the great emperors of China had quite a collection, and now all of these amazing time pieces are gathered a drafty room with vaulted ceilings (again, we were hopelessly lost for an extended period of time as we tried to find this place, but you can probably apply this addendum to any story I tell about Beijing). THESE CLOCKS ARE FABULOUS. There was a clock that used elaborate waterfalls to indicate the passage of time, a clock shaped like a dirigible, a clock with a working model of the solar system (complete with moons and housed in shark leather), a clock that was also a pillow, and a clock with a little man that uses a brush to write the time with Chinese characters every time an hour passes. I am planning a clock heist.

Slow down days! I may miss coniferous forests, and the moon may look lonely, stuck as it is in an impenetrable bank of smog, but I am enjoying Beijing. I am striving to be a Billiards Master at my hostel's pool table. Every morning Miles and I 1) respectively read Augustine's Confessions and the Tao de Ching over coffee, 2) eat breakfast, 3) fabricate an adventure, and 4) execute an adventure. Existence is good.

*"Atticus Atlas and the Taxicolor Getaway" refers to my experience today at The Beijing Natural History Museum and The Beijing Zoo. Atticus Atlas is the scientific name for a BEHEMOTH moth that we found pinned to the wall at the natural history museum (think in feet, not inches), and Taxicolor is the species name of a spectacularly awkward deer that marveled at us as we strolled through the zoo. When I heist my clocks, I am going to use this deer as a getaway vehicle.

Movement

Five days ago I was in Drom, an odd patchwork city on the Nepali border and in the clouds. Now I am in Beijing, where smog melds with humid fog and it is difficult to breathe for different reasons.

The interim between Here and There was deliciously in between. Our last evening in Drom we were flabbergasted to find that we would be driving the ~20 hours back to Lhasa in a BUS. The gravel mountain roads that don't technically exist had been rough in a land cruiser... this (overnight) journey in the back row of the bus was punctuated by alarming moments of anti-gravity. I'm talking absolutely-no-contact-with-anything-solid-are-you-sure-we-haven't-driven-off-a-mountain?

We made it back alive and only a little bit frozen from enduring high altitudes with no heat.

We then had one last day in Lhasa, where we wandered the old city and I said goodbye to yogurt like I would a dear friend. That night a spectacular thunderstorm boomed through Lhasa. When the rain subsided I ascended to the roof of the hostel to watch lightning flash on the skyline. I tried to figure out what these six weeks in Tibet have meant--if I will come back, what I will remember, what within me has moved...

I went to bed late, and there were only more questions.

Then I continued my love affair with trains. It was 48 hours from Lhasa to Beijing, and the time passed surprisingly quickly. I met an amazing Romanian Religion professor who I'm convinced is a reincarnation of a Tibetan lama. (Incidentally, the word for "cheers" in Chinese means "you drink too much" in Romanian.) As I read and conversed and rocked ever so gently as one does on trains, the clouds got higher and Tibet morphed into China.

Seven more days.

Snapshots from the TAR

Friends, again I seem to be writing somewhat damply, in the midst of a downpour. This time, however, I am not in Jianzha. Now I am in Dram, a Tibetan city that butts Nepal. It smells like curry in this terraced metropolis, Hindi mixes with Tibetan, and, at this altitude, I would better describe myself as inside of the rain clouds than below them.

So soooo much has happened since my last update. We did manage to buy some train tickets to Lhasa from the "mafia" at an exorbitant price, and thus I have been gallivanting about the Tibetan Autonomous Region for the past week or so. When faced with the sheer magnitude of things that have transpired, I am, as usual, at a bit of a loss. Therefore I feel that the best approach for this post is a series of snapshots, or textual postcards, if you will.

The Highest Railway in the World
This is only the first of several "Highest in the World" I will encounter during my travels. Chinese families sit placidly with oxygen tubes in their noses, at least until we pass a herd of Tibetan deer--then pandemonium ensues among the passengers. Even with the extreme rip-off price we forked over to the mafia, we are only able to get hard seats, and during the 24 hour journey I learn that I am allergic to the floor of the cars of the highest train in the world. The clouds appear to descend towards the earth.

Lhasa
This city smells like incense in general, or perhaps like hot milk tea. Pilgrims mix with tourists mix with brigades of Chinese militia in riot gear, and the sky will take your breath away. Our hostel is in the heart of the old city, and I spend much of my time pleasantly bewildered in an impossible network of narrow, winding streets.

Jokhang Temple
This is the holiest structure in all of Tibet, and it is a three minute walk from my hostel in Lhasa. Pilgrims prostrate themselves around the entire building. The interior is also teeming, and it smells like butter lamps and reverence. I can feel the intangible weight of history in this place. Also, there's a hole in the wall where, if you're a good Buddhist, you're supposed to be able to hear the ripple of the lake-water upon which the temple was built. I hear the resounding silence of my un-enlightenment.

The Debating Monks
They sit in the dappled shade of a courtyard in Sera monastery--at least 50 monks, clad in burgundy and gold, gesturing animatedly. They are debating the intricacies of existence. Of course I can't understand a word that is said, but I love watching the discourse unfold. When a monk makes a point, he thrusts his hands forward with a resounding clap. Then, while his left hand symbolically covers any holes in his argument, his right hand lifts his audience free of suffering.

Tibetan Michael Jackson
I sit in an odd club in Lhasa beneath flashing lights of many colors. There are many bad singers, and we are served beer in shot glasses. Then, finally, he comes onstage: Tibetan Michael Jackson. I have never seen a moonwalk walked with more style. Even Nikki (a South African with whom I am traveling) agrees that he is damn good, and she's met the real Jackson. A reincarnation? ...perhaps. He is followed by a midget who steals the show.

Breakfast
Yogurt from yak, tsampa (barley flour+yak butter+hot milk+sugar+yak cheese), and coffee. It is spread before me in indescribable glory. I could eat this for breakfast every day for the rest of my life and be fulfilled.

Potala Palace
It costs a ridiculous 100Y, and we are brusquely shepherded through like cows to slaughter (to the Chinese government, the Potala Palace is just another resource to exploit, like coal). Nevertheless, I stand in awe at the throne of the 14th Dalai Lama. Heaps of currency--from yuan to dollars--are at the foot of this empty seat, and it is festooned with white scarves.

The Solar Eclipse
I spend the night before this event sleeping on the roof of my hostel, and upon awakening I beam at the spectacular, impressionistic could-cover blanketing Lhasa. This, however, is not conducive to a climactic viewing of the biggest solar eclipse in 100 years. Jon, Nikki, Miles, and I put on silly mock-mountaineering goggles we bought at the street market and take pictures, but the net effect of this monumentous celestial alignment is a slight darkening of the cloudy sky.

Dijiredoo Monk
The monks chant as they perform a ceremony, and, although the sound is organic and fluid, one voice is particularly noteworthy. It resounds deeply off the stone walls of the monastery, like humpback whales or mountains shifting.

The Nunnery
We are invited to sit with the nuns as they chant, and the peaceful sound of ceremony is interrupted by their giggles. They make us drink copious amounts of sweet tea. The nun beside me entertains herself my tickling my bare feet with a stray feather, and mysterious cakes, humungous and painted red, are carried by to an unknown destination.

Peace Pilgrims
We are in our Land Rover, cruising out of Lhasa, when we pass a group of 25 peace pilgrims on their way to the holy city. They started in Kham, have been on pilgrimage for the past three months, and are prostrating all the way there. They are dusty and dwarfed by the semi trucks that blast by. With the sight of these pilgrims bowing their weary bodies toward Lhasa, I begin to fathom the strength of the Tibetan people.

Nam-sto Lake.
Holy shit the word "beautiful" shatters into a million pieces when applied to this place. We cross a 5230 meter pass with a clap of thunder and a tinkling of hail, and the most sacred lake in Tibet (and the highest lake in the world) yawns before us like a mirage--it's an other-worldly shade of blue and seemingly boundless. I should probably write an epic poem or maybe a novel about the clouds, because the lake is literally in the sky (hence "Nam-sto," or "Sky-lake"). With the storm passing by, it looks like the clouds are sucking the lake up into heaven, or perhaps vice-versa.

The Nomad Tent
We spend the night in a yak fur tent beside the sacred lake, with a family of nomads. I swear I can almost touch every star--I have never seen a better sky. We are fed tsampa (with especially healthy helpings of butter) and sweet tea for dinner, sleep beneath our own personal flocks of sheep, and are warm.

Mount Everest
Everest: Qoomolangma: Highest Entity on the Planet: Pretty Awesome. Upon our approach, Her Mightiness th Mountain is shrouded in clouds, but when we pull in to base camp (elevation ~18,000 feet) she decides to show her face in all it's glory. I can't convince myself that this is really and truly Mt Everest before me. It is like meeting a famous person, or learning that the tooth fairy is actually my mom. Nevertheless I am in awe, especially when the mountain glows at gloaming and the moon emerges like a silver nail-clipping. I experience no ill-effects at the enormous altitude, but running is difficult and red wine is far more potent than one might expect.

...and now I am here, in Dram, at the southernmost corner of Tibet. Tomorrow we drive back to Lhasa for a covert day or two (our permits expire). Then we embark on a 42 hour train ride to Beijing where there will be a week or so of merry-making and exploration prior to our return to Oregon. It's been awesome, it's been beautiful, and there is so much more to say except I'm frustrated with adjectives so I think I'll sign off.