Tibet

August/September 2001

Slightly the worse for wear, I was up at 4am and we met the rest of our Tibetan ‘tour group’ in the hotel lobby at 5 am. 1 Italian, 4 Japanese and ourselves. A minibus took us to Chengdu airport and we were presented with our ‘permits’(just a piece of paper with our names, nationalities and passport numbers). The South Western Chinese Airlines flight to Lhasa left on time at 7am. A Chinese/English newspaper accompanied a plastic breakfast.

Two hours later, we descended to the tiny Gonggar Airport at 4000m in the Tibetan Autonomous Region (TAR), the Chinese name for Tibet. A Chinese business delegation was getting a formal Tibetan welcome. Groups of women and men, dressed in colourful traditional clothing, were lined up and presented them all with long flowing white silk welcome scarves. I decided to join their queue. Noone protested and I got a scarf. Then I had to file past some women who carried Buddhist emblems. I dunked my hands into bowls of dust and wine as a peace offering. Picking up our luggage, we were met by a rep who took us to a crappy local bus for the airport transfer to Lhasa, 90 km away. We followed the Yarlung Zangbo River, which was enormous and heavily flooded, passing fields stacked with wheat sheaves and horses grazing. Welcome to Tibet.

I’ll admit that, before my arrival, I knew virtually nothing about Tibet. I had seen the movie ‘Seven Years in Tibet’ (which wasn’t filmed there and had Brad Pitt producing one of the worst Austrian accents in movie history). In the movie ‘Caddyshack’, Bill Murray had reported how he’d caddied for the Dalai Lama on a round of golf in Tibet: “So he tees off into a 10,000 deep canyon. Big hitter. At the end of the round, he’s going to stiff me. I say “Hey Lama! How about something for the effort?” He replied “Goon-goon-gondungin-goon-goon-gondungin” and said “There will be no money, but on your death bed, you will receive total consciousness”. So I’ve got that going for me”. Admittedly, two Hollywood movies was a little lacking in preparation for the final country on this journey.

The Lonely Plant guidebook concludes that “Tibet is without doubt one of the most remarkable places to visit in Asia. It offers fabulous monastery sights, breath-taking high altitude treks, stunning views of the world’s highest mountains – a memorable, fascinating but also sad experience”.

For years, the mysterious Buddhist kingdom was locked away in its mountain fortress of the Himalayas and was known to outsiders as ‘Shangri-La’, ‘Land of Snows’ and the ‘Rooftop of the World’. It was only opened to tourists in the 1980s.

Tibet is twice the size of France but contains only 2.4 million people. The Tibetan plateau is one of the most isolated regions in the world. Four of the world’s ten highest mountains straddle its southern border. The environment is very harsh and uncompromising. Little of the Indian monsoon makes it over the Himalayas. The arid and cold plateau lying between 4-5000 metres cannot sustain many people and those that survive are tough and resilient.

About a quarter of the Tibetans are still nomadic (drokpas). Others farm the valleys (rongpas) and others make up the communities based in the monasteries (sanghas). Traditionally, the country has been very resistant to change but the Twentieth Century caught up with them and the place is westernising very quickly. Lhasa now has Internet cafes.

Brief history: Back in the 7th Century, the Tibetans were the best warriors around Asia. Buddhism arrived from India/Nepal and took over the country. In 1641, the Buddhist sects of the ‘Red Hats’ and ‘Yellow Hats’ went to war with each other and the Yellow Hats won. Their leader adopted the name of ‘Dalai Lama’(‘Ocean of Wisdom’) and Buddhism and politics became entwined. Each Dalai Lama was considered a reincarnation of the last one and the Buddhist monks would spend years searching Tibet for a newborn child who showed some sign of embodying his predecessor’s soul. Tibet kept all foreigners out and lived as an isolated Buddhist kingdom.

In 1950, Communist China, attempting to envelope and centralise all adjoining provinces, used an excuse to ‘peacefully liberate’ Tibet which was supposedly, a highly repressive theocracy based on serfdom, and took over the country. In the Chinese section of Lhasa, there were Chinese posters celebrating ‘50 years since the Peaceful Liberation’.

Between 1950 and 1970, the Chinese drove the present Dalai Lama and 100,000 Tibetans into exile. They also apparently killed 1.2 million Tibetans (sounds peaceful enough), and destroyed most of Tibet’s cultural heritage (because Communism did not recognise religious beliefs). The current 14th Dalai Lama is now based at Dharamsalama in Northern India. We had visited his palace there, earlier on the trip. He is now an international diplomat on a mission for Tibetan independence, but is fighting a losing battle as the West prefers to look at 1.2 billion potential Chinese consumers and turns its back on the ‘human rights’ issues.

After the Chinese took over, they made a real mess of the Tibetan economy, and moved in hundreds of thousands of Chinese immigrants to dominate the locals. In the 1980s, they realised that there was money to be made from the tourist industry that wants to see the mystique of Tibet. They have been back-pedalling and rebuilding the cultural heritage ever since. It’s still being rebuilt, and they are charging top dollar for the privilege of seeing a country they destroyed. The overall impression of Tibet is of a strange, unique, independent country under Chinese occupation.

Language: Tashi Dali - hello, Thoo Jaychay thank you and Katso Ray - how much?

When we arrived in Lhasa, it was real ‘in your face’ stuff. Our crappy 'Snowlands Hotel' was in the Tibetan quarter of the city. There were packed streets of beggars - old women, mothers and babies, small kids, and even Buddhist monks. Many Tibetans were dressed in traditional costumes. Women had their black hair braided with colourful ribbons. Shaven headed Buddhist monks wore burgundy robes. Men wore Stetson hats. There were acres of souvenir market stalls with everyone yelling ’looky-looky’. Many people walked around with hand held prayer wheels which they spun around and rubbed rings of rosary beads. Tripedals (bicycle rickshaws) would weave in and out of the people, ringing their golden bell, which hung off the handlebars. Children were allowed to shit in the streets. Their trousers even had splits in them with their small bums poking out. There were lots of happy, smiling faces combating extreme poverty. It was a bustling, colourful society completely revolving around Buddhism.

As a deeply religious people, Buddhism permeates most facets of daily life. It is based on the idea of accumulating merit, by participating in pilgrimages, and daily rituals such as sending prayers via chanted mantras, prayer wheels and flags which build up their spiritual reserve of karma for their next reincarnated afterlife. Many parents send their sons to the monasteries, which also acts as a birth control device to keep the population down!

Upon arrival in Lhasa, the rest of our ‘tour party’ took to their beds suffering from altitude sickness. Our tour guide told us to relax to save energy for the tour the following morning. It was actually a revelation to find that the tour existed. Jo and I preferred to hit the ground running, but on the first night were to suffer from bad headaches and the ‘runs’ which was not good fun with 100 other tourists sharing 4 squat toilets!). Our ‘in with the tour’ accommodation was 11 cramped dorm beds to a room with thick eiderdowns. We stayed out of our room as much as possible.

The old Tibetan centre was surrounded by modern Chinese infrastructure with western supermarkets etc. My impression was that the Chinese ran the capitalist economy and the Tibetans survived with local market stalls.

Lhasa is certainly one of the most unique places I have ever visited. It is the heart and soul of Tibet, abode of the Dalai Lamas and an object of devout pilgrimage. The Potala Palace dominates the low-level skyline - a vast white and ochre fortress soaring over one of the world’s highest cities. The Jokhang is the spiritual heart of the city. This is the most sacred and active of Tibet’s monasteries, a curious mix of sombre darkness, wafting incense and prostrating pilgrims. En-circulating it is the Barkhor, the holiest of Lhasa’s devotional circumambulation circuits – “a medieval push and shove of the crowds, stalls hawking everything imaginable and devout pilgrims tapping their heads to the ground at every step” (Lonely Planet). Over the next four days we would repeatedly return to these three areas - every minute revealed a different spectacle.

On our first afternoon, we just strolled around, encapsulated by the culture. We walked around the base of the Potala Palace, which looked stupendous against a backdrop of towering brown mountains and blue skies. It was surrounded by hundreds of prayer wheels and market stalls. Old toothless women with traditional multi-striped aprons shuffled by (one leading a goat), with their hand held prayer wheels, turning the fixed prayer wheels to help them concentrate the mind on the mantras and prayers they were reciting. Inside the prayer wheels are a ream of coiled paper with printed prayers on them. The wheel is spun and the prayers flutter up to the sky.

Groups of Buddhist monks sat cross-legged and chanted mantras, waiting for money. In Myanmar and Laos, the monks were given their alms every morning (free rice and other food). In Lhasa, they just asked for money. It was strange to see monks with mobile phones (“Get me Buddha on the line, now!”). The aroma of fried food permeated the air. There were huge mounds of yak butter for sale. In the market we saw collapsed pig heads with their snouts piled on top of one another. The plucked chickens had their legs tied together stuck out at 50% angles.

The area around the Jokhang (2 minutes walk from our hotel) was a hive of activity. The open paved square had two white chimneys bellowing out smoke from grass offerings. Thousands of pilgrims would pass by on their circular route around the Barkhor. The male Kamba pilgrims from eastern Tibet braided their hair with red yarn or black tassels and strode around with ornate daggers hanging off their belts. Goloks (Tibetan nomads) wore ragged sheepskins, and furry red boots with upturned toes and the women wore incredibly ornate hairbands down their backs. The pilgrims would do the circuit as many times as they felt necessary to fulfil their Buddhist beliefs. It was more like a moving local community meeting on legs to exchange gossip.

The Barkhor circuit was a mass of market activity - jewellery, prayer flags, furry hats and boots, monk robes etc. ‘Looky-looky’. I haggled hard for a vast Thangka, a Tibetan religious painting framed by silk brocade. It was 4 x 6ft and the most splendid souvenir of the two-year journey. The oil painting was of the Shri Devi, the special protector of Lhasa and the Dalai Lama. She is a blue coloured goddess who carries a club in one hand and a skullcap of blood in the other. She holds the moon in her hair, the sun in her belly and a corpse in her mouth. She rides a mule with a third eye in its rump. Seemed like a nice girl!

There were so many cheap souvenirs if you were prepared to haggle. Consequently, I also ended up with an embroidered Tibetan door covering 3x6ft with the traditional design of the ‘knot of eternity’ in blue and white. This symbol represents the entwined, never ending passage of time, harmony and love and the unity of all things (I was told). Smaller items also crammed into the backpack were a Buddhist prayer wheel, hand cymbals (which make a nice ding), and prayer flag. Shop till you drop!

The Barkhor circuit also had prostrating pilgrims. They had two wooden mittens and a long grubby apron and would smack their hands together with a loud bang and collapse to their knees and slide along the ground. Then they would stand up and do it again. A few did it all the way around. Others, spotting tourists, would do it for a ‘Kodak moment’ and then ask for money. We were accosted for money hundreds of times a day during our stay. In front of the Jokhang temple, other pilgrims did Tibetan aerobics. Stand, bow, kneel, lie flat out on the ground (no mat), get up and repeat action ad-nuseum. We also saw pilgrims doing the same at the bottom of the Potala Palace. Tibetans sure do like to pray.

That first night, we ate at the nightmarket. Fried kebabs, broccoli and potatoes. As I opened a Lhasa Beer bottle (‘Beer from the Roof of the World’), the top splintered and slashed my finger. Blood everywhere. It needed stitching, but somehow repaired itself over the next few days.

On our second morning, our ‘tour’ resumed. Our tour guide was a friendly if cautious Tibetan called Dodyer. We were bussed out to the Potala Palace for the official tour. Dozens of coaches waited to take Chinese tour groups up the steep road to the entrance. I hopped out, walked up the road and joined the tour group later (what there was of our tour group - the Japanese were still sick in bed “not fweeling wvery well”).

The Potala Palace is the most imposing attraction of Lhasa - the original centre of Tibetan Government and the winter residence of the previous Dalai Lamas. I‘d agree that it is one of the architectural wonders of the world. It is simply outstanding and completely unique. This immense construction is thirteen stories tall and contains thousands of rooms, shrines and statues. Construction of the present structure began during the reign of the 5th Dalai Lama in 1645 and took fifty years to complete. The general layout includes the White Palace, the main part of the building, which was the living quarters of the Dalai Lamas and the Red Palace, the central building rising above, which was used for religious functions. The Palace was fortunately spared by the Chinese during their ‘Cultural Revolution’.

The Red Palace was the tourists-allowed-here area, containing the many halls and chapels - the most stunning of which was filled with the jewel bedecked massive copper/gold plated tombs of the 5th - 13th Dalai Lamas. The Chapel of the Dalai Lamas’ Tombs contained the three story golden chorten of the 5th Dalai Lama made from 3700kg of gold. Much of the complex was full of long, gloomy corridors full of Buddha and Bodhisattvas statues. Other rooms contained centrepieces with thousands of small Buddhist statues behind glass cabinets. Many rooms had original Tibetan manuscripts piled up to the ceilings. The history of Tibet has traditionally been stored in the monasteries and are now centuries old, dusty piles of paper.

In many chapels, huge bowls of yak butter and vegetable oil had burning candlewicks. Pilgrims would top up the bowls with their own supplies of butter in handy sized bags, using spoons to ladle out lumps of the stuff. Small amounts of paper money (and the occasional white scarf), were left at each relevant shrine. The overall impression of the palace was of piles of paper money everywhere - including many international currencies (they liked to show off the $50 bills, which had been donated). I nearly started picking it up to finance some of the Tibetan trip. Supposedly, the money is only collected once a year, but so much was being left by pilgrims, I think it must be a weekly job.

Many tourists are disappointed with the dark interiors and overbearing Tibetan Buddhist artefacts, calling it a ‘dead museum’. But I found the entire complex, one of the most compelling places I had ever visited. Most of our guide’s rehearsed patter went over my head, but I could still appreciate its uniqueness. History was dripping off the walls. As we made the circular tour, rising upward along the ascending stories (with hundreds of Chinese tour groups blocking the way), the palace opened up to the sunshine and brilliant orange/yellow/white coloured wooden structures and beautifully ornate doors.

We had to pay an extra £1 to climb out to the top roof for a view of the surrounding cooper roofs and backdrop of Lhasa below, surrounded by towering brown mountains. The three hour visit seemed to fly past and I even thought the inflated £6.50 admission was well worth it.

The ‘official tour’ that afternoon, took in the Jokhang Temple, but we had heard that it was free after 7pm so dropped out and spent the afternoon just wandering around. I never got bored with daily life in Lhasa.

At 7pm, we entered the Jokhang Temple with the pilgrims prostrating themselves outside. The golden-roofed Jokhang is 1300 years old and a wonderful old temple. We climbed up to the roof where the setting sun gleamed off the copper decorations. As with all monastery roofs, the ‘Wheel of Dharma (Law) dominated the decoration which represents the Holy Enlightened Path to salvation. The wheel turns twelve times, three times each for the four Holy Truths. Two sitting copper deer (representing purity) flanked it, along with vases of immortality, victory banners and dragons.

Groups of resident Buddhist monks were having their debates on the roof, which was a strange sight. A dozen shaven headed monks dressed in burgundy robes sat in two lines. Two monks would sit at the head of the group and a monk would get up and challenge them, asking them questions about Buddhist scripture. If they were not happy with the answer, they would raise their arm and crash their hand down onto the other hand, really forcefully. As they got more motivated or displeased, they would eyeball the answering monk, then step back and crash their hands together again with a loud slap. It was a type of initiation for the younger monks.

One poor young sod, eyes bulging with the experience, had three older monks around him, yelling questions, and slapping hands in his face, very aggressively. We sat for an hour watching this activity. They didn’t mind close up photos either. There was the wonderful sight of a young American tourist teaching an old monk how to work a video camera.

At 8pm, the bells tolled and the monks all filed off for singing and praying. Down below, on the ground floor, we followed the pilgrims around an open-air corridor(kora), lined with large copper prayer wheels, which they spun as they ambled around the inner circuit. The temple was another unique sight of observing Buddhist religion.

That night, we ate at a Tibetan café to sample yak curry and rice, yak momos (small dumplings filled with yak/veg) and tea with yak milk. On another night I had the Tibetan version of steak and kidney pudding – except it was just minced yak meat.

The following day, the ‘official tour’ had two more sights. We visited Norbu Lingka, which was the old summer residence of the present Dalai Lama before he was exiled. Built in the 1950s, the residence interior was covered in splendid detailed painted murals outlining the history of Tibet. They were really stunning. The furniture was all 1950s and I noted that he had a western toilet and shower unlike us poor sods.

When I questioned our guide about the current exiled Dalai Lama, he refused to answer or even acknowledge his existence. He had spent hours telling us all about the previous ones, but Chinese law prohibited him from any comment. I told him the ‘Western view’ and he replied “You cannot say these things in public in Tibet” and scuttled off to avoid anymore talk. Later, he told me that the Potala Palace had hidden cameras and bugs to record what the guides were telling the tourists. It was typical Chinese hypocrisy. They tried to destroy Tibetan culture, then saw that they could make a buck, as long as free speech is banned and Chinese dominance is recognised. As tourism increases, I don’t see how they can stop tourists asking questions, but currently, Tibetans can be jailed for any political discussion. I came away concluding “They want my money, but they don’t want my opinions”.

Incidentally, we saw no pictures of the current Dalai Lama anywhere in Tibet. As far as the Chinese are concerned, he is a non-person and his presence is banned. It used to be a tourist trick to sneak in photos and portraits of him and secretly pass them on to the Tibetans.

In the afternoon, with a very nervous guide, worried that I might start ranting against the Chinese, we visited the Sera Monastery on the outskirts of town. Founded in 1489, 550 monks are currently resident (there were 5000 before the Cultural Revolution).

It was typical of a monastic layout in Tibet and it is worth some description because every other monastery we saw was pretty much a slight deviation from this. It was built above the villages in a spectacularly high location with high whitewashed walls to defend their treasures from robbers. Inside the gates was a central courtyard used for special ceremonies and festivals.

The central assembly hall in the centre of the huge 110,000-acre complex was guarded at its entrance by the Four Guardian kings. The painted murals depicted four jolly fellows:

1. Yamantaka - Destroyer of Yama (the Demon of Death). Blue in colour with eight heads with the main one like a bull. 34 arms, 16 legs and waving a knife, he wore a garland of skulls around his neck. A sort of Buddhist Rambo.
2. Mahakala – the ‘Great Black One’ was actually blue with fanged teeth and a tiara of skulls and looked like Bette Midler with a bad blue-rinse.
3. Hayagriva – the ‘Horse Necked One’ had a red body, white and green face and horses in his hair. He wore a tiara of skulls, a necklace of severed heads and held weapons like an axe, sword and club. He was slightly thinner than Marlon Brando in the ‘Godfather”.
4. Vajrapani – ‘Thunderbolt in Hand’, was dark blue with a tiger skin around his waist. Like a Tarzan who’d fallen down a toilet full of blue detergent.

The interior, illuminated by windows covered in red cloth, created a warm, cosy atmosphere. The tall wooden pillars covered in red cloth. The rows of low-level seats and tables were also red and strewn with cloaks, hats, musical instruments, drums and huge telescopic horns.

Small altars would have seven silver bowls of water in front, incense sticks burning and yak butter lamps flickering in the darkness. The main altars housed the main Buddha statues and lifelike statues of previous Yellow Hatted movers and shakers. Piles of money littered the area.

Protector chapels were dark and spooky. Tibetan pilgrims pushed their way past us into one of these to offer blessings to another sacred shrine with a horse’s head. The Chinese authorities were charging £85 for the use of a video camera! Surrounding the main temples would be plain monastic quarters, kitchens, libraries and sometimes printing presses.

Near the monastery was a Tibetan ‘sky burial’ site. Traditionally, Tibetans were never buried. Soil and wood were at such a premium, they didn’t have the resources, so a different kind of funeral took place. After death, the body would be kept in a sitting position for 24 hours while a lama recited prayers from the ‘Tibetan Book of the Dead’ to help the soul on its journey to the state between death and rebirth (now known as New York). Then after three days, the body was blessed and carted to a burial site where ‘undertakers’ chopped up the body for vultures and wild dogs to eat. The soul was considered to have already left the physical body and this was just a convenient way of disposing of the body. It still goes on, but is not on the tourist itinerary. Our guide refused to acknowledge it existence but it does.

Our biggest dilemma was how to leave Lhasa and head for the Nepalese border. You can rent 4WD Toyota Landcruisers for a week to do the journey, but the Chinese authorities have shut down most independent agencies forcing tourists to go through the official agencies at 30% increased prices.

At our hotel, many tourists were advertising to team up and split the costs. We got in touch with Pierre and Lorna (a French/English couple) and Shawn and Kath (a Chicago couple), who with Mark and Annie (French Canadians from Quebec) had been hunting around for the last three days. The sole independent operator was swamped. Shawn asked at his hotel and the Manager offered to organise an ‘undercover’ trip for the 8 of us in two Landcruisers at the normal rate.

On our fourth day, I got up before dawn to explore the Jokhang/Barkhor area. I was amazed to see pilgrims still prostrating themselves outside the temple in the dark, while other pilgrims made their daily circuits around the Barkhor. At the white chimneys, grass sellers set up ready to cater for the offerings. Pilgrims would buy a lump of grass, light it in the chimney and do a few religious turns. The grass really did smell like ‘grass’ (marijuana). I’d never seen an entire country where Buddhist activity was the main activity above all else.

Now our ‘organised tour’ accommodation was finished, we moved up the road into a better hotel (run by the manager who was organising our Landcruisers). For less than a dorm room at the old place, we got an ensuite double room with TV. It was a shame that the toilet stopped working. A real shame for the cleaners with our case of the runs! We were forced to leave the toilet full of unflushable shit. But it was only for one night. Still enough shit to drown a cleaner!

Later that morning, our group met up to meet our drivers, discuss itinerary, inspect the vehicles and draw up a contract stating where we wanted to go, stay the night etc. It probably had no legal basis, but it made us feel better. We organised that Pierre/Lorna/Jo and myself would take one Landcruiser and the American/Canadians the other - for a seven-day, 1000km overland journey to the Tibetan/Nepalese border. En route we would take in some of the sights. A Landcruiser and driver would cost about £500 between the 4 of us for the week (excluding Everest Base Camp permit, another permit and admission prices. The driver paid for his own food/accommodation). The Chinese agency price had been quoted at £770. Another small step for Bob Jack's wallet but a giant leap over Chinese Government rip off prices.

We had our transport sorted but there were a series of possible problems.
1. Because we were doing it ‘undercover’ we could not get the Chinese permit to visit the town of Gyanste. If we were stopped en route, or caught in Gyanste by the Chinese authorities, we’d either be fined heavily, turned back, have the Landcruiser confiscated or at worst be locked up.
2. The roads are pretty much non-existent for much of the trip along the ‘Fellowship Highway’. We would be doing lots of detours off the highway and heavy rainfall, mud and landslides could block our passage anywhere, anytime. It was therefore safer for two vehicles to attempt the trip together to pull each other out of the mud.
3. Jo and I only had 8 days left on our Chinese visas. If we broke down, got stuck by landslides or caught by the authorities, we’d overstay the visa and get fleeced by the Chinese.

Our group consisted of: Pierre and Lorna. Pierre was a 35 year old French skiing fanatic and IT consultant for the Paris Insurance companies, on a 3 week holiday to Tibet/Kathmandu with Lorna, a dreamy 23 year old English student from Guilford who had been studying in Paris for the past year . Since Jo was also fluent in French, the three of them would spend hours gabbling in French to each other in the back of the Landcruiser.
Shawn and Kath from Chicago, Illinois – ‘Blues Brothers Land’. It’s always good to meet independent American travellers, which are few and far between. Shawn was a tall, 28-year-old, PJ O’Rourke lookalike with an excellent sense of humour. His mother had promised to finance his university education but had then refused. Shawn signed on with the US army the next day to get an education (“That’ll teach her, I thought”). He spent six years in the infantry, came out, started an IT consultancy firm in Chicago, and got bored. So he and his fiancé, Kath signed up with the Peace Corps and had just spent two years living in Uzbekistan teaching English and economics. At least Jo and I had been there and we could laugh about the Tescos in Tashkent. They had bussed into Tibet from Tashkent for a couple of months travelling before heading home. Shawn and I seemed to have watched all the same movies and could swap movie dialogue and scenes at will. He was really good fun. An American with a European sense of humour.
Mark and Annie, late 20s French Canadians from Quebec. They had just spent a year teaching English in Taiwan, which they found pretty friendly, and had just toured China, which they hated. “I left China a racist” concluded Mark with his shaven head. But they liked Tibet. They were heading for a brief tour of SE Asia before returning home. It was a nice group and we seemed to bond very well, especially when they realised I was always capable of finding the cheapest beer in any town or village.

So at 6am the next morning in darkness, before the Chinese authorities were up, we departed for our 7-day epic roadtrip. There was plenty of room for our luggage and us, in the spacious high-powered vehicle. We fled Lhasa heading west. 45 minutes later, I realised that I’d left my Thangka hanging behind a curtain in our hotel room, so the Americans/Canadians went on, while we sneaked back into town and recovered my souvenir. Boy, was I embarrassed. Though not as embarrassed as looking at the unflushed toilet again.

We returned to the sole bridge over the Yarlung Zangbo River. Turn left for the airport, turn right for Nepal. During our break, a Chinese soldier stopped me from taking a photo of the mountains from the bridge! So I walked back around a corner out of sight and took one anyway. More satisfyingly, I had taken one of the bridge before he stopped me! (a real no-no in China). It will be scanned to George ‘Dubya’ Bush a.s.a.p.

Over the bridge, we entered the Tibetan province of Tsang. The road had been fully sealed until the bridge but as we started to climb the hills, it turned into a rocky track with waterfalls and rivers gushing over it. Our first sight was the dazzling Yamdrok-Tso Lake at 4488m, which we viewed from the summit of the Kamba-La pass (4794m). The lake lay several hundred metres below the road and was a fabulous shade of deep turquoise. Far off in the distance was the huge massif of Mt Nojin Kangtsang (7191m).

Yamdrok-Tso, ‘Scorpion Lake’, was a coiling, many armed body of water that doubled back on itself just like an, er, scorpion. It is one of the four holy lakes of Tibet, not that it has stopped the Chinese from building a massive hydroelectric complex around it. Since the lake is only refreshed by rainwater, the water level is going down quickly. But the Chinese didn’t think about those implications when they built their power station.

At the Kamba-La pass summit, grubby nomadic Tibetans had large woolly yaks dressed in ye-olde traditional costumes, charging tourists to sit on or take photos of them. It was a desolate place and a pretty sorry sight to see the locals panhandling for money.

A word on yaks. We had seen plenty of these while trekking in Nepal last year. They are very large and impressive black bovines, which at 1.8m tall, weigh a ton. Their sharp slender horns often span a metre in length. Wild yaks are in short supply nowadays and what you see are ‘Dzo’, a cross between a bull and a yak. Cloaked in layers of shaggy, coarse black or brown hair, the Tibetans use them like the American Indians used buffalo. Yak milk is used for cheese and their butter tea, which tastes salty. The hair and tanned skin is used for clothes, blankets and tents. Each domesticated yak has a name and a bell around its neck. They are also all given names. (Hairy yak, Yak with a limp, Yak who speared me in the ass with its horns etc). Of the world’s 14 million domesticated yaks, 5 million reside on the Tibetan plateau. In the valleys, we passed endless herds of them grazing. It was like a scene out of the ‘Dances with Wolves’ movie with yak replacing the buffalo. I kept expecting Ted Nugent to pop up with a high-powered bow and arrow.

After the unattractive Tibetan town (and lets face it, every town is pretty ugly in a rural, desolate kind of way), of Nangartse (4500m), we passed through some spectacular mountain scenery, very like Lakdah (which borders Tibet in northern India). There were looming brown and orange mountains with green valleys and carpets of yellow flowers. A new lake had recently been created by the Chinese (not on the maps).

We climbed the steep, narrow, rocky and very bumpy track up to Karo-La Pass (5045m) to the Nujin Kangtsang glacier, which lies, on the slopes of Mt Nujin Kangtsang. It was here in 1904, that Colonel Younghusband's British troops clashed with Tibetan forces on route to Lhasa and is thought to have be, geographically, the highest battle in British military history. The British turned up with their maxim guns and 1000 Tibetans turned up with their Buddhist emblems (blessed by the Dalai Lama) and only their bravery. 4 minutes later, 700 Tibetans lay dead and the rest trooped back to Lhasa to complain about the dodgy blessings (“Oi, Lama! How about some kosher protection? A gun would be useful!")

It was another desolate spot with more grubby nomads and yaks available for photos. The small boys grabbed my balls and offered me pieces of quartz (not necessarily in that order). The nomad families lived in low level windowless mud houses covered in yak dung (or was it yak dung houses?) with smoke pouring out of the door. The roof was decorated in yak skulls, which wasn’t surprising. It was so high, yak herding was the only possible activity. The long white glacier loomed above us up the slope.

At every pass we, er, passed over, there would be prayer flags strung out over the summit. These are strips of coloured cloth printed with Buddhist sutras and ‘wind horse’ symbols used to purify the air and pacify the gods. When the flags flutter, the prayers are released, to be taken by the windhorses up to the heavens. The colours are highly symbolic – red, green, yellow, blue and white – representing the elements of fire, wood, earth, water and iron. The houses would also have prayer flags. Let’s face it, you see an awful lot of the things in Tibet (and Nepal).

Our driver, who spoke minimal English was excellent. He was cautious, honked before we went around any bend and negotiated all the terrible roads with relative ease. I felt very guilty for having made him drive an extra 80km on an already long day due to my forgetfulness. What was it I forgot? I can’t remember.

We rolled into the ‘forbidden’ Gyanste (3950m) around 4pm. The driver parked up and went to seek out the Chinese police checkpoints, then drove us to a newish hotel where the four of us shared a four-bed dorm room. Gyanste is one of the least Chinese influenced towns in Tibet (which is probably why the Chinese try and keep a lid on it). The town was situated at the base of a steep cliff with the ‘Dzong’(castle) on a peak and the old fortified and turreted city walls strung along the cliffs above the main sights.

Its principal attraction is the Gyantse Kumbum - Kumbum means 10,000 images, a magnificent tiered structure that has only one contemporary rival in the Buddhist world. Built in 1440, the decorated chorten rises 42m over six symmetrical floors and is surmounted by a gold dome. The dome rises like a crown over four sets of eyes that gaze serenely out in the cardinal directions of the compass.

Chortens or stupas, are highly symbolic of Buddha and his teachings (see previous Nepalese and Thailand updates for info). Five levels represented the four elements and eternal space. The square base symbolises earth, the dome is water, the spire is fire and the top moon and sun are air and space. The whole thing is seen as a symbolic representation of the ‘path to enlightenment”.

A clockwise route spiralled up through the floors of the Kumbum, taking in all the chapels that line the walls of the chorten. Much of the statuary was damaged during the Cultural Revolution and has only been recently restored, but the 14th century murals have weathered very well, all things considered.

Next door was the Pelkor Chode monastery. Founded in 1418, it was once a multi-denominational complex of monasteries. Today, much of the sprawling courtyard is enclosed by walls that cling to the hills backing into the monastery below the city walls. Pretty unfriendly Gelugpa monks inhabit it.

It is a dark and gloomy place of murals and hanging thangkas. The Four Guardian kings flanked the entrance. In one chapel we watched locals donate their yak butter to the bowls with candles and after they left, a monk who held a Buddhist statue to our foreheads (“On me head, son) blessed us. In another chapel, ferocious masks were strung out along an overhead frame and the murals were of a sky burial. Corpses had been cut up and were being eaten by vultures and wild dogs and looked very grizzly.

I counted over 30 wild dogs in the monastery courtyard -fighting, barking, humping, and shitting. Wild dogs can be a real hazard out in rural Tibet though the locals seem to tolerate them. We followed the locals on the perambulations around the lines of prayer wheels around the complex and the dogs followed us. They would leave ‘Tsatsa’ behind the prayer wheels – small icons fashioned from clay from a sacred site.

Returning to the hotel, a real dust storm took hold and blasted the cobbled streets. It was like a medieval scene - shrieking horses (the main transport here), barking dogs and people staggering through the dust. When we re-met Pierre and Lorna, we discovered that they had been questioned by the local police. They had fobbed them off by telling the police that their guide (who had the permit the police wanted to see) was at the most expensive Chinese hotel in town having a nap. The police turned up at our hotel later for a nose around but didn’t ask any questions. That night, we ate at a Muslim café and had ‘Thugpa’, noodle soup with meat and veg. It was the best soup we tasted in Tibet.

I was awoken before dawn by fighting dogs outside the hotel. Today was the tricky part. We had to escape Gyanste at first light, bypassing the police checks which were not yet open, but also others that would set up sporadically in the surrounding area. It turned out to be an epic adventure, a bit like being wanted bandits on the run, cut off at every pass.

On the outskirts, our driver crossed a river and then took a right to follow a bumpy stony track parallel to the river. Followed by the second Landcruiser, we crawled for miles, while the driver would ask locals if the checkpoints were manned. The recent rain had created new problems. The drivers had planned to come off the trail and cross a sandy riverbed to another trail, but just descending to the river had the vehicles leaning over precariously. The sandy riverbed was now also flooded. The American Landcruiser made an attempt to cross the river and got stuck in 2ft of mud. Using 4WD, they got out. So we backtracked along the upper trail, took a side turning, drove through some muddy villages whose walls were covered in yak dung pancakes and rejoined the river further on. It was pouring with rain and the mountains were covered in mist. I saw a dead horse floating down the river (first riverkill!).

We seemed to be going well until the track suddenly ended. Another river joined the main one, but had not been bridged. The track continued on the other side. Doh! At this point, Kath, already feeling unwell, got out to throw up, while the drivers consulted on the next plan of attack. Shawn passed by po-faced, and uttered “It just keeps getting better!”. So we backtracked again for miles until a muddy side road took us away from the river. Every truck we saw was bogged down in mud, getting dug out by shovels. The track was just a gruesome quagmire of mud and vast puddles. Cambodian roads had finally met their match. We drove through more crappy muddy villages as the kids all waved and yelled. (“More bloody foreigners lost as usual!”).

Somehow, we returned to the main road (a generous description of basically, mud) and had avoided all checkpoints, but it had taken hours. With all the 4WD necessary, our driver then hinted that we were almost out of fuel. Which was nice. A convoy of 17 Chinese army fuel tankers passed us coming the other way. A fat lot of good they did us. They were followed by another posse of Tibetan pilgrims in open trucks. Singing, chanting and waving flags, they were obviously off to some Buddhist revival festival somewhere.

Then we had to deal with the Chinese construction crews building the road. It looked like the Somme during World War One. To avoid trucks carrying huge amounts of boulders, our vehicle would be forced into muddy trenches and inevitably we got bogged down. The driver clambered onto the bonnet, leaned over and turned levers on both front wheels and pulled us out with brute force. I was glad we didn’t have to get out and push! It was one of those trips where you both didn’t have a clue to your whereabouts or what would happen next.

Finally, after 5 and a half-hours (official distance - 95km), we pulled into Shigatse. The guidebook hotels were all overcharging, so we did our normal thing - find a new luxury hotel and haggle. We ended up with a spotless room, TV and hot showers for less than the four-4 bed dorm the night before. It would be the only decent place we stayed at in Tibet.

Shigatse is the second largest urban centre in Tibet, and pretty much a new Chinese town, Tibetan style. The main attraction is Tashilhunpo Monastery, the seat of the Panchen Lama. No, I’d never heard of him either, but he is the reincarnation of Amitabha (‘Buddha of Infinite Light’), who ranks below the Dalai Lama but still has plenty of karma on his side. The tenth one, who had been living a puppet existence in Beijing, died in 1989. The search for the new one led to a verbal conflict between the Dalai Lama and the Chinese. The Chinese then placed the Dalai Lama’s nomination under house arrest and nominated their own candidate who also just lives it up in Beijing.

Built in 1447, it is an enormous complex (the biggest monastery I’d ever seen) and the largest functioning monastic institution in Tibet. It once housed 4000 monks. 600 have returned since the Cultural Revolution. It was a fascinating place to explore - lots of alleyways, courtyards around the whitewashed monastic quarters as well as the main temples, which are a series of ochre buildings topped with gold and containing the tombs of the previous Panchen Lamas. And all the trimmings.

The chapel of Maitreya housed a 26m tall image of the Future Buddha which in 1914, took 900 labourers, 4 years to complete and who used 300kg of gold paint to coat the statue. The Grand Hall had the opulent tomb of the 4th Panchen Lama, which contained 85kg of gold and masses of jewels. I could never work out how such a poor country could produce such splendours, but like Bill Clinton’s shady election campaign finances, everyone was forced to chip in what they had for the overall good of the country.

The Kelsang Temple is the centrepiece of the entire complex. Here you are able to watch the monks go about their monking business. They sit in small smoky chapels chanting mantras, singing and praying, blessing pilgrims, replacing candles, spinning wool, sweeping the floors, and talking to the tourists. There was even a few printing out prayer flags. I sat and gave one an English lesson on parts of the body.

We climbed up the hills behind the monastery to peer over the walls for a better appreciation of how large the place was. Lines of prayer wheels and fluttering prayer flags surrounded the walls. Boulders had been painted with Buddhist murals and pilgrims waved cheerfully as they passed by turning the prayer wheels. It was a hell of a climb for the average pilgrim.

The local market revealed some interesting sights: butchers displayed severed yak heads and goats, which had been skinned and beheaded. The goat bodies were displayed sitting up like a dog begging, but without their heads. There was also an outdoor pool hall - about 20 pool tables in the middle of the market. The drizzle didn’t seem to put anyone off. I had a leather belt made from scratch in less than 5 minutes. The old town surrounding the monastery was full of fortress like houses with solid ornate doors, piles of firewood on the flat roofs and yak horns. Locals used the stream as a toilet. The nearby road looked like a ’Wacky Races’ scene. Communist tractors - like glorified lawnmowers, horses and carts, tricycles and banged up trucks all tooling along the road in chaotic fashion. In Shigatse, we were able to get the necessary permit to allow us to head for Nepal, which was a real relief.

Back on the Friendship Highway, we spent a day crossing two passes: Yulung La (4950m) and Gyatso La (5220m). We began by heading up the gentle Tso La pass (4500m) and passed more scenic Tibetan villages. These consisted of distinctive one-story buildings made from sun-dried mud bricks and covered with whitewashed clay and plaster. There were vertical pairs of red and black stripes above every window. There were also sun and moon symbols, complimentary opposites of wisdom and compassion. Firewood was stored on the flat roofs of pounded mud, for the winter in 1-metre piles. The roofs are flat because there is little rain or snow. At each corner of the roof were poles with Tibetan prayer flags. This description pretty much sums up every village we saw. Just add mud, yak dung, children waving and you get the idea.

Horses and yaks grazed in the lush valleys. Barley and wheat were being cultivated. On the road we passed the ‘5000 km marker’. We were 5000km west of Beijing. These regularly placed markers are everywhere in China and Tibet, just to let you know that Beijing is still in charge.

In-between the two high passes, we dropped down to Lhaste (4050m). Essentially just a truck stop, it was full of beggars and people staring at us through the windows of the Landcruiser like zoo animals. Places like these are used for meal breaks for the travelling tourists. The menus, as in every other vehicle stop were in English and the prices were English too. Really expensive. At every rest stop, we’d just walk around and avoid the restaurants, trying to find local stalls. At worse, we just survived on cheap beer.

Our vehicle had taken a hammering and a front wheel axle-rod came adrift. The driver kicked it back into place, tied it with some rope and we all prayed it would survive the journey. It could only be repaired back in Lhasa. The roughest roads were still to come.

We holed up in Shegar (also called New Tingri - though if anything was new, I never saw it) for the night. Another scruffy one horse town of endless dust. We got a basic double room (two beds, that’s it), with limited electricity (i.e. turn on the light and also light a candle to see anything). There was no running water and two outside holes-in-the -ground toilets. Luxury! From this point on, we forgot what washing, shaving, or even undressing was like and never saw a mirror for days. At a local café, we ate crappy noodle soup while watching Chinese tourists leave a stack of food. As soon as they left, two scruffy locals walked in, scraped all the remains into a plastic bag and left. This place was that poor.

Shegar provided us with a Vehicle Permit (£40) and the Everest Base Camp permit (£6) for our next plan of attack. There were police checkpoints outside town and also at Chay village. It was just a rugged rocky track with switchbacks up the valley that threw us around the Landcruiser. A new road was being constructed by hundreds of Chinese and the valley was a real eyesore of cuttings, drainage ditches and rocks. 4WD (or horse) is currently the only way you can get through. But I suppose in ten years, there will be a sealed road all the way to Base Camp and the tour buses will flock in their thousands to visit the (future) ’Highest McDonalds in the world’. I felt fortunate that we still had to the opportunity to do it the hard way.

We slowly climbed 1000m in elevation up to the Pang La Pass at 5120m. The mountains were covered in mist and there were no startling views of the Himalayas. At the top of the pass, we had a late breakfast in a nomadic tent. It was Tsampa, a kind of dough made with roasted barley flour and mixed with yak butter and water. It didn’t taste as bad as it sounds. Black tea with yak milk washed it down. The road descended past a couple of villages and old mud ruins of former strongholds into the fertile Dzakar valley full of barley fields that were strung out like rice paddies. A dirt road bumped us further along the valley to Rongpho Monastery.

Built in 1902, this is the highest monastery in Tibet and therefore the world. It was a scruffy complex of a dozen monks and nuns. Next door, a basic hotel overcharged for a cramped four-room dorm bed. There was no water, no shower and the food prices were extortionate. Still, they had a captive audience. It was the only place to stay for hours in any direction and the nearest place to Everest Base Camp.

Since it was mid afternoon, there was still time to head for the Base Camp, 8km away. While Pierre, Lorna and Jo took the Landcruiser to within a thirty minute walk (the road was blocked by construction crews blowing up the rocks), I puffed against the high altitude, with a hike up all the way, through a valley of looming brown cliffs, a jumble of boulders, glacial moraine and a glacial river roaring nearby.

The Chinese call Everest ‘Qomolangma’ and the Tibetan Base Camp lies at 5200m. There are a couple of permanent structures, but the site was empty of expeditions at this time of the year. It was first used in 1924 by the first British Everest expedition. There were numerous failed attempts to summit Everest, until in 1953, they switched to the Nepalese side and Hilary and Tensing finally conquered the highest mountain on earth. Having spent 12 days in Nepal last year, walking up to the Nepalese Everest Base Camp, it was a bit of a revelation that you could drive all the way to the Tibetan one.

As we peered down another flat valley of glacial moraine, we could see a spectacular ice covered mountain to one side. The rest of the valley was covered in thick billowing white clouds that filled the sky. That must be Everest, we thought, though it looked a bit small to me. It wasn’t until we’d returned to the monastery, that the skies cleared and Everest just towered above everything else. How the hell did we miss that? Those clouds must have been enormous. It is not until you see how vast the mountain is against the others, do you really appreciate the scale of this massive white hammer headed edifice.

The Americans/Canadians had rolled in after a previous detour to see another monastery (“That’s enough monasteries” – Ed). The following morning, in brilliant blue, early morning skies, Everest could be clearly seen from the monastery. I accompanied Shawn and Kath on the hike back up to Base Camp. Jo, who, yesterday had ended up throwing up from altitude sickness, said I was welcome to it. We had a splendid walk back to Base Camp. By the time we arrived, Everest was back behind the clouds. It was windy but warm enough for me to be able to just wear shorts, with no shirt – much to the amusement of a couple of elderly Chinese tourists who took obligatory photos of the ‘naked barbarian’. The Americans’ driver came and picked us up in their Landcruiser for the return ride.

That afternoon, we backtracked all the way back down the valley and back over Pang La pass, where we finally had a startling view of the Himalayas. The huge sweep of mountains included Makale, Lhotse, Everest, Gyachung Kang and Cho Oyo. I had seen most of these from the Nepalese side as well.

Cho Oyo, was the 8000+ metre mountain that my Aussie mate, Matt Walton had attempted to climb as part of an Australian Army expedition last May, after I had met him on the Everest trek. Two of the team reached the summit while exhaustion and severe altitude sickness sapped the others. It looked a bugger of a mountain to ascend. Matt had shown us video footage of the attempt when we visited him in Queensland earlier this year.

Back on the Friendship Highway, we roared past villages, yak herds and goats to Tingri (4390m), a huddle of Tibetan homes that overlooked a sweeping plain bordered by the towering Himalayas. It was another shitty, dusty town, another shitty room, no electricity or water and 1.50 English pounds for a plate of chips. They must grow potatoes here so why are the charges so steep? I stuck to Lhasa beer at less than 40p a bottle. Over 3 days, I only ate a pancake and survived on cheap beer. I decided to hold out for the cheaper food in Nepal.

After three nights of crappy accommodation, no showers and starvation, the group consensus was that we should push onto the border a day early. We were all ready to leave. While discussing the itinerary with the manager back in Lhasa, he had told us that the final 30km stretch south of Nyalam had been destroyed by landslides and construction crews were scrambling to repair it, closing the road all day. He suggested that it would be better to hole up in Nyalam and tackle it early the next morning on Day 7 – giving us a full day to deal with the conditions. But the drivers had been told that around 1pm, the roadworks opened temporarily during the construction crews’ lunchbreak. So we decided to go for it. It turned out to be a day beyond belief.

So on Day 6, we left Tingri at 7.30am, and bumped our way into Nyalam around 11am. A one-horse town of muddy streets and people shitting in the streams running off the main drag. Seeing this place, we were glad that we hadn’t decided to spend the night here.

The murderous, twisting rocky trail hugged a spectacular river gorge for about 10km. Then we reached a bridge crossing a side gorge. A landslide had destroyed the road on the other side. On our side of the bridge, there were a dozen Landcruisers and trucks backed up, waiting. On the other side, hundreds of Chinese workers toiled with wheelbarrows, shovels and trucks of rocks were being dropped off the side of the road to shore it up again. A raging river thundered below. It was 12.40pm. A sign by the bridge in both Chinese and English indicated that the bridge was closed between 7.30am and 8pm. Which you couldn’t really argue with, but obviously, word had got around about the 1pm lunchbreak.

By 1.30pm, nothing had happened, except that another 20 vehicles were now backed up behind us. There was only a metal coil draped across the bridge entrance, but a Chinese truck was blocking the bridge on the other side. A group of German tourists at the head of the queue got restless. They were trying to reach Kathmandu to catch a plane that night. Their driver, waving airline tickets, remonstrated with the tiny Chinese security guard, who, in a green Khaki uniform, looked like a poison dwarf. Refusing bribery, he just blanked them and walked away.

Other Landcruiser and Tibetan truck drivers then got restless. They marched across the bridge, urging on the tourists and pushed the Chinese truck off the bridge. This really pissed off the Chinese. Scuffles then broke out with irate drivers versus construction crew security. The Americans’ driver, armed with a crowbar (not used as far as I saw) really got stuck in. But to start with, it was lots of handbags at dawn stuff.

While the drivers and security did a lot of yelling and fisticuffs, the cry went up and the rest of the Chinese construction workers stopped work, grabbed their shovels and poured over the bridge to join in. There were running attacks on each other. The construction workers went for the Americans’ driver, about a dozen men welding shovels at him. Shawn took a photo of the attack and the flash stopped everyone. He did it both to get evidence and stop the physical assault (ironically, I had been happily snapping off photos all the time but without a flash – everyone was too preoccupied with the fighting).

Then the construction workers all chased Shawn (who is well over 6ft) to get his camera. He ran back to his Landcruiser where Kath and Annie were sat, threw in the camera, and yelled “lock the doors”. Twenty construction workers surrounded the Landcruiser with the frightened girls inside. Lots of yelling, shoving, shovels hitting the vehicle, fists flying. Absolute bedlam. Americans under attack in Tibet? Send in the airstrikes George. Now the tourists were getting pushed around. Even Jo took a few punches at the poison dwarf who was trying to getting his own back on the verbal/physical assault by the Americans’ driver.

The construction crews retreated. As far as they were concerned – that was it. Noone was coming across that bridge until 8pm in 6 hour’s time. I wasn’t bothered. We still had a full day of visa left. At worse, we’d head back to Nyalam and try again tomorrow. The Germans having started it all (I wonder what else they started in history?), decided to abandon their vehicle and walk the 20km to the border. It was pouring with rain and not my idea of fun. We preferred to sit it out. We heard later that trucks were charging 30 English pounds for a lift to the border on the other side of the bridge.

So we holed up in the Landcruiser with books for the long wait. You do a lot of waiting while dealing with Chinese bureaucracy. I thought that once things settled down, we’d be let through eventually. The Construction workers went back to work and security kept a low profile.

So it was a bit of a surprise when an official vehicle rolled up and arrested the Americans’ driver. He was taken back to Nyalam for interrogation. Now we had a serious problem. Even if they let us through, our buddies were marooned. The driver may never return. We worked on ideas to abandon their vehicle and pile everyone and the luggage into our Landcruiser. Shawn suggested that they attempt to get deported “Then they’ll have to take us to the border”. Around 4.30pm, the driver returned, laughing off his experience with his limited English “No problem. Ok”. It was a bit of a relief.

By 5pm, a cry went up in Chinese of “Let them through”. What there were left of us. Half the tourists had given up and lugging their backpacks had already set off walking to the border. A posse of vehicles crossed the bridge (it felt a bit like Arnhem during World War Two), past the construction crews and weaved its way along the tottering dirt track that had been carved through the landslide. It had been a final reminder that the Chinese authorities treat the Tibetans like shit and that there is one rule for the Chinese and the rest of the world can go suck eggs.

The remaining 20km of track was a terrible bumpy, winding, rocky path of switchbacks, fording streams, rivers, mud and landslides. It hugged the gorge, almost overhanging the edge, with vast drops on our right and no guard rails anywhere. The surrounding scenery, however, was absolutely stunning. The rain had stopped and the sheer-sided rocky gorge cliffs, covered in lush green vegetation and forests were broken up by hundreds of metre long, narrow, ribbon like waterfalls tumbling vertically down the cliffs and swirls of mist and cloud wafting through the gorge. A real “Land that Time Forgot” experience that could have been used in a ‘Jurassic Park’ movie sequel. At one point, we drove under a 30ft wide, crashing waterfall that was a natural carwash.

We reached the Chinese/Tibetan border at Zhangmu (2300m) around 6pm, thirty minutes before closing. Surrounded by moneychangers and paying off our reliable driver who had got us through a week of abysmal conditions (and who now had to drive back to Lhasa), we grabbed our packs and went through the immigration departure formalities. It was nice to see a smiling, friendly Chinese official who said “I hope you enjoyed your stay!”

There was one more saga. The Nepalese border lay 8km further on at the end of ‘No Man’s Land’. You have two choices – walk it, or rent a cross-border truck at inflated prices. While Shawn and I were haggling down one of these, Jo had got talking to a Chinese truck driver. He had been sitting in his truck behind us at the roadblock queue all afternoon and had watched the entire scene, including the attack on Shawn. “I don’t suppose you’ve got room for eight people in your truck do you?” she laughed. “Maybe”, he smiled.

We found him waiting on the other side of immigration. “Jump in” he cried. So eight of us, plus another couple who had passed through customs, jumped into the back of his truck that was full of baggage. Jo sat in the front. The driver was very apologetic “Those were very bad Chinese and they were very wrong to keep everyone waiting”. Highly embarrassed about the entire affair, the free ride was his apology on behalf of “nice Chinese people”.

The ride was unbelievably rough. While others crashed out on packs, I stood up and held onto side support bars under the canvas tarpaulin. It was like windsurfing. I’d be thrown into the air, both feet off the ground, still clinging on. In the back, we couldn’t see what was coming so every lump in the track was painful. We had to stop to wait for some explosives to be detonated and then at 5km, we had to stop completely. A new landslide had completely blocked the road and nothing could get through.

We unloaded our bags and the driver pointed to a steep muddy short cut that would cut off a long hairpin bend. He was supposed to be meeting someone in the border town of Kodari and scribbled me his name on a bit of paper. “Please find him and tell him I’m stuck up here”. I disappeared, only to climb back up a few minutes later. I discovered that my camera had been shaken out of my daypack and was still wedged in-between some boxes in the back of the truck. It was that rough!

A wet muddy trek down the mountainside took us to the ‘Friendship Bridge’ and across into Kodari, the Nepalese border town. The clocks had gone back 2 and a ¼ hours from Tibet (Time throughout China and Tibet is set to Beijing Time – 8 hours ahead of GMT) and it was now 5pm on a Sunday afternoon. When we got to the border immigration, we found it closed! Which was the inevitable conclusion to a very strange day.

Final Impressions on Tibet: One of the most interesting countries I have ever visited. Both colourful and drab, beautiful and stark, primitive yet compelling. The dominant Buddhist culture was unique. Outside Lhasa, it is a difficult place to tackle. We left vast parts unseen and I would like to return to see the northern sections. The Chinese inflated prices make it a very expensive place to visit (as against the rest of our trip), but ultimately, it was well worth it. It is changing very quickly and the Chinese are forcing Westernisation at a great pace. If you can handle the terrible roads, and the crappy accommodation, the overland trip is epic. But Lhasa on its own, gives you a good perspective on the country. Given the choice of visiting China or Tibet, I’d go for Tibet every time – before it fully westernises. Even doing it as a side trip from Kathmandu, you won’t be disappointed, and hopefully will be amazed as I was.

Costs in Tibet for 10 days (in British Pounds Sterling)

Travel - £136.75 (cost of 6 day Landcruiser hire -split between 4 people)
Accommodation - £17.52
Food - £16.14
Other - £69.21
Total - £239.62
Grand Total - £13,149.30