Lhasa is too full of tourists! I've never seen so many fat Germans, American students, Koreans and Japanese at once in the same place! You have to go to the Canadian Rockies to find a zoo as touristy as this, and while Aspen and Tahoe may be far more cramped, at least they suffer mostly local traffic. I make the right choice at last, and ride into the gate of the Banak Zhol Hotel. There, I dismount beside a sad looking professorial type, probably an Italian socialist; he stands gazing fixedly at the hotel bulletin board, which is mounted upon huge portraits of Tibetan door guards painted in bright colors. I mumble: "The more mediocre - the more they hear..."

With this cryptic greeting, I go in and try to book rooms. At first none of the women behind the desk recalls my attempt to phone for a place. It's just too busy now. Then, Miguel and I are placed in a four-bed room with two Korean girls, one of them a sweetheart who resembles the Disney character, Mulan. She grew up in America, and she's very civil and talkative: the girl even summons courage enough to whisper a few hints about being hungry for a fuck, having been locked up in an all girl dorm in Dalian, China for months and months. Her youthful deprivation is so cute. Her travel partner comes from Korea, and they speak Korean as well as Chinese together. I always smile at girls of twenty-three because they look tasty. Can't help being polite and eager... But Miguel is hopelessly gruff. It's not worth repeating how this guy takes perverse pleasure as he irks them with senseless comments about the feud between the two Koreas - perhaps so he can make himself feel lonely and unwanted...

Across the street from the hotel sit three email cafes. I start writing letters to my friends and family. Buy souvenirs, then I'll leave. A tourist: face your fate, brother! Kiss your dollars goodbye and pray to your fantasy of the unique and unforgettable experience! Somebody has already written this book three times over!

I get up well before dawn to cycle up for the Zhoton "Yoghurt" Festival at Drepung Monastery. Busses wait outside the hotels for sleepy tourists. As I reach the outskirts of town, I'm blinded by the dark. The air is chilly. Hundreds of locals stroll up the path to Drepung. Daybreak seeps through the torn veils of smoky mist...

A mood of going forth to a destination possesses the ten thousand feet rising together upon the early dawn... Everyone walks in a single body - upwards. Only the Tibetans know exactly what's happening. They're not so mystified and they smile a lot. It's a festive day. Others look seriously humble because it's a holy day, too. Some of the local Tibetans are confused by the presence of so many strange foreigners at their show. What do we have to do with their land and religion? Fifty years ago Tibet was still firmly closed to outsiders. For over ten years, she has welcomed thousands of visitors. Undoubtedly, the money we bring is welcome. But take a close look at the faces of Lhasa's folk: you see surprise, shyness and fascination, and many other emotions - sour and sweet. Many seem to enjoy watching the fair-skinned strangers wander their streets. The Tibetans must think the wide world a strange place: that we should have so much money, time and freedom to travel so far... We must appear somehow narrow-minded...

The dawn gives in to the day. I find an old lady selling incense sticks and snacks: she keeps an eye on my bike while I walk up the rest of the way. The Zhoton draws the biggest crowd of the year. I'm also sure that more Western foreigners will converge here today at Drepung than ever before throughout the whole history of the Tibetan nation... I run into an acquaintance at the monastery gate, a Japanese who wants to cycle to Nepal, but only after his ankle has healed. A dog bit him, and he neglected the wound for two weeks. Now, he's taking antibiotic shots everyday. Twice, in the hotel, I warned him to take care and wait until he had recovered fully before travelling.

We pay twenty-five yuan to get inside the monastery gate. Most don't bother to pay. The Zhoton takes place outside the grounds, on a rough hillside north of the monastery. We clamber up a sharp rock face upon which is hung a huge covered image of the Maitreya Buddha, the "future Buddha," and the next incarnation destined to appear in this world. Sunrise must happen before the monks can reel up the white fabric covering the huge tanka. The mural is massive, at least thirty-five metres deep and forty wide. The Maitreya Buddha is symbolic, perhaps for the enduring faith of the Tibetans: Buddha cannot die, but will always return to help save and enlighten humanity. The Maitreya holds an orange emblem that bids us to free ourselves of superfluous and upsetting emotions. But it is still hidden, and all of us, tourists and locals, must wait.

As we stand around, my Japanese pal and I run into Miguel, and we see a few more familiar faces appear, including the Lacedaemonian Youth - the Brit from Darchen. Sans the wholesome California mama - he's quite alone, and he tries to smile down on us, but looks rather mincey and tight-lipped. I don't recognize anyone else. A whole bunch of knobby tourists are here, each one toting a fancy camcorder or a big fat camera. So obviously, I'm witnessing a lot of aging "professionals-on-tour," each and every one of them redolent with subliminal phallic memories of something lost forever, like that lonesome blonde years ago, encountered that first time wandering away from hearth, home and wife. Years ago is as good as today, if you are an older gent on holiday. Actually, there are plenty of young Japanese and several very old Caucasian ladies, too. Tibet is the perfect surrogate for that untenable fantasy to touch the pas - right now.

Certainly, coming to Tibet does reflect a fascination about something exotic, which we imagine has remained untouched. Why do I always search for irony behind embarrassed dreams? This dream's no longer possible! I can see the elderly monks of Drepung appear amused and shy. Some of the younger ones on top of the ridge appear annoyed with the crowd. Many smile, too, enjoying the excitement. We're too many strangers. So they march slowly and shyly from the main monastery across the ravine to reach the tent pavilion beneath the veiled Buddha. I'm tickled - because each foreigner seems to ignore all the other foreigners present here: maybe that's just because all of us have cameras - and so we look too identical. Ludicrous.

The eldest monks finally take their places in the pavilion and begin to recite their tantric-mantric chant, much amplified over a public address system. "Buddha is an expensive camera," I say to Miguel and my Japanese friend a moment before one of the elders smiles and drones, in English, over the PA, "You've got a big camera..." The sum monetary value of all the high-tech camera equipment with us today on Drepung hill exceeds the combined income, for at least five or ten years, of all the local Tibetans here this morning! It's true - believe me.

One of the local Tibetans observes that he has never seen so many foreign tourists at the Zhoton in previous years... People, enthusiastic for blessings from Gelukpa elders, crowd round the pavilion as the old gents chant on. Their voices are deep and resonant, spoken in a rolling grind of words rumbling in circles upon nonsense syllables followed by the names of faith. The elders pay scant attention to onlookers who press in for personal blessings...

In the vanguard, tall young monks push the crowd back several times. Sometimes, these monks employ long wooden sticks to whack at the zealous devotees. Even so, some people, especially women, surge forth and reach out with donations, imploring the elders to give some sign of blessing. Today is an auspicious day. But the sun rises behind grey clouds... Fifty young monks begin hauling up the fabric masking the great Buddha. His blue curls and yellow aura are revealed. Then the people toss silky white "kata" scarves onto the image...

It's 9:00 A.M. and I realize that the hillside is very crowded. I want to get away. The crowd confuses me and I feel the inexorable panic of agoraphobia threaten me once again. As quickly and as calmly as possible, I make my getaway. Old American, German and French wives step most gingerly up and down the difficult paths. I get around them. But below, a bottleneck blocks the way out: a stone stair is built between the monastery and an old wall ringing the premises. Here I am, squeezed in with everyone else, just like some ooze from a tube of toothpaste. I experience nightmarish memories of news reports about people crushed in football stadium stampedes... I swallow my fear of crowds and try not to look right or left, but only straight beyond the thick press of bodies. No escape - try not to push or fall down. Thank god's holy shit nobody shouts fire! Somehow, I squish out the exit despite the horrible, chest crushing cement-like flow of idiotic people. Outside, hundreds more still hike up.

I encounter a couple from Germany at the hotel. They want to look at Lhasa before riding on to Nepal. The southward route to Nepal is most popular with cyclists. However friendly they are, nobody has the tool I need to remove the freewheel so my broken spokes can be replaced!

Feeling alone is how I come home to what started in the embryo. I suspect my mother smoked then. That's why I don't smoke, except grass. (Mushrooms and clouds give you sounds unreal, because cats can't talk... Baby blue she used to call me, when I was still dreaming in jazz, and forgetting the rent. I'm not free of the rent, yet.) Today, being able to take a nap somehow signifies the end of my long ride. Then Miguel tells me that the Tibetan chambermaid wants to give me a massage... So she does, quietly methodical about it. I can tell she is dying of curiosity about my white body, my white sex and all I think about are bluesy metaphors: society is a killing floor... Maybe American blacks were the first ones ever to have made emotionally truthful modern music. Only a black man can make me hop to that chopping block!

I'm happy despite having to "go back"... I'm a tool too. You're free, aren't you? Since you were far too scared to buy me, right? Lying in bed all day, a chill, it's the cloying sweat of the shits... The misery of eating something wrong lasts twenty-four hours. Makes me forget the money I don't have, because I didn't want to die too soon, a young-blood drunk on my own voice, paying for every new girl... My room is padded with her slippery skin. I'm as near to being a Read Indian as I'll ever get!

Miguel fucks up at the Bank of China for the third day running. He's trying, but can't talk, and doesn't know how to get the clerk to check if his mail order money is in yet... I don't care - he can't go anywhere, and I'm hanging on, too; so, I email for two hundred fifty, which is enough to feed a family of Tibetans for a couple years, and I'm out in two weeks...

You don't have to throw away everything and go live in the barrio. Give me money to write more? Who should do that - the reading public? But who are they anymore? Do they exist? ...Maybe they do?! Okay, then the government - the government should feed me? Since nobody reads anything after all - we writers should become civil servants, too! Sure!