Lhasa to Gyantse

Some Chinese fishermen walked alongside the road as we headed along the river out of Lhasa. My government-mandated guide and driver both chuckled from the front seat of the white Land Cruiser.

Okay, I'll bite.

"What's so funny?"

My driver, a 60-ish Tibetan man in tinted 70s glasses, didn't speak much English and didn't answer me. My guide, a fluent English-speaking Tibetan in his forties, did.

"Tibetans don't fish. We find fishing to be really funny."

That didn't really answer my question, so I tried again.

Lhasa: Day Four

I showered fearlessly. I'd been mocking the tourist literature all week, which suggested that washing my hands and showering might cause me to catch a cold at altitude. This was, of course, insane.

Then today I'd realized that this was based on most people outside the city having no hot water. So yes, washing in glacial-melt water probably wasn't a good idea.

But the Yak, though it had a stinky bathroom, did have hot water.

My guide met me to escort me to Jokhang Temple, which is at the center of Lhasa's old town and is one of the holiest, most sacred sites in Tibet. Pilgrims used to hike for weeks to reach it, but now they can just take the bus—thanks to the new Chinese roads (oh, the dilemmas offered by the modern world!)—and boy, do they. In droves. Pilgrims were everywhere, along with hundreds of Chinese tourists.

More Lhasa Photos

Here are more photos of my second and third day in Lhasa.

And here's a link to the previous photos.

Lhasa: Day Three

Hic.


Hic.

Are hiccups a symptom of altitude sickness?

Or maybe they're just a symptom of being crabby. Tibet itself was charming my socks off while being simultaneously heartbreaking with the hardcore military presence, but I was still feeling crabby, given that the enforced tour didn't include hotels or admissions or taxis within Lhasa.

But yesterday, I'd learned that my guide was actually paying attention when I'd complained about the price of the taxi and he'd effortlessly switched us to the public bus for the return trip. Maybe being on a leash in Tibet would work out all right in spite of it being annoying.

Lhasa: Day Two

"Where is breakfast? I was at the front desk of the Yak Hotel in Lhasa.

"Fifth floor."

"Where is the elevator?"

"There is no elevator.

Oh. 

I live on a 4th floor walk-up at home (no elevator there either) but at home I live at sea level. Lhasa is at 3650 meters, or 12,000 feet. That's a lot. It's not the highest city on earth or even the highest city I've ever visited—that honor prior to this trip belonged to La Paz, Bolivia, but only just as it wasn't much higher than Lhasa. Because I'd been there, I knew I'd be okay in Lhasa, though I was concerned about Everest Base Camp later in the week. But having been to La Paz didn't mean I breezed up the stairs here. I was puffing a bit by the time I got to the top. I was glad I'd booked in for four days to acclimate before heading down the Friendship Highway.

Lhasa: Day One

 I waited an hour in my room, wondering when my guide would show up to do whatever guides do when you first arrive in a country. He'd been at the airport straightening something out with a departing group's tickets and sent me ahead to Yak Hotel, which was crumbling and had a stinky sewer drain in the room (I quickly got into an ongoing battle with some invisible force of housekeeping, who took the towel off that I'd throw over the bathroom drain every day), but was a damn sight better than having no room at all. Plus, the location was great for access to the center of Lhasa's old town.

I unpacked and stared at the wall for a bit, before getting bored. I took my laptop and went to the restaurant next door, Dunya, which turned out to be delicious and had wifi. 

"I'm going next door," I told the hotel receptionist. "When my guide arrives, can you tell him I'm in the restaurant having a cup of tea?"

I worked there for a few hours until my MacBook battery ran down, then tried my iPhone via wifi on a proxy server just to see where the bigger world thought I was but all I got was a loop of interwebs confusion, so I went back to my room. The phone rang immediately.

Heading to Lhasa

I plucked this choice bit off of the New Yorker's website. It's from 2007, when the train to Tibet first opened.

Between this and the consideration that the ethics of the train to Tibet were complicated, maybe it was for the best that I couldn't get a sleeper and had chosen to fly instead.

Pandas!

The coolest tourist attraction in Chengdu has got to be this.

PANDAS.

Here are plenty more photos of Panda Day, the most-bestest animal day since Lemur Day with Guy back in Madagascar.