Merry Christmas from the roof of the world!


First and foremostly I'd like to wish everyone a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year! I hope everyone's enjoying the holiday and partaking in some excellent food and drink.

At the moment i'm sitting in an extremely large internet cafe (more like a hall actually) in Lhasa. It wasn't really what we expected to find here, but it's actually kind of a welcome change. So far today we've spent about 3 hours playing video games... not your standard christmas, however, after a large night of drinking and Christmas Eve cheer, it was exactly what we needed.

Actually, Christmas in Lhasa was some what of a strange experience. Our Christmas eve kicked off at about 8:00pm when we got a knock on our hotel door, who should it be? Santa Clause! who then proceeded to invite us up to the roof for drinks, courtesy of the hotel. This was pretty bizzare. We entered the room to find two long rows of tables, completely filled with locals and staff: and four empty seats at the end of the room waiting for us. It seemed like we were the guests of honor. Once we got over this, we actually had a fairly good time. They force fed us beer and presented us with gifts and white scraves and in the end we felt kind of bad when we had to leave.

The night then shifted into a bit of a blur, possibly due to drinking games played with some new irish friends: never a good idea. In the end a good night though, it was great to be somewhere we could relax and try and recreate a sense of home.

That was just last night though: allow me to rewind a bit and recap our adventures since we left Kathmandu:

After the pain of organising a tour, the drive here really wasn't too bad: on the contrary, it was absolutely amazing. Our first morning in Tibet began with a drive from the border up to the high pass of Tong-La. At 5200m, this is the highest any of us had been, the air was noticably thinner and it was bone achinhgly called: just before reaching the pass we realised that the condensation on the inside of the jeep's windows had turned to ice.... that's while the heater was on.

Once we got there though, the views from Tong-La where nothing short of amazing. Tibet seems to be a photographers paradise: Big bluesky + Mountains + Prayer flags meant that these are probably some of the best photos i've ever taken. Below are some of my favourites:

Prayer flags atop the pass.

The distant Himilayas (not sure what peak this is, but it's above 8000m apparently)

The wide open spaces of the Tibetan plateau.

From here we continued on to the town of Shigatse, via the town of Tingri with it's views of Everestand and Cho Oyu. Unfortunately this was a little disappionting. We had hoped to get to Base Camp that day, however, our "Guide" turned out to be an obstinate bastard who would not take us there unless we payed an extra 2000Yuan between the four of us. This pattern continued: the guy was all but useless, he was pretty unresponsive, offered little in information and would never deviate from the prescribed route. Oh yes, he was also a certifiable maniac. After narrowly avioding hitting a car which pulled in front of us, he lept from the vehicle and began chasing down the offending vehicle... with a 8inch knife drawn. Luckily this incident occured just before we arrived in Lhasa, so we only had a few more hours before we were rid of him for ever.

Back to the journey: at our guides suggestion (the only good one he had) we skipped the truck stop town of Lhatse and headed straight to Shigatse, the seat of the Panchen Lamas. The Panchens are the second in charge in Tibetan Buddhism and the source of some controversy. The latest reincarnation was original found by the Tibetan's, however, the child was immediately taken into Chinese custody and has not been seen since. Shortly after, the Chinese government announced that they had found their own (government sanctioned) reincarnation of the lama who is now cloistered in Beijing. The whole thing really stinks, but it also typifies China's approach when dealing with Tibet.

That aside, the Shigatse monastery is a really amazing place. We were the only tourist there among hundreds and hundreds of Tibetan pilgrims. It's great to see that the culture is still very alive inside these buildings, even if the towns surrounding them are now rampantly Chinese. We were allowed to explore most of the buildings including the library and study rooms which are in full use by the monks. We were also lucky to witness a large scale debate which took the form of around 50 monks arguing very animatedly in an outside courteyard. Very very cool.

From Shigatse we headed straight for Lhasa, which turns out to be a pretty modern town. Again, we had to spend a lot of time organising our onward travel and it wasn't until the third day that we actually got out to see the sites: namely the Potala and the Jarkhong. Once again I'll take a dig at the Chinese Government: In front of the Potala is one of the ugliest things i've seen, a massive Tienamen square style replica replete with Chinese flag and a statue dedicated to "the libteration of the Tibetan people". Give me a break, the only good thing is that they held back on putting in a 40ft statue of Mao.

Rant aside, the Potala and Jarkhong were both massively impressive buildings. The Potala due to it's sheer size and splendour and Jarkhong because it is the spiritual centre of Tibetan Buddhism. At the Jarkhong we became part of a massive push of pilgrims to try and get into the most sacred chapel within, pretty cool experience.

And so here we are. Tomorrow morning we fly out to Lijang in the south-western Chinese province of Yunan. This has a reputation of being one of the most beautiful places in China and is supposedly the inspirtation for the book Shangri-la. Looking forward to it.

After that we plan to head south west into Burma, political climate permiting, or otherwise into northern Laos. As a result internet may soon become scarce, so it might be a while before I update this again.

Once again, hope everyone had a great christmas and is looking forward to fun new year!