August 13-15
HBD to Maggie and Evie!!
We left Lhasa and headed out into the Tibetan countryside. We were looking at 8-10 hours of driving for each of the next three days. Tibet is huge and driving up and down mountains takes a long time. Before we saw any “true sites” we had the chance to hang out with some yaks and these Tibetan Mastiffs at a rest stop.
I love yaks. So much. I also love this random painting.
Apparently we didn’t get the memo that we were suppose to be reading the maps that were just handed out.
Our first real stop was Yamtso Tso Lake which is also called Yamdrok Yumtso or Yamzho Yumco. It is one of the three largest sacred lakes in Tibet. It is over 45 miles long and the elevation is 4441 meters. The names translate to turquoise in English. According to local mythology, this lake is the transformation of a goddess.
Like mountains, lakes are considered sacred by Tibetan people, with the thought that they are the dwelling places of protective deities and therefore have special spiritual powers. Everyone from the Dalai Lama to local villagers make pilgrimages to this lake. It is revered and is said to be the life-spirit of Tibet. This lake is closely associated with the Second Buddha and is home to the famous Samding Monastery which is the only Tibetan monastery to be headed by a female re-incarnation.
Yak.
We also got a higher view of the same lake as we were climbing the mountains.
This is the stop where we made friends with the goats.
Well… some of us became a bit closer with the goats than I did. This is our Italian friend, Simone. He had no issue with the goats getting right up in his business.
Karola Glacier is only 9.4 square kilometers but it sits at 5560 meters. This isn’t our finest picture below, but it was sleeting at this moment and I just stepped out of the van, snapped the picture and jumped right back in.
Our next stop was Gyantse Kumbum. The word kumbum means one hundred thousand holy images. This has nine levels that contain 77 chapels. As you climb each level, and view the chapels, you are suppose to be on a path to the Buddha’s enlightenment.
Here are some views of the chapels below. A lot of the art was destroyed during the Cultural Revolution. So some of this art was replaced or replicated.
Some more views outside the Kumbum:
Another day, another monastery. Tashi Lhunpo Monastery was founded in 1447 by the first Dalai Lama. This is the traditional seat of the Panchen Lama who are the second highest ranking in the Gelug tradition of Tibetan Buddhism after the Dalai Lama.
Although two-thirds of the buildings were destroyed during the Cultural Revolution, it was mostly residences so the damage was not as extensive as other monasteries and temples in Tibet. However, you can still see the remains of damage. Our guide pointed out the below where graffiti has been meticulously scrubbed but still shows.
The 10th Panchen Lama did not flee Tibet when the 14th Dalai Lama fled. The life of the 10th Panchen Lama is a bit confusing. He supported China’s claim over Tibet and is called the “fat businessman” by a lot of Tibetans. Instead of fleeing to India with the Dalai Lama, he stayed and started monetizing Buddhism in Tibet. However, he also wrote a 70,000 character petition in 1962 outlining the abusive policies and actions of China’s government in Tibet. After this he was publicly humiliated and imprisoned for 13 years.
After his release, he was considered by authorities to be “politically rehabilitated” and rose to power in the Chinese government. He also got married and had a daughter who is the only known offspring in the history of either the Panchen Lama or Dalai Lama reincarnation lineages. She was schooled in the US for ten years where her legal guardian was Steven Seagal. I seriously cannot make this up. She is popularly known as the Princess of Tibet and is considered important in Tibetan Buddhism and Tibetan-Chinese politics.
The 10th Panchen Lama died just five days after giving a speech where he said, “Since liberation, there has certainly been development, but the price paid for this development has been greater than the gains.” The official cause of death was a heart attack, but some Tibetans suspect foul play. He died with a net worth of $20 million.
Our guide had an interesting take on the Panchen Lama. It seems like he was a polarizing figure and although our guide had no problems letting us know some of the bad things he had done, he did argue that by staying and cooperating with the Chinese government, he could be the main reason why much of the monasteries, art, and scriptures were saved in various areas of the country. Without his business savvy and his willingness to play along there would have been much more devastation in Tibet.
The 11th Panchen Lama is controversial. I know that’s hard to believe. There is an acting Panchen Lama in Tibet that is supported by the Chinese, however, there is also an 11th Panchen Lama that is supported by the Tibetan government in exile, but he was taken into “protective custody” by China when he was named the Panchen Lama and hasn’t been seen since May of 1995.
Our next stop was Everest basecamp!! We arrived just before sunset, so we dropped our bags and did a short walk out of camp to see what we could see. What did we see? Not a ton…
You can kind of see a bit of Everest out back – the small darkish mountain. Our guide told us that we should have a clear view the next morning since there was no pending rain during the evening. So, we enjoyed our quasi view along with a few beers.
First you obviously have to chill the beer.
That’s Mike with our new friend, Ralf, from the Netherlands.
Also, a crew of Chinese who live in Australia wanted us to jump in their picture with them. So we did. Chick with the green shoes needs to work on her ups.
So feeling content with the high probability of seeing Everest the next morning, we headed back to our tents for dinner.
This is what the tents look like on the inside. People are sitting on the end of the beds. They are really just benches with some cushioning on them so you are sleeping directly next to all of the friends you just made on the bus. Fifteen or eighteen people can sleep in one tent. Michael and I, however, got some “good luck” and got invited to sleep in an empty tent next door. So the two of us along with the two solo men on our trip went to the next tent which was completely empty. Great! We got into bed, and our guide came over and layered us up with extra blankets and we settled in for a great night’s sleep.
Hahaha. Just kidding. It was a terrible night’s sleep for several reasons.
1. This really great empty tent became the guide party tent. True story. For 1.5-2 hours after we got into bed all of the guides came into our tent to hang out, tell stories and watch videos on their phones. They were super loud and kept the lights on. Horrible.
2. Our guide slept in the tent with us and as we already knew from driving in the bus with him for hours on end is that he snores. He snores really loud.
3. Since the altitude is so bad, 8844.43 meters to be exact, I was drinking a ton of water to try to get my hands and feet to stop tingling. As such, around 2am I needed a bathroom in a bad way. So after spending twenty or so minutes talking myself into it, I got out of the warm bed, threw on shoes and headed out. Half of the difficulty was getting across the pitch black tent to my phone that was plugged in to the wall. Once I was out of the tent, with my phone light, I was in better shape (mostly). I had heard horror stories about the designated bathrooms. After dark, before bed, Michael and I went out and used the Inca bathroom, so this was my first experience with official bathrooms. I made my way across camp, got to the location and the smell was so bad that I just couldn’t do it. So instead, it was round two of that Everest basecamp bathroom under the sky!
After my bathroom break I was in much better shape and slept fairly well for another few hours. We woke up early, excited to see our mountain!
Ok… so we’re definitely not seeing Everest.
It was still a cool experience, even though the views were not spectacular.
Something to note: the tents are all warmed with dried yak dung. Here’s a box of it. It kept everything super warm and it was odorless, believe it or not.
Something else to note: the only people who obeyed these signs were foreigners. The Chinese just walked right past it without a care in the world. There was no reason to ignore the sign. There was absolutely nothing to see with this cloud coverage. But they kept walking anyway.
Look at all those stupid foreigners lined up at the boundary.
Rongbuk Monastery is a hermitage right by Everest. We went to visit after leaving basecamp.
While we were at basecamp earlier that morning, Michael and I hiked up to one of the monastery’s meditation huts that run up and down the valley.
This monastery was completely destroyed by the Cultural Revolution, but their books, scriptures, and costumes were taken for safekeeping to another site. However, all of those were then lost in a 1989 fire.
In the below picture, on a clear day you can see Everest.
This woman was tickled when I asked to take her photo.
She is holding a Tibetan Buddhist prayer wheel. On the outside of the cylinder is the Avalokitesvara mantra which translates to ‘Om the Jewel in the Lotus Hum’. On the inside of the cylinder, written on paper, are mantras or scripture. It is believed that spinning a prayer wheel is as effective as reciting the sacred texts aloud. Prayer wheels are also used by illiterate members of the Buddhist community who equate turning the wheel to reading the prayers. The concept is the same for large wheels that Buddhists turn by hand when walking by.
So that was it for Everest and Tibet. The landscapes were beautiful and diverse and the colors of the Buddhist prayer flags were incredible against the bright greens, browns and blues of the views.
We had several great views of the Himalayas even though we missed out on the main event.
Plus we got these super cool certificates that said we visited… even if we don’t have an Everest shot to prove it. Also it’s not clear to me that being driven to basecamp and walking the half mile for the view is that much of an “accomplishment”. But cool experience. Maybe we’ll be back to do some real hiking in a few years.
