My crew and I had 2 days around rural Tibet booked in the tour. Early in the AM, our car and guide afforded us breakfast then took us away. It didn't even take long to get to the rural expanse. A river wound by the road we traveled, and then it was up up up up, a neverending zigzag of roads that went progressively higher into a mountain, but never seemed to reach the top.
We broke the cloud cover and leveled out at a small outpost. We were overlooking Yamdrok Lake, a large and sacred body of water, and a common stop on tours, by the look of the surroundings. Lots of locals were hanging around trying to get some money from tourists, a practice I have no problem with provided its something I'm keen on spending money on. One lady had a baby goat all done up like a gypsy priestess and she was charging about a dollar to let you hold it. Another guy was giving yak rides for about the same price. I wanted all the Tibet, so I negotiated an amalgam of the two.
We drove down for a closer look at the lake. Little rock piles were carefully arranged by the shore, either the product of some traditional Tibetan spiritual practice, or the result of long stretches of boredom between tour buses. The guys that made them tried to get money out of everyone who tried to take a picture.
A lot of time and not a lot of scenery went by. It was like a blank template of a computer generated landscape before all of the vegetation, wildlife and buildings got rendered in. Simply devoid of anything at all but shape. Most of the roads went by a flowing river, many of which were clear to the point of being almost unnoticeable. The source of the flawless water lay further ahead. A massive peak capped with a glowing white glacier. We stopped the car to take photos of the sight. At 5020m up, I can say it's the highest point I've ever been elevated to on the planet Earth.
It took a look around to get a bit more of a candid image of Tibet. Some shoddy stone dwellings sat at the foot of the glacier surrounded by yak and prayer flags. Sounds quaint, but there were some pretty disquieting images. Namely a shivering family begging and a young boy openly urinating into the doorway of his house.
We kept on rolling. Occasionally fields of green would punctuate the landscape. Sometimes they were yellow. Sometimes the yellow fields, red hills and blue skies would combine to form this streak of primary colors. Sometimes the surroundings took on this over-saturated look, like I was in the Black Hole Sun music video. I was in the back of the car with the two girls who had fallen asleep in a tangle of arms and legs. The ride took hours and hours.
A few more lakes, a few more stupas and a lot more prayer flags later, we were in Gyantse. The midday weather was sunny and clear. Unbeknownst to me at the time, I explored the biggest chorten in Tibet, the Gyantse Kumbum. It was a multi-storied aggregate of Buddhist temples. A Buddha beehive. A reason to stop in Gyantse. Afterwards it was onwards to Shigatse, Tibet's second biggest city.
We stopped and found cheap lodging. I don't recall much from my time there other than a few things. One, the toilet was disastrously filthy, and two, I found a PC cafe with some pretty ripping Internet connection. I remember video Skyping my parents and thinking "well shit if I'm not making a video call across the planet from the middle of goddamn nowhere".
In the morning it was one more monastery then back on the road. I was already finished with monasteries back in Lhasa, and I apologize to anyone put off my how jaded I'd become. Monasteries sound really cool in theory. You no doubt imagine these hallowed grounds, nestled in the mountains and completely still aside from the slow deliberate movements of a few noble monks. The reality kind of makes you go "oh". The places are usually crowded with Chinese tourists and a lot of the monks are just a bunch of bored teenagers. Camera clicks drown out the solemn incantations, and the few really interesting people you do see, spoil the illusion by either asking for money or being kind of crazy (like most other religious devotees).
We took a different route back to Lhasa, one that looked like someone had made a conscious effort to plant trees alongside the road. No one wanted to be in the car anymore. At one pee stop, I saw two men having a conversation. One man, feeling the need to urinate, did not feel it necessary to break the flow of conversation, so he just turned sideways and peed into the open wind.
Back in Lhasa we all had a good final night at a bar with some friendly song-singing locals. Lykke got dressed up in some kind of local garment and we took a creepy looking group shot.
The next day we all got driven to the Lhasa Gonggar Airport to be separately deposited back into our own respective normal lives. Siri seemed to have come down with something pretty nasty as she could barely keep her head up. Our goodbyes were pretty subdued as a result, but the girls and I did extend offers to meet again in the future. My plane took me to Chengdu then to Beijing. As I flew overtop, I could see where the Tibetan plateau dropped steeply to the Chinese mainland below. I was leaving the seemingly unobtainable heights I aimed for when I got off the plane in Bali. Tibet was my goal and my reward for making it that far into the journey, and now that it was over, there was nothing more to do than to feel the slow descent back into my absolute reality in Canada.
It only goes up from here.
A Tibetan man is rolling his eyes somewhere.
A the top of that endlessly winding road.
At the foot of the glacier.
Not a Windows screensaver.
Water on Mars.
Plenty of room to stretch out in Gyantse.
Gyanste again.
The Gyantse Kumbum: The beehive of Buddhas.
That creepy group pic I was talking about.
After skirting through the highest points on Earth, this seemed like cheating.
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