Prayer Wheels on the Tibetan Plateau

It was proving to be extraordinarily difficult to navigate our way to anywhere near Tibet. We were in South West China and all the borders into Sichuan, the province that straddles Tibet, were closed to foreigners. Sichuan is in the Tibetan Autonomous Region but is controlled by the Chinese Army. In the neighbouring province of Yunnan, we heard of a section of the border where travellers occasionally slipped through on bus tickets bought for them by locals. We decided to give it a go.

Crouched in the back corner of the public long-distance bus that was approaching the road block, looking at the rapid eye movements and sharp breathing of my travelling buddy, I realised we did not understand the gravity of the situation. Soldiers with machine guns waved the bus down and the other passengers went silent. I shut my eyes, pulled my bandanna up to cover my face and shuffled under our packs.

We made it through.

We jumped off the bus in Litang, a Tibetan village built around a monastery. It is a hard place to describe. In some ways it is beautiful; it sits at the beginning of the Tibetan Plateau in a valley surrounded by mountains that match Everest in height. The architecture is ornate, held together with elegant simplicity. Prayer flags are draped around mud-brick houses and through shrubs growing from the pale dirt. There are yaks, ponies and carts. It's hot; dust sticks to my altitude sick lungs; walking is difficult, breathing is shallow. Elderly ladies with long skirts and men with crinkled leather-like faces sit along the pot-hole streets.

But as strong as the beauty is visible so is the darkness. Barbed wire on the tops of fences, boarded up shops, smashed windows. Glass over the road, doors ripped off houses, piles of prayer flags burning. Troops and tanks in the streets. An unspoken quietness, smiles quick to vanish, prayer wheels hidden behind backs.

Tibetan people are not legally allowed to invite foreigners into their houses but a man offered us a room in the back of his house. We drank yak butter tea and ate rice bread with stew. He spoke a little English and described what the Chinese invasion was like and how different life was before. He told us about the magic of Tibet that was now almost gone.

The next morning he organised a ride for us to travel across the Plateau. We said thank-you before pulling our bandannas up. I watched as Litang's mark of soft sad kindness slowly disappeared as the truck rolled on.