The Stunning Adventures "Not all those who wander are lost." Tolkien

Along with a huge laundry list of other transgressions to the Tibetan people, the Chinese government has made travel within the Tibet "Autonomous" Region incredibly difficult. In the same vein as the permits that are supposedly required to enter the region, there are different permits required to enter into separate prefectures. These permits can vary in cost and also in the amount of time required to acquire one. All this being said, the easiest, and by far the most used, method of travel is to find other people that have your same itinerary and book a mini-van, or Land Cruiser, to the border, with a travel agency. The travel agency then arranges (or doesn't!) all the required permits; this is a huge pain in the ass. It is not hard to find a travel agent, they are all over. It is difficult to run around the city to find other like-minded travelers to sign up or a mini-bus charter. In any event, this is what we had to do to get to the border, and we were pretty damn happy with the results. We had arranged for a 6-day trip to the border with some stopovers along the way; 5 Americans, 1 Aussie, and 2 Poles later, and we were on our way...

...well not exactly on our way. Two of our crew had visas that were to expire before our planned border crossing. We found out this was going to be a problem on our departure morning, excellent! This caused a huge snag, and we had to wiggle our way around the permit situation. After two visa extensions and a wasted day waiting, the next morning, we were on our way!

Our first stop was Samye Monastery. This is the oldest monastery in Tibet, and a bit off the beaten track. This is not to say that many people don't visit it, but it is not usually on the route from Lhasa to the Nepali border. After a late start and hours of bumpy driving, we finally arrived at the Monastery. The actual chapel was closed, but the entire grounds were open for our perusal. It was incredible to see where Tibetan Buddhism had its start, and it really makes you realize how a forest fire can be started by just a small spark. Our guide (he came with the mini-van, we didn't really ask for him) told us that the driver wanted to leave at 7:00 a.m. This would not allow us time to see the monastery (our only reason for coming so far out of our way). He also told us that the monastery would not open until 9:00, so we would have to leave without seeing it. Taking the role as our own guides, we asked some monks what time the monastery opened. They told us that they would have a service at 7:00 that we could watch. This is were we first realized that our guide was playing for two teams. Our driver, as it turned out, was a huge pain in the ass and he made our guide (Wang Chu) feel like he always needed to listen to his instruction. In any event, we basically told them that this was why we had come and we would not leave until we had seen it. This proved to be no problem, as we did not leave until 9:30 and still had plenty of time to drive to Gyantse; this further aggravated us as there was no reason to leave so early in the first place.

Day 2 started with us seeing Samye Monastery and then waiting for two of our crew that were a bit under the weather. Adam was suffering from what we all thought was altitude sickness and Joe had eaten something bad and was vomiting and crapping nearly non-stop (he even shit on his wallet as it fell out of his back pocket into the latrine). It is really difficult (actually impossible) to describe the amazing scenery along the way, so we will not even try. Our next destination was Gyantse. The driver was a bit sulky, as he had wanted to leave much earlier and therefore drove at a snail's pace. The day of driving ensued and we finally arrived at a road block that forced us to pull over for two and a half hours, clearly negating any reason for leaving any earlier; we would have been forced to stop anyway. We did not get to our hotel until nightfall, and we all quickly showered in one of the few hot showers we would get on this trip and snuggled up into bed.

Gyantse is the site of another important monastery, Kumbum Monastery, and also is a city that has a wonderful Tibetan quarter that is untouched by the modernization that has changed the faces of so many Tibetan towns. We strolled throught the old quarter and were even invited into the home of a family who was just as interested in us as we were in them. It was a very interesting cultural exchange that unfortunately had to be conducted with gestures and facial expressions. The stroll took a bit longer than we anticipated, and we still wanted to see the monastery. Much to our driver's chagrin, the monastery and grounds are quite enormous. We thoroughly investigated a huge stupa and its myriad of chapels before going into the main monastery. One of the chapel's had huge masks of angry beasts and murals depicting the tibetan ritual of sky burial. A sky burial is when bodies are dissected into pieces small enough to be devoured by vultures. This is still very much an active ritual employed my many Tibetans. Needless to say it was incredibly interesting and eye-opening, yet a bit haunting with the chanting and drumming in the background.

After just a short bit of driving we arrived in our third destination of the trip, Shigatse. Shigatse is the second largest city in Tibet, but only rates as a small town back at home. We explored yet another huge moastery in Shigatse. So much of Tibet's culture is wrapped around the astoundingly devout belief in the tenets of Buddhism. That being said, it should be no surprise that viewing the cities and culture of Tibet would also center around the places of worship. Tashihunpo Monastery is the traditional seat of the Panchen Lama, although he is currently under house arrest in Beijing and has been since 1995 (when he was six years old). The monastery grounds are huge and contain a number of colleges of Buddhist teachings. We viewed many incredible chapels and the burial chortens of many of the past Panchen Lamas. The town offers some very interesting markets that we strolled around, before heading back to the hotel.

Day four was another one started early at our driver's behest, as we had a long drive ahead of us to Rongphu Monastery, the highest monastery in the world; at the foot of Mt. Everest. The drive also took us by the incredible Yamdrok Lake, a holy scorpion-shaped lake that is regularly circumambulated by devout Buddhists. The lake has since been used by the Chinese to create hydro-electric power. Having no natural means of replenishment, the lake is estimated to be empty in twenty or so years, another unfortunate consequence of the Chinese occupation of Tibet. After leaving the lake, we continued to gain elevation until we reached Nam La pass that took us to our highest elevation yet, 5100m. This is where we got our first glimpse of the Majestic Mt. Everest. The sight was incredible and we all must have taken fifty pictures each. The cold was incredible and we only stopped taking photos when we were just too cold. We then lost a lot of the elevation we had just gained as we entered into a beautiful valley that would take us into the Mt. Everest National Park. We had a bit of permit problems at the military checkpoint, but after some explanation we were finally allowed into the park. We started gaining elevation again until we reached Rongphu Monastery and the highest, and coldest, guest house we would stay in. The guesthouse restaurant was exactly what we had previously envisioned. A Tibetan door covering is swept aside to reveal a darkened room rimmed by padded benches with colorful and decortative Tibetan chests/tables. The large room has a central wood stove completely surrounded by other visitors. Outside, the sun started to fall, and Mt. Everest was even more incredible in the fading light of the day. A full complement of pictures ensued before we finished the evening with Tibetan noodles and sweet milk tea. The room, which we shared with our Polish friends, was absolutely freezing. The two of us wore our long underwear and fleece pants and tops to bed and had somewhere around 6 blankets and still froze all night. The condesation on the inside of our windows froze during the night, and the thermometer on our travel clock said it was exactly 32 degrees Farenheit in our room, this is after the sun had risen and started to warm the air (it was really cold).

Our driver was giving us some more problems, wanting us to depart much sooner than we were ready. We had planned on trekking the 8 kilometers to Everest Base Camp, feeling a little funny to drive there. We headed out and really enjoyed the first half of the walk. The views were incredible and the sun had risen over the high peaks to warm our chilled bones. Off in the distance, in the direction of the guesthouse, we see a dust cloud approaching us. It turns out to be our driver chasing us down. He wanted us to get in and abort our trek to drive to base camp, where we would undoubtedly leave nearly right away. We declined his unreasonable request and headed on our way. Further on the way, we saw the highest post office in the world, unfortunately, it was closed for the season; poor sick Joe had to hide behind it to poop. We finally arrived at base camp. Climbing had ceased for the season, so we were only greeted by some Chinese soldiers that registered our visit and let us walk around. The camp itself is quite unremarkable, but the view from a small hill is absoutely spectacular. It is the classic view of Mt. Everest you see in pictures, and it was immediately in front of us. Because we were already at 5200 m, it almost looked accessible for us to finish hiking up the rest of the way; clearly this was not possible. We took another enormous amount of photos before finally giving in to our rude honking driver. Before getting in the van, we got out our contract and showed him that the schedule was to be at our discretion, and he needed to relax or we might have some serious problems. The guide was caught in the middle, but was forced to listen to reason, which was on our side.

We pulled into Old Tingri a little after sun down. We sat in the restaurant and celebrated our visit to Everest Base Camp with some curry and a beer. The restaurant cleared out pretty early as most of the other travelers were headed the other way to visit base camp early the next morning. A little before closing, some Chinese soldiers strutted into the restaurant as if they owned the place. The workers quickly turned off the Tibetan music that had been playing and the silence that ensued was depressing. They perused the financial books of the restaurant and ate some food. They never paid and the exchange had a feeling of sad familiarity. We really enjoyed traveling in China and met many wonderful and generous Chinese people; but for so many reasons, the occupation of Tibet by the Chinese is so incredibly heart breaking. After the soldiers left, the workers wanted to close up shop, so we went off to bed.

We started really early the next morning. We had to drive to Nyalam, the drop-off point for our trip. We had to arrive there early enough for the driver and guide to turn around and pick up one of our group members who was headed back to Lhasa. Nyalam is not actually on the border, it is 35 km to the border town of Zhangmou and the drive is a dangerous winding road that descends an incredible 1450 m, nearly a mile. Nyalam can roughly be translated as "Gateway to Hell", and that is exactly what the drive turned out to be, but that is a different story, altogether.