TIBET.....the search for enlightment

Tibet is known as the roof of the world. And so it is! Lhasa sits at 3600m above sea level, we were struggling for air. But before we get into that, the train trip from Beijing first.

It was long and our excitement about spending the next 11 days in Tibet didn't help to pass the time either. What broke our attention away from our impending adventure was the passing landscape. Central China's mountainous farmlands gave way to stunning lakes and snow capped mountains of the Tibetan plateau. Rumors were circulating about the actual time the train was arriving in Lhasa. We had heard 9pm, while the guard said it was 730pm. Needless to say we were a bit unprepared when we arrived at 6:10pm.

Oxygen was pumped into the each cabin once the train began it's climb, providing us with a false self confidence about our adjustment to high altitude. The 5 minute walk from the train to our tour guides car, left us panting like dogs on a hot summers day. Climbing the 3 flights of stairs to our room was going to be a grueling challenge. Unless, we stopped at each flight of stairs with a beer to acclimatise!!!

Tibet, what an amazing place. Within a couple of hours we knew we were going to enjoy our time here. Everyone is so friendly and colourful. You can't walk down the street without someone saying hello to you. Most just laughed when we replied Tashi Dele (hello in Tibetan) back. We also had to get use to being a novelty. It is very common for locals to stop what they are doing and just stare at you not matter what you are doing. It can be quite flattering, in a strange way.

At this time of year, the end of the harvest, Lhasa is alive with pilgrims from all over Tibet, who are here to pay their respects to Buddha in one or all of Lhasa's many monasteries. For the poorer pilgrims this is usually a once in a life time event. The result is a wonderful mixture of traditional culture and dress and ancient building with a city on the brink of Chinese modernism.
We could have spent hours capturing the many faces of the Tibetan people but as many believe that the camera can take a part of your soul it was very rare to come across someone who would look into the camera.

Tibet is littered with hundreds of monasteries, thankfully the Chinese Government rebuilt many after the Cultural Revaluation ended in 1966. Chairman Mao and the Red Guards barley left any of Tibet's history standing. This is clearly seen in small villages, where tourism is low. All that remains of a once thriving monastery and home to hundreds of monks is a vague brink outline of what use to be.
Our trip involved visiting 6 monasteries, I was a little bit worried we may get a little......bored. To both our surprise we didn't. Thanks mostly to our guide Kangdol. She was brilliant! We always walked away amazed at what we just saw and learnt.
The most brilliant monastery we saw was in fact a temple, as no monks lived inside. It is the Potela Palace. Built in the 7th century on Red Hill in Lhasa, the Potela Palace was not only the home of the present and past Dali Lamas but was also Tibet's government building. In the 17th century the 5th Dali Lama united Tibet and therefore became it's spiritual and political leader.
Once we conquered the stairs to the entrance of the Palace we saw the present Dali Lamas pray room, meditation room and bedroom. Amazing! It was so odd and wrong to think that as tourist was can move around freely in his home while he can not after being exiled to India in 1959. To top of our tour in the Potela Palace, we vised the 5th Dali Lamas stuppa or tomb as we would call it. Standing at 12.5m tall, weighing in at 3721kg of gold and covered in over 1000 precious stone it put all other stuppas to shame. Inside is the Dali Lamas mummified body in the meditation position.

Buddhism is not a easy religion to get your head around. I think we quite often tested our guides patience with our sometimes stupid and repetitive questions. One aspect we did struggle with was Tibetan funeral procedures. Followers can either have a sky or water burial performed for dead family members. At it's core, both burials involve a Sharman taking the body to a scared place, where he goes about chopping the flesh up and grounding down the bones with barley seeds. For a sky burial the body is feed to the vultures while in a water burial the body is feed tot he fish. If the whole body is not consumed, then it is a sign that that person had bad karma. It is also why Tibetans don't eat fish! We visited one water burial site.

We like to engage ourselves in culture rather than just always being an observer. Tibet was no exception. Due to suffering from the Man Flu (yes it is the worst kind! ) Nick was snorting and spitting like the best of them. While I quite often joined the locals in peeing on the side of the road (it was much nicer than using the toilets). All modesty went out the window when deciding what direction to point my bare backside. Towards the road always resulted in a good laugh!

Our last point of interest in our tour was Mt Everest. For me it wasn't as awe-inspiring as I thought it would be, maybe because it was bitterly cold and blowing a sandy gale. I can't say the same for Nick who just about used up a memory card capturing Mt Everest in very position possible.

We are now in Kodari, a hillside town on the Tibet / Nepal boarder, which is strangely in the middle of the mountains. Tomorrow we leave Kangdol and our driver behind and cross the boarder for Kathmandu. We loved our time here and this blog could have easily been 5 x times as long explaining to you all the aspects of the Tibetan culture that has amazed us. We may not have found enlightment, but we were often light-headed and giddy due to the high altitude mountain passes we went through to get here. And maybe sometimes due to the Lhasa beer. But we think that being light-headed is just as good.