The road to Lhasa (1)
How very stereotypically Asian-- the only way you can get to Tibet (oops, China) is in a tour group cos the Chinese government does not issue individual visas to individuals. You can only get an individual visa through a group. Go figure. Macke and I sign up for bargain-basement trip to Lhasa-- the jump-and-dump of Tibet tours-- that takes you from Kathmandu, Nepal to Lhasa and then leaves you to your own devices. You get rooms and wheels but no meals. We are in two mini-busses.
So, Butch, you thought INDIA was chaos...
I get the travelling ball properly rolling by getting a serious case of the shits the night before we leave. After a night on the toilet I'm exhausted and dehydrated. I have trinidazole (the B-52 of antibiotics) and Cipromax (the hydrogen bomb) but refuse them-- this will clear up, I say to myself, I'm strong, antibiotics are bad, etc. Words of an idiot.
In the morning we leave Kathmandu and stop for breakfast at Dhulikel. The tour guys forgot that you can't cook for thirty people in tweny minutes and so some are forced to leave the retaurant without eating. I crawl into the bushes and then pass out in the bus.
An hour later one bus dies. We get dropped off in a tiny baking hot town. I crawl into the toilet. We get moved to the Bhoti Kosi where we watch people bungee jump and wait for the other bus. I crawl into the bushes.
We arrive at Khandun, the border. The street is 1.5 truck-widths wide and trucks are comign the other way. This is a signal to the bus driver to push through. Somehow he does.
At Chinese Customs a five foot tall marionette in a green suit and Army cap comes out with a machine that sprays about three cubic centimeters of cleansing blue fog onto the edges of our luggage. He then presents us with thermometers which thank God we don't get to put into any of our bodily orifices but rather under our armpits. There is no mercury in the thermometers, or none that I can see.
I then fill out the Health form. The box asks if I have diahrea, fever, possibly an amoebic infection or giardiasis, at least one mental disorder, etc. Of course I tick "no" for all of them, wiping the sweat off my feversih forehead and shaking. I crawl into the toilet.
The Customs guy laughs when I request a Chinese stamp in my passport-- their visa is on a separate sheet of paper-- but obliges. We walk up with our gear to the Tibet side transport, a fleet of ancient battered Land Cruisers manned by a (yes I'm using the phrase) motley crew of Tibetans. One guy looks happy but kind of weasely. Another wears a cowboy hat and is a dead ringer for a Mexican sheriff. Another looks pure-bred Hindu. The "leader" is a skinny guy in a white Tilley hat named Dorje ("lightning bolt" in Tibetan).
Our driver-- we'll call him Fong Dong Bung-- cranks the LC into shuddering spastic gear and we lurch up the road.
First impressions of Chinese Tibet: they like to play pool, they wear horrible pointy dress shoes with their tacky pseudo-dress clothes, the streets are remarkably clean, and OMFG there's no ENglish anywhere!
We lurch up the twisting mountain road. It is 2.5 truckwidths wide. A mile-long line of trucks fills one side of the road. Ahead of us another Landcruiser is jockeying for position. A five-ton is coming, passing parked trucks. Fong Dong Bung cranks up (if you can do that on a two-speaker system) some horrible Chinese pop music-- which sounds like Sara McLauchlin's band with the chipmunks on vocals, the whole thing filtered through a bongfull of Novocaine and Percocet-- and guns the LC into the four foot wide space between the roadbarrier and the oncoming five-ton truck.
He could wait. He could just wait ten meters back and let the five-ton by. But no.
Ahead of us, the other Landcruiser front-ends another truck and there is the thump of a trashed radiator. Our LC stops. We are literally one inch from the barrier on one side and two inches from the oncoming truck on the other. One minute later all traffic going both ways for a mile has been stopped by us. Fong Dong Bung licks his lips and peers vaguely into the rear view mirror where another Landcuiser is four feet behind us.
The Tibetan-Mexican looking guy shows up and screams at Fong Dong Bung. Traffic cops show up. I want to crawl into the toilet. Half an hour later we are moving again, up into the ever colder darkenss of the Tibetan plateau.
The trip will take four more days. In Nyalam we get our first Chinese hotel. It has green carpets, wild psychedelic oriental wallpaper, and huge Thermoses of hot water to make green tea. The toilet is a hole in the floor and it's clogged with shit. I go into the ladies' and that evening beg Immodium (a.k.a. "plug") from the Aussie lady our car.
The next day we drive from 1400 meters to 5200 in two hours. We stop for photos at a dusty village where a Tibetan man whose face has been melted off and then reapplied shoves a hand with one finger at me and asks for money. Tibetan women-- who look like Native Canadians, but much more weatherbeaten-- wear mostly black, their hair braided with red ribbon, skirts with rectangular abstract patterns, and a wild variety of shoes, from Converse clones to men's dress shoes to Tibetan red-yellow-green handwoven thick-soles. A woman heards goats and kids yell at us. I look for a toilet. There are no trees for fifty miles.
At the first of the day's summits (5200m, about 18,000 feet) most of us are gasping for breath. There are a billion prayer flags and the air...well, you can see for 3,000 miles. The air is so clear it's like the world is suspended in invisible crystal. There's nothing between you and things-- things are just there. North, brown peaks stretch off to infinity. The sky is a deep electric unreal blue. South, we see Everest and Choy-Oyu, white teeth in the sky. Here there are wind-powered prayer wheels.
There is no sound. And no toilet.
So, Butch, you thought INDIA was chaos...
I get the travelling ball properly rolling by getting a serious case of the shits the night before we leave. After a night on the toilet I'm exhausted and dehydrated. I have trinidazole (the B-52 of antibiotics) and Cipromax (the hydrogen bomb) but refuse them-- this will clear up, I say to myself, I'm strong, antibiotics are bad, etc. Words of an idiot.
In the morning we leave Kathmandu and stop for breakfast at Dhulikel. The tour guys forgot that you can't cook for thirty people in tweny minutes and so some are forced to leave the retaurant without eating. I crawl into the bushes and then pass out in the bus.
An hour later one bus dies. We get dropped off in a tiny baking hot town. I crawl into the toilet. We get moved to the Bhoti Kosi where we watch people bungee jump and wait for the other bus. I crawl into the bushes.
We arrive at Khandun, the border. The street is 1.5 truck-widths wide and trucks are comign the other way. This is a signal to the bus driver to push through. Somehow he does.
At Chinese Customs a five foot tall marionette in a green suit and Army cap comes out with a machine that sprays about three cubic centimeters of cleansing blue fog onto the edges of our luggage. He then presents us with thermometers which thank God we don't get to put into any of our bodily orifices but rather under our armpits. There is no mercury in the thermometers, or none that I can see.
I then fill out the Health form. The box asks if I have diahrea, fever, possibly an amoebic infection or giardiasis, at least one mental disorder, etc. Of course I tick "no" for all of them, wiping the sweat off my feversih forehead and shaking. I crawl into the toilet.
The Customs guy laughs when I request a Chinese stamp in my passport-- their visa is on a separate sheet of paper-- but obliges. We walk up with our gear to the Tibet side transport, a fleet of ancient battered Land Cruisers manned by a (yes I'm using the phrase) motley crew of Tibetans. One guy looks happy but kind of weasely. Another wears a cowboy hat and is a dead ringer for a Mexican sheriff. Another looks pure-bred Hindu. The "leader" is a skinny guy in a white Tilley hat named Dorje ("lightning bolt" in Tibetan).
Our driver-- we'll call him Fong Dong Bung-- cranks the LC into shuddering spastic gear and we lurch up the road.
First impressions of Chinese Tibet: they like to play pool, they wear horrible pointy dress shoes with their tacky pseudo-dress clothes, the streets are remarkably clean, and OMFG there's no ENglish anywhere!
We lurch up the twisting mountain road. It is 2.5 truckwidths wide. A mile-long line of trucks fills one side of the road. Ahead of us another Landcruiser is jockeying for position. A five-ton is coming, passing parked trucks. Fong Dong Bung cranks up (if you can do that on a two-speaker system) some horrible Chinese pop music-- which sounds like Sara McLauchlin's band with the chipmunks on vocals, the whole thing filtered through a bongfull of Novocaine and Percocet-- and guns the LC into the four foot wide space between the roadbarrier and the oncoming five-ton truck.
He could wait. He could just wait ten meters back and let the five-ton by. But no.
Ahead of us, the other Landcruiser front-ends another truck and there is the thump of a trashed radiator. Our LC stops. We are literally one inch from the barrier on one side and two inches from the oncoming truck on the other. One minute later all traffic going both ways for a mile has been stopped by us. Fong Dong Bung licks his lips and peers vaguely into the rear view mirror where another Landcuiser is four feet behind us.
The Tibetan-Mexican looking guy shows up and screams at Fong Dong Bung. Traffic cops show up. I want to crawl into the toilet. Half an hour later we are moving again, up into the ever colder darkenss of the Tibetan plateau.
The trip will take four more days. In Nyalam we get our first Chinese hotel. It has green carpets, wild psychedelic oriental wallpaper, and huge Thermoses of hot water to make green tea. The toilet is a hole in the floor and it's clogged with shit. I go into the ladies' and that evening beg Immodium (a.k.a. "plug") from the Aussie lady our car.
The next day we drive from 1400 meters to 5200 in two hours. We stop for photos at a dusty village where a Tibetan man whose face has been melted off and then reapplied shoves a hand with one finger at me and asks for money. Tibetan women-- who look like Native Canadians, but much more weatherbeaten-- wear mostly black, their hair braided with red ribbon, skirts with rectangular abstract patterns, and a wild variety of shoes, from Converse clones to men's dress shoes to Tibetan red-yellow-green handwoven thick-soles. A woman heards goats and kids yell at us. I look for a toilet. There are no trees for fifty miles.
At the first of the day's summits (5200m, about 18,000 feet) most of us are gasping for breath. There are a billion prayer flags and the air...well, you can see for 3,000 miles. The air is so clear it's like the world is suspended in invisible crystal. There's nothing between you and things-- things are just there. North, brown peaks stretch off to infinity. The sky is a deep electric unreal blue. South, we see Everest and Choy-Oyu, white teeth in the sky. Here there are wind-powered prayer wheels.
There is no sound. And no toilet.
posted by Butch at 1:15 PM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home