We're back in rainy Kathmandu after a fantastic 3 weeks in Tibet. An amazing country filled with wonderful people - they're super curious but really really shy, so they'll stare and stare but back away when you respond. Can't possibly write about everything that happened, so a few highlights will have to do.
Huge huge landscapes: rolling hills, endless valleys, fields of barley being harvested, grazing yaks, snowcappd peaks on the horizon, blue, blue fastflowing rivers, quaint, traditional buildings and villages.
Serendipity: poking my head into an open doorway at Drepung Monastery to find a young man sitting on the floor and singing as he's printing pages of scripture from woodblocks. He grins and gives me a freshly printed page to keep! And then gives Smithy one (and an apple each)
Religious dancing at Sakye Monastery. Went for the usual tour to find the courtyard full of locals all waiting for a special dance to start. Two hours later, we get up from our front row seats with our heads full of the colour and spectacle of the dance.
People: three tiny mites who come running out to say hello when we stop just outside Gyantse. They giggled and squirmed with delight when I showed them thier picture on the camera.
The sharply dressed young man at Sakye who took an interest in my camera. I showed him how it worked and off he went taking pictures of the crowd around us (and Smithy)- including a very good one of me!
The shy shy young woman in traditional dress and with a child on her back (also at Sakye) who could not take her eyes off Smithy.
The weather: brilliant all the way. Some light showers sometimes overnight, but sunshine and blue skies most of the way. Towards the end of the trip, the weather got colder. Strong winds would blow up each evening and leave us scurrying to the shelter of the tent. We'd wake up to find nearby hills dusted with snow. It snowed heavily on the last day of our kora around Mt Kailash - magical!
Roads: A beautiful two-lane highway from the airport to Lhasa - would make an Aussie roadmaker blush. The rest? They ranged from OK to shitful (direct quote from Smithy). Reasonable dirt roads to what road as we bumpd over the landscape. But our trusty Land Rover and Rinzin our intrepid driver got us through everything.
The wildlife: 4 glorious eagles that soared silently past us (on separate occasions) with wingspans of up to 6 ft; 3 orange/blue foxes; herds of kang (wild ass); small groups of gazelles; a marmot-lik creature called a chiwa - hundreds of them; small mouse-rabbits called chipis which would dash and dive for their burrows as you passed; 3 hares; yaks (of course, but not wild); hundreds of different kinds of birds, including cranes and yellow ducks (in reality an apricot colour).
Tibet is an amazing place - it's dirty and squalid with ugly Chinese towns, the loos are disgusting most of the time, the food preparation questionable but the scenery is breathtaking (literally at 5000 metres!) and the people delightful - big welcoming grins as soon as you say ''Tashi delek"
Huge huge landscapes: rolling hills, endless valleys, fields of barley being harvested, grazing yaks, snowcappd peaks on the horizon, blue, blue fastflowing rivers, quaint, traditional buildings and villages.
Serendipity: poking my head into an open doorway at Drepung Monastery to find a young man sitting on the floor and singing as he's printing pages of scripture from woodblocks. He grins and gives me a freshly printed page to keep! And then gives Smithy one (and an apple each)
Religious dancing at Sakye Monastery. Went for the usual tour to find the courtyard full of locals all waiting for a special dance to start. Two hours later, we get up from our front row seats with our heads full of the colour and spectacle of the dance.
People: three tiny mites who come running out to say hello when we stop just outside Gyantse. They giggled and squirmed with delight when I showed them thier picture on the camera.
The sharply dressed young man at Sakye who took an interest in my camera. I showed him how it worked and off he went taking pictures of the crowd around us (and Smithy)- including a very good one of me!
The shy shy young woman in traditional dress and with a child on her back (also at Sakye) who could not take her eyes off Smithy.
The weather: brilliant all the way. Some light showers sometimes overnight, but sunshine and blue skies most of the way. Towards the end of the trip, the weather got colder. Strong winds would blow up each evening and leave us scurrying to the shelter of the tent. We'd wake up to find nearby hills dusted with snow. It snowed heavily on the last day of our kora around Mt Kailash - magical!
Roads: A beautiful two-lane highway from the airport to Lhasa - would make an Aussie roadmaker blush. The rest? They ranged from OK to shitful (direct quote from Smithy). Reasonable dirt roads to what road as we bumpd over the landscape. But our trusty Land Rover and Rinzin our intrepid driver got us through everything.
The wildlife: 4 glorious eagles that soared silently past us (on separate occasions) with wingspans of up to 6 ft; 3 orange/blue foxes; herds of kang (wild ass); small groups of gazelles; a marmot-lik creature called a chiwa - hundreds of them; small mouse-rabbits called chipis which would dash and dive for their burrows as you passed; 3 hares; yaks (of course, but not wild); hundreds of different kinds of birds, including cranes and yellow ducks (in reality an apricot colour).
Tibet is an amazing place - it's dirty and squalid with ugly Chinese towns, the loos are disgusting most of the time, the food preparation questionable but the scenery is breathtaking (literally at 5000 metres!) and the people delightful - big welcoming grins as soon as you say ''Tashi delek"
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