The Adventures of Laura Drumm

Dear Family and Friends,

Before we pulled out of my Lhasa hotel, our driver, who was as responsible for my happiness as my guide, switched music tapes. And as we drove out of Lhasa, The Righteous Brothers crooned...

Oh, my love
my darling
I've hungered for your touch
a long lonely time
and time goes by so slowly
and time can do so much...

This music was wrong. Utterly wrong for the moment. Completely wrong for the setting. I was touched that my guide and my driver wanted to please me and as they kept stealing glances at me, I smiled 'til I ached through a few more tunes of the same ilk. I broke when Richard Marx began singing, "Wherever you go, whatever you do, I will be right here waiting for you..." as we parked next to a stone-carved Buddha. I've always loved the romance of this song (in all its 80s glory) and this song turns me into a 13-year old pitiful puddle of loneliness.

As we walked towards the brightly painted Buddha, I restrained myself from outright begging. "Why don't we listen to your music?"

My guide's response was a worried look.

"Look, there are two of you, one of me. If I must have my music, I'll ask [on the 12th of never!]." I assured him.

The driver changed tapes and I never turned into a pitiful 13-year old again. Almost immediately, I discovered that our driver had eclectic taste in music - Tibetan, Indian, Electronic - and that his music was perfectly suited to the setting. Even Britney's "Baby One More Time" was surprisingly appropriate.

I had the feeling that despite my assurances, both my guide and our driver worried, a lot, about my not enjoying myself - but I did not get bored during our drives through the Tibetan countryside. Our first day's drive to Gyantse took us past a bend in the river that was the Tibetan version of a cemetery and up through a paved pass of tight hairpin turns that at the time I found disconcerting but later realized were a piece of cake. At the top of the pass, masses of prayer flags snapped in the breeze while a lone man hocked fossils. At one point on our way to Gyantse, we pulled to the side of the road where a man with a yak stood waiting for tourists. At the same time, a Western man climbed out of another SUV and immediately paid to climb aboard the yak while his wife took his picture from several angles. I had to climb back into the SUV so that I could giggle without offense. A few minutes later my guide confirmed the wisdom of my foregoing that particular Kodak moment, "Yaks are smelly."

We promptly stopped for lunch at noon; I climbed to the restaurant's tourist-oriented upstairs and ate friend yak momos (momos are the Tibetan version of the Chinese potsticker or the Korean mandu) with wooden chopsticks. We drove into Gyantse at 2:30 and I spent a congenial afternoon scrambling through the almost-ruin of their city's castle: I interrupted a game of mah-jong to purchase my entry, irresponsibly snapped pictures of near-extinct murals, and clambered to the very highest point of the roof.

Blue signs reading "This place dangerous. Be devious." at Gyantse's castle taught me to never miss English language signs that can be found in Tibet. That sign (Be devious?) became my favorite sign, but I also found "Jump of the cliff" amusing (it becomes even more amusing if you add just one more "f"!). And in the coming days, I became a fan of the irony-not-intended China Mobile signs:

Follow traffic rules, respect your life.

Maintain ecological equilibrium.

Continue the spirit of the Beijing Olympic Games; Promote ecologically friendly development.

Let's work together to keep the sky blue and the water clean.

May green be with us forever. (no matter that wasn't a speck of green within eyesight).

The hotel in Gyantse could've been owned by Motel 6 - I think they used the same interior designer - but the shower water never warmed to bearable. I ate breakfast in a cavernous Chinese restaurant where the waitress placed a metal plate with soggy bread accompanied by a hard-boiled egg before my guide ushered me to the Palcho Monastery, promising me a thousand Buddhas and that I could look at the temple's eyes.

As we drove away from Gyantse, it occurred to me that shadows on the hills at sunrise were the same color as Buddha's hair - deep royal blue.

The scenery did not at all pall during our the second, rather short, day of driving to the second largest city in Tibet, Shigatse. In actuality, the city wasn't large but its Tashilhunpo Monastery was... and was crowded with a surprising number of other tourists: groups of Germans, Americans, Chinese, and even a group of Koreans (who oohed when I confirmed my hunch that they were Korean with an inquiry in Korean, "Hanguk sa-ram imneedah?" "Nae.") Each of the monastery's four showy chapels assessed a 75 Yuan fee in order to take pictures, so I found myself badly wanting to photograph my favorite giant gold Buddha seated in the first chapel but unable to afford the $10 fee. I noticed that other tourists paid to click. But standing to the side of the tours and simply observing the tourists and the monks, I found myself wondering if I had arrived in a Tibetan-style Disneyland. Apparently Catriona Bass, when she taught in Tibet in 1986, had a similar concern:

More vociferous than Tibetans, westerners, including myself complained that
tourists defiled Tibet's sacred sites. But it occurred to me that China is not
the first to use tourism to defray the costs of preserving a religious and
cultural heritage. I thought of the gift shops and unremitting tramp and shuffle
of tours in English cathedrals and was reminded that not only in Tibet was the
spiritual purpose of buildings being eroded by their secular promotion. But was
tourism needed to restore the monasteries? Or was it, as many westerners
believed, that the monasteries were being restored solely to encourage the
tourists?

Twenty years have passed and it was still hard to say. Personally, I did not find all development for tourism in Tibet bad. The following night, in a town called Shegar, I wallowed in a new, comfy (but not untasteful) hotel. As the afternoon grew into evening and my guide departed to secure permits for the following day's travel, I went for a walk and attracted an uncomfortable number of stares interspersed with "Tashi delek"s (which apparently means "good luck" but was explained to me as "welcome"). Tired of the stares, I veered away from town to investigate the natural scenery (Have I yet mentioned that I never got bored with the natural scenery???) and got caught in an alley, choking on a thick cloud of dust. That night in Shegar, I began to worry about my eyes, which suddenly couldn't stay focused in order for me to read. This was disturbing as I consider my vision to be my sole physical perfection. I sighed and thought, "Yeah, yeah, the eyes are not to be messed with." Our next site and sight was Mt. Everest, so I decided to care for my eyes by going to bed.

Laura

Buddha... right there waiting for me.