Lhasa has the bluest sky I've ever seen. No doubt a combination of bluest skies, "original natural scenery" (as described by Harrer), geographic isolation, and a breath-catching elevation that nears 12,000 feet have lead some people to report Tibet a gentle, Utopian society while others have arrived at the conclusion that Lhasa is the real-life Shangri-La.

But I am going to urge you, dearest friends and family, to disregard paradisaical stereotypes. Because the truth is, as usual, more complicated. However, with that said, I must warn you that my journal from Tibet is unfortunately littered with hyperbolic-sounding descriptions which, despite my preference to report my travels with decent skill, I'm still likely to lapse into. Tibet is no paradise, but it is awesome (in the truest sense of the word).


A foreigner such as myself cannot currently travel in Tibet without the heavy-handed guidance of a government-sanctioned tour. So, for the first time in my life, I paid a high-end tourist rate and was greeted at the train station by a man holding a sign with my name on it. I gave him a rather wan smile as he draped a thin white silk scarf around my neck, introduced himself as my guide, and imparted the news that the other people registered for my tour were not going to be able to join me. As we arrived at our four-wheel drive Toyota Land Cruiser and our Goretex-clad driver tossed my backpack into the back, I acknowledged this news with an internal grimace. While I cannot deny that I need a fair amount of attention, my eleven day overland tour from Lhasa to Kathmandu now sounded as if I'd get too much attention. However, the days that followed, I learned to feel safe with my guide and driver - and that that was crucial to my enjoyment of Tibet.

A word on safety. Yes, I'm fully aware that my idea of "safe" is likely a mite different than your own. I still recall the reaction of a friend after I had spelled out my plans for these few months. She exclaimed,

i cannot believe you -- i won't even go to mcdonalds by myself, and off you go, all over china, nepal and india!!

maybe i'll get a big mac on the way home.

using the drive-thru, of course.

I laughed and didn't have the heart to tell her that a McDonalds drive-thru is way too scary for me! But a necessity of my travels, of course, is relative safety. When I get a hair-brained notion to travel to a place such as Tibet, my first step is to research the political situation, followed by whether or not single women travelers are ok. Happily for me, I read that while Tibet is not particularly safe for the Han-Chinese and nor is particularly safe for independent-minded Tibetans, it is quite safe for a Caucasian tourist. But what my preparatory reading could not determine was whether I'd feel safe by myself with two men in a four-wheel drive SUV for eleven days. It wasn't automatic nor instinctual, but in time, I came to feel perfectly safe with them (well, except for... well, I'll describe the exception later). My safety with the guide and driver was a huge comfort to me.

But perhaps more important is the question about whether my guide and my driver were/are safe from me? The political situation in Tibet is disturbing and frankly, I'm going to comment negatively about the Chinese government's handling of the situation. But never, at any point, did my guide nor my driver give me any political insight. Interestingly, other foreigners who I met along the way had guides with much better English than my own who were willing to supply their visitors with potentially dangerous opinions. One foreigner told me a story that her guide had told her: a year or two ago, a foreign blogger toured Tibet under the tutelage of a guide who strongly and vocally objected to the Chinese government. The blogger returned to the States and wrote both compellingly and negatively about his time in Tibet. This caught the eye of the Chinese government, who reacted by arresting the tour guide and throwing him into jail. While I would've actually loved a guide that could've discussed the Tibetan political situation with me, my guide simply did not have the English. As illustrative example, towards the end of my trip I asked my guide, "Is the road ahead going to be bumpy or smooth?" and he could not answer this question without some rephrasing coupled with amusing gesturing. This was typical. Clearly my guide's English did not arise to the level of political discussion and while initially I found this disappointing, I never established with certainty if my guide lacked an interest in English or had decided on a clever way to protect himself. Either way, my guide and driver should be absolutely safe from me. Please, please may they be absolutely safe from me.



Despite the glow of the peerless Potala over the city that night of my arrival, the dark streets of Lhasa confirmed that no matter the rights or wrongs of the Tibetan situation, the Chinese had made an indelible impression on the city. Later, I found that the epilogue of Heinrich Harrer's book about the years just previous to the initial 1950 People's Liberation Army occupation of Lhasa titled Seven Years in Tibet, described the city more knowledgeably than I could:

After almost 40 years, the destruction of Tibet continues. Perhaps only 2% of the old Lhasa I knew still stands. It has become a Chinese city. Innumerable Chinese shops, hundreds of drinking and gaming houses, red-light establishments around the Potala entertain the occupying troops; decades of destruction, oppression, sterilization, genocide and political indoctrination - none of this has been able to conquer the Tibetans' desire for freedom...

Of course, it wasn't like I could see the destruction and desire for freedom the moment I arrived - but the "Chinese city" was evident in street names, monuments, and especially in the glaring red signs of entertainment establishments. A blurb in the Lonely Planet Guide on China mentioned something to the effect that the Chinese government had done much to modernize and improve the lives of Tibetans and that it was genuinely puzzling to the Chinese why the Tibetans weren't grateful for their improved city. But even during that first night, dissent was evident in the buildings: both in the division of the city into a Chinese district and a traditional (Tibetan) district as well as in the individual buildings themselves. The Chinese buildings gave every indication of being modern and utilitarian while the Tibetan buildings were obviously more traditional.

My hotel had once been modern. Now it had a mold-ringed toilet and the traditionally painted ceiling was peeling. But I had been sleeping in dorms during the weeks previous and just the night before, I had attempted to sleep in a train compartment for six. My hotel room was clean and comfortable and felt luxurious, especially considering where in the world I had arrived. I may not have wanted to pay for it; however, having my own hotel room turned out very good because, contrary to what I had assured Chinese officials on my Shanghai to Lasa train health form, I was actually suffering from a severe "head cold." And then, having arrived at an elevation of 12,000 feet, I was going to need a few days to adjust to the altitude. You see, Lhasa is higher in elevation than Washington State's Mt. Saint Helens, which is 8,365 feet and not much lower than Mt. Rainier, which is 14,411 feet. higher elevations have less oxygen for breathing and this effects unaccustomed travelers, of which I was one. On short stair climbs, I could not avoid sucking in harsh breaths. And amusingly, my bottles of shampoo and conditioner had puffed during the train ride and during my days in Tibet, their contents regularly exploded into my hands. I missed these explosions after I descended into Kathmandu.

During my days in Lhasa, my tour guide would stipulate a morning time for our day's first destination. We'd spend a few hours at that destination and then my guide would send me back to my hotel room with an admonishment to rest. Truly indicative of my physical state was that I actually rested. Mid-afternoon, we'd journey to a second tourist destination and when we had exhausted that, my guide would again return me to the hotel - this time admonishing me to eat and rest. Between the leftovers of tonsillitis, the very real head cold, the altitude, and in order to allow me to come to grips with all that I was seeing, this schedule in the days following my arrival in Lhasa worked very well. And the tourist destinations were - I'm going to use that word again - awesome. --L