Trekking to Tibet: Shigatse to Gyantse

The Heartland

          Mustard fields and willows by the highway           Nyang Chu valley barley fields           LtoR: Cyril, me, Paul, Anthony - can't remember who used my camera!           Curious kids greet the cars at a roadside water-powered mill           Inside the mill: Water-driven stones grind barley           Gyantse Dzong           Gyantse street life           Gyantse's Pelkor Chode Monastery           Anthony heads for the Gyantse Kumbum's roof           Cyril atop the Gyantse Kumbum Mustard fields and willows by the highway

Today we're heading for Gyantse which lies at 3950m (13000ft) in the Nyang Chu valley. Gyantse is the least Chinese influenced town in Tibet and I'm really looking forward to it.

The drive from Shigatse to Gyantse is a delight. Verdant fields, an avenue of willows thirty kilometers long, splendid Tibetan country houses, Om Mani Padme Hum scribed in white stones on high hillsides, the bells of horses, barley being ground for tsampa in water powered mills.

On the journey the story of my brother Bear comes out... I feel really bad that I haven't been in contact with him in jail this time around...I've got some work to do there when I get home...

The conversation in the car turns dark and personal. The nature of so-and-so and how upset some are because of it. Within a few minutes I'm upset 'cause it really feels like they're talking about me - and they may as well be! I feel better when I realise that I've done a lot of work over the last few years to minimise those darkside Virgo tendencies...

Yesterday in Shigatse we went hunting something new to eat and found a large food market - fresh fruit! All kinds of vegetables, spices, nuts, noodles - and pigs' noses and yak tongues and caged chickens, pheasants, rabbits - trays of lungs, tripe and all manner of bodyparts. I spent one oz dollar on each of two oranges and two tangerines and another four on six bananas. It was so good to have fresh fruit for the first time in weeks!

Weeks? I hadn't had a tangerine in years! I peeled it and as the smell hit me a song started playing in my head: "Tangerine, tangerine - living reflection - from a dream - I was her love - she was my queen - and now a thousand years in between..."

Amazing! Here we are miles from nowhere on the roof of the world and this fresh citrus comes from California and the bananas from Ecuador! How can that possibly be?

Our first view of Gyantse is that of the Dzong - the imposing hilltop fort and monastery that towers over the southern end of the town. The dzong was the site of the last stand of the Tibetans against the English incursion of 1903, led by Francis Younghusband. English artillery breached the walls and exploded the Tibetan gunpowder store and much of the fort with it. The Tibetans were reduced to throwing rocks at their attackers and the battle was lost in a single day with 300 Tibetan casualties. Four British soldiers died and the victorious Younghusband marched on to Lhasa.

We'll be following his route tomorrow...

Gyantse is indeed a Tibetan town - almost everybody here wears the boots I've been hunting since arriving in the country. I find a shop that sells them and use my best sign language to indicate the pair I want to try. The man behind the counter shakes his head and reaches for a much less colourful pair which don't interest me at all. I shake my head. Point at colourful pair. He looks at me, then over my shoulder at the gathering crowd behind me who are all craning to see. He looks back at me, shakes his head and pulls out the plain pair. I try again. He looks exasperated, shakes his head and motions to a woman browsing fabric to come over. He points at the colourful pair, shakes his head at me and then points at the woman. Then he grabs the plain pair and shoves them in my face.

Oh! Riiiight... I'm asking to try on ladies' boots! Of course!

"Hey - I don't care! Let me!" I indicate. He's resolute. Pushes the men's pair at me. Sigh... One more try...

This time he gives up and disdainfully hands me the ladies' boots. Of course they're way too small and they only come in one size. And he really doesn't want to sell them to me.

The men's ones are OK, but nowhere near as funky as the ladies'. I find a pair that fit and give the universal sign for "How much?" He goes for 200 yuan - about forty oz dollars! He's confusing my eccentricity with stupidity now! I'd like to buy them, but I think I'm going to have to pass. They're not exactly what I want and $40 will buy a lot of gifts of other kinds. I decide to sleep on it - I'll probably get a chance to look again in the morning...

As I leave the shop, a kid grabs my elbow and pulls at me to follow him. Always up for a solo adventure, I willingly tag along. He leads me down the street and then dives into a warren of alleyways. He escorts me into a house. I'm blown away... Who would have thought I'd wind up alone in someone's home?

A woman is preparing food as we enter and the kid excitedly tells her what I assume are words to the effect of "This crazy westerner was going to pay 200 yuan for ladies shoes, but the shopkeeper had none that would fit!" I assume this because his mother (?) immediately removes her boots and hands them to me. I try, but it's no go. She gestures to me to sit and says something to the kid, who vanishes. She begins to prepare some Tibetan tea. Black tea - heavy with yak butter and salt. Even though I know I don't have the palate for it (and suspect it could make me ill again) I can't refuse. I'm halfway through the second cup when the kid bursts back in with an armload of ladies boots. He must have been to every house on the block! Unfortunately they're all too small. I'm as disappointed as they are - I would've loved to have been able to give them cash for the real thing.

To know they'd been worn around this town...

I look around and spy a huge jar of incense...

I pay way too much, but it's not about the purchase. Even though we don't have a word in common, their welcome and laughter is the highlight of the whole trip...

Pelkor Chode Monastery and the Gyantse Kumbum

At the northern end of town lies a compound dating back to 1418, which used to enclose 15 monasteries and was unique in that all three orders of Tibetan Buddhism were represented there. Today the few remaining buildings are inhabited by the Gelugpa order.

The interior of the monastery is surreal. It's magnificently dark and spooky, its chapels and libraries blackened with the soot of 600 years of butter lamp smoke, its halls and staircases heavy with the patina of handprint and scalloped wear of footfall.

And the Kumbum - what to say? As we wait to pay the entrance fee, I'm awed at it's presence - as humbled as the woman prostrating herself in circumnambulation of it's pyramid-like majesty.

The Gyantse Kumbum has only one counterpart in the Buddhist world - a now ruined and even more remote building far to the west near Lhatse. Kumbum means "10,000 images" and the six floors of the building contain 108 chapels, accessed by a clockwise spiraling staircase. I'm soon left far behind...

There are indeed about ten thousand murals in the kumbum - all original. There are also countless niches filled with statuary, but most of these are modern reproductions, the originals having being destroyed in the psychosis of Mao's Cultural Revolution.

On the fifth floor, I enter a chapel and see there are rectangular openings in the walls to my left and right. These prove to be windows to rooms appearing to be about four meters on a side. It's hard to tell, because these rooms are dark - there is no access to them except through these windows. Both rooms are filled to the window ledges with billions of tiny votive offerings. They are unfired clay mouldings, shaped like little jellies, about 2cm in diameter by the same high. In the base of each is pressed 3 grains of barley. From the window ledges they are piled in a slope all the way to the ceiling at the back of the rooms. I'm just stunned. It's the visible, permanent record of every human who's ever paid homage here - the physical manifestation of the faith of thousands over the passage of six hundred years. It takes me a long time to leave this room...

On the sixth floor I find Anthony and Cyril waiting. We're now immediately below the gold parasol that crowns the building. This level is a circular floor around the central spire of the chorten. It has a low, intensely colourful ceiling and except for a parapet is completely open to the outside sky. The metal lattice that forms the hanging fringe of the parasol screens the panoramic view into a mosaic of triangles. There's a ladder to the roof and the monk patrolling the floor gestures for us to go up. He indicates that if we do, we must walk clockwise around the roof, ringing three times on each of the four bells tied to chains which run to the top of the spire towering above. There's no even surface up there. No guard rail. No safety lines or handrails, but my fear of heights can't stop me. We ascend the ladder, turn right and ring the first bell...

Gyantse is spread out below us. We're high above the monastery roof and the maintenance crew repairing its rammed earth waterproofing. The dzong rises still higher above us at the other end of town. The emptiness of the Pelkor Chode compound is made obvious. The thangka wall, where enormous tapestries are unfurled to hang above the town on holy days, stares blankly at our backs. I'm breathless again...

Cyril and Anthony hurry back down to catch the departing vehicles. I tell them to let the crew know I'm going to walk back to the hotel at the other end of town. I want to savour this. I want to burn it into my memory, as it seems impossible that I'm ever to set foot here again. I slowly work my way back down the kumbum's clockwise spiral stairs, marvelling all the way...

I love being alone here... The walk back to the hotel is a walk through my childhood dreams. So exotic. So attractive. So mysterious. So... familiar...?

I notice that every time I pull the camera out to photograph the streetscape, everybody either turns away or fades back into a doorway or shop.

Even this freakin' horse didn't want me to take his picture!

I'm guessing that's it... I'm taking...

One more of Padmasambhava and the cow and I quit...

Our hotel, the Wu Tse, is the most luxurious accomodation we've had since we left Kathmandu. The food is just excellent (and includes pizza - yay!) and the rooms spacious and clean with ensuite bathrooms and TVs. All the programs are in Mandarin - as far as I can tell there's no Tibetan language ones.

Having a bath tonight was a major source of joy and calm. I really needed it - I feel so much better than I have for the past few weeks. I feel as if I'm emerging from a long period of intense grieving and I guess in a way that's exactly what's going on... I've lost my love, my youth, my self confidence and my illusions about the stability of my life. I guess you'd be right if you labelled it a mid-life crisis and it all happened simultaneously and totally unexpectedly - sort of like a car wreck...

So now I'm in splints, learning to use my wings again and man that bath put some feathers on me! It's amazing how much of a balm the simple things in life are. My friendship with Paul is a wonderful thing too. We're the same age but he feels like my older brother. He's been through all the stuff I may yet have to face and his life experience is so much wider than mine. We talk a lot about these personal crises and the potential for growth they always encapsulate and I know I'm going to miss him so much when we return to our homes.

We wander the streets after dark, hearing competing radios pumping out Chinese music, Nepali and Tibetan pop and The Carpenters, for crying out loud! Tall and lean Khampa men with their red corded long black hair drink and play pool on the tables that line both sides of the street. Families sit out the front of their businesses and the night is filled with the smells of food and spices and smoke and the sound of raucous laughter and the ever present exhortations to enter and buy...

Tomorrow we have a 260km eight or nine hour drive to Lhasa.

That fabled city. My romantic lodestone.

The subconscious magnet of my life.

What will the reality be like? Will there be more?

What confrontations await me there I wonder...

Oh yeah! In case you were wondering about those boots... I finally found a pair in the style I was after. It was back in Kathmandu, at the Tibetan precinct around the Boudhanath Stupa. They make them there especially for tourists. The right size and only fifteen bucks! Bargain!

Check 'em out! Hehehe...