Altitude and Lhasa

I can tell you now that altitude sickness is truly awful. Imagine being so exhausted that all you want to do is collapse into bed, but you cannot sleep because of the headache pounding away. Then add to this constant dry retching because you have already emptied the contents of your stomach hours ago. You then become desperately thirsty and hungry, but anything you consume reappears almost immediately. This happened to me on the night we had to drive past the roadworks, as this was the part of the journey in which we ascended to high altitude, unfortunately I suffered badly. The "road" had degenerated into a muddy track filled with holes and our truck shook from side to side constantly, this put paid to any faint notion of sleep. A further night's camp at 4700m altitude, at Namtso Lake, was better, but still not wonderful. This was a pity, because it was a stunningly beautiful place which I was not able to appreciate. Thankfully we finally descended into Lhasa, which is only at 3600m, and I have been able to acclimatise better.

Lhasa is a bittersweet experience. Again, most of the town could be anywhere in China, with wide avenues flanked by innumerable shops, cars with their horns seemingly stuck in the on position and Mandarin the language of choice. But go behind the Chinese frontage and find the old town and you see what Lhasa must have been like before it was "improved".

The people speak a totally different language, the buildings are markedly different and crowd in on the narrow lanes which are all paved in granite. The whole feel of the place is different, and definitely not Chinese. Prayer wheels are the accessory of choice, and monks are still a relatively common sight. Of course most of the important sites have been taken over by the Chinese, with mixed results.

We went to the Jokhang Temple and the Sera Monastery yesterday, and despite the heavy security presence, both visible and hidden, both these sites were fantastic to visit. The temple was still very much in use, and fascinating to see the devotees practice their faith. At the monastery we were fortunate enough to be there when the monks were debating, this is quite energetic and takes place outside under a grove of trees. It was strangely calming to sit and watch them make their arguments and responses, they are obviously used to being photographed by tourists. Apparently there used to be 6600 monks in Lhasa, now there are only 660: I can only imagine how it must have looked in its heyday.

Today we visited the Potala Palace, the main landmark in Lhasa, and probably Tibet: it towers over the city and is astonishingly beautiful to see. I was hugely disappointed by it. Why? Because of massively over bureaucratic nonsense to get in, incompetent overseers whilst inside, a train track tour of a infinitesimally small part of it whilst there and little in the way of "feel". In a very real sense, to me the Palace is a microcosm of Tibet: ruled from afar by those who could care less.

Something odd did happen to me here though, I was interviewed by Tibet TV along with one of my fellow travellers, Robin. We were sitting in a rather nice rooftop restaurant which had only just opened that day, and a TV crew arrived to film something for, I assume, the local news. They must have decided that we were too good an opportunity to pass up. I was handed a mobile phone by one of the waitresses and the man on the other end told me some random facts about the restaurant, upon which he hung up! With nothing but this cryptic message to guide me a camera and microphone were thrust into my face, and so I fumbled my way through some positive comments about the place and the town. Thankfully they seemed happy with that and moved onto Robin, who was, if anything, more bewildered than I as he had not spoken to the mystery man on the phone. We did get some free beer as a thankyou from the restaurant though, so it wasn't all bad.

Pics are the Tibetan plateau at dawn with part of the "road" visible at the bottom, and the square outside the Jokhang Temple with Potala Palace in the distance.