All Five Tibet Stories

So Below is a collection of the last five entries. It be best to read them in this order, since they are written in order. Read it here, instead of reading each of the entries in the backward order.

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Just Beat It

Hey yall,

I know yall probably heard about the earthquake that occurred in an Tibetan area near Tibet Province. In fact, yall actually probably heard about it well before I did, since I was lost in a blizzard on another part of the Tibet's Everest foothills, fighting off hypothermia at the time the earthquake occurred. But I'll get that in a later email.

For the last week, I was in the very western part of the province of Yunnan with a friend from UGA, Shannon, and her friend Katherine. Historically and culturally, the place is actually the very Eastern part of Tibet. Tibet is not only the name of a province within China, but it also signifies the greater Tibetan region. Tibetans live not only in Tibet, but also throughout much of Qinghai (the province where the earthquake occurred), Western Sichuan and Western Yunnan (where I was).

The area that I went to used to be called Zhongdian, but, a few years ago, the Chinese government changed the name of the Tibetan area of Yunnan to "Shangri-la," claiming that they had discovered incontrovertible evidence that the area was the setting for James Hilton's entirely fictional Tibetan story, "Lost Horizons." Cynics suggested that renaming the county "Shangri-la" was actually just a cheesy attempt to boost tourist revenues. Either way.

As I was trying to think of where to start with this story of our journey in Shangri-la, I kept coming back to the night before we left for our four day hike through a remote part of "Shangri-la." We were eating in a kind-of touristy, Tibetan restaurant, chomping down on momo's, a traditional kind of Tibetan dumpling. We were talking about our upcoming journey, a hike through a series fairly unspoiled Tibetan mountain villages, and through the back door into a national park.

Then, all the sudden, Michel Jackson's "Beat It" started reverberating throughout the restaurant and the Tibetan restaurant owners jumped up from their seats and started dancing to it. "Beat it...beat it, no I won't be defeated! Show them how chunky and strong is your fight..." Though his lyrics were off, I was and always am struck by the globalization just suddenly pops its head up, even on the "Roof of the World."

But, as I thought more about it, the song was strangely appropriate for the Tibetan people, and the journey we would set off on. The song is a story about betting against the odds and coming out on top. On our trip, we had to face off against the Chinese government and the sometimes against the even more brutal forces of Nature. After both fights, we came out, worn but wiser.

We had wanted to go from Shangri-la to a small town on the edge of Tibet proper, Deqin, but we had found out that there was
construction on the road. Due to construction, the road was only open to traffic once every four days. @#$^ China!

We arrived at the Shangri-la bus station early one morning to buy tickets for the next day, the one day that the road was open. But at the ticket office, the lady rudely informed me that foreigners were not currently allowed on the bus. @%#@#@ China!

I should probably explain some background info. Foreigners are not allowed to enter Tibet without getting special permits, paying a fair amount of money and joining a tour group. However that does not normally prevent foreigners from going into Tibetan parts of other provinces like Yunnan or Sichuan. Well, they were not allowing foreigners onto the buses because the bus, due to construction, had to pass into parts of Tibet to get to Deqin. We could have taken a minivan, but that was crazy expensive. @#$&@ China!

Thinking up a way to beat the Chinese government, we meet up with an American named Kevin working in the area who happened to be going to another part of the county, where there was some good hiking. The plan was that he would drop us off at a small town, Luoji. From there, we would hike for two days, to a Tibetan village called Niru, and then hike into the backdoor of a national park (avoiding the US$30 entrance fee, again beating China). From there, we could get a bus back to Shangri-la and civilization.

So, despite all the road blocks China threw in our face, we still 'beat it.'

The next morning, we meet Kevin near the entrance to the touristy old town of Shangri-la and took off for Luoji in his Jeep. Blocked by construction at one point (they are doing construction throughout the county), he slipped it into four wheel drive instead of waiting for five minutes for them to let us pass. As the car leapt back onto the pavement, the gearbox made a strange crank and we noticed the smell of gasoline fumes filling the Jeep. "Yea," Kevin informed us, "its a great jeep, but a couple of weeks ago, a drunk Tibetan was driving it, and he drove it a hundred feet off a cliff and flipped it into a river. We pulled it out and got it repaired, but the gears are still a little funny and there's a bit of a gas leak. But hey, she's still beatin' it!"

As I said, this will be a story of fighting against China and nature, and, in the end, beating them both, if getting bruised along the way.

Beating it,
Lee

You're playin' with your life, this ain't no truth or dare
They'll kick you, then they beat you,
Then they'll tell you it's fair
So beat it, but you wanna be bad
- Micheal Jackson's 'Beat It'

Notice.
Persons attempting to find a political motive in the meaning of these lyrics will be prosecuted by the Chinese Government.

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Silver Dagger - Demons, Prayer Wheels and Other Tibetan Relics


Hey yall,

We got out of Kevin's Jeep in a little village called Luoji, a hot, two-dirt road town inhabited mostly by Yi people. From Luoji, we made our way up through a valley into an area that was mostly inhabited by Naxi people.

I've heard a lot of crap about how great Tibet is. I heard so much that I avoided Tibetan areas for a while, so as not to be that typical tourist searching for his own Shangri-la. But I have to say, there was something especially spiritual about the Tibetans. As we were hiking, we made our way out of Luoji, up into areas inhabited by the Naxi people. Some of the Naxi were nice enough. When we stopped to ask directions, a few of them gave us water and some bad-tasting apples. But later, as we were approaching the divide between the Naxi and Tibetan world, a drunk Naxi man approached me and told me that he would give us a ride to the village that we were trying to get to. For an absurd price, of course. We rebuffed his offer and he stumbled back to his friends, yelling.

But then we crossed an invisible line into the Tibetan world and the atmosphere seemed to change. We came upon a pile of stones with prayer flags tied to the top, shivering in the wind. The first house we passed shouted, welcoming us, drunk probably, but a friendly drunkenness.

That night, we eventually found someone who was willing to host us, a middle-aged lady taking care of her 88 year old grandfather (her husband off working in the mines). We threw our stuff in the room that looked like it might be a small hostel, and went to sit in her living room/kitchen area as she prepared us food. She scurried from the fire to the little plastic bags filled with dry meat and then back, preparing food for us, but her grandfather did nothing but sit next to us, cross his legs, spin a little handheld Tibetan prayer wheel while chanting Tibetan Buddhist scriptures (something like this http://www.singingbowlshop.com/prayer-wheel-12.html).

The chanting was a little haunting and humbling at the same time, reminding me of my own mortality and my lack of piety. Fortunately, he regularly punctuated his holiness with outburst of yelling at his granddaughter, lending an air of mortality to someone who seemed to already have one foot in the door of Heaven.

The family we lodged with the next night was just as friendly, and the setting of the guesthouse was something close to stunningly beautiful. We stayed in a place that was located at the top of a village called Niru, where houses clung to the hillsides above terraced potato and barley fields. The village was fairly large, a collection of about three hundred houses in this valley where two or three rivers came together.

In the terraced fields beneath us, there were three guys kicking an ox, trying to get him to plow a field. Pigs randomly appeared on trails, scurrying away to somewhere with an air of what appeared like urgency. Every ten minutes or so, the barking of dogs off somewhere unseen seemed to punctuate the bucolic calm. All was in the shadow of monuments wrapped in prayer flags and a mountain creatively named, "The Holy Mountain."

That evening we were invited to eat with the family, sharing a traditional meal of bread and slabs of pork fat (yummy). The grandfather of this household was not quite as old and not nearly as holy as last night's. He talked with us that night over the dinner, discussing life here in Tibet. After a few minutes, I asked the old man why he carried a silver dagger around his belt.

"Oh this, we used to have a problem with demons a hundred years ago, so we would use these silver daggers to kill them. Now, we keep them around just in case." He grinned in a way that didn't allow me to pin down how serious he was.

Towards the end of the night, I went outside to take a Sprite-induced bathroom break. As I stood on the porch in front of our room, I looked down on the village and the terraced fields. The rural scene was now blanketed in the silvery glow of starlight and the random twinkle of stove fires. A few pigs still seemed to wander busily from here to there as purposefully as they had earlier that day. Cows mooed and dogs barked, but all with less urgency than during the daytime.

At the village entrance, a sign had listed how far it was from there to Kunming, Tokyo, New York and so on. It seemed aptly placed since the bustle and hassle that is China seemed like it was a million miles away. The challenges that we had faced getting here seemed like they were already ancient history, completely beaten.

But the calmness of the scene brought a false sense of comfort and ease, one that did not prepare us for the battles that we would fight the next day.

Until then,
Lee


Then she picked up that silver dagger
And she stove it through her lily white breast
Sayin' goodbye mama, goodbye papa
I'll die for the one that I love best

"The Silver Dagger" by Old Crow Medicine Show


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Icarus - Flying too Close to the Sky


"When the boy began to delight in his daring flight, and abandoning his guide, drawn by desire for the heavens, soared higher. . ."
Ovid, "Metamorphosis"

Hey Yall,

Somewhere in Eastern Tibet, the sprightly grandfather of the Tibetan family who I mentioned in the last email led us from his cabin to the bridge where the trail started. "First go and then turn left, then go and turn right. After that, keep going," were the only instructions that he gave us. Then, he said goodbye, and shook hands with each of us. Strangely, he insisted on using his left hand to shake hands. I couldn't figure out if he just didn't know how to shake hands, or if there was something else going on.

Our guide left us, and we started climbing. That day, we climbed a total of about 3,500 feet, about 7/10ths of a mile straight up, from a starting point of about 9,000 feet above sea level at the bridge. As we started to climb, it started to rain. The rain came lightly at first, but, slowly, the mist transformed into pellets, and the trail we were following metamorphed into mud. We passed a rock that the Tibetans claimed was the footprint of Buddha, on his way to bring salvation to the Tibetan people, but we had little time to contemplate this salvation, because there the trail turned even steeper upwards and we ascended into a Hades of our own.

As we moved up, the temperature dropped. When we reached the crest of the trail, we took a rest in a little cabin. But we soon realized that, as nice as it was to get out of the cold, we couldn't stay there for too long. We were soaked, and stopping would just make us colder, risking hypothermia. We nibbled on some of the bread that the Tibetan family had given to us that morning and then kept moving. By the time we left the shelter, the rain had morphed into snow. Things were getting worse.

We continued on. In the next hour, we past two small Tibetan caravans, three or four people with five to ten horses. They confirmed that we were going in the right direction. It could have been worse.

And soon it became worse. We descended a little ways into a big meadow, about three miles wide and one mile long. By this point, the snow was coming down hard, and a strong wind was whipping it across our faces and across the meadow. The ground wasn't cold enough for the snow to stick, so it just gelled into cold mud. Visibility was bad. I could just barely make out some cabins about a mile away, in the middle of the meadow. There was a sign and a trail, but where the sign pointed was not really clear and the trail led towards the cabins, so we made for the cabins. One of them was locked, so we went into the other one, an empty barn. We had a little powwow. Shannon thought that we should explore the area to our left, but I felt that our best chance was to go across the meadow, to a little outlet we could just barely make out on the horizon.

Neither were really good choices, but we went the way I thought was right. Along the way, the pathway dissipated, and we just walking through unmarked fields without any idea where we were going. As we walked, we came on several herds of Tibetan yaks, standing quietly in the gale, as if they couldn't feel the gusts of snow through their shaggy coats. They stared ominously at us as we passed by. We crept by, not sure why they were staring at us so intently.

After about thirty more minutes of walking through the fields, we found our way to another collection of cabins, cabins that had been invisible at first due to the blinding gusts of snow plowing their way across the meadow.

Once again, we broke into a house that wasn't locked. It was not a barn this time, but some one's house. We sat around their sitting room, trying to figure out our next move. It was 2:30 in the afternoon, so we decided to take our chances and descend from the meadow through the little outlet I had seen earlier. I couldn't stay in the cabin for too long in my wet clothes. I was now showing signs of hypothermia.

As we wondered across the meadow, through the white blaze of snow, faces wet and numb with the melting snow flakes dripping down them, it became clear that we had flown to close to the sky, taking on something that was too tough, at least in this weather. And now, like Icarus, we were falling.

After an hour of making our way across the meadow, we started descending through that little outlet that I had seen. The signs started out being good. The snow stopped, and, for a few moments, the sun even broke through the clouds, warming us up. We stopped to soak in his warm rays. That was only a temporary relief, though. Precipitation quickly returned, but, mercifully, it turned back into rain as we descended to lower elevations, not snow.

We continued on, through a small, hillside meadow with two houses clinging to the mountainside, but no one was home. So we descended farther into a gorge, hoping that where ever it ended, there would be a village or something. The gorge quickly narrowed, and the path we had been following disappeared. We continued slashing our way through bamboo and jumping over rocks down the narrow gorge. It was getting warmer as we descended, but there was no sign of human habitation.

Around six o'clock, just as we were starting to really worry about the coming darkness, we had a little miracle. We found a large rock-overhanging, with a dry plot ten feet by fifteen feet. Someone had used the spot as a campsite before, and they had built a little rock wall around it and left four blankets there.

We made camp there. Shannon took charge, telling us how to set up the campsite and making me and Katherine eat some of the pork fat that the Tibetan family had left us (pork fat is instant calories, warming you up immediately). We changed into dry clothes, pulled the blankets over us and tried to stay as warm as possible for the rest of the night.

Towards the end of the day, I remembered a quote which was comforting, if also a little disturbing. I shared it with Shannon, and she said, "If you had told me that quote when we were wandering through that blizzard, I would have mashed the *#$ out of your &*#@" (The contents of this email have been modified for a Southern/Mormon audience). Though Shannon didn't appreciate it at the time, I think I'm going to end this email with that quote, leaving yall at the point where the clouds were clearing away, the stars starting to twinkle through the trees, and nighttime was descending on Eastern Tibet.

Best,
Lee

"Although the road may be dangerous
and the destination far out of sight,
all journeys come to an end:
Do not despair."

Hafez (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hafez)


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(Tibetan) Cowboy, Take Me Away

Hey Yall,

As night fell on our make-shift campsite, things had started looking up. As I alluded to at the end of the last email, that night, the rain stopped and the clouds broke up, revealing a starry sky. The next morning, we awoke and packed up as quickly as we could. After chewing on some cookies that we still had left, we started back up the canyon.

We had decided to turn around. Instead of continuing down this canyon to lower ground and then onto where ever, we decided to climb out the way we had come down, out of the canyon, up to the meadow where we had gotten lost. The plan was that, at the meadow, we would see if we could figure out how to get to the lake and the national park that we were originally aiming to get to yesterday. And so we climbed back up the canyon.

Slowly and softly, the verdant but narrow canyon gave way to a wider forested valley. The forest dissipated and we found ourselves in a small meadow two hours after we had left camp. This is not the giant meadow that we had gotten lost in yesterday, but a smaller meadow, about a thirty minute walk from that big meadow. The day before we had seen two houses clinging to the hillside in this meadow, but they were apparently empty, so we had kept going.

I stopped to take a picture of the meadow. Shannon and Katherine started yelling at me. "Lee, get over here!" They had spotted someone, the first soul we had seen in twenty hours.

How should I begin the description of our hero. He was a Tibetan cowboy, making his living by grazing sheep, yaks and cows. He lived in one of the two houses we had passed by the day before in the small meadow, (he had still been watching over his flock somewhere else when we had passed by). He wore the coolest hat in the world. It reminded me of the WWII bomber hat that my grandfather had, with its felt lining and giant ear flaps. But, unlike that bomber hat, the body of the Tibetan cowboy's hat was more like a golden turban, shining bright like a little lighthouse, reflecting the morning sun. Though he wasn't that old, maybe 35 or 40, his skin looked as tough and tanned as leather. Not Chinese but Tibetan, his skin was browner, more like that of someone from Bombay than Beijing. Part of that was from spending every day of so many years trudging across open fields beneath the Tibetan sun, in the thin Tibetan air. A grungy mustache circled his lips and chin. His clothes looked like they were fifth generation hand-me-downs, though they weren't that old, his tshirt had the phrase "New York 32" on the front.

When we first showed up in his little meadow, Shannon and Katherine yelled, "Ni Hao" to him. He acknowledged the greeting, though he seemed perplexed at what the heck two white girls could be doing in his field in the middle of nowhere in Eastern Tibet. I climbed up the hill to his house to meet him. As I shook his hand, I detailed our travails from the night before to him.

"Yall went down THAT canyon?" he said, gesticulating the way we had come. "You know there's no road down there, right?"

"Yea, we found out when we went down there. But we were lost and we didn't see any other way."

"But no one goes down there. There's no road down there, you know that, right?"

He had trouble accepting that we had gone down a canyon that had no road.

After he calmed down (after two or three more "you know there's no road down there, right?"), I talked to him about the lake and the national park. "Yea, I know where the lake is. My other house is over by it," he commented.

"Oh really, would you be willing to take us to it? We need to get back to civilization. We'd pay you 100 rmb (US$ 14.5)."

"Sure. I'm going towards there anyways. But I need about thirty minutes to pack up."

We sat down in the mud in front of his hut, and our Tibetan cowboy packed up his house. Pot(s), water, rope, roof (a blue tarp), he gathered every thing from his house, and packed it up on the back of his three horses. Then he took the rest of his stuff, stuffed it into a basket and tied it onto his back. Everything he owned, except the wooden structure of his hut was either on his back, or on the backs of his horses.

And that's how we were rescued from the wilderness by a Tibetan Cowboy.

Thirty minutes after we left his hut, we emerged over the crest of the hill we were climbing and descended down into the big meadow that we had gotten lost in the day before. It was the same place but a different scene. Before, all we had seen was a blinding whiteness, but now every thing in the meadow was green or brown, flourishing and peaceful. The sky was blue and seemed almost eternal, like the big sky of Montana. The meadow was surrounded on three sides by peaks over 14,000 feet (we were already at about 12,500 feet in the meadow). These not-so-distant peaks were capped with a fresh dress of white from the day before's blizzard. I'm guessing Shannon and Katherine would not agree with me, but I kind of thought that getting lost and risking hypothermia in the blizzard was almost worth the beautiful scene we got that day.

As we spent an hour or so crossing the five or six mile long meadow, I talked with our Tibetan cowboy. How often does he have to migrate to reach his flock? (Most days), How much did he make a year selling meet and wool (10,000 rmb, roughly US$1500), Why was no one living in the big meadow (Still too cold). I also asked him about his silver dagger. He claimed it was actually just for cutting trees and things, not for fighting off demons.

After a few hours, we came to what I think was his other house. He tied up his horses, and then took us down the road. We had finally arrived in the national park, the doorstep to civilization.

And that was almost the end of our adventure. .

After we got on a tourist bus, we just sat, mostly silently. It was already late in the afternoon as the bus snaked its way through asphalt pathways that traversed the green valleys and small mountains of the national park. I was leaning silently against a pole when Shannon shouted, "Lee, Look!"

Our cowboy made one last appearance. He was leading his three horses alongside the road, in his eternal search for green pasture, and our bus passed him by. I stuck my head out and shouted and he waved back at us, grinning as we rode off into the Tibetan sunset.

And that was it.

Taken away by a Tibetan Cowboy,
Lee

I want to sit and not run, I don't want to sleep on the hard ground
I want to look at the horizon and see a soulless Chinese building standing tall
I don't want to be the only one for miles and miles around
I want to stand in a flood of Chinese on hard paved ground

Oh it sounds good to me.

(Tibetan) Cowboy, Take me away
Fly this guy as far away as you can from this wild blue
Set me free, oh I pray, closer to KFC and far away from you
Far away from you

"Cowboy, Take Me Away"
Written by Dixie Chicks, Modified by Me
http://v.youku.com/v_show/id_XMTYyMTcyNDg0.html


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The ialaD amaL and the Whore of Babylon - Don't Go Chasing Waterfalls

Hey Yall,

One final story on my trip to Tibetan Yunnan.

Note: Leonardo da Vinci often wrote things backwards to keep people
from reading his papers.

After being rescued by the Tibetan cowboy and returning from the
wilds, our group split up. Shannon and Katherine turned south, while I
stayed in Shangri-la for an extra day. For the afternoon I had alone,
I decided to take the local bus up to the Songzanlin Tibetan
Monastery. According to the Lonely Planet, this was a cool, peaceful
and ancient monastery with a small city's worth of monks attached to
the monastery. It sounded cool enough to spend an hour or two
wandering around.

But, when we first entered into the temple town, there was something
wrong. First, they had tried to charge me $12 dollars to get into the
monostary town, as if this were Colonial Williamsburg and not a real
working temple. Refusing to pay, I slipped through an unguarded door
without anyone noticing, and took the tourist bus up to the monastery.

When I got off the bus, I saw even more that seemed out of place. The
monastery was on the top of the hill, about three hundred feet above
us. The hilltop had two old-looking, red buildings, what you would
expect to see at a Tibetan monastery. Strangely though, in between
these two ancient-looking, monastic temples was a giant construction
project, big crane, concrete pourers, herds of poor laborers yelling
and jack-hammering. Not what you expect to find in an ancient temple.

As we followed a tour guide up the stairs, I noticed something else
strange: lining the sides of the ancient stone stairway were men
dressed in the orange robes of Tibetan monks, lazily toking on a
cigarette, leaning back in their chairs, chortling with each other in
front of tables full of cheesy knick-knacks that they tried to
convince us to buy. (Buddhist are forbidden to smoke, and they are
supposed to be in the process of freeing themselves from worldly
desires and attachments, not selling worthless curios ).

It appeared someone had Babylonned this temple from top to bottom.

Our tour guide continued on, explaining buildings in posture even more
listless than your normal Chinese tour guides. When we got to the top,
he took us through the temples, but, with the sound of jack-hammering
in the background and the Chinese tour group fluttering around me, it
was hard to find much that was spiritual about this place. At the end,
our tour guide told us that we could continue exploring the town and
the other temples on our own. As our tour guide,
dropped down into a folding chair and began texting on his phone, our
group dissipated, most of them either going back to the bus or getting
one more photo before going back to the bus.

I was pretty disappointed. This wasn't Tibet. This was a tourist
colony, whored out to materialistic outsiders, lamely searching for
their own Shangri-la.

Saddened, I wandered over to another temple, thinking something was
missing. I kept thinking that, in building a new temple, something was
being destroyed.

Then, a sprightly, seventeen-year-old monk ran past me, yelling
"Hello!" I returned a "Ni Hao," and he stopped to talk to me.

I asked him a question. "Why do yall charge money to get into this temple?"

"Oh, that's not us. Some tourist company is doing that. They started
doing it about 8 months ago. We don't get any of the money, either.
Just that tourist company... Where are you from?" The seventeen year
old queried back.

"America."

His face lit up and he did his best to speak English. "A-may-li-ka."
He looked around to make sure no one was nearby and then asked, "Have
you meet the ialaD amaL?"

"No....Wait, do you like the ialaD amaL?"

Again, he took a furtive glance in both directions before answering,
"Of course, we all love him, eight of the nine temple-leaders at this
monastery support him, but you know...with the Chinese government." A
sense of disappointment swept over his face, but then, he brightened
up and said, "Well, I got to go."

I continued wandering farther from the tourist pathway, and came upon
a big temple, bigger than the ones at the top of the hill. But, unlike
the ones at the top, this one was as silent as death.

Entering, I could just barely hear the sounds of water being poured,
of sandals sweeping against the ground and of candles flickering, not
really sounds, but a sort of rhythmic silence.

There were two monks working in the temple. I walked over to them as
casually as possible. I saw a picture of the Panchen Lama (the
counterpart to the ialaD amaL,
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panchen_Lama) on a little table with some
offerings, and, in an effort to strike up a conversation, I pretended
to be ignorant, asking, "I've seen this guy's picture in all the
temples. Who is that?"

"The Panchen Lama. He's the second most important monk in our
Buddhism." They waited a moment, calmly pouring water into small
offering cups and then returned a question to me. "Do you know who
that is?"

They gestured towards a table facing the one with photo of the Panchen
Lama. Surprised, I recognized the photo instantly. "That's the ialaD
amaL! But how come I have seen pictures of the Panchen Lama in every
temple, but I haven't seen any other photos of the ialaD amaL?" (Any
pictures of the ialaD amaL are illegal and could get people jailed in
a monastery like this).

The two monks looked at each other, one of them speaking to his
counterpart in Tibetan, and then they went back to sweeping and
pouring water, completely ignoring me. I stood there for a few
minutes, but they were already beyond answering my question.

I left that temple and kept walking away from tourist tracks, starting
to feel like this place's spirtuality hadn't been destroyed, just
pushed to the side.

I came to the last and oldest temple of the complex. By this time, the
sound of the jack-hammering had faded to a low-hum and the crane over
the construction site was little more than a glimmer in the falling
afternoon sun. This temple was small, nothing impressive. It looked as
if they had allowed the temple to remain standing only because it was
far enough away to not distract from the temple complex's main
attractions.

I entered into the temple and two real Tibetans, darkened faces, dirt
on their hands, cowboy hats on their heads, entered with me. Smiling,
they exchanged some reverent comments with one of the monks in there.
The monk draped some religious scarf around their neck, and they
proceeded to move slowly around the little temple. These kids, who
probably earned five bucks a day, were dropping a dime into each of
the ten or so donation boxes scattered around the temple, and then
dropping down on their knees, tapping their heads against the floor
and praying at each statue. As they went around doing this, I couldn't
help but be amazed by the fullness of their faith.

It was here that I felt like I had come to the real Tibet, something
unmolested and original, close to and yet so different from the
Babylonned-out tourist lane just ten minutes away. As the two kids
finished up, they chatted with the monks as he took the scarf back off
of them. I couldn't help but look on and wonder if this is what this
temple was like two hundred years ago.

But, as they were talking, the monk's cellphone went off, and, a
familiar, 90's R&B song started playing. Before the monk could silence
his phone, I was struck by how close I can feel to home despite being
so far away.

And now, I'll leave yall with that monk's ringtone, a song recorded in Atlanta.

Ciao,
Leo

Don't go chasing waterfalls
Please stick to the rivers and lakes that you're used to
I know you want to have it your way or nothing at all
But I think you're moving to fast
http://v.youku.com/v_show/id_XNzY2NjQ1OTY=.html

P.S. These lyrics do not have any political meaning, they were just
the ringtone on the monk's cellphone. They are certainly not meant to
be read as a warning to either Beijing or the ialaD amaL as they try
to conduct diplomacy.

The ialaD amaL and the Whore of Babylon - Don't Go Chasing Waterfalls

Hey Yall,

One final story on my trip to Tibetan Yunnan.

Note: Leonardo da Vinci often wrote things backwards to keep people
from reading his papers.

After being rescued by the Tibetan cowboy and returning from the
wilds, our group split up. Shannon and Katherine turned south, while I
stayed in Shangri-la for an extra day. For the afternoon I had alone,
I decided to take the local bus up to the Songzanlin Tibetan
Monastery. According to the Lonely Planet, this was a cool, peaceful
and ancient monastery with a small city's worth of monks attached to
the monastery. It sounded cool enough to spend an hour or two
wandering around.

But, when we first entered into the temple town, there was something
wrong. First, they had tried to charge me $12 dollars to get into the
monostary town, as if this were Colonial Williamsburg and not a real
working temple. Refusing to pay, I slipped through an unguarded door
without anyone noticing, and took the tourist bus up to the monastery.

When I got off the bus, I saw even more that seemed out of place. The
monastery was on the top of the hill, about three hundred feet above
us. The hilltop had two old-looking, red buildings, what you would
expect to see at a Tibetan monastery. Strangely though, in between
these two ancient-looking, monastic temples was a giant construction
project, big crane, concrete pourers, herds of poor laborers yelling
and jack-hammering. Not what you expect to find in an ancient temple.

As we followed a tour guide up the stairs, I noticed something else
strange: lining the sides of the ancient stone stairway were men
dressed in the orange robes of Tibetan monks, lazily toking on a
cigarette, leaning back in their chairs, chortling with each other in
front of tables full of cheesy knick-knacks that they tried to
convince us to buy. (Buddhist are forbidden to smoke, and they are
supposed to be in the process of freeing themselves from worldly
desires and attachments, not selling worthless curios ).

It appeared someone had Babylonned this temple from top to bottom.

Our tour guide continued on, explaining buildings in posture even more
listless than your normal Chinese tour guides. When we got to the top,
he took us through the temples, but, with the sound of jack-hammering
in the background and the Chinese tour group fluttering around me, it
was hard to find much that was spiritual about this place. At the end,
our tour guide told us that we could continue exploring the town and
the other temples on our own. As our tour guide,
dropped down into a folding chair and began texting on his phone, our
group dissipated, most of them either going back to the bus or getting
one more photo before going back to the bus.

I was pretty disappointed. This wasn't Tibet. This was a tourist
colony, whored out to materialistic outsiders, lamely searching for
their own Shangri-la.

Saddened, I wandered over to another temple, thinking something was
missing. I kept thinking that, in building a new temple, something was
being destroyed.

Then, a sprightly, seventeen-year-old monk ran past me, yelling
"Hello!" I returned a "Ni Hao," and he stopped to talk to me.

I asked him a question. "Why do yall charge money to get into this temple?"

"Oh, that's not us. Some tourist company is doing that. They started
doing it about 8 months ago. We don't get any of the money, either.
Just that tourist company... Where are you from?" The seventeen year
old queried back.

"America."

His face lit up and he did his best to speak English. "A-may-li-ka."
He looked around to make sure no one was nearby and then asked, "Have
you meet the ialaD amaL?"

"No....Wait, do you like the ialaD amaL?"

Again, he took a furtive glance in both directions before answering,
"Of course, we all love him, eight of the nine temple-leaders at this
monastery support him, but you know...with the Chinese government." A
sense of disappointment swept over his face, but then, he brightened
up and said, "Well, I got to go."

I continued wandering farther from the tourist pathway, and came upon
a big temple, bigger than the ones at the top of the hill. But, unlike
the ones at the top, this one was as silent as death.

Entering, I could just barely hear the sounds of water being poured,
of sandals sweeping against the ground and of candles flickering, not
really sounds, but a sort of rhythmic silence.

There were two monks working in the temple. I walked over to them as
casually as possible. I saw a picture of the Panchen Lama (the
counterpart to the ialaD amaL,
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panchen_Lama) on a little table with some
offerings, and, in an effort to strike up a conversation, I pretended
to be ignorant, asking, "I've seen this guy's picture in all the
temples. Who is that?"

"The Panchen Lama. He's the second most important monk in our
Buddhism." They waited a moment, calmly pouring water into small
offering cups and then returned a question to me. "Do you know who
that is?"

They gestured towards a table facing the one with photo of the Panchen
Lama. Surprised, I recognized the photo instantly. "That's the ialaD
amaL! But how come I have seen pictures of the Panchen Lama in every
temple, but I haven't seen any other photos of the ialaD amaL?" (Any
pictures of the ialaD amaL are illegal and could get people jailed in
a monastery like this).

The two monks looked at each other, one of them speaking to his
counterpart in Tibetan, and then they went back to sweeping and
pouring water, completely ignoring me. I stood there for a few
minutes, but they were already beyond answering my question.

I left that temple and kept walking away from tourist tracks, starting
to feel like this place's spirtuality hadn't been destroyed, just
pushed to the side.

I came to the last and oldest temple of the complex. By this time, the
sound of the jack-hammering had faded to a low-hum and the crane over
the construction site was little more than a glimmer in the falling
afternoon sun. This temple was small, nothing impressive. It looked as
if they had allowed the temple to remain standing only because it was
far enough away to not distract from the temple complex's main
attractions.

I entered into the temple and two real Tibetans, darkened faces, dirt
on their hands, cowboy hats on their heads, entered with me. Smiling,
they exchanged some reverent comments with one of the monks in there.
The monk draped some religious scarf around their neck, and they
proceeded to move slowly around the little temple. These kids, who
probably earned five bucks a day, were dropping a dime into each of
the ten or so donation boxes scattered around the temple, and then
dropping down on their knees, tapping their heads against the floor
and praying at each statue. As they went around doing this, I couldn't
help but be amazed by the fullness of their faith.

It was here that I felt like I had come to the real Tibet, something
unmolested and original, close to and yet so different from the
Babylonned-out tourist lane just ten minutes away. As the two kids
finished up, they chatted with the monks as he took the scarf back off
of them. I couldn't help but look on and wonder if this is what this
temple was like two hundred years ago.

But, as they were talking, the monk's cellphone went off, and, a
familiar, 90's R&B song started playing. Before the monk could silence
his phone, I was struck by how close I can feel to home despite being
so far away.

And now, I'll leave yall with that monk's ringtone, a song recorded in Atlanta.

Ciao,
Leo

Don't go chasing waterfalls
Please stick to the rivers and lakes that you're used to
I know you want to have it your way or nothing at all
But I think you're moving to fast
http://v.youku.com/v_show/id_XNzY2NjQ1OTY=.html

P.S. These lyrics do not have any political meaning, they were just
the ringtone on the monk's cellphone. They are certainly not meant to
be read as a warning to either Beijing or the ialaD amaL as they try
to conduct diplomacy.

(Tibetan) Cowboy, Take Me Away

Hey Yall,

As night fell on our make-shift campsite, things had started looking up. As I alluded to at the end of the last email, that night, the rain stopped and the clouds broke up, revealing a starry sky. The next morning, we awoke and packed up as quickly as we could. After chewing on some cookies that we still had left, we started back up the canyon.

We had decided to turn around. Instead of continuing down this canyon to lower ground and then onto where ever, we decided to climb out the way we had come down, out of the canyon, up to the meadow where we had gotten lost. The plan was that, at the meadow, we would see if we could figure out how to get to the lake and the national park that we were originally aiming to get to yesterday. And so we climbed back up the canyon.

Slowly and softly, the verdant but narrow canyon gave way to a wider forested valley. The forest dissipated and we found ourselves in a small meadow two hours after we had left camp. This is not the giant meadow that we had gotten lost in yesterday, but a smaller meadow, about a thirty minute walk from that big meadow. The day before we had seen two houses clinging to the hillside in this meadow, but they were apparently empty, so we had kept going.

I stopped to take a picture of the meadow. Shannon and Katherine started yelling at me. "Lee, get over here!" They had spotted someone, the first soul we had seen in twenty hours.

How should I begin the description of our hero. He was a Tibetan cowboy, making his living by grazing sheep, yaks and cows. He lived in one of the two houses we had passed by the day before in the small meadow, (he had still been watching over his flock somewhere else when we had passed by). He wore the coolest hat in the world. It reminded me of the WWII bomber hat that my grandfather had, with its felt lining and giant ear flaps. But, unlike that bomber hat, the body of the Tibetan cowboy's hat was more like a golden turban, shining bright like a little lighthouse, reflecting the morning sun. Though he wasn't that old, maybe 35 or 40, his skin looked as tough and tanned as leather. Not Chinese but Tibetan, his skin was browner, more like that of someone from Bombay than Beijing. Part of that was from spending every day of so many years trudging across open fields beneath the Tibetan sun, in the thin Tibetan air. A grungy mustache circled his lips and chin. His clothes looked like they were fifth generation hand-me-downs, though they weren't that old, his tshirt had the phrase "New York 32" on the front.

When we first showed up in his little meadow, Shannon and Katherine yelled, "Ni Hao" to him. He acknowledged the greeting, though he seemed perplexed at what the heck two white girls could be doing in his field in the middle of nowhere in Eastern Tibet. I climbed up the hill to his house to meet him. As I shook his hand, I detailed our travails from the night before to him.

"Yall went down THAT canyon?" he said, gesticulating the way we had come. "You know there's no road down there, right?"

"Yea, we found out when we went down there. But we were lost and we didn't see any other way."

"But no one goes down there. There's no road down there, you know that, right?"

He had trouble accepting that we had gone down a canyon that had no road.

After he calmed down (after two or three more "you know there's no road down there, right?"), I talked to him about the lake and the national park. "Yea, I know where the lake is. My other house is over by it," he commented.

"Oh really, would you be willing to take us to it? We need to get back to civilization. We'd pay you 100 rmb (US$ 14.5)."

"Sure. I'm going towards there anyways. But I need about thirty minutes to pack up."

We sat down in the mud in front of his hut, and our Tibetan cowboy packed up his house. Pot(s), water, rope, roof (a blue tarp), he gathered every thing from his house, and packed it up on the back of his three horses. Then he took the rest of his stuff, stuffed it into a basket and tied it onto his back. Everything he owned, except the wooden structure of his hut was either on his back, or on the backs of his horses.

And that's how we were rescued from the wilderness by a Tibetan Cowboy.

Thirty minutes after we left his hut, we emerged over the crest of the hill we were climbing and descended down into the big meadow that we had gotten lost in the day before. It was the same place but a different scene. Before, all we had seen was a blinding whiteness, but now every thing in the meadow was green or brown, flourishing and peaceful. The sky was blue and seemed almost eternal, like the big sky of Montana. The meadow was surrounded on three sides by peaks over 14,000 feet (we were already at about 12,500 feet in the meadow). These not-so-distant peaks were capped with a fresh dress of white from the day before's blizzard. I'm guessing Shannon and Katherine would not agree with me, but I kind of thought that getting lost and risking hypothermia in the blizzard was almost worth the beautiful scene we got that day.

As we spent an hour or so crossing the five or six mile long meadow, I talked with our Tibetan cowboy. How often does he have to migrate to reach his flock? (Most days), How much did he make a year selling meet and wool (10,000 rmb, roughly US$1500), Why was no one living in the big meadow (Still too cold). I also asked him about his silver dagger. He claimed it was actually just for cutting trees and things, not for fighting off demons.

After a few hours, we came to what I think was his other house. He tied up his horses, and then took us down the road. We had finally arrived in the national park, the doorstep to civilization.

And that was almost the end of our adventure. .

After we got on a tourist bus, we just sat, mostly silently. It was already late in the afternoon as the bus snaked its way through asphalt pathways that traversed the green valleys and small mountains of the national park. I was leaning silently against a pole when Shannon shouted, "Lee, Look!"

Our cowboy made one last appearance. He was leading his three horses alongside the road, in his eternal search for green pasture, and our bus passed him by. I stuck my head out and shouted and he waved back at us, grinning as we rode off into the Tibetan sunset.

And that was it.

Taken away by a Tibetan Cowboy,
Lee

I want to sit and not run, I don't want to sleep on the hard ground
I want to look at the horizon and see a soulless Chinese building standing tall
I don't want to be the only one for miles and miles around
I want to stand in a flood of Chinese on hard paved ground

Oh it sounds good to me.

(Tibetan) Cowboy, Take me away
Fly this guy as far away as you can from this wild blue
Set me free, oh I pray, closer to KFC and far away from you
Far away from you

"Cowboy, Take Me Away"
Written by Dixie Chicks, Modified by Me
http://v.youku.com/v_show/id_XMTYyMTcyNDg0.html

(Tibetan) Cowboy, Take Me Away

Hey Yall,

As night fell on our make-shift campsite, things had started looking up. As I alluded to at the end of the last email, that night, the rain stopped and the clouds broke up, revealing a starry sky. The next morning, we awoke and packed up as quickly as we could. After chewing on some cookies that we still had left, we started back up the canyon.

We had decided to turn around. Instead of continuing down this canyon to lower ground and then onto where ever, we decided to climb out the way we had come down, out of the canyon, up to the meadow where we had gotten lost. The plan was that, at the meadow, we would see if we could figure out how to get to the lake and the national park that we were originally aiming to get to yesterday. And so we climbed back up the canyon.

Slowly and softly, the verdant but narrow canyon gave way to a wider forested valley. The forest dissipated and we found ourselves in a small meadow two hours after we had left camp. This is not the giant meadow that we had gotten lost in yesterday, but a smaller meadow, about a thirty minute walk from that big meadow. The day before we had seen two houses clinging to the hillside in this meadow, but they were apparently empty, so we had kept going.

I stopped to take a picture of the meadow. Shannon and Katherine started yelling at me. "Lee, get over here!" They had spotted someone, the first soul we had seen in twenty hours.

How should I begin the description of our hero. He was a Tibetan cowboy, making his living by grazing sheep, yaks and cows. He lived in one of the two houses we had passed by the day before in the small meadow, (he had still been watching over his flock somewhere else when we had passed by). He wore the coolest hat in the world. It reminded me of the WWII bomber hat that my grandfather had, with its felt lining and giant ear flaps. But, unlike that bomber hat, the body of the Tibetan cowboy's hat was more like a golden turban, shining bright like a little lighthouse, reflecting the morning sun. Though he wasn't that old, maybe 35 or 40, his skin looked as tough and tanned as leather. Not Chinese but Tibetan, his skin was browner, more like that of someone from Bombay than Beijing. Part of that was from spending every day of so many years trudging across open fields beneath the Tibetan sun, in the thin Tibetan air. A grungy mustache circled his lips and chin. His clothes looked like they were fifth generation hand-me-downs, though they weren't that old, his tshirt had the phrase "New York 32" on the front.

When we first showed up in his little meadow, Shannon and Katherine yelled, "Ni Hao" to him. He acknowledged the greeting, though he seemed perplexed at what the heck two white girls could be doing in his field in the middle of nowhere in Eastern Tibet. I climbed up the hill to his house to meet him. As I shook his hand, I detailed our travails from the night before to him.

"Yall went down THAT canyon?" he said, gesticulating the way we had come. "You know there's no road down there, right?"

"Yea, we found out when we went down there. But we were lost and we didn't see any other way."

"But no one goes down there. There's no road down there, you know that, right?"

He had trouble accepting that we had gone down a canyon that had no road.

After he calmed down (after two or three more "you know there's no road down there, right?"), I talked to him about the lake and the national park. "Yea, I know where the lake is. My other house is over by it," he commented.

"Oh really, would you be willing to take us to it? We need to get back to civilization. We'd pay you 100 rmb (US$ 14.5)."

"Sure. I'm going towards there anyways. But I need about thirty minutes to pack up."

We sat down in the mud in front of his hut, and our Tibetan cowboy packed up his house. Pot(s), water, rope, roof (a blue tarp), he gathered every thing from his house, and packed it up on the back of his three horses. Then he took the rest of his stuff, stuffed it into a basket and tied it onto his back. Everything he owned, except the wooden structure of his hut was either on his back, or on the backs of his horses.

And that's how we were rescued from the wilderness by a Tibetan Cowboy.

Thirty minutes after we left his hut, we emerged over the crest of the hill we were climbing and descended down into the big meadow that we had gotten lost in the day before. It was the same place but a different scene. Before, all we had seen was a blinding whiteness, but now every thing in the meadow was green or brown, flourishing and peaceful. The sky was blue and seemed almost eternal, like the big sky of Montana. The meadow was surrounded on three sides by peaks over 14,000 feet (we were already at about 12,500 feet in the meadow). These not-so-distant peaks were capped with a fresh dress of white from the day before's blizzard. I'm guessing Shannon and Katherine would not agree with me, but I kind of thought that getting lost and risking hypothermia in the blizzard was almost worth the beautiful scene we got that day.

As we spent an hour or so crossing the five or six mile long meadow, I talked with our Tibetan cowboy. How often does he have to migrate to reach his flock? (Most days), How much did he make a year selling meet and wool (10,000 rmb, roughly US$1500), Why was no one living in the big meadow (Still too cold). I also asked him about his silver dagger. He claimed it was actually just for cutting trees and things, not for fighting off demons.

After a few hours, we came to what I think was his other house. He tied up his horses, and then took us down the road. We had finally arrived in the national park, the doorstep to civilization.

And that was almost the end of our adventure. .

After we got on a tourist bus, we just sat, mostly silently. It was already late in the afternoon as the bus snaked its way through asphalt pathways that traversed the green valleys and small mountains of the national park. I was leaning silently against a pole when Shannon shouted, "Lee, Look!"

Our cowboy made one last appearance. He was leading his three horses alongside the road, in his eternal search for green pasture, and our bus passed him by. I stuck my head out and shouted and he waved back at us, grinning as we rode off into the Tibetan sunset.

And that was it.

Taken away by a Tibetan Cowboy,
Lee

I want to sit and not run, I don't want to sleep on the hard ground
I want to look at the horizon and see a soulless Chinese building standing tall
I don't want to be the only one for miles and miles around
I want to stand in a flood of Chinese on hard paved ground

Oh it sounds good to me.

(Tibetan) Cowboy, Take me away
Fly this guy as far away as you can from this wild blue
Set me free, oh I pray, closer to KFC and far away from you
Far away from you

"Cowboy, Take Me Away"
Written by Dixie Chicks, Modified by Me
http://v.youku.com/v_show/id_XMTYyMTcyNDg0.html

Icarus - Flying Too Close to the Sky

"When the boy began to delight in his daring flight, and abandoning his guide, drawn by desire for the heavens, soared higher. . ."
Ovid, "Metamorphosis"

Hey Yall,

Somewhere in Eastern Tibet, the sprightly grandfather of the Tibetan family who I mentioned in the last email led us from his cabin to the bridge where the trail started. "First go and then turn left, then go and turn right. After that, keep going," were the only instructions that he gave us. Then, he said goodbye, and shook hands with each of us. Strangely, he insisted on using his left hand to shake hands. I couldn't figure out if he just didn't know how to shake hands, or if there was something else going on.

Our guide left us, and we started climbing. That day, we climbed a total of about 3,500 feet, about 7/10ths of a mile straight up, from a starting point of about 9,000 feet above sea level at the bridge. As we started to climb, it started to rain. The rain came lightly at first, but, slowly, the mist transformed into pellets, and the trail we were following metamorphed into mud. We passed a rock that the Tibetans claimed was the footprint of Buddha, on his way to bring salvation to the Tibetan people, but we had little time to contemplate this salvation, because there the trail turned even steeper upwards and we ascended into a Hades of our own.

As we moved up, the temperature dropped. When we reached the crest of the trail, we took a rest in a little cabin. But we soon realized that, as nice as it was to get out of the cold, we couldn't stay there for too long. We were soaked, and stopping would just make us colder, risking hypothermia. We nibbled on some of the bread that the Tibetan family had given to us that morning and then kept moving. By the time we left the shelter, the rain had morphed into snow. Things were getting worse.

We continued on. In the next hour, we past two small Tibetan caravans, three or four people with five to ten horses. They confirmed that we were going in the right direction. It could have been worse.

And soon it became worse. We descended a little ways into a big meadow, about three miles wide and one mile long. By this point, the snow was coming down hard, and a strong wind was whipping it across our faces and across the meadow. The ground wasn't cold enough for the snow to stick, so it just gelled into cold mud. Visibility was bad. I could just barely make out some cabins about a mile away, in the middle of the meadow. There was a sign and a trail, but where the sign pointed was not really clear and the trail led towards the cabins, so we made for the cabins. One of them was locked, so we went into the other one, an empty barn. We had a little powwow. Shannon thought that we should explore the area to our left, but I felt that our best chance was to go across the meadow, to a little outlet we could just barely make out on the horizon.

Neither were really good choices, but we went the way I thought was right. Along the way, the pathway dissipated, and we just walking through unmarked fields without any idea where we were going. As we walked, we came on several herds of Tibetan yaks, standing quietly in the gale, as if they couldn't feel the gusts of snow through their shaggy coats. They stared ominously at us as we passed by. We crept by, not sure why they were staring at us so intently.

After about thirty more minutes of walking through the fields, we found our way to another collection of cabins, cabins that had been invisible at first due to the blinding gusts of snow plowing their way across the meadow.

Once again, we broke into a house that wasn't locked. It was not a barn this time, but some one's house. We sat around their sitting room, trying to figure out our next move. It was 2:30 in the afternoon, so we decided to take our chances and descend from the meadow through the little outlet I had seen earlier. I couldn't stay in the cabin for too long in my wet clothes. I was now showing signs of hypothermia.

As we wondered across the meadow, through the white blaze of snow, faces wet and numb with the melting snow flakes dripping down them, it became clear that we had flown to close to the sky, taking on something that was too tough, at least in this weather. And now, like Icarus, we were falling.

After an hour of making our way across the meadow, we started descending through that little outlet that I had seen. The signs started out being good. The snow stopped, and, for a few moments, the sun even broke through the clouds, warming us up. We stopped to soak in his warm rays. That was only a temporary relief, though. Precipitation quickly returned, but, mercifully, it turned back into rain as we descended to lower elevations, not snow.

We continued on, through a small, hillside meadow with two houses clinging to the mountainside, but no one was home. So we descended farther into a gorge, hoping that where ever it ended, there would be a village or something. The gorge quickly narrowed, and the path we had been following disappeared. We continued slashing our way through bamboo and jumping over rocks down the narrow gorge. It was getting warmer as we descended, but there was no sign of human habitation.

Around six o'clock, just as we were starting to really worry about the coming darkness, we had a little miracle. We found a large rock-overhanging, with a dry plot ten feet by fifteen feet. Someone had used the spot as a campsite before, and they had built a little rock wall around it and left four blankets there.

We made camp there. Shannon took charge, telling us how to set up the campsite and making me and Katherine eat some of the pork fat that the Tibetan family had left us (pork fat is instant calories, warming you up immediately). We changed into dry clothes, pulled the blankets over us and tried to stay as warm as possible for the rest of the night.

Towards the end of the day, I remembered a quote which was comforting, if also a little disturbing. I shared it with Shannon, and she said, "If you had told me that quote when we were wandering through that blizzard, I would have mashed the *#$ out of your &*#@" (The contents of this email have been modified for a Southern/Mormon audience). Though Shannon didn't appreciate it at the time, I think I'm going to end this email with that quote, leaving yall at the point where the clouds were clearing away, the stars starting to twinkle through the trees, and nighttime was descending on Eastern Tibet.

Best,
Lee

"Although the road may be dangerous
and the destination far out of sight,
all journeys come to an end:
Do not despair."

Hafez (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hafez)

Silver Dagger - Demons, Prayer Wheels and other Tibetan Relics

Hey yall,

We got out of Kevin's Jeep in a little village called Luoji, a hot, two-dirt road town inhabited mostly by Yi people. From Luoji, we made our way up through a valley into an area that was mostly inhabited by Naxi people.

I've heard a lot of crap about how great Tibet is. I heard so much that I avoided Tibetan areas for a while, so as not to be that typical tourist searching for his own Shangri-la. But I have to say, there was something especially spiritual about the Tibetans. As we were hiking, we made our way out of Luoji, up into areas inhabited by the Naxi people. Some of the Naxi were nice enough. When we stopped to ask directions, a few of them gave us water and some bad-tasting apples. But later, as we were approaching the divide between the Naxi and Tibetan world, a drunk Naxi man approached me and told me that he would give us a ride to the village that we were trying to get to. For an absurd price, of course. We rebuffed his offer and he stumbled back to his friends, yelling.

But then we crossed an invisible line into the Tibetan world and the atmosphere seemed to change. We came upon a pile of stones with prayer flags tied to the top, shivering in the wind. The first house we passed shouted, welcoming us, drunk probably, but a friendly drunkenness.

That night, we eventually found someone who was willing to host us, a middle-aged lady taking care of her 88 year old grandfather (her husband off working in the mines). We threw our stuff in the room that looked like it might be a small hostel, and went to sit in her living room/kitchen area as she prepared us food. She scurried from the fire to the little plastic bags filled with dry meat and then back, preparing food for us, but her grandfather did nothing but sit next to us, cross his legs, spin a little handheld Tibetan prayer wheel while chanting Tibetan Buddhist scriptures (something like this http://www.singingbowlshop.com/prayer-wheel-12.html).

The chanting was a little haunting and humbling at the same time, reminding me of my own mortality and my lack of piety. Fortunately, he regularly punctuated his holiness with outburst of yelling at his granddaughter, lending an air of mortality to someone who seemed to already have one foot in the door of Heaven.

The family we lodged with the next night was just as friendly, and the setting of the guesthouse was something close to stunningly beautiful. We stayed in a place that was located at the top of a village called Niru, where houses clung to the hillsides above terraced potato and barley fields. The village was fairly large, a collection of about three hundred houses in this valley where two or three rivers came together.

In the terraced fields beneath us, there were three guys kicking an ox, trying to get him to plow a field. Pigs randomly appeared on trails, scurrying away to somewhere with an air of what appeared like urgency. Every ten minutes or so, the barking of dogs off somewhere unseen seemed to punctuate the bucolic calm. All was in the shadow of monuments wrapped in prayer flags and a mountain creatively named, "The Holy Mountain."

That evening we were invited to eat with the family, sharing a traditional meal of bread and slabs of pork fat (yummy). The grandfather of this household was not quite as old and not nearly as holy as last night's. He talked with us that night over the dinner, discussing life here in Tibet. After a few minutes, I asked the old man why he carried a silver dagger around his belt.

"Oh this, we used to have a problem with demons a hundred years ago, so we would use these silver daggers to kill them. Now, we keep them around just in case." He grinned in a way that didn't allow me to pin down how serious he was.

Towards the end of the night, I went outside to take a Sprite-induced bathroom break. As I stood on the porch in front of our room, I looked down on the village and the terraced fields. The rural scene was now blanketed in the silvery glow of starlight and the random twinkle of stove fires. A few pigs still seemed to wander busily from here to there as purposefully as they had earlier that day. Cows mooed and dogs barked, but all with less urgency than during the daytime.

At the village entrance, a sign had listed how far it was from there to Kunming, Tokyo, New York and so on. It seemed aptly placed since the bustle and hassle that is China seemed like it was a million miles away. The challenges that we had faced getting here seemed like they were already ancient history, completely beaten.

But the calmness of the scene brought a false sense of comfort and ease, one that did not prepare us for the battles that we would fight the next day.

Until then,
Lee


Then she picked up that silver dagger
And she stove it through her lily white breast
Sayin' goodbye mama, goodbye papa
I'll die for the one that I love best

"The Silver Dagger" by Old Crow Medicine Show

Just Beat It - Tibet in Yunnan

I know yall probably heard about the earthquake that occurred in an Tibetan area near Tibet Province. In fact, yall actually probably heard about it well before I did, since I was lost in a blizzard on another part of the Tibet's Everest foothills, fighting off hypothermia at the time the earthquake occurred. But I'll get that in a later email.

For the last week, I was in the very western part of the province of Yunnan with a friend from UGA, Shannon, and her friend Katherine. Historically and culturally, the place is actually the very Eastern part of Tibet. Tibet is not only the name of a province within China, but it also signifies the greater Tibetan region. Tibetans live not only in Tibet, but also throughout much of Qinghai (the province where the earthquake occurred), Western Sichuan and Western Yunnan (where I was).

The area that I went to used to be called Zhongdian, but, a few years ago, the Chinese government changed the name of the Tibetan area of Yunnan to "Shangri-la," claiming that they had discovered incontrovertible evidence that the area was the setting for James Hilton's entirely fictional Tibetan story, "Lost Horizons." Cynics suggested that renaming the county "Shangri-la" was actually just a cheesy attempt to boost tourist revenues. Either way.

As I was trying to think of where to start with this story of our journey in Shangri-la, I kept coming back to the night before we left for our four day hike through a remote part of "Shangri-la." We were eating in a kind-of touristy, Tibetan restaurant, chomping down on momo's, a traditional kind of Tibetan dumpling. We were talking about our upcoming journey, a hike through a series fairly unspoiled Tibetan mountain villages, and through the back door into a national park.

Then, all the sudden, Michel Jackson's "Beat It" started reverberating throughout the restaurant and the Tibetan restaurant owners jumped up from their seats and started dancing to it. "Beat it...beat it, no I won't be defeated! Show them how chunky and strong is your fight..." Though his lyrics were off, I was and always am struck by the globalization just suddenly pops its head up, even on the "Roof of the World."

But, as I thought more about it, the song was strangely appropriate for the Tibetan people, and the journey we would set off on. The song is a story about betting against the odds and coming out on top. On our trip, we had to face off against the Chinese government and the sometimes against the even more brutal forces of Nature. After both fights, we came out, worn but wiser.

We had wanted to go from Shangri-la to a small town on the edge of Tibet proper, Deqin, but we had found out that there was
construction on the road. Due to construction, the road was only open to traffic once every four days. @#$^ China!

We arrived at the Shangri-la bus station early one morning to buy tickets for the next day, the one day that the road was open. But at the ticket office, the lady rudely informed me that foreigners were not currently allowed on the bus. @%#@#@ China!

I should probably explain some background info. Foreigners are not allowed to enter Tibet without getting special permits, paying a fair amount of money and joining a tour group. However that does not normally prevent foreigners from going into Tibetan parts of other provinces like Yunnan or Sichuan. Well, they were not allowing foreigners onto the buses because the bus, due to construction, had to pass into parts of Tibet to get to Deqin. We could have taken a minivan, but that was crazy expensive. @#$&@ China!

Thinking up a way to beat the Chinese government, we meet up with an American named Kevin working in the area who happened to be going to another part of the county, where there was some good hiking. The plan was that he would drop us off at a small town, Luoji. From there, we would hike for two days, to a Tibetan village called Niru, and then hike into the backdoor of a national park (avoiding the US$30 entrance fee, again beating China). From there, we could get a bus back to Shangri-la and civilization.

So, despite all the road blocks China threw in our face, we still 'beat it.'

The next morning, we meet Kevin near the entrance to the touristy old town of Shangri-la and took off for Luoji in his Jeep. Blocked by construction at one point (they are doing construction throughout the county), he slipped it into four wheel drive instead of waiting for five minutes for them to let us pass. As the car leapt back onto the pavement, the gearbox made a strange crank and we noticed the smell of gasoline fumes filling the Jeep. "Yea," Kevin informed us, "its a great jeep, but a couple of weeks ago, a drunk Tibetan was driving it, and he drove it a hundred feet off a cliff and flipped it into a river. We pulled it out and got it repaired, but the gears are still a little funny and there's a bit of a gas leak. But hey, she's still beatin' it!"

As I said, this will be a story of fighting against China and nature, and, in the end, beating them both, if getting bruised along the way.

Beating it,
Lee

You're playin' with your life, this ain't no truth or dare
They'll kick you, then they beat you,
Then they'll tell you it's fair
So beat it, but you wanna be bad
- Micheal Jackson's 'Beat It'

Notice.
Persons attempting to find a political motive in the meaning of these lyrics will be prosecuted by the Chinese Government.