"A Trip to Tibet"

 

Soon enough, we were lifting off, in another plane, this one to Lhasa. Flying into Tibet, soaring over the Himalayas, a shudder plaited down my spine as I peered down from the plane, gawking at those mountains. The Himalayas were mountains like I’d never seen before. They had this unique shape, twisting sharp tips and spooky gray, white and black colors. They looked more like a leviathan, a strange dark living organism, than a chain of mountains. Thinking how they’d risen, erupted from the Earth, they were, in a way, the Earth’s adult teeth, wisdom teeth, fangs from the ground.

Stepping off the plane, the air was sucked dry from my lungs, as if a vacuum tube had been shoved down my throat. Frigid winds whipped at my face, causing my eyes to wet up and my nose to coldly congeal and drip icy snot.

It was tough to adjust. I felt breathless and lead boned as we lurched through the airport, respirating in rapid, shallow sprints. All of us were feeling rough, light-headed, dizzy due to the sudden shock of the altitude sickness. And we all were slightly aphasiac at the magnificence of the place’s scenery, the ruggedly exotic, breathtaking landscape.

(I’d been to Denver, so I’d been “mile high,” but this place was something else. It was 14,370 feet in the air. It really was the “rooftop of the world,” like walking through the clouds. If you stepped too quickly, especially when ascending stairs, you’d be gasping, literally. We found out fast, that in Lhasa, slow movements were preferrable…) 

The vibe in the place was weird, man. I don’t think I could ever have adjusted to it. Tibet, Lhasa, was just heavy with tension, and the minute we met our tour guide, by the baggage carousel, I felt a cold-dripping premonition...

We piled into a minivan with our tour guide, who drove us from the airport to downtown Lhasa, and he started telling us about the city, its ancient history. His English was excellent, only slightly accented, which was certainly advantageous for us, since none of us spoke any Tibetan...

Peering out the van’s tinted windows, we saw red flags everywhere. And I mean real red flags, the Chinese national flag. Chinese flags plastered on billboards, Chinese flags hanging from lampposts, Chinese flags attached to traffic lights, Chinese flags hanging over seemingly every business or home.

There were gigantic billboards lining every road with what looked to be propaganda. It was hammer and sickle, commie stuff, Chinese characters with lots of exclamation points and brave, happy peasants working under or saluting the omnipresent red flag.

Looking at the Chinese flag, the Welshman whispered into my ear that the flag was Mao’s bedsheet dipped into a pool of blood, and that Mao had run, like a cricket bowler, and launched himself into the sky, snatched five evil dwarf stars from space and then crashed back to Earth, slapped the evil stars onto his blood-soaked flag. Welshman said he’d read something about that in a book by a Chinese dissident.

“Ma Jian is my favorite Chinese writer,” Welshman whispered, panning his snarling mug back toward the passing scenery of wintery plains and spiraling swaths of snow-capped mountains. 

The Welshman was a bit of a bookworm, read a lot, unlike me, who’d read some, but was more into nonfiction and thrillers, the page-turner, Tom Clancy stuff. The Welshman read fucking Russian, French, and Indian novels and shit… However, you probably wouldn’t pin him as a reader, if you saw him walking down the street. Given his perpetually scowling Sid Vicious face, you’d think of him, likely, as a ruffian. And you’d also be right. The Welshman was really a case study of interesting dichotomies... 

The Welshman pointed out that every street sign was tri-lingual, with the Chinese characters atop, in the largest type, then the Tibetan script underneath, roughly half its size, and English, smooshed to the bottom, even smaller. “The irony is didactic,” mumbled the Welshman, as he angled his handheld digital camera, pressed it to the van’s windows, snapping pics like a seasoned traveler.

Arriving in downtown Lhasa, I found the city itself to be a dichotomy, a curious amalgamation of modern and ancient. Modern, glassy boxes of buildings were situated next to slanted roof, chalk white structures; knots of Buddhist monks in saffron robes played on cell phones in front of golden, triangular temples, constructions that appeared over 1000 years old; elderly street hawkers, with faces worn as an old leather glove, wrapped almost like mummies in countless layers of clothes, the hawkers squatting on tiny plastic stools, curbside, the hawkers with colorful blankets unfurled and piled with vegetables or fruits or handicrafts to sell to passersby, the hawkers adroitly operating smartphones, accepting mobile phone, digital payments… It was quite a scene…

Driving by a temple, we passed a group of lumpy elderly women, their bodies wrapped in heavy orange shawls. They were facedown, prostrating on the street, outside the temple. I’d never seen anyone prostrate. One of the other Brits exploded in laughter, upon witnessing the women throwing themselves, crawling on their bellies through the icy muck of the street.

“What is that shite?” he asked himself, through gasps of cackling, high-pitched laughs... The Brit had a narrow, ruddy face and a frohawk style haircut that made him look sort of like a chicken…

“They’re prostrating,” spat back the Welshman, sounding annoyed.

“Prostrating? What’s that?” the laugher queried, speaking in one of those London accents that omitted every hard “T”. “Prostra..ing,” he chirped, but after realizing his ignorance, the Londoner’s laughter quieted and slowly died.  

“It’s a religious thing,” returned the Welshman, sneering and pointing his camera at the prostrating women.

I’d half-expected the Welshman to crack a dark joke about it. But he didn’t.

 

We then arrived at our hostel. The place was a total dump. It had graffiti written on the walls and stank like a pungent mixture of cigarettes and unwashed ass.

After we checked in, our tour guide, a local Tibetan, a chunky, 30ish, sad-faced man, pulled the Welshman aside and whispered something, the guide speaking with a somber expression.

The Welshman stepped back over to us, with a pained face. He said something about how we needed to keep quiet about political matters. That the tour guide had done 3 years in jail because he got ratted out for criticizing the Chinese Communist Party, saying something he claims he never said, and it had taken 3 years in jail for it to be cleared up, so we needed to be careful how we spoke during our trip.

(Yeah, like, I’d noticed immediately something was off about the tour guide, man. He had the thousand-yard stare and spoke mechanically. He never smiled. His lips weirdly twitched. His dark brown face, especially his eyes, looked droopy, like an invisible weight were pulling them downward. He had unevenly buzzcut hair, color-clashing clothes, tattered sneakers, and his yellow jacket was zipped up to his chin. His head seemed to be bloated, like the size of a pumpkin, really unnaturally large, even for his heavy-set body... He just didn’t look right, not at all… Man, I bet the poor fuck was tortured like a bastard for years in that Chinese prison. We all really pitied him after learning his past, laying our eyes on him as if he’d been a holocaust survivor or some shit…)

“A fucking cultural genocide,” mumbled the Welshman, as we hauled our heavy backpacks, wheezing as we trudged up three flights of twisting, narrow stairs, to settle into our dingy rooms.

 

Shortly after getting situated in the hostel, our guide took us out on a short drive around downtown Lhasa.

Man, it was amazing. It was sort of like I’d have imagined India to be, except colder and less populated. It was more modern than I’d envisioned, too, full of shiny new cars, vans, buses, trucks, and motorbikes. And there were no animal-pulled carts or rickshaws, either, like I pictured. Except for the bicycle driven rickshaws, though, which, like, at that altitude, those dudes pushing and pedaling those bicycle rickshaws had to be stronger, more jacked than even the most roided-up Lance Armstrong…

The traditional Tibetan buildings around the city were similar to other Asian buildings I’d seen, with the triangular, sloping roofs. But they were slightly different, had a chalkier white exterior, smaller windows, and loads of bright orange prayer flags hanging from their upcurved eaves.

Lhasa was turning out to be a bustling, lively little place, with tons of restaurants, tiny shops, street vendors, people in brightly colored garb, puffy sheep fur jackets, turban type head wraps and various colorful ethnic clothes.

(With their explosions of radiant colors, the woven patterns on their loose, long-sleeved robes, their wide-brimmed hats, plaited hair, beads, precious stones, glimmering jewels and finery, the Tibetans, reminded me, in a way, of Native Americans… And I spotted one Tibetan woman, in a purplish red robe, who was wearing a headdress that was similar to a Jamaican beanie, and I couldn’t help but wonder if she was a fortuneteller of some sort, maybe the Tibetan reincarnation or sister spirit of Miss Cleo…)

All of Lhasa’s winding streets and curving alleys seemed to be leading to the Jokhang Temple, which was the heart of the city, both spiritually and economically.

The temple was where our short driving excursion ended. We parked across the street from it, got out, set out on foot and perused the rows and rows of stalls outside the temple’s gates. The stalls were selling items to the masses of tourists (who were mostly Tibetans), hawking stuff like Buddha-themed souvenirs, Tibetan knickknacks, prayer wheels, and local food, largely consisting of dumplings stuffed with yak meat.  

As we walked through the rows of souvenir stalls, toward the imposingly tall, golden temple gates, which were glowing effulgently in the cold sun, we encountered more folks out front, Tibetan pilgrims, predominantly elderly, in black robes, who were prostrating, chanting and crawling on their bellies, through the streets beside the temple entrance… None of us said a word as we walked by, shifting our paths to avoid them, their bodies undulating and sliding as if submerged in water…

Our guide then brought us inside, took us on a tour of the Jokhang Temple, shepherded us around. It was astounding. Beyond words, really. There were bald-headed monks in saffron robes chanting Buddhist mantras as we walked in. I got goosebumps, stepping in there, for real. It was like a scene from a movie, like Indiana Jones or something. To a man, in our group, we were all pretty speechless, in awe of it…

The Jokhang Temple has an impressively long history. Our guide said it has stood in various forms since 652, and the Welshman whispered something to me about how it was a miracle the place survived the Cultural Revolution, when mobs of angry young communists were running amok, all over China, smashing up every temple in sight…

The temple was jam-packed with people, largely Tibetan pilgrims, Buddhists, who were there to pray. Long lines of worshippers were streaming in and out of the temple gates, crowding and moving in masses through the halls, rooms, and spaces. Practically every inch of the place was peopled.  

We carried forward, amongst the knots, like passengers in a packed train station. The temple was like a maze. It was disorienting, overwhelming, and incredible, with twisting, turning halls and corridors that were brimming with statues, paintings, writings in Sanskrit. The halls and corridors were somehow narrow yet vast, infinite yet still somehow small...  

Throughout the temple, there were Tibetans on their knees, chanting, bowing to Buddha statues, bowing and praying to and with the monks. The Tibetans were really into their prayers too. Their bodies electrified as they knelt. The monks sitting there all cross-legged and Buddha-like, too, were the epitome of Zen. It was quite a sight. The monks’ and pilgrims’ chanting reminded me somewhat of preachers speaking in tongues. But, really, it was nothing like you’d ever see in America…

The temple was simply magnificent. Man, like, I’d seen gorgeous churches in Europe, but I’d never witnessed anything that could compare to this temple, certainly not in terms of exoticness. It had these intricate frescos of scenes from Buddhism, and immaculate, brightly painted red, gold and green wooden beams, and various Buddha sculptures sat everywhere.

We trudged up a steep stairway to a rooftop deck, took a look at the peaks of the Himalayas that ringed around the temple. I noticed that the temple’s roof was gilded, and part of it looked to be made from pure gold. I couldn’t imagine how they’d constructed it, with that much gold. It looked like more gold than I’d seen in every gangsta rap video ever made. I think Trinidad James would die from a euphoric heart attack if he ever saw it…  

I wanted to ask the guide more about the temple’s construction, but he’d stopped to pray with a monk. He was on his knees, his eyes shut, and was chanting, rocking back and forth, and so I didn’t think it was the ideal time to disturb him.

A feeling surfaced in me, like, how peaceful this was, the temple, how chill. Unlike Christian churches, with the bloody Jesuses hanging overhead, the Buddhist imagery seemed so… serene. It seemed to be about life rather than death and purgatory. That was the vibe I got from it, anyway, and I appreciated it…

Not only was visiting the temple incredible, but the smell inside, oh man, it was unforgettable. The monks were burning incense, “joss sticks,” everywhere, plus some other sort of stuff that I couldn’t identify. As we made our exit, clumped amongst another surging mass that pushed toward the gate, I asked the tour guide about the unique scent, and he said it was yak butter.

Like, wow, the stuff had the most pungent smell to it. The smell crawled and nestled itself in my nostrils, clung to my clothes. It was stronger than any cigarette smoke, as if the scent were a power of its own. Everywhere in Lhasa, I noticed it, that same smell, that cloying, heavy scent of yak butter. At first sniff, it repulsed me, but pretty soon I got used to it, and even started to like it...

Walking out of that temple, our group was dead quiet. I think we were all experiencing a touch of sensory overload. It blew me away, really, that something so beautiful, intricate, and incredible could actually exist.