A Presence Challenge

Writing a blog from a journal at the end of a trip is a little like reading the last page of a novel first:  It both enlivens and impoverishes the storytelling.  However, since there is no "unseeing" the future given this approach -- and no way to post a Google* Blog from China -- it is the reality of recounting our Tibet Trekking adventure.  As I post the following blog entries from our journals, I'll endeavor to live in the present (now past) of each entry.

And in spite of this commitment, it inevitably will come through in my writing that traveling in Tibet (perhaps most particularly in the Tibet Autonomous Region) brings starkly into the traveler's view the harsh juxtaposition of Chinese progress/oppression and Tibetan tradition/culture.  While evident from the start, this contrast (and the disturbing feelings it stirred within us) grew each day as we better understood the daily living conditions of the Tibetan people (significantly learned through direct observation and engagement).  This too, I cannot (nor would I choose to) un-see.  It was beyond what any reading or documentary impressed.  As I said more than once on this trip, I wish I could have visited Tibet 20 or more years ago, and I was grateful to have been there now, rather than two years hence as the change seems not only swift, but unstoppable and irreversible. Simply said, it is like Tibet is disappearing.  If you have time, we think taking five and a half minutes to view the (YouTube) trailer from "When the Dragon Swallowed the Sun" (below) will help create context for following the pages.

Finally, trekking in Tibet has felt for us, like the unfinished piece of our trekking in Asia -- living in Korea allowed us to explore and indulge our adventurer's hearts: First being bitten by the trekking bug in Nepal in 1998, and most significantly advancing our experience with our Snow Man Trek in Bhutan in 2011.  Tibet, though, possessed an irresistible allure teasing our imaginations like Hilton's mystical "Shangri-La."

The mountains gleamed around in a hedge of inaccessible purity, from which his eyes fell dazzled to the green depths of the valley; the whole picture was incomparable . . .."  ~Lost Horizon

Of our treks, Tibet -- its people, customs, geography and tradition -- is in deed, incomparable.



* And, oh by the way, if the Chinese people really can't access Google. why do they use the word as a verb?