Closing Report -- Tibet Trek 2018 (19-23 June)

There is no real ending.  It's just the place where you stop the story.  ~Frank Herbert

With just one glance back, the yaks lumbered out of our lives forever

This final blog entry covers the final four days of our trip.  I didn't continue my dedicated journaling beyond our last day in mountains.  The mountains were my Tibet.

19 June:

Breaking camp

Gary looking cool just slightly below 15,000'

I shed more than one tear as we broke and packed camp and said goodbye to our camp crew, yak men and yak.  It felt like a forever goodbye to really safe, good and kind friends.

Back in Lhasa (~ four hour van drive -- stopping for lunch en route):  we checked back into the Kyi-chu for showers (it took more than one to get clean), sink-washed some clothes, napped and re-emerged for a quick dinner.

Note: This return to Lhasa is a day early to accommodate our missed visit to the Potala.

20 June:

Drepung

View from the Drepung Assembly Hall

In the morning we visited Drepung Monastery, which is built into a mountainside on what was once a remote site just west of Lhasa center.  In these times, the monastery with its many chapels and universities seems to sprout in a series of white cones (the word drepung is translated as rice heap -- referencing the piled appearance of the white buildings), from its verdant green garden root, which is in turn ringed by the urban bustle of ever-expanding Lhasa.  Once among the world's largest monasteries, now only about 300 monks out of the pre-invasion resident population of more than 7,000 remain. 

In the afternoon we cruised the now somewhat familiar streets of the Tibetan Quarter of Lhasa -- returning to the Barkhor for a few more photos, while Gary, Tinsley and Dharma worked to get our Potala visit back on the itinerary.

21 June:  We convened after a hotel breakfast with the intent of visiting the Dropenling Handicraft Center -- a small and hard-to-locate collection of shops within a shop, promoting the handmade crafts of Tibetans.  This shop is the retail front for a free-trade and handicraft development initiative.  But the Dropenling excursion will have to wait as there is word we can visit the Potala Palace.  

Potala Palace

View of Potala from the street

If you think back weeks now, you will recall our first trip to the Potala failed when the gentleman coordinating our tickets suffered a stroke.  It would seem simple enough to get a refund for those tickets and reschedule -- but in the Tibet Autonomous Region with its strong arm Chinese Government, nothing is easy.  Once our van drops us outside of the palace, our guides begin negotiations with Potala security, ticketing and government representatives to re-purchase the right to purchase our entry tickets (seriously, they had to buy the tickets to buy the tickets).  Complicating things, our permit, which had to be presented to negotiate the purchase and entry, no longer jibed with our itinerary (literally, we weren't where we were supposed to be).  Over nearly two hours and hundreds of dollars (paid in Yuan) on top of our already purchased, non-refundable, beyond-use-date tickets, our guide team finally got us in (to include a scrutinizing wait at the palace threshold to resolve yet another our permit-appearance disagreement).

The Potala Palace is an absolute landmark in Lhasa.  If ever you have seen a picture of the city, you have seen a picture of this imposing structure.  It is a true testament to its size and grandeur that even today, surrounded by the hub of urban Lhasa, it rises above the streets breathtakingly large and beautiful.  The Potala was the home to every Dalai Lama from the fifth to the fourteenth (winter residence only following the completion of Norbulingka in the 18th Century).  The magnificent fortress-like structure includes more than a thousand rooms (only a couple of dozen are open -- leaving many to believe there may be great damage or even evident theft in those unseen).   Photos of the open chambers and temples of the Potala are expressly prohibited -- and there are security cameras at every turn and twist to enforce the rule. 

Bottom line: The Potala Palace was stunning -- even given the crowd, high security, unsettling mix of tourists and pilgrims, and many (many) sealed rooms.  Stunning, but for me, not spiritual.  The uninhabited museum-like atmosphere, gross commercialization, graft and bribery necessary to gain entry and in-your-face Chinese revisionist history of the 1950s liberation of Tibet housed there made my heart ache.

Forget this revisionist history -- our brains may be oxygen deprived, but they're not dead!

22 June: It's a pre-dawn wake-up and breakfast before we're hustled back to Gongkar airport for our return flight to Chengdu.  Back in Chengdu and re-installed at the Jin-Jiang Hotel by mid-afternoon, we make plans to meet for our farewell dinner (Gary, Karl, Cliff and me).  It was a fabulously fun upscale hot-pot dinner where we totally entertained the restaurant staff with our ordering, mimed communication and awkward handling of the cooking process (duck beaks have to cook how long?).

23 June: Our return trip is long, long, long (more books, more movies, more lousy inflight meals).  But, thanks to the International Dateline, we arrive back in Denver the same date we depart China.  We are safely home to Munro and Illy in Santa Fe before midnight.

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Now can I say, Tibet was the trip of a lifetime?  Still too much world to see.  A trip of my lifetime, indeed.  Going there felt important to me.  My Tibet itch is scratched.  I wish we could have visited 20 years ago, glad we didn't wait two more . . .

Today, due to the massive Chinese population transfer, the nation of Tibet truly faces the threat of extinction, along with its unique cultural heritage of Buddhist spirituality. ~ The Fourteenth Dalai Lama