Journey To The West (Part One)

Episode 11 

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For any mighty river, it all began with a single drop of water from somewhere. When the river flooded like a beast destroying everything in its path, those who desperately ran for their lives couldn't imagine that everything was caused by a tickling sound deep in the mountains. The thunder roared, the storm wept, but people feared the sky above the clouds the very most. Water is the reason why there are lives, and it is also the reason why one day everything living beings cherish the most will perish.

No river would keep flowing without a source. For rivers Indus, Brahmaputra, and Ganges, it all began with the melting glaciers of the mighty one in the background of Lake Manasarovar. As for Lake Manasarovar itself, nobody knew where its water came from. There was no point of entry for water to flow into the lake, nor was there any exit for water to flow out of the lake. There was only one connection to Manasarovar, and that was another giant lake next to it called Lake Rakshastal. However, the dark colored Rakshastal was believed by Tibetans to be poisonous and demonic, as the lake was too salty to nurture any lives. This was in sharp contrast to Manasarovar, where lives flourished by its vast shores and was considered by people of many faiths holy and pure. The two lakes were connected by a small stream in between, but for thousands of years Manasarovar remained pure to its heart, but Rakshastal's chaotic nature wasn't changed a bit as well. Right over the stream that connected the two lakes there was the Chiu Gompa. Built on a high cliff, the monastery stood in the pure barrenness like a beacon of hope. 

He raised his head the first time in a long period to look at the Chiu Gompa right above him. On the roof of the monastery he noticed that a group of bald eagles were staring at him. 

They are waiting for me to die, so they can eat my body.

But he knew that it wasn't the time for him to die yet.

Not far in distance, an elder was held by two younger men in their arms and  was slowly walking towards the shore of Lake Manasarovar. From the three people's looks, he thought they must be Hindu pilgrims. He had never seen one in his life before, but he knew that many Hindus from the other side of the Himalayas also saw the mighty one and Lake Manasarovar as something very special. 

A strong gust swept through him, cutting his face like a sharp knife. But none could be compared to the knife fate had stabbed in his heart. The next moment, he realized the elder was looking at him. The elder's long hair draped down like branches from a withered tree. When their eyes met, the elder tried his very best to make a sincere smile from his pale and weak face. He acknowledged the elder's friendly greeting by simply nodding at him. But he noticed that the two younger men holding the elder looked rather anxious. 

A loud thunder suddenly shocked him. 

Right behind the Chiu Gompa, dark clouds in the background formed a giant cluster of smoke. Many people he met on his way told him that the mighty one was somewhere in the cloud, but no one had seen it for a very long time. 

He hesitated a little bit. Unsure whether he should continue to seek Mahākāla for the explanation of all the tragedies that happened to him. Then the image of his children and wife appeared in his mind.

The crusade must go on.

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Part One: River



"That one is Cho Oyu, the sixth highest mountain in the world".

However, nobody was paying attention to what our guide just said. Everyone appeared to be very exhausted from the bad sleep from the night before at the Mt. Qomolangma/Mt.Everest Base Camp.

A Tibetan house and Cho Oyu

Outside the window, it was miles of alpine desert. Nobody knew exactly how big it was. The only thing we knew was that at the end of it there were mountains, and on the other side of the mountains was a different country called Nepal. 

The road we were on from Mt. Qomolangma

Alpine desert and towering mountains. Nepal is on the other side

The vehicle suddenly stopped, we all stepped out for some fresh air. 

Alpine desert in Tibet

Underneath the cliff where we stood was a creek. If your eyes followed the curves of the creek all the way to its source, you would find a giant peak right in front of your eyes. The peak juxtaposed with the barren surroundings,  where miles of yellowish rocks dominated the scene for as far as one could see.

Cho Oyu

"What is that mountain?" A voice from our group asked the guide.

"That one? It's  Cho Oyu, the world's sixth highest mountain."

The road we traveled and Cho Oyu

The creek and its source

Despite not falling asleep, I was a bit suprised to find out that the mountain in front of my eyes was the Cho Oyu. It just looked so much different from the one I saw earlier. I asked the guide why this Cho Oyu looked so different from the other Cho Oyu. He told me that I would find out a bit later on.

The landscape of Tibet resembled that of.....Mars

Ruins and the high mountains

We headed back to the vehicle and continued our journey towards the West. At one point our driver Tenzin made a sharp left turn. The vehicle went off the road. However, Tenzin kept driving in the untamed land the same way like he was driving on the hardened asphalt. There were no signs telling him where to go. There were no marks telling us where we were. But we trusted Tenzin's knowledge of the area we were in, as most of us had heard countless stories of how people die in places with surroundings like where we were at that moment. 

Suddenly the Cho Oyu I just saw popped up right outside window. Moments later, the Cho Oyu I saw earlier  that day appeared as well, right beside the other Cho Oyu. Tenzin then pulled the vehicle over.

The main peak of Cho Oyu

We all got out of the car. In front of our eyes were the two Cho Oyus I saw. The two peaks shared the very same mountain base, and were connected by a relatively flat middle part. The guide told us that many Tibetan pilgrims would walk through the flat middle part, which was called the Nangpa La Pass to reach Nepal. 

The Nangpa Pass

I suddenly realized how small humans were in compare to the nature. I failed to recognize that both peaks were in fact two parts of the same mountain. It took me at least 100 kilometers and a couple of hours to find out how Cho Oyu really looked like. 

Full view of the Cho Oyu peaks

The frequency of seeing human settlements had dramatically reduced as we kept traveling westwards. However, I noticed that the frequency of seeing ruins had gone up instead. At one point I even saw a village that was built on a ruin. Up till today I still don't know how did the ruins got there. I certainly forgot to ask our guides or the locals while I was there, but I'm sure that there were stories behind every single collapsed wall I saw.

A ruin

A village that's built on a ruin

A Tibetan village

A Tibetan village

Suddenly I saw a police SUV on the side of the road. When our vehicle got close, I realized that it was just an abandoned vehicle. The interior of the car was completely smashed. I thought it had must been left there by the police on purpose to scare those who violet traffic rules in a land where you don't even see any signs of  life, let alone any law enforcement personnels.

A ruin in Tibet

An abandoned police SUV

Later on our guide brought up a very good theory: the government orchestrated the 2008 riot, in which event the Hans and the Hui Muslims residing in Lhasa were attacked by Tibetans. Our guide believed that because the vast majority of Tibetans were Buddhists, they would not even think about committing violent acts, regardless of how much they detest the massive immigration wave of Hans and Huis  into Tibet.  There were some good logics behind the guides' theory. The  government had certainly done some thing very similar before, yet from my observations in the last couple of days I was convinced that the vast majority of Tibetans by nature were peaceful people.

A Shepherd and his sheeps

Roads in Tibet

"If Tibetans were Buddhist, why would they eat meat?" a voice came out from our group.

"As you can see, the natural environment of Tibet is unlike everywhere else. Growing vegetables is very difficult in Tibet. At the same time we need energy to sustain our health, and meat would provide that kind of energy. To be honest, if I don't eat meat, I would feel dizzy all the time like people who just arrived the Tibetan plateau the first time. But we Tibetans don't slaughter though. Like I said before, the Hui Muslims slaughter the yaks for us". Our guide answered.

A Shepherd, a village, sheeps, and mountains

A lone sheep

"So the yak meat Tibetans eat are halal?"

"Yes".

"And I assume you guys don't eat pork as well?"

Yaks and mountain

Yaks, sand dunes, and mountain

"No, we don't eat pork. But you see porks in Lhasa now because the Han Chinese, who eat pork are shipping all the meat from other provinces...........Everyone, look! That's Shishapangma!"

Shishapangma

Out of nowhere, a giant chunk of ice emerged from the horizon.  The 14th highest mountain in the world is the only eight-thousanders that's located entirely in Tibet. We stopped by the highway not only to enjoy the views, but also to wait a little bit as vehicle speed was strictly controlled on Tibetan highways. There were check points where every single vehicle must time in / time out. Being too fast or too slow will incur penalties to the driver. A confused Chinese tourist stopped the car and asked us where Shishapangma was, our guide told him to look no further but the mighty one that was right in front of our eyes.

The main peak of Shishapangma

Soon we reached a crossroad. If we kept traveling on the left we would hit the Nepali border within three hours. If we kept traveling on the right, we would continue our journey in the wilderness for who knows how long. But our driver Tenzin made the choice for us, we stucked to the right.

Road in Tibet

Full view of Shishapangma

Miles later an enormous lake appeared in the valley down below. Despite sitting on a valley floor, Peiku Tso was in fact around 4600 meters above sea level. The sapphire color of the lake was in sharp contrast to the surrounding barren mountains. Because the lake was so high, clouds hovered above the water like they were ready to descend at any time. Not far from the vast shore of Peiku Tso, peaks of Shishapangma hid in the clouds like giants hiding their heads behind the curtains. 

For such a breathtaking place, I noticed that there were no sign of lives. In our shallow and material world, a place like this would be sought after by many. You would expect to see condos being built along the shores of Peiku Tso, and artificial beaches would e would be constructed just for generating  profits.  

While remaining as one of the last true paradises on earth, Peiku Tso was a curse. The harsh environment around it made the surrounding area literally uninhabitable. But when  resources became more and more scarce, human's desire for exploiting the untouched world would become stronger and stronger. As a result, technology advanced to satisfy human greed. One day, even Peiku Tso would face the same fate as other paradises we had already destroyed. 

Shishapangma

We headed back to the vehicle. After miles of pure wilderness, I spotted some tents along the road. For hours we hadn't seen a single village or town. All of sudden I felt that we were heading towards a lower altitude as the mountains around us appeared to be taller and taller. From the slope, I saw a small town in front of our eyes. Our guide told us that the place was called Saga, and we would be staying there overnight.

The sheer size of Shishapangma can be compared with the truck on the bottom left of this picture

Nomadic tents

For every single Tibetan town we passed through, we needed to hand our passports over to our guide so he could register with the local authority. After a quick stop over at the registration station at the entrance to the town, we arrived at a hotel. The hotel was a little bit "strange" - none of the facilities it had actually worked. Our hotel rooms had bathrooms that could not be used. Watertaps that flew no water. A TV that didn't have a plug. Lamps that could not be turned out. For the entire room, there was only one power outlet working, let alone any lightings inside the room. A half-burnt candle in the ashtray  probably had already given away what was about to happen. Beside the ashtray, there was a sign indicating the following:

No Smoking In The Room

Valley near Saga

Upstream of Yarlung Tsangpo

After putting down our luggage, our "evening free time" started. Our guide and driver were nowhere to be found. After gathering everybody, we went for searching a Sichuan restaurant on Ross's Lonely Planet Guidebook.  It was already past 8 o'clock at night. There were only a handful of people on the street, together with cows and dogs roaming on the streets. We followed the map, but we still couldn't find a place. The map told us that the restaurant should be right beside the town's military garrison.

Suddenly we saw a Chinese soldier walking towards us. We asked him about the restaurant, and he told us that he had already past the place. It was a very small restaurant, but he and his colleagues often order pickups from the place.  We went in, and ordered a lot of delicious vegetarian food, possibly some of the best Sichuan food I ever had in my life (yes, in Tibet).
 

The next morning, we went to a small breakfast shop opened by a couple from Henan Province and ordered fried dumplings to eat. I woke up a little bit late, so I ordered some fried pork dumplings to go. Then we went to a shop run by a Hui family to pick up some last minute equipments (gloves, hats, and hiking sticks, for those who didn't bring them). Eventually we went to a grocery store run by a Tibetan woman, where I bought bananas at a price that was even higher than bananas in Canada. When I was paying the shop owner, she pointed at my pork dumplings:

"What are these?"

I told her those were pork dumplings for breakfast, and told her that she could buy them from the Henan couple just across the street from her shop.

"Oh, they just moved here from another province in China last month. They seemed to be very nice people"
 
I asked her whether she had tried them before. She said no, but appeared to be very interested.  I asked her if it was because Tibetans would never eat pork.

"No, Tibetans can eat pork. I don't think there's any traditions or customs that forbid us from eating pork.  Before we didn't have pork, so we didn't eat it. Now we can buy them from the market, so we eat them. But I know the Hui family who run the shop don't eat pork. They told me it's because of their religion."

I told her that the Islamic dietary law does not allow Muslims to consume pork. I also told her what Ramadan was, and how the Muslim family had to observe it on that very day.

"No wonder I haven't seen them for a while. They are very faithful indeed!"

Upstream of Yarlung Tsangpo

The wheels kept rolling west. The landscape became only more and more barren. Looking south, the Himalayas stood like a wall that blocked all the clouds from flowing north. It created a huge shadow zone which resulted in no vegetation growing in the region. Instead, sand spread from the foot of the mighty Himalayas walls all the way to the Trans-Himalayan mountains in the north.  Our guide and driver decided to stop by the sand dunes for a short break.

Sand dunes, a lake, and mountains

Then a line of high-end trucks and SUVs entered the scene. A Land Rover was driven straight into the sands,presumably to show off the vehicle's off-road abilities. However, the driver only found out that his over $100,000.00 ride got stuck and was sinking into the sands. His teammate, who drove a Ford F-150 (which by the way, is considered as a very exotic car in China), hooked the Land Rover with two sturdy steel cables. After some time and a lot of gas wasted, the Land Rover was able to get out of the hell. The Land Rover driver learned that it wasn't a good idea to play around with nature in a cruel setting like Tibet. The luxury vehicle fleet ran away like an army that was brutally  defeated. 

A village at the foothill of a sand dune

We followed the luxury fleet on the road, though our vehicle was anything but luxurious. At one point all of us stopped. It was a check point. Our guide once again collected our passports, and went into the check point station. We waited there for about one hour, but there were no sign of our guide. 

Barren landscape in Tibet

Wild donkeys

Suddenly we were directed into a lane at the check point station. Right outside the window I saw some Tibetans squatting near the wall, like they were under some sort of arrest. A Chinese soldier in combat suit carrying an automatic rifle came into our view. He first saluted the driver, and asked the driver to hand over the driver's identification card. However, he did not return the ID back to the driver right away. Instead, he circled around the vehicle, and studied everyone in the vehicle. Eventually he stopped at the door of our vehicle.

A military post in Tibet

The door opened. A military helmet appeared. The next thing I saw was a People's Liberation Army military personnel with a deadly gun inside our vehicle.

(To Be Continued In Part 2)