Not wanting to, and conveniently not being able to afford the ludicrous amount of money charged for a “tour” into Tibet, we opted instead to visit Western Sichuan province. When most people hear the word “Tibet” they think of Lhasa and the region known as the Tibetan Autonomous Region of China, as seen on our maps. What most people don't realise though, is that when China claimed Tibet as part of its own, they were so desperate to prove to the world that it really was Chinese, that they pretty much destroyed Lhasa, imported lots of Han Chinese people to live there and rebuilt the city in classic Chinese city style – boring concrete buildings. As our host from shangrila said “In Lhasa you can still find some people who speak Tibetan!” emphasis on some people.... However, when the Chinese maps were drawn up, some traditionally Tibetan regions were merged into already existing provinces, such as Sichuan, Gansu, Qinghai etc. As the map marks them as clearly being Chinese regions, the Chinese government didn't feel the need to prove this to the outside world and so has left them almost completely untouched. As we were interested in seeing how the real modern day Tibetans live, and not the ones for show in Lhasa, we chose to explore Western Sichuan instead.
Already at a crazy high altitude leaving Shangrila, we weren't too surprised to be stuck in “yak jams” for sometimes up to 20mins while the Tibetan nomadic herders moved their herd of yaks, sometimes carrying all the families belongings strapped on their backs along the narrow ridge that doubled as a road! The 7 hour trip to XIANGCHENG was simply stunning and we passed through one amazingly high and serene mountain range to the next. Over snow capped peaks, through raging gorges, and across hand thatched bridges dangling above frozen lakes and rivers. The trip was worth it itself.
Eventually we arrived at Xiangcheng, not much more than a little town with a beautiful but sadly, freshly destroyed monastery, about half way between Shangrila and our destination, Litang, but it was a nice place to spend the night. A night in Xiangcheng and we were on the road by 5am, and at -15C in a minivan with windows that wouldn't close, and a driver who wouldn't stop smoking, on our way to LITANG. Litang was simply beautiful. At 4100m altitude, the air is just sparkling clear, the stars amazingly bright, the wind chillingly cold, and the sun surprisingly hot! We were surprised to find ourselves sweating and walking around in t-shirts in the -1C daytime temperature! That is, until you cross a stretch of shade and then the -1C becomes -5C and you shiver and freeze and throw the layers back on as quickly as you can! All whilst trying to breath and stopping to catch your breath every 20m or so! It was a very unique experience. The town is literally a 1.5 street town. That's it. 1.5 streets! Every where you look Tibetans from various tribes and with variously decorated hair and dressed in traditional clothing are walking up and down the 1.5 streets doing laps of the town with prayer wheels spinning and fingering prayer beads as they chant softly to themselves.
We were lucky enough to be invited to witness a sky burial on our second morning. A sky burial is the highest honour that can be bestowed upon a Buddhist person and is a highly sacred ceremony. Buddhists believe that as soon as a person dies they are instantaneously reborn, rendering the body nothing more than a shell. They have no attachments to this shell as the person who used to occupy it has already left and moved on, and so, in keeping in line with their harmony with nature, very highly regarded members of society, or monks, are fed to the vultures. Firstly 108 (the Buddhist holy number) cuts are made into the flesh whilst family members look on and chant, occasionally shooing a bird away, and then the monk steps back and in less than 5 minutes, there is only a perfect skeleton remaining. An amazing reminder about just how delicate our “shells” are and how easily they can be gone. After all the skin and flesh has been removed and consumed by the vultures, the bones are ground up and mixed with a sweet paste and fed to the vultures again, so that, after no more than 15mins, there is absolutely nothing left. No bones, no skin, no blood, no fingernails, nothing. We felt honoured to witness the ceremony, humbled to see the close connection with nature the people have, and overwhelmed by the amount of restraint and non-attachment they showed. It really made us think about our own mortality, and at the same time, how beautiful it was that they surrender their bodies back to feed the earth.
Litang was a very special place and we learnt a lot about ourselves and our beliefs.
We had originally planned to visit a few more traditionally Tibetan areas, but then roh got sick.
In the space of about 1 hour, he went from completely fine, to coughing, struggling to breath, cold sweats and a fever of 39.6C. By the next morning he couldn't breath without Ventolin every half an hour, couldn't stand or eat, and had a raging fever of 39.9C! A new personal high for poor sick rohroh...
Being a 1.5 street town, I called the insurance company to try to find a hospital, and to my surprise was told there was one in town! Having thoroughly explored the 1.5 streets my heart sunk at the realisation that we were probably headed not for a “hospital” as I was hoping, but a tiny clinic. The “hospital” consisted of a 10m x 10m group of trees with a half metre high concrete wall around them, 1 building on the left side with no windows or doors (the in-patients block!!) and 2 tin sheds. A guy from the hotel offered to translate and led us into 1 of the tin sheds. Already the alarm bells were going off in my head but we went inside and sat down next to a doctor who put a thermometer in roh's mouth and then left it there for 15mins!! Eventually I asked the Dr if he could take the thermometer out yet, to which he kinda shrugged his shoulders and asked our translator what his temp was. 39.8C. The translator explained roh's symptoms to the doctor and then, without touching roh or listening to his chest the diagnosis was made:
DR: He is a foreigner (um, no shit?!!?)
ROBYN: Yes he is. So why is he sick?
DR: because he is a foreigner
ROBYN: Sorry what? Yes he is a foreigner but why is he sick?
DR: (rolling his eyes) He is sick because he is a foreigner!
ROBYN: I'm sorry, I don't understand....
DR: (rolling his eyes and speaking in a very matter of fact way) It is very high here and very cold and he is a foreigner, that is why he is sick.
ROBYN: But I'm also a foreigner and i'm not sick?!
DR: Yes, you will be sick too because you are a foreigner.
ROBYN: (growing more and more impatient and trying not to laugh at the same time) Um, there is a Tibetan lady at our guesthouse who is sick too? She's not a foreigner....
DR: Really, a Tibetan? Okay then, we will give him Antibiotics.
ROBYN: (screaming in her head) What?!?! You weren't even going to give him antibiotics?!?
And so roh was led to the nurses station where a drip containing something colourful was put into his hand.
And then he was handed the drip bag.
And then he was shooed outside.
Not quite sure why we had been told to go outside we looked around, and then realised that everyone else was sitting around the trees, on the cement wall, and with their drips hanging from nails in the trees!!!
OMG !
And so rohroh with a 39.8C temperature was left outside in the wind and -1C shade to sit on cement with his drip hanging from a tree while a little kid with a drip in his forehead pooed all over the ground metres away, for 3 hours!!
By the end of it, my head was pounding as well and by next morning I too had a fever of 38.8C. I guess the doctors prediction was right!
Getting nothing but worse and with no intentions to ever go back to that same hospital again, we called the insurance company and they agreed to move us to the closest big hospital, 2 days by overland travel away!! Great.......
Day 1 was meant to take 5 hours but took 11 in a minivan with smoking Tibetans insisting on having their windows down! I'm sure the trip was beautiful but we were both waaay too sick and pumped full of the maximum number of drugs possible to notice. Day 2 was meant to take 7 hours but took 9. By the time we finally arrived to Chengdu it was 6pm at night on the 2nd day of continuous travel and we were delirious from the drugs, the fevers, the sudden rush to oxygen to the head (4100m to 100m) and sooooo excited to have a hot shower and sleep in a warm bed in a heated room. The next day we took ourselves to the hospital and after a couple of tests and a doctor who actually understood that being a foreigner wasn't a disease, we were diagnosed as having chronic upper respiratory tract infections, bronchitis and were told we were about 1 day away from pneumonia. Nice...
Feeling like shit we spent about 7 days in bed before we even had the strength to leave the guesthouse! When we did eventually leave we took a day trip to visit the massive Leshan Buddha, and then jumped on a train back to Nanning to recuperate.
China is a massive country, and there were lots more places we had planned on seeing, but all our energy was zapped from us when we were sick, and well, roh by that point was just simply sick of china! As beautiful a country as it is, you have to fight to get anything and everything done. Han Chinese people are habitually lazy and corrupt, and unless you yell and kick up a fuss, they simply wont do anything. They will look at a light bulb and tell you its broken, whilst holding a spare globe in their hands, they will tell you the trains are full, without looking at the computer screen, they will tell you the bus is going to point A, when in fact its going to point C, they will sit in your seat and then have a massive hissyfit if you ask them to move, and they will even tell you that being a foreigner is a disease.
We made lots of great friends in China, had some fantastic times, learnt to speak Chinese, visited some beautiful places, had some amazing experiences, mastered the ancient Chinese art of yelling at people, enjoyed teaching and working, raised a stray kitten and drank lots of Tsingtao beers in our beergarden. Maybe one day we will be back to see what we didn't see this time, but then again, as the plane took off from Guilin Airport, roh's middle finger rose from his fist as he whispered, half in promise, half in dare “F++k you China! I'm never coming back!” So maybe we wont be either....
Already at a crazy high altitude leaving Shangrila, we weren't too surprised to be stuck in “yak jams” for sometimes up to 20mins while the Tibetan nomadic herders moved their herd of yaks, sometimes carrying all the families belongings strapped on their backs along the narrow ridge that doubled as a road! The 7 hour trip to XIANGCHENG was simply stunning and we passed through one amazingly high and serene mountain range to the next. Over snow capped peaks, through raging gorges, and across hand thatched bridges dangling above frozen lakes and rivers. The trip was worth it itself.
Eventually we arrived at Xiangcheng, not much more than a little town with a beautiful but sadly, freshly destroyed monastery, about half way between Shangrila and our destination, Litang, but it was a nice place to spend the night. A night in Xiangcheng and we were on the road by 5am, and at -15C in a minivan with windows that wouldn't close, and a driver who wouldn't stop smoking, on our way to LITANG. Litang was simply beautiful. At 4100m altitude, the air is just sparkling clear, the stars amazingly bright, the wind chillingly cold, and the sun surprisingly hot! We were surprised to find ourselves sweating and walking around in t-shirts in the -1C daytime temperature! That is, until you cross a stretch of shade and then the -1C becomes -5C and you shiver and freeze and throw the layers back on as quickly as you can! All whilst trying to breath and stopping to catch your breath every 20m or so! It was a very unique experience. The town is literally a 1.5 street town. That's it. 1.5 streets! Every where you look Tibetans from various tribes and with variously decorated hair and dressed in traditional clothing are walking up and down the 1.5 streets doing laps of the town with prayer wheels spinning and fingering prayer beads as they chant softly to themselves.
We were lucky enough to be invited to witness a sky burial on our second morning. A sky burial is the highest honour that can be bestowed upon a Buddhist person and is a highly sacred ceremony. Buddhists believe that as soon as a person dies they are instantaneously reborn, rendering the body nothing more than a shell. They have no attachments to this shell as the person who used to occupy it has already left and moved on, and so, in keeping in line with their harmony with nature, very highly regarded members of society, or monks, are fed to the vultures. Firstly 108 (the Buddhist holy number) cuts are made into the flesh whilst family members look on and chant, occasionally shooing a bird away, and then the monk steps back and in less than 5 minutes, there is only a perfect skeleton remaining. An amazing reminder about just how delicate our “shells” are and how easily they can be gone. After all the skin and flesh has been removed and consumed by the vultures, the bones are ground up and mixed with a sweet paste and fed to the vultures again, so that, after no more than 15mins, there is absolutely nothing left. No bones, no skin, no blood, no fingernails, nothing. We felt honoured to witness the ceremony, humbled to see the close connection with nature the people have, and overwhelmed by the amount of restraint and non-attachment they showed. It really made us think about our own mortality, and at the same time, how beautiful it was that they surrender their bodies back to feed the earth.
Litang was a very special place and we learnt a lot about ourselves and our beliefs.
We had originally planned to visit a few more traditionally Tibetan areas, but then roh got sick.
In the space of about 1 hour, he went from completely fine, to coughing, struggling to breath, cold sweats and a fever of 39.6C. By the next morning he couldn't breath without Ventolin every half an hour, couldn't stand or eat, and had a raging fever of 39.9C! A new personal high for poor sick rohroh...
Being a 1.5 street town, I called the insurance company to try to find a hospital, and to my surprise was told there was one in town! Having thoroughly explored the 1.5 streets my heart sunk at the realisation that we were probably headed not for a “hospital” as I was hoping, but a tiny clinic. The “hospital” consisted of a 10m x 10m group of trees with a half metre high concrete wall around them, 1 building on the left side with no windows or doors (the in-patients block!!) and 2 tin sheds. A guy from the hotel offered to translate and led us into 1 of the tin sheds. Already the alarm bells were going off in my head but we went inside and sat down next to a doctor who put a thermometer in roh's mouth and then left it there for 15mins!! Eventually I asked the Dr if he could take the thermometer out yet, to which he kinda shrugged his shoulders and asked our translator what his temp was. 39.8C. The translator explained roh's symptoms to the doctor and then, without touching roh or listening to his chest the diagnosis was made:
DR: He is a foreigner (um, no shit?!!?)
ROBYN: Yes he is. So why is he sick?
DR: because he is a foreigner
ROBYN: Sorry what? Yes he is a foreigner but why is he sick?
DR: (rolling his eyes) He is sick because he is a foreigner!
ROBYN: I'm sorry, I don't understand....
DR: (rolling his eyes and speaking in a very matter of fact way) It is very high here and very cold and he is a foreigner, that is why he is sick.
ROBYN: But I'm also a foreigner and i'm not sick?!
DR: Yes, you will be sick too because you are a foreigner.
ROBYN: (growing more and more impatient and trying not to laugh at the same time) Um, there is a Tibetan lady at our guesthouse who is sick too? She's not a foreigner....
DR: Really, a Tibetan? Okay then, we will give him Antibiotics.
ROBYN: (screaming in her head) What?!?! You weren't even going to give him antibiotics?!?
And so roh was led to the nurses station where a drip containing something colourful was put into his hand.
And then he was handed the drip bag.
And then he was shooed outside.
Not quite sure why we had been told to go outside we looked around, and then realised that everyone else was sitting around the trees, on the cement wall, and with their drips hanging from nails in the trees!!!
OMG !
And so rohroh with a 39.8C temperature was left outside in the wind and -1C shade to sit on cement with his drip hanging from a tree while a little kid with a drip in his forehead pooed all over the ground metres away, for 3 hours!!
By the end of it, my head was pounding as well and by next morning I too had a fever of 38.8C. I guess the doctors prediction was right!
Getting nothing but worse and with no intentions to ever go back to that same hospital again, we called the insurance company and they agreed to move us to the closest big hospital, 2 days by overland travel away!! Great.......
Day 1 was meant to take 5 hours but took 11 in a minivan with smoking Tibetans insisting on having their windows down! I'm sure the trip was beautiful but we were both waaay too sick and pumped full of the maximum number of drugs possible to notice. Day 2 was meant to take 7 hours but took 9. By the time we finally arrived to Chengdu it was 6pm at night on the 2nd day of continuous travel and we were delirious from the drugs, the fevers, the sudden rush to oxygen to the head (4100m to 100m) and sooooo excited to have a hot shower and sleep in a warm bed in a heated room. The next day we took ourselves to the hospital and after a couple of tests and a doctor who actually understood that being a foreigner wasn't a disease, we were diagnosed as having chronic upper respiratory tract infections, bronchitis and were told we were about 1 day away from pneumonia. Nice...
Feeling like shit we spent about 7 days in bed before we even had the strength to leave the guesthouse! When we did eventually leave we took a day trip to visit the massive Leshan Buddha, and then jumped on a train back to Nanning to recuperate.
China is a massive country, and there were lots more places we had planned on seeing, but all our energy was zapped from us when we were sick, and well, roh by that point was just simply sick of china! As beautiful a country as it is, you have to fight to get anything and everything done. Han Chinese people are habitually lazy and corrupt, and unless you yell and kick up a fuss, they simply wont do anything. They will look at a light bulb and tell you its broken, whilst holding a spare globe in their hands, they will tell you the trains are full, without looking at the computer screen, they will tell you the bus is going to point A, when in fact its going to point C, they will sit in your seat and then have a massive hissyfit if you ask them to move, and they will even tell you that being a foreigner is a disease.
We made lots of great friends in China, had some fantastic times, learnt to speak Chinese, visited some beautiful places, had some amazing experiences, mastered the ancient Chinese art of yelling at people, enjoyed teaching and working, raised a stray kitten and drank lots of Tsingtao beers in our beergarden. Maybe one day we will be back to see what we didn't see this time, but then again, as the plane took off from Guilin Airport, roh's middle finger rose from his fist as he whispered, half in promise, half in dare “F++k you China! I'm never coming back!” So maybe we wont be either....
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