Festival of Yoghurt
They say we've seen the best parts of China, that the rest of it is just an endless sprawl of identical, concrete cities. It's just as well really, since we've decided to ditch our trip through the rest of China. We have a new plan, a far more exciting plan. But I'm getting ahead of myself ...
Shigaste is a town. A real town, with busy streets and buildings over one storey high. It's definitely Tibetan but the Chinese brute force modernisation is once again evident. The town is divided into a modern but ugly Chinese part, and a quirky but dirty Tibetan part.
We are still suffering from massive hangovers when we arrive, a little momento from Latse. We check into the first place available. It's a decent enough hotel in the old part of town. It has showers and that's about all we need.
It's not until lunchtime the next day that we are in any state to see the local sights. Before we get too cultural though, we manage to find a classy restaurant selling western food (or close enough anyway). It's the first "real" food we've seen in weeks.
Glover and I order up two hamburgers. When they arrive we discover that they are in fact Yak burgers, with a nice juicy chunk of Yak steak as the pattie. We devour them. Then we order two more. Like I said, it's the first real food we've seen in weeks and we are gaunt, like two escapees from the local prison camp.
Shigatse is home to a large monastary, called Tashilhunpo. It's a decent construction at the base of a mountain. This is (or at least was) the main hang out for the Panchen Lama. The Panchen Lama was the Dalai Lama's side kick in one of his previous lives. In his more recent reincarnations he is seen as the second in charge for Tibetans. His kidnapping by China, at the age of six, has put a hold on that though.
We make the pilgrimage around the monastary. A nice hike with good views of the city, though the extra weight of our Yak burgers slow us down. The entire path is lined with large golden prayer wheels that we spin as we make the walk. The path finishes up at the ruins of a once impressive palace that sits alone on a hill towering over the old part of town. The ruins are now covered in bright prayer flags.
After the pilgrimage we enter the monastary itself. There's a very non-Buddhist cover charge and Ben and Riva decide to pass. Glover and I go in and are visually impressed but emotionally underwhelmed. The place has a strange fakeness to it. This feeling is not helped at all by the monks sitting out the front selling "protective medallions" in little plastic wrappers for two dollars each.
We stay in Shigaste only the one day. We have some small business to take care of: I have two days before my visa expires. We jump the bus to Lhasa, the capital of Tibet. It's another marathon eight hour bus ride on bad roads. The "Friendship Highway" linking Shigatse to Lhasa is under repairs.
In Lhasa we find another bustling city, with a population of some 200,000. The Chinese presence is even more evident here, with the now familiar concrete new town, and pokey little old town.
As a result of our usual excellent planning and organisation we have timed our arrival with one of Lhasa's big festivals. The Xodoin festival, or Yoghurt festival in English, is some sort of celebration to do with monks not coming outside at this time of year for fear of treading on and killing insects. To somehow compensate them for being locked inside, the benefactors of the monastary feed them yoghurt (or more correctly translated, sour milk).
This is a great cultural experience for us and we are lucky to arrive in time for it. The only draw back is that every hotel in town is booked solid. Both foreign tourists and Tibetans alike have swarmed to the city to celebrate this most excellent occasion.
After tramping around the city for several hours, getting more rejections than we average on a Friday night out, we finally score a room. We stay in a new and virtually unkown Indian hotel buried in the very back of the old town. It is near a monastary (one of many in Lhasa) and by the time we check in we have completed the pilgrimage around this monastary at least twice.
The next morning we are up at five to catch the festivities. We take a taxi out to the main monastary, pay the merchant monk his ten dollars entrance fee (scoring a free multi-media CD as part of the ticket!) and follow the thousands of pilgrims heading up the steep hill to the monastary. It's still dark as we follow the dirt and stone path up, and only the press of the crowd stops us from falling over.
The sun comes up as we reach the top. We are standing on the edge of a steep cliff looking down on the monastary a few hundred meters below. We take a seat amongst the crowd of Tibetan festival goers. There are thousands of them, all in their best clothes (i.e. the ones with the brightest colours - vibrant reds, blues and yellows). They throw prayer cards into the air and they flutter like hyper-coloured leaves in the wind.
After some time the music starts. A cacophony of slow, drawn out horns - like the baying of a dying yak - accompanied by half hearted drum beats with no detectable rhythm. It's my kind of music (as in the kind I could play, rather than the kind I'd like to listen to).
A procession of monks, dressed in the customary red and yellow robes, make their way through the crowd. They are carrying a furled poster some fifty meters in width. They reach the bottom of a huge structure of scaffolding, pushing their way through a veritable mosh pit of pilgrims.
The lead monk carries a huge yellow umbrella and as he passes, the crowd throw strips of white material (from where we sit it looks suspiscously like bog roll) over his shoulders. By the time he reaches his destination he looks like the Sorbent equivalent of the Michelin Man.
From the top of the scaffolding a group of twenty or so monks throw down ropes to the monks below. At first we think that a bit of monk abseiling is planned, but alas it is not to be. The monks at the bottom tie the ropes to the furled poster. The monks at the top then haul on the ropes, revealing the poster bit by bit.
It is a huge depiction of a monk (assumably Buddha) sitting in the standard cross legged position. In his lap is the all important bowl of yoghurt symbolising this great ceremony. The crowd go wild as the image is revealed, throwing prayer cards into the air and hurling more white bog roll onto the huge poster.
Huge mounds of incense are lit and the entire mountain is covered in a thick, pungent haze. The crowd begins to move. The faithful make their way under the massive poster and on to complete the pilgrimage around this huge monastary. Thousands of people push and shove each other along goat tracks cut across the steep hills. With the bright colours, the smoke, the hoard of shoving people and the deep sound of the horns, the entire scene is like a riot at an English football match.
We join the press of people flooding past us. We are herded along the path, up steep hills, over loose rocks and all the while on the edge of a sheer drop to the rocks below. People slip and fall on each other. At each turn, burning mounds of incense fill the air with smoke so that we can barely see a few meters in front of us. We emerge choking and coughing onto the high ground.
It takes more than an hour to finally reach flat ground. Here the pilgrims claim space on the ground and spread out picnic blankets. From all accounts this is how they will spend the rest of their day. We unfortunately have no picnic food with us and the festival is over for us. We make our way back to town for lunch.
The Yoghurt festival continues for a week but this is the only public ceremony we find. I guess the rest of the celebration is private. No one knows what those monks get up to with all that yoghurt.
I focus on other matters. My all important visa. The Police office was shut on our arrival on the 14th and was of course closed for the festival on the 15th. It's now the 16th and my visa is offically expired. I'm once again illegally travelling through China for the second time in only three weeks.
Luckily the Police really don't care, or perhaps can't add up to work out that my visa is expired. It may have something to do with the abusive Europeans in the office at the time, getting angry about some permit prices or something. The little Chinese woman who serves me seems to be just glad that I'm not yelling at her. In any case I escape with a ten day visa extension and no fine. A friendly tip for all travellers: a smile gets you a long way, yelling just ups the price.
Our plan is to fly to Beijing and work our way down the East coast. We have to tick off all the required Chinese sights: The Great Wall, The Terracotta Soldiers, Shanghai, Hong Kong, etc. They have some appeal, but from the reports of other travellers, China really is a monotony of big concrete cities. Even for us, Shigatse and Lhasa have blurred into one and we are strangely unenergetic and unmotivated.
We go in to book our flights only to find that the festival has made this difficult too. To get to Beijing we will have to spend a week in Lhasa. In fairness, Lhasa is a nice town with plenty to see and do but really we are done with it. As Dai said, after endless days of rolling foothills on our journey here, "It is very beautiful, but I am full".
We check the map. Apparently there is a closed road that we can hitch on to get to Chengdu. It's at least three days however, on roads possibly even worse than the ones we've been on. Fines are high if we are caught. The monsoon season has just started and avalanches are common. At the end of the hitch we end up half way down China, meaning we have to travel up and then backtrack down. It's an option but not a good one.
Then we realise something: just south is Everest and past that is Nepal. Tourists are making trips to Everest basecamp and the Nepalese border from Lhasa, maybe we can head there. We do the research. It's possible. What's more, after Nepal is India, from all accounts one of the most interesting places in the world. After that is Bangladesh, Burma, Thailand and the rest of South East Asia. China begins to look very dull. Our Way is obvious.
So now we are travelling in a jeep (luxury!) to the Nepalese border with a new plan and fresh energy. Tonight we stay in Shigatse once more. Tomorrow, after passing through Latse (where Glover and I intend to wear hats and dark sunnies so as not to be recognised) we should arrive at the base of Mount Everest and the Nepalese border.
There does seem to be a slight problem getting into Kathmandu at the moment. The Maosist, a popular Nepalese terrorist group, have set up a blockade, demanding the release of political prisoners. I'm sure they will let us through however - who wouldn't?
Shigaste is a town. A real town, with busy streets and buildings over one storey high. It's definitely Tibetan but the Chinese brute force modernisation is once again evident. The town is divided into a modern but ugly Chinese part, and a quirky but dirty Tibetan part.
We are still suffering from massive hangovers when we arrive, a little momento from Latse. We check into the first place available. It's a decent enough hotel in the old part of town. It has showers and that's about all we need.
It's not until lunchtime the next day that we are in any state to see the local sights. Before we get too cultural though, we manage to find a classy restaurant selling western food (or close enough anyway). It's the first "real" food we've seen in weeks.
Glover and I order up two hamburgers. When they arrive we discover that they are in fact Yak burgers, with a nice juicy chunk of Yak steak as the pattie. We devour them. Then we order two more. Like I said, it's the first real food we've seen in weeks and we are gaunt, like two escapees from the local prison camp.
Shigatse is home to a large monastary, called Tashilhunpo. It's a decent construction at the base of a mountain. This is (or at least was) the main hang out for the Panchen Lama. The Panchen Lama was the Dalai Lama's side kick in one of his previous lives. In his more recent reincarnations he is seen as the second in charge for Tibetans. His kidnapping by China, at the age of six, has put a hold on that though.
We make the pilgrimage around the monastary. A nice hike with good views of the city, though the extra weight of our Yak burgers slow us down. The entire path is lined with large golden prayer wheels that we spin as we make the walk. The path finishes up at the ruins of a once impressive palace that sits alone on a hill towering over the old part of town. The ruins are now covered in bright prayer flags.
After the pilgrimage we enter the monastary itself. There's a very non-Buddhist cover charge and Ben and Riva decide to pass. Glover and I go in and are visually impressed but emotionally underwhelmed. The place has a strange fakeness to it. This feeling is not helped at all by the monks sitting out the front selling "protective medallions" in little plastic wrappers for two dollars each.
We stay in Shigaste only the one day. We have some small business to take care of: I have two days before my visa expires. We jump the bus to Lhasa, the capital of Tibet. It's another marathon eight hour bus ride on bad roads. The "Friendship Highway" linking Shigatse to Lhasa is under repairs.
In Lhasa we find another bustling city, with a population of some 200,000. The Chinese presence is even more evident here, with the now familiar concrete new town, and pokey little old town.
As a result of our usual excellent planning and organisation we have timed our arrival with one of Lhasa's big festivals. The Xodoin festival, or Yoghurt festival in English, is some sort of celebration to do with monks not coming outside at this time of year for fear of treading on and killing insects. To somehow compensate them for being locked inside, the benefactors of the monastary feed them yoghurt (or more correctly translated, sour milk).
This is a great cultural experience for us and we are lucky to arrive in time for it. The only draw back is that every hotel in town is booked solid. Both foreign tourists and Tibetans alike have swarmed to the city to celebrate this most excellent occasion.
After tramping around the city for several hours, getting more rejections than we average on a Friday night out, we finally score a room. We stay in a new and virtually unkown Indian hotel buried in the very back of the old town. It is near a monastary (one of many in Lhasa) and by the time we check in we have completed the pilgrimage around this monastary at least twice.
The next morning we are up at five to catch the festivities. We take a taxi out to the main monastary, pay the merchant monk his ten dollars entrance fee (scoring a free multi-media CD as part of the ticket!) and follow the thousands of pilgrims heading up the steep hill to the monastary. It's still dark as we follow the dirt and stone path up, and only the press of the crowd stops us from falling over.
The sun comes up as we reach the top. We are standing on the edge of a steep cliff looking down on the monastary a few hundred meters below. We take a seat amongst the crowd of Tibetan festival goers. There are thousands of them, all in their best clothes (i.e. the ones with the brightest colours - vibrant reds, blues and yellows). They throw prayer cards into the air and they flutter like hyper-coloured leaves in the wind.
After some time the music starts. A cacophony of slow, drawn out horns - like the baying of a dying yak - accompanied by half hearted drum beats with no detectable rhythm. It's my kind of music (as in the kind I could play, rather than the kind I'd like to listen to).
A procession of monks, dressed in the customary red and yellow robes, make their way through the crowd. They are carrying a furled poster some fifty meters in width. They reach the bottom of a huge structure of scaffolding, pushing their way through a veritable mosh pit of pilgrims.
The lead monk carries a huge yellow umbrella and as he passes, the crowd throw strips of white material (from where we sit it looks suspiscously like bog roll) over his shoulders. By the time he reaches his destination he looks like the Sorbent equivalent of the Michelin Man.
From the top of the scaffolding a group of twenty or so monks throw down ropes to the monks below. At first we think that a bit of monk abseiling is planned, but alas it is not to be. The monks at the bottom tie the ropes to the furled poster. The monks at the top then haul on the ropes, revealing the poster bit by bit.
It is a huge depiction of a monk (assumably Buddha) sitting in the standard cross legged position. In his lap is the all important bowl of yoghurt symbolising this great ceremony. The crowd go wild as the image is revealed, throwing prayer cards into the air and hurling more white bog roll onto the huge poster.
Huge mounds of incense are lit and the entire mountain is covered in a thick, pungent haze. The crowd begins to move. The faithful make their way under the massive poster and on to complete the pilgrimage around this huge monastary. Thousands of people push and shove each other along goat tracks cut across the steep hills. With the bright colours, the smoke, the hoard of shoving people and the deep sound of the horns, the entire scene is like a riot at an English football match.
We join the press of people flooding past us. We are herded along the path, up steep hills, over loose rocks and all the while on the edge of a sheer drop to the rocks below. People slip and fall on each other. At each turn, burning mounds of incense fill the air with smoke so that we can barely see a few meters in front of us. We emerge choking and coughing onto the high ground.
It takes more than an hour to finally reach flat ground. Here the pilgrims claim space on the ground and spread out picnic blankets. From all accounts this is how they will spend the rest of their day. We unfortunately have no picnic food with us and the festival is over for us. We make our way back to town for lunch.
The Yoghurt festival continues for a week but this is the only public ceremony we find. I guess the rest of the celebration is private. No one knows what those monks get up to with all that yoghurt.
I focus on other matters. My all important visa. The Police office was shut on our arrival on the 14th and was of course closed for the festival on the 15th. It's now the 16th and my visa is offically expired. I'm once again illegally travelling through China for the second time in only three weeks.
Luckily the Police really don't care, or perhaps can't add up to work out that my visa is expired. It may have something to do with the abusive Europeans in the office at the time, getting angry about some permit prices or something. The little Chinese woman who serves me seems to be just glad that I'm not yelling at her. In any case I escape with a ten day visa extension and no fine. A friendly tip for all travellers: a smile gets you a long way, yelling just ups the price.
Our plan is to fly to Beijing and work our way down the East coast. We have to tick off all the required Chinese sights: The Great Wall, The Terracotta Soldiers, Shanghai, Hong Kong, etc. They have some appeal, but from the reports of other travellers, China really is a monotony of big concrete cities. Even for us, Shigatse and Lhasa have blurred into one and we are strangely unenergetic and unmotivated.
We go in to book our flights only to find that the festival has made this difficult too. To get to Beijing we will have to spend a week in Lhasa. In fairness, Lhasa is a nice town with plenty to see and do but really we are done with it. As Dai said, after endless days of rolling foothills on our journey here, "It is very beautiful, but I am full".
We check the map. Apparently there is a closed road that we can hitch on to get to Chengdu. It's at least three days however, on roads possibly even worse than the ones we've been on. Fines are high if we are caught. The monsoon season has just started and avalanches are common. At the end of the hitch we end up half way down China, meaning we have to travel up and then backtrack down. It's an option but not a good one.
Then we realise something: just south is Everest and past that is Nepal. Tourists are making trips to Everest basecamp and the Nepalese border from Lhasa, maybe we can head there. We do the research. It's possible. What's more, after Nepal is India, from all accounts one of the most interesting places in the world. After that is Bangladesh, Burma, Thailand and the rest of South East Asia. China begins to look very dull. Our Way is obvious.
So now we are travelling in a jeep (luxury!) to the Nepalese border with a new plan and fresh energy. Tonight we stay in Shigatse once more. Tomorrow, after passing through Latse (where Glover and I intend to wear hats and dark sunnies so as not to be recognised) we should arrive at the base of Mount Everest and the Nepalese border.
There does seem to be a slight problem getting into Kathmandu at the moment. The Maosist, a popular Nepalese terrorist group, have set up a blockade, demanding the release of political prisoners. I'm sure they will let us through however - who wouldn't?
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