10NOV06 Monks, Momos and Monasteries.



Monks, momos (meat or vegetable filled dumplings) and monasteries are just some of the things that characterize Tibet, along with the daily hundreds of pilgrims at the Jokhang Temple and Potala Palace in Lhasa.

The Jokhang is the first and most sacred temple in Tibet, the heart of the old Lhasa. Originally founded in the 7th century by the first Tibetan king, Songtsen Gampo, and has been built in many stages, with major extensions and remakes in the 17th-18th centuries.
Because the temple is not controlled by a particular sect of Tibetan Buddhism it attracts adherents of all the sects as well as followers of Bon-Po, Tibet's indigenous religion. Three pilgrimage circuits exist in Lhasa, each directing pilgrims to the Jowo Sakyamuni statue: the Lingkhor, which encircles the city’s sacred district; the Barkhor, which encloses the Jokhang temple; and the Nangkhor, a ritual corridor inside the Jokhang. Every day throughout the year hundreds of pilgrims circumambulate each of these three circuits. Some pilgrims will cover the entire distance by prostrating every few feet, and others will walk slowly, chanting sacred mantras and spinning hand-held prayer wheels. For more than a thousand years, millions of pilgrims have trod these sacred paths with incredible devotion and piety. The flagstones close to the main entrance of the Johkang attest to this history, their surfaces polished by the countinuous rubbing of pilgrims that prostrate stretching their body on the ground. Around the Jokhang you can meet pilgrims coming from all the regions of Tibet, wearing their characteristic regional dress and ornaments.


Other than the pilgrims that populate the Barkhor area surrounding the Jokhang Temple, are the vendors selling souvenirs from prayer wheels and colorful prayer flags to t-shirts, incense and jewelry. Tourists sometimes join in the prayer and pilgrimage around the temple and other holy sites as well. I took the opportunity to do as the pilgrims and circled the Jokhang and the Potala palaces. It was quite an amazing feeling being part of the swirling mass of people. I definitely felt like I was really experiencing Tibet by taking part in this centuries old tradition.

10NOV06 Yak Butter Tea.
I finally got my first taste of yak butter tea - a black tea made with salt & yak butter. It's a funky combo that the Tibetans love, but foreigners mostly hate. Butter tea is an indispensable part of Tibetan life. Since yak butter is the main ingredient, butter tea is a very warming drink and a good antidote to the cold, and very well suited to high altitudes. When you enter into a Tibetan house you will be gently constrained to drink the notorious Tibetan tea.

I thought it was fine, for the most part, although the biggest problem is that once you've taken a sip they come and refill your cup, so it's impossible to finish. According to the Tibetan custom, butter tea is drunk in separate sips, and after each sip the host refills the cup to the brim. Thus, the guest never completely drains his cup; rather, it is constantly topped up. One quickly learns that if the tea is not to their preference, the best thing to do is leave the cup untouched until the time comes to leave and then drain the bowl. In this way etiquette is observed and the host will not be offended.

09NOV06 Day Two - The Tibetan Plateau.
When I awoke on the second morning and I was in awe of the landscape: Outside was a startlingly different world, a landscape of stark beauty and ruggedness. In the early hours of the morning we had crossed the Kunlun Mountains and arrived on the Tibetan plateau, the highest major land mass on the planet.

Departing Beijing through the countryside, the sky had been hazy and yellow, the light flat and dull. Now the sky was an almost painfully deep blue, the landscape was sharp, bright and deeply etched. Jagged white peaks where crowned in gold as the first light of dawn spread across their ridges.


The plains were treeless and gently rolling with a million colors, all of them variations of brown: coffee, tan, taupe, chestnut, khaki, chocolate, terra cotta, beige, sand. From the mountains and rock outcroppings hung long strings of tattered, sun-bleached prayer flags, fluttering in the winds. When we passed our first yak, I fumbled for my camera, and the waiter in the dining car watched me and grinned: Yaks in Tibet are as rare and exotic as cows are in Alberta. By the time we pulled into Lhasa, I'd seen thousands, perhaps tens of thousands.

Extra oxygen on board

The highest point on the rail line, the Tangu La pass, is usually listed as 16,640-feet. But the map in my Lonely Planet guide places it at 16,994.75 feet, which means passengers -- especially those in the upper bunks -- poke their heads above 17,000 feet. The actual Tangu La railway station, at 5,068 m in elevation, is the world's highest, surpassing Cóndor station, at 4,786 m, on the Rio Mulatos-Potosí line in Bolivia, and La Galera station at 4,781 m in Peru.

One thing is certain about the Tibetan Plateau: The human body was never designed to rocket up to an elevation this rarefied this quickly. The atmosphere here holds between 40 and 50 percent less oxygen than at sea level. Extra oxygen is pumped into the unpressurized rail cars as they roll across the Tibetan plateau, but wasn't clear that id did that much good. All around me in the dining car, passengers were suffering the hangover-like symptoms of altitude sickness: throbbing headaches and severe nausea. One by one they staggered off to the bathroom.

I was feeling relatively chipper due to Diamox, a prescription drug that prevents altitude sickness. Even so, I was lightheaded and a little dizzy, and found that I'd been reading the same sentence in my paperback over and over. For just a second I couldn't remember my wife's name (JUST for a second!). However, I never did feel quite uncomfortable enough to use the oxygen hose which had been distributed to each passenger cabin. I knew that while it would clear my mind temporarily, the effect would last only as long as I breathed oxygen from the hose; the moment I stopped, my lightheadedness would return, and would only prevent my acclimatization to the altitude.

The surrealness was heightened by what looked like hundreds of enormous golf tees lining the tracks. These are a cleverly designed engineering attempt to solve the railroad's most challenging problem, and one that may ultimately prove to be its undoing.

Over 650 km of track lie atop a particularly unstable form of permafrost that thaws during the day and freezes at night, causing the tundra above it to rise and fall by 5 to 10 cm. To try to prevent sections of track from buckling and cracking, Chinese engineers elevated more than 175 km of it and installed the giant "golf tees" along other stretches. These are cooling pipes that use solar energy to turn liquid ammonia into gas, chilling the ground and preventing the permafrost from melting.

Some Chinese engineers have worried publicly that if the climate continues to warm, the railroad could be unusable in less than 50 years. The Swiss engineers may have been right after all!

By the end of the second day, the train had descended into the Lhasa Valley and the more manageable altitude of 12,000 feet (3,650 m). At around 10 pm we arrived at the end of the line and the Lhasa Railway Station, a symbolically imposing and modern structure visible from almost any point in the valley.




A quick bartering session with the locals, a fistful of Yuan and 20 minutes later, our small group of foreign trekkers had been delivered to our respective lodging, ready to re-group later for a celebratory feast of Yak Soup and Lhasa beer!

08NOV06 Day One on the "Sky Train".

It was 9:30 p.m. and dark when I joined the mob swarming onto the train at the airport-like Beijing West Railway Station, not far from Tiananmen Square. Opened in early 1996 after three years of construction, it is the largest railway station in Asia. It was expanded in 2000 and can now handle 300,000 passengers daily.

When it was first built it suffered from a leaky roof. To further complicate matters, it was built on mud and is currently sinking. According to locals, the building was poorly built due to corruption and bribery, and is expected to have a greatly shortened life due to its poor construction.


Once aboard, there wasn't much to do but show my ticket to the conductor (much to my annoyance, he didn't even bother to ask for my "Tibet Permit" which I had spend considerable money and effort to secure!), find my compartment and try to get some sleep. I was in soft-sleeper class, the most luxurious accommodation, with four bunk beds to a compartment. (Hard-sleeper compartments have six less-comfortable beds, second class has sit-up-all-night seats and "hard class" is often standing room only.)
I had a lower berth -- the top ones looked like hell to climb up to -- with a flat-screen TV (Chinese programming only) and a socket for the oxygen hoses that would be issued later. First thing I noticed: There is no place to store luggage. I shoved my bulky duffel down to the end of the mattress and curled up with my knees against my chest.

My roommates were a Chinese couple from Xining, and they stayed up all night chatting and watching TV. I was outvoted two to one, so the compartment's light stayed on. The were quite friendly in fact and very knowledgeable about Lhasa and Tibet having spend many years there themselves so in the end, and in spite of the night light, they proved very helpful in planning various parts of my trip. They would depart the train the next day upon in arrival in Xining, affording me the luxury of the entire sleeper car to myself!


Each rail car on the "Sky Train," as the Chinese call it, has a trio of sinks, a hot-water dispenser and two bathrooms -- one Western, one squat. They were all open and spotless when we boarded, but it didn't stay that way for long. As far as I could tell, they quickly locked the western toilet leaving only the Asian squat-style toilet open - presumably so that the service staff would only have one toilet to maintain! Word to the wise: Bring your own toilet paper.

Tai chi and Budweiser

I awoke next morning to the sight of the green Chinese countryside rolling past my window. There were a few interesting vignettes of rural life -- a man in a Chairman Mao suit riding a bicycle, corn laid out to dry, a sod-roof house with a satellite dish, piles of coal lumps tucked into corners and against buildings -- but the scenery was only mildly captivating. The sky was filled with a yellow-brown haze as we passed through series after series of industrial towns. During a stop in Lanzhou -- said to be one of the most polluted cities in the world -- Chinese men and women stepped off the train to perform tai chi on the rail platform.

In the dining car, which was outfitted with white tablecloths and silk roses, it took a while to interest one of the servers in bringing me a cup of tea and Chinese breakfast. The menu, inexpertly translated into English, offered such delicacies as "steamed weever" and "potherb mustard shrimps and bean crud." The most popular beer for sale, oddly, was Budweiser. At 10 RMB I was easily converted from my westcoast micro-brew ways to the "king of beers".

The dining car was filled with a mix of Chinese businessmen and upper-middle-class Chinese tourists. Later, a quartet of Tibetan Buddhist monks in burgundy robes stopped by, and a couple of Americans. I met Guido, an ex-pat Italian graphic designer, currently based in Paris but travelling in Asia, who had with him such a mass of electronic devices and wires to connect with his Powerbook that I immediately knew that I had found a kindred spirit! We hung out there sharing photos, travel stories and technical know-how until it was time to return to our compartments.

08NOV06 The Tibet Railway - an engineering marvel with political baggage

Beijing-Lhasa, The Qinghai-Tibet Railway - The highest railway in the world climbing up to 5,200 m (Tanggula Mountain Pass).

It is, by any reckoning, one of the great engineering feats of our age. Over the last five years, more than 100,000 workers have worked to build the US$4.2-billion engineering miracle that traverses the 1,140 kilometres of mountains and permafrost between Tibet's capital, Lhasa, and the Qinghai frontier city of Golmud, where existing track runs to Beijing. The railway extends over the Kunlun Mountains and across the Tibetan plateau, through some of the highest, coldest and most forbidding real estate on the planet.
Now the trains are running every day—and during the peak tourism season of May to September, they are delivering 1,000s of tourists to this ancient city.


Maybe trains were not meant to go this high.
That's what Swiss engineers concluded when they were brought in to consult more than a decade ago, and the Chinese are taking conspicuous delight in proving them wrong. Building a railroad into Tibet has been the obsession of every Chinese leader since Chairman Mao, and this past July they finally succeeded.

If anyone was up to the task, it was the Chinese. After all, it was Chinese laborers who built the most difficult parts of Canada's transcontinental railroad. Many at the expense of their lives.

For those looking for a novel way to visit one of the world's more remote corners, the new express train to Tibet offers an extraordinary trip. From the ubiquitous oxygen outlets to the vacuum flush toilets, from the flat screen TVs in Soft Sleeper Class to the tracks anchored in the shifting permafrost, the "Sky Train" as China calls it is a marvel of modern engineering.

But the trip comes with some heavy political baggage. The Chinese government says it will help invigorate Tibet's economy. But critics say it threatens to crush a Tibetan culture already weakened by 56 years of often harsh Chinese rule.

With additional trains planned for the 2007 season, running from Shanghai and Guangzhou to Lhasa, and destined to deliver 1,000s more passengers daily to this fragile landscape, I was determined to visit Tibet at my earliest convenience to observe the impact for myself.

08NOV06 Blogging in the P.R.C.

I've been away almost one week now, with great ambitions to document my travels on the web via Blogger and have quickly come to learn that blogging, like many other things here, is tightly managed by the government.
Controls on access to the web and various "blacklisted" websites has meant that, alas, http://rantsofants.blogspot.com is not able to be viewed by my friends here in China. Apart from the ongoing frustration in getting even the most basic post published - without images - I do find it amusing that somehow, my little website is deemed subversive enough to be blocked from general access here!
Guess I'll just have to update my travel journal when I get back to Canada later this month.

07NOV06 One Day in Beijing
With only one day in Beijing before departing on the new train, I was determined to pack in as many activities as I could! Jetlagged, I awoke early and left my hotel at 7am, walking the 10kms from my hotel to Tianamen Square, the Forbidden City and the People's Hall. Lovely clear and sunny day to join the hordes of Chinese tourists sightseeing in the capital city.


I was quite intrigued by the model Potala Palace that been constructed by the Central Goverment on the fringe of the square, one of the great wonders of "China". The original Potala Palace in Lhasa was built in 641 by Songtsan Gambo, ruler of the Tubo Kingdom, for his new bride, Wen Chen Konjo (Princess Wencheng) of the Tang Dynasty. The Potala Palace has always been the political and religious center of Tibet and home to the Dalai Lama since the fifth Dalai Lama (1645-1693). In 1994, the Potala Palace was declared the United Nations World Cultural Heritage site. It is widely considered to be the world's first "skyscraper" because of it's height and complex construction.
This smaller version was built to commemorate and promote the new Beijing-Lhasa rail service which started this past July, and which I would be riding later that day. Ironic really, considering that the cost of this train is far beyond the means of the average citizen here, and a picture in front of this "Mini-Potala" sitting in Tianamen Square would be as close to Tibet as most of these people would ever get. (On the left-side of the photo you can see the "Great Hall of the People", erected in 1959, the site of the China National People's Congress meetings and an important site for other political and diplomatic activities.)

In contrast to the original Potala Palace in Lhasa (photo taken by me during this trip, Tibet blogs are coming soon.)

Later in the day, I did a rush trip to the Badaling Section of the Great Wall, approximately 70kms outside Beijing city. The Great Wall of China was built mainly to protect the Chinese Empire from the Mongolians and other invaders. The Wall has been periodically rebuilt and modified throughout history by each reigning Chinese dynasty. There are huge discrepancies regarding the length of the wall. Estimates on it's length range between 3,000 to 6,000 kms. Putting this into perspective, the distance from Vancouver to Halifax is approsimately 6,300 kms - that sure is one great wall!
Historical records report that at least one million slaves and prisoners of war were used to create this defensive wall. Many laborers died from exhaustion and starvation while working on this colossal task, and their bodies were added to the rubble and masonry as the quickest means of disposal. For centuries, the Wall was known as "the longest cemetery in the world."

Board the train to Lhasa tonight!

07NOV06 Departure to Beijing, Shanghai and Tibet

I departed from Vancouver to Beijing yesterday Sunday, November 5th. Prior to arriving in Shanghai for business at the China International Tour Market (CITM) I've decided to ride the new Qinghai-Tibet Railway, and I'll spend the better part of a week in Tibet exploring Lhasa and the surrounding area.

My pre-trip preparations were all made in great haste the week before departure, and in spite of the fact I only received final confirmation of my train ticket and Tibet Pass the day before my departure, I'm ready for a great adventure to one of the highest cities in the world, via the most spectacularly engineered railway in the world! In true Anthony style, I've packed pretty much everything but the kitchen sink!