Tibet Summary

 Our group, BK on the right, Rob in blue at the back.

Our driver Tenzing, our Tibetan guide Wangee and our CEO BK.

 The omnipresent poster of the Chinese leaders.

 Clear meaning, but interesting translation.

 Peek-a-boo!

 This was the only family of beggars we saw in Tibet.

A sky burial site.

Summary

‘Tibet, is a plateau region in Central Asia and the indigenous home to the Tibetan people. With an average elevation of 16,000 feet, (4,900 meters) it is the highest region on earth and is commonly referred to as the "Roof of the World." China, which presently controls Tibet, maintains it is a province-level entity, the Tibet Autonomous Region’.

My trip to Tibet was amazing from start to finish. I loved the people, the country, the historical places we visited and the people I was travelling with. I didn’t mind the cold, after all I am Canadian, and really by Canadian standards it wasn’t that cold. But after spending months in hot countries, this was a bit of a shock. The biggest problem is the altitude. I found it hard to adjust and everything that required effort left you gasping for breath. Thankfully I was not the only one, but still it hampers the experience a little bit.

I know that the plight of Tibet is a very contentious subject. I don’t want to offend anyone, I am just reflecting on what I saw and experienced in my short time in Tibet. I was aware of the Chinese presence and by observation and questioning BK and others I came up with this summary.

I was travelling with a great group of international travellers, one of whom was my room mate Rob from Belgium. He was terrific. We got along very well right from the get-go. The first day when we both arrived well before the initial start-up meeting, I asked him if he wanted to go exploring and he did. We had a great day together, which really set the tone. We share a similar sense of humour and interests. He is another wide world explorer.

This was a GAdventure trip and our Chief Experience Officer was the incomparable Baikuntha Simkhada, or BK. One of the reasons I like this type of tour, is that you get a local guide who knows the country. Well, in this case we got a guide who knows more about Tibet than most Tibetans do. BK has made 78 trips to the county, has studied there, learned there, and speaks the local language. He would very much like to live there and has applied but that kind of visa is very hard to get. He never got ruffled by anything we did and displayed incredible patience. He explained very well all of the ins and outs of travelling in Tibet and being under the noses of the Chinese. Frequently he went into the kitchens of the places where we ate to make sure the food was prepared properly for us and the water was fully boiled. He helped them with preparation and often worked as a waiter too. He was known and respected by all of the restaurants and hotels we went to.

We all know of the Chinese invasion of Tibet in the 1950’s. We know the charismatic face of the Dalai Lama and his continued drive for a free Tibet that is supported by entertainers and international personalities such as Richard Gere. But the reality is that the Chinese run the show and I cannot foresee anyway that is going to change anytime soon, or later.

I don’t want to go into the whole history of conflict between Tibet and China, as others have reported much better than I could. The conflict is long and complicated. Here is a website that provides more than enough information for those interested:

www.newworldencyclopedia.org/entry/Tibet

Our trip, although a GAdventure tour had to have a Chinese supported Tibetan guide and driver. They accompanied us everywhere. They had to be with us every step of the way from the airport when we arrived until the airport when we left. They took us through every check point where the authorities checked our group visa and sometimes our individual passports. If that was the case, we had to line up in the order that we appeared on the group visa. I was number four, right behind Yannick. We were only allowed to go to designated sites. In the major cities though we were allowed to wander around shopping or exploring. We never got a stamp in our passports, as we had a group visa and maybe they realized we wanted a Tibetan stamp, not a Chinese one, and they didn’t want to acknowledge Tibet as a country with a stamp.

The Chinese are omnipresent. There are military and police everywhere. They are in uniform everywhere you look, and presumably there are undercover ones as well. I saw a group of twelve go by carrying full riot gear including shields. They are at every check point, market, monastery, temple and shopping areas. The civilian Chinese population is approaching half of the total population of Tibet, which will make the Tibetans a minority in their own country.

We were warned by BK not to speak about politics in public places and not to put any Tibetan on the spot by asking their opinions of the situation. Either of these situations could get us or local people in serious trouble.

Apparently, there was a device in our van that records pictures periodically of the inside and that the Tibetan guide or driver must submit it to the government. BK said that ‘so far’ they don’t monitor audio.

Every Tibetan house must have a picture of the five Chinese communist leaders in their living room or dining room. The Tibetans of course hate this but have no choice as the police periodically come and check. If they say it is dirty or has been damaged, they are issued with a new one. We saw the same poster billboard sized in many public places. There are Chinese flags everywhere and all signs and posters are written in Tibetan first and then in a larger font in Chinese.

Having said all of that, the Tibetan people did not look oppressed or depressed, as I imagine that would just get them in trouble. And I never felt unwelcome or unsafe, but we were never doing anything we should not have been doing. The one time we were challenged was when Dirk, Nick, Els, Rob and I were walking towards Everest Base Camp and had gotten ahead of the others in the group and our guide who was with them. A police car coming down, stopped and asked us where our guide was, and when we said he was coming behind us, they just drove on.

Playing the devil’s advocate, I asked what BK what he thought Tibet would be like without the Chinese. He said like the town of Gyantse, which he thought was less affected by the Chinese and more traditionally Tibetan. He immediately pointed out that at the time of the invasion Tibet had no electricity and that the roads at the time were very basic. He said that Tibet was a theocratic government and that most of the money was poured into making more monasteries. There were 4000 in the country before the invasion and now they number in the hundreds (after the Chinese destroyed many of them). But they have done some good things too. They have built a lot of infrastructure such as good paved roads, new rails lines, and hydroelectric dams. Whenever someone talks about Chinese investment, it is always around the parameters of: they are not doing it to help the country, but rather to help themselves to the country’s resources. Apparently the two things that the Chinese wanted from Tibet in the first place was access to their water for hydroelectric power and to the raw materials to be mined, such as gold and uranium. So, all of the investment in infrastructure is meant to benefit the Chinese but has raised the standard of living for the Tibetans as well and helped to make the country less isolated and remote.

As soon as we entered Tibet we were aware that this country was clean, there was little visible poverty and that there were many signs of affluence. There was little litter or garbage laying around and the air was much cleaner than Nepal. We only saw one family that was trying to beg from us. BK explained that the Chinese will put anyone to work and there is no shortage of work. The big SUV style cars are all owned by Chinese, and all the western style shops and plazas near our hotel cater to Chinese and have Chinese workers, but this too helps to raise the lifestyle and economy of Tibet and Tibetans.

Other points to reflect on:

Tibetans are very religious. This from a booklet that BK gave me: ‘Tibetan Buddhism is absolutely central and essential to the lives of all Tibetans. There is little ceremony surrounding visits to Buddhist temples and they are generally open and welcoming places. Tibetan offerings include incense, prayer flags, butter (for candles), kataks, repetitious mantras and the spinning of prayer wheels to invoke the gods.’

The Dalai Lama was fifteen when he fled Tibet by horse. The Panchen Lama at the time (religious leader of Tibet with equal rank to the Dalai Lama without the political component), became a hero because he remained in Tibet to serve his people and was imprisoned for years by the Chinese for his efforts.

Although most Tibetans now live in towns and villages, they were originally nomadic herdsmen. As we visited the various pilgrimage sites and towns we saw many different types of tribal and nomadic traditional dress.

Prayer flags always come in strings of five colours in the same order. Each colour represents something, from top to bottom: blue for water, white for air, red for fire, green for wood and yellow for earth.

I mentioned before that all good Buddhists walk in a clockwise fashion around the stupas and temples and someone asked why? The answer is that one does clean activities with the right hand, eating for example and not so clean activities with the left, washing one’s behind for example. Therefore, clockwise offers cleanliness to the buddha.

After death Tibetans are disposed of in four ways:

1)      Cremation, which is the usual form of burial for most Buddhists.

2)      For young children less than 14 years old, the bodies are dismembered and thrown into the rivers, which is referred to as ‘water burial’. This is because they believe the spirit has already left the body, which then has to be disposed of. This also explains why Tibetans don’t eat anything from the water, like fish.

3)      Adults can choose either ‘sky burial’ or cremation. With Sky burial the body is dismembered high on top of a hill and left for birds to dispose of or carry away.

4)      And for the Dalai Lamas and Panchen Lamas, there is stupa burial, where their body is entombed in a large multilayered box. They are thought to be sitting upright inside.

When entering a temple of religious site in Tibet we did not have to take off our shoes unlike Nepal, India and elsewhere. I think this is because the floors are so cold. But we did have to remove our hats.

We saw a number of young children wearing pants that were split open. In this way, the children could relieve themselves without messing their clothes and the parents didn’t have to buy diapers. I saw a few parents holding their children dressed like this over grates in the ground. BK said that when he first started coming to Tibet many adults still wore clothes like this as it was their tradition in the old days.

BK also told us to observe that in a certain area the houses were larger. He explained this was because of a different kind of marriage: Polyandrous marriages one wife multiple husbands, usually brothers. Why? 1) it slows down the process of dividing up arable land between sons, because there is so little arable land and this keeps the farm the same size from generation to generation, and they believe they are keeping their blood lines pure. If there are three husbands, two work in the fields for three months and the other one stays with the wife. Then they rotate. But if she becomes pregnant the others come back and help with the child and claim it as their own as well. The wife tries to make sure she gives each husband a child which further bonds the family. Divorce is unheard of and 60% of marriages in Tibet are still arranged.

The high-altitude medicine that most of us took to help with breathing makes you pee a lot, especially the first few days, which helps your body balance the amount of fluid it needs at this altitude and it sometimes makes your fingers and toes tingle. We all had symptoms similar to this.

In an effort to make the Tibetan plateau less bleak looking and to beautify it by making it more green and attractive the Chinese government is planting thousands of poplar trees. They grow fast and add some greenery, but they are not good as forestry products.

One really interesting fact is that in regard to time zones, China is one country with one-time zone, even though the country is huge. As a result, in the west of China, where we were, the sun comes up late, about 8:00 and no stores are open before 9 and we had trouble getting a restaurant for breakfast early enough for the start of our trips.

Déjà vu? Tibet reminds me very much of Bolivia. The arid landforms and topography, the look of the people, the hats and clothing that they wear, all seem quite similar.

As always with these summaries, I hope I have been clear, but I always feel that there is so much more to say. It is a fascinating country and continues to be one of international interest.