Exploring Lhasa (and its Nunneries)

Since getting back into Lhasa a couple of days ago, I realized I didn't have enough time to launch another out-of-town expedition - I decided to content myself with exploring Lhasa and places that I could get to and back from in a day. I thought that I'd be bored after a day, but it turns out there's a lot more around here than I realized. I visited the big three Gelupga sect monasteries of Ganden, Drepung, and Sera (well, I'd already been to Sera). I went to Ganden with my college Chinese classmate Yangchen and her dad. Her dad's from Lhasa originally, and he was actually a monk at Ganden for a couple of years before 1959, when he and his little brothers fled (by foot) to India in anticipation of the Red Guard wreaking havoc in Tibet. Turns out that it was a good call - Ganden was almost completely demolished over the course of the Cultural Revolution, and is only now being rebuilt. It was cool hanging out with a Stanford connection over here on the other side of the world; it was also a different experience going to a temple with a Tibetan family, although it did bring it home that I was the only one who got charged entrance fees anywhere.


[Yangchen and I at Ganden]

Drepung was back to the old wandering around by myself routine again - I made the regular circuits of all the important chapels, but began to lose interest after a couple of hours. On my way out, I stopped into one of the smaller colleges to have a last look around, and I once again ended up getting invited in for some tsampa and yak butter tea with one of the monks. I spent an hour or so talking with him; he was a nice guy, and I had to give it to him for being ballsy - he had a big picture of the Dalai Lama up in his quarters, even though pictures of the Dalai Lama are forbidden in Tibet and the PSB is being more strict than ever with the 40th anniversary of the "liberation" of Tibet coming up.


[A couple of friendly monks at Drepung Monastery]


[At Drepung: 1 - Time for a shave, 2 - The monk who invited me up for tsampa and yak butter tea]

On the monastery front, I also checked out two of the smaller monasteries in Lhasa that I've walked by a million times but never gone in. One, the Gyume Lower Tantric College, was in the middle of a full-blown chanting session when I showed up. A family of pilgrims and I got white prayer scarves draped around our necks by one of the priests as we stood at the entrance, so that was a nice touch. Another, Meru Sarpa monastery, was in the middle of an apartment complex tucked back off the main street. There were men from the apartment complex gathered outside playing the dice game I'd seen earlier when waiting for the ferry to Dorje Drak. Later, I found out it's a traditional Tibetan game called sho. I bought a set off the street; it was 120 kuai less than the one in the tourist shop, although it did require two hours and a lot of toothpaste to clean up the coins. One of the staff at the Oh Dan typed me up some instructions and played a couple of games with me to make sure I knew what I was doing.

In my wanderings around Lhasa, I also found this cool place called Dropenling. It's an organization which supports Tibetan artisans and their work, as most of the handicrafts sold on the street are actually shipped in from Nepal, so Tibetans don't see much of the profit (except for the stand owners, that is). It was, as most morally upstanding native crafts organizations are, way out of my price range. I did buy a really cool book of photographs of some of the artisans, which was one of the cheaper options. In their complex, they also had a thangka workshop. Thangkas are traditional Tibetan religious paintings that follow a strict mathematical pattern in which all of the figures are positioned according to a grid that's sketched onto the canvas. In one room, there were women grinding up various substances with huge mortar and pestles to make the pigments (which are traditionally all-natural). In another room, there were some men sketching the outlines of the thangkas and others actually in the process of painting them. As always, there were also a good number of people milling about, smoking and making fun of everybody else.


[At the Dropenling thangka workshop: 1 - Painting a thangka, 2 - Testing out the colors]


[1 - Mixing the paints, 2 - Sketching new thangka designs]

Dropenling is located in Lhasa's Muslim quarter, which in and of itself was pretty interesting to check out. It's not very big, but it is pretty active as more and more people from the interior (especially Gansu province) are moving to Tibet. After eating lots of hand-pulled noodles and wandering around the market stalls there wasn't much for me to see, though, because non-Muslims aren't allowed in any of the mosques.


[In the Muslim quarter: 1 - A couple of guys from Gansu province chilling out, 2 - Herbs for sale]

All of these excursions were fun, but the best parts of the last couple of days have been my visits to nunneries. I don't know why I've only been going to monasteries so far; maybe it's because all of the well-known places are all for men - figures, huh. Anyway, I found out about two nunneries that are in Lhasa or within day trip distance, and both were great experiences. The first one, Sanghkhung Nunnery, was right in the middle of Lhasa's Tibetan quarter. I showed up in the middle of a chanting session, and one of the nuns pulled me down to sit next to her and chant along. She read off the Tibetan first, and then had me repeat it. After about 10 minutes, a big group of Spanish tourists came in, and the nun I was sitting with got about 5 other nuns to sit down with some of the Spanish women and try to get them to chant along. All of the nuns were very amused by the whole scene. The nun I was sitting with used hand gestures to convey that, although I couldn't read, my hearing seemed to be working OK because my chanting was much better than the Spanish women's. I left after about half an hour because it was about dinner time, and I saw them bringing out the tsampa. I both didn't want to impose on their hospitality and didn't really feel like consuming another stomach-full of the stuff.


[At Ani Sanghkhung Nunnery: 1 - The nun who gave me chanting lessons, 2 - Rolling up prayer sheets]

The second nunnery was a fifteen minute bus ride and an hour walk outside of town. It was listed in my book as a side excursion from a monastery (it figures); I visited both the monastery and the nunnery, and the nunnery by far made the most lasting impression. The monastery (Pabonka) was nice enough; it's supposed to be one of the oldest Buddhist structures in Tibet, and I had the good luck of showing up at the same time as one of the monk's nieces, who showed me around. One hour at the monastery was more than enough, but I ended up spending about five hours at the nunnery. The name of the place was Chupsang; at first I thought there wouldn't be much there, as I wound up walking through a residential area for ten minutes before I even saw anybody. I first found a couple of nuns outside a side chapel; they played around with my camera for a while and we all took pictures of each other before they led me to the main assembly hall. Once again, there was a big chanting session going on; it turns out that it was a blessing leading up to their dinner. I got invited to sit down with them as they chanted. This time I didn't chant along; they were chanting much more in unison than the previous nunnery, so the chant and repeat schtick wouldn't have worked. I got fed along with everybody else. Mercifully this nunnery was not serving tsampa; instead they had a dinner of rice, vegetables, and meat (Buddhists here eat meat because they need the protein at this altitude). They did give out hardened sweet tsampa cones later on, but apparently they were to be saved for night-time snacks as everyone just put theirs in plastic bags, tucked them away, and encouraged me to do the same.


[1 - A farmer hard at work while I was hiking up to Pabonka Monastery, 2 - Lunchtime at Pabonka]

The chanting and singing went on for a while, punctuated every once in a while with some of the nuns going around with more food, sweets, yak butter tea, or sweet tea. All the while I was speaking with one of the nuns, Lob Sangh Lhamo (or Trinley Yangkiy - one is her family name and one is her religious name, I'm not sure which is which). She was really quite an amazing person. She had taught herself not only Chinese but quite passable English. Not a single soul in the rest of the nunnery could say anything more than the most basic phrases in Chinese, but she was practically fluent. The only practice speaking Chinese she had was with her sister, who was studying in Lhasa and who would come to the nunnery once a week to help her with her Chinese in exchange for lessons on Buddhism and Tibetan literacy (as school in Chinese-occupied Tibet only uses Chinese script). She had taught herself English out of a couple of 10 yuan English dictionaries that she had bought in Lhasa with her food allowance from the nunnery. She had memorized up to the letter "t" in the dictionary that she was currently using. The only practice she had speaking it was when the occasional foreigner such as myself showed up at the nunnery and she could ask questions. Her pronunciation was pretty amazing; it helped that she'd learned all of the phonetic symbols used in English language dictionaries. Her grammar was also pretty good for not having a single grammar book in her possession - she said that some of the dictionaries had small grammar sections.

There was a short break about halfway through the afternoon, and I was going to go help her outside with some of the English questions she had for me. Unfortunately a Chinese man from Hainan who had come to Tibet to find the "meaning of Tibetan Buddhism" ended up occupying her time as a translator so that he could ask the head teacher of the nunnery inane questions. It was quite frustrating, as he could have found out any of the answers if he would have read a book (he had one with him, so I knew he could read) or even just shut his mouth for a minute and observed - he had been practically shouting over the chanting at points, trying in vain to ask questions in Chinese to the non-Chinese speaking nuns. At least he did add some entertainment value, as all of the nuns were busy making fun of him when he wasn't looking.

In the second half of the afternoon chanting session, a senior nun eventually gave Lob Sangh Lamo permission to go outside with me so that I could help her with some of her English questions. I didn't really have to do much; she already had lists of words which she wanted me to help her pronounce or to use in a sentence. She said she wanted to visit America to learn more English because she had no opportunities to practice here. I asked if she thought she'd want to live in America or if she just wanted to visit; she said that she thought the freedom there must be nice, but she mostly just wanted a chance to learn more. Apparently the Chinese government has banned monks and nuns from going to university, so she can't get any more education while she is in Tibet than what is available at the nunnery. For a monk or a nun who has interests outside of Buddhist teachings, there aren't many resources. It was one of those experiences that everyone has while travelling in which they feel really unfairly priveliged. Yes, I'm smart and I work hard, but I doubt that I would be able to become fluent in Chinese and pretty darn good at English without any help other than a dictionary and the occasional opportunity to practice. So why I am having a ball at Stanford and she's stuck spending her food money on books? Anyway, I promised to send her copies of the pictures I took. Maybe I'll slip some English instruction tapes in there for good measure.


[At Chupsang Nunnery: Lob Sang Lhamo kidding around with a friend]


[Nuns at Chupsang]


[Lob Sang Lhamo]

Well, it's getting late and I've got to get up for a flight tomorrow. Last night I got a military escort home (that is, I ended up behind a troop of PSB officials patrolling the streets making sure everything looked sufficiently patriotic to China). We'll see whether my military buddies show up on my walk home tonight...


[My late-night military escort home]


[The staff at the Oh Dan: 1 - Passang and Dolma, who studied together in a Tibetan school in India, 2 - Dolma and the other girls on staff]

Up to top

Monastery Roadtrip, Part III: Dorje Drak

After a bit of a restless night, I got up early to make my way to Dorje Drak, the next stop on my trip. The weather maintained its consistent pattern of early morning rain and hot, sunny afternoons. That was all well and good for the afternoon bit, but it made my travel in the mornings less than pleasant. I said goodbye to some of the monks (and got fed some tsampa and yak butter tea by the "chi guo le" monk), and then headed out of town. I was hoping that somebody would also be heading out of town at the same time, preferrably with some sort of motorized transport; unfortunately that was not the case. I ended up walking the 7km from the monastery to the main road - at least the rain had calmed down to intermittent drizzling rather than full-blown showers. On the way I passed a tour group bus full of foreigners going the opposite direction. I think they looked a bit sorry for me, walking along in the rain, but I was just as happy to do a little extra bit of walking if it meant I didn't have to be carted around according to a pre-approved tour group schedule.

Once I got to the main road, my hitch-hiking luck picked up. I stuck out my thumb and the first car passing by stopped. It was a luxury SUV with four Chinese businessmen who were just returning from a trip to Samye. Before this point, being in Tibet was making me like Chinese people less and less. All of the Chinese tourists I had encountered were like whiny children whose experience in Tibet never met their expectations. Everywhere I went there were Chinese tourists complaining in high-pitched whiny voices about the slow service at a restaurant, the lack of privacy in a shared dorm room in a hostel, or having to wait in long lines to get into temples because of all of the pesky pilgrims. In Samye I had just about had it as I watched one Chinese tourist, rather than going to the hotel office to find the receptionist, stand in the middle of the courtyard and whine "Fuuuuuuwuuuuuyuuuuuuuuan" (literally, "employee/staff") repeatedly at the top of his lungs until the receptionist came outside to attend to his needs. But now that these guys were giving me a ride for half an hour with air conditioning and leather seats, I suddenly started to feel myself warm up a bit. It also surprised me how comforting it was for me to be speaking Chinese. Now that I was used to being almost completely incapable of expressing myself in Tibetan, the ability to communicate even basic concepts in Chinese was a huge relief.

Anyway, they dropped me off at kilometer marker 112, where I needed to catch the ferry across the Yarlung Tsangpo to Dorje Drak. I got there about noon, and the next boat wasn't leaving until about two. I could charter my own boat for 50 yuan, they said, or I could wait and pay the 2 yuan standard fare. So I sat around and watched two monks and a couple of local guys play a dice game whose rules I never quite figured out while eating instant noodles from the little shop. The ferry ride across was an interesting experience; the ferry was a wooden boat about 30 feet long, onto which we crammed several dozen people, multiple bags of grain and gas canisters, and three horses.


[A round of the Tibetan dice game which I later learned is called "sho"]


[My company on the ferry ride over the Yarlung Tsangpo to Dorje Drak]


[Dorje Drak Monastery: I climbed up to the white structure at the top of the hill (in the first picture) and then back down the middle]


[1 - Unloading the ferry, 2 - The empty ferry waiting for passengers for a return trip]

Dorje Drak monastery has a beautiful location right on the bank of the river, nestled into the side of a big rocky hill. By the time I got off the ferry and hiked up to the monastery office, the sun was shining and the sky was bright blue. An old caretaker set me up in a room right in the middle of the monastery with big windows overlooking the river and traditional Tibetan style bedding (hard mattresses with rug coverings and big warm blankets). It was clean, they gave me a thermos of hot tea, and they didn't charge me for it (I made a donation later).

I went to check out the assembly hall, but it was bolted shut. The caretaker invited me in to the monastery office, which doubled as a dining hall, and fed me some tsampa and yak butter tea. He explained that normally there were about 40 monks, but most of them were at home right now - I only spotted 6 in total the whole time I was there. That explained why the assembly hall was closed. Without much to check out in the monastery itself, I decided to walk the kora up to the top of the big rocky hill behind the monastery and back down. The walk up wasn't too awful, and the 360 degree views from the top were amazing. From the back, it started off with dark mossy mountains, moving to shrubby beaches, then crossing the Yarlung Tsangpo to views of a beautiful landscape of clouds and mountains, looking back at the Yarlung Tsangpo again to see little trees growing out of sandbars along the opposite coast, ending back on our side of the river with sand-swept dunes that led back up to the original mountains. I was joined by some mountain goats, among whom the males let off some not very intimidating bleats when they noticed my presence.


[View from the hike up the kora]


[Panoramic view from the top of the Dorje Drak kora]


[At the top of the kora: 1 - Me, and 2 - My company]

The walk back down was not fun. In order to be respectful and complete the kora in the proper clockwise direction (or because I'm an idiot, take your pick), I decided to go down the east side of the hill, which I had not seen at all before attempting the descent. The climb got steeper and steeper until it was just sheer rock face. I backtracked up but realized that I'd already descended quite a ways and I wasn't sure if I could make it back up to try another descent. I decided to go down the center of the hill (that's still clockwise, right?) but that had it's own share of sheer rock face. After a couple of terrifying moments and some leaps of faith, I was on comparatively easy ground. It was even more frightening because I knew that if something happened to me, nobody would know where I was. I finally stumbled back to the monastery by 7:25, just in time for the 7:30 dinner to which I'd been invited. At dinner, the caretaker sympathized with my tiredness; he said that the descent is really hard on his knees, too. Either he knows a much better route down, or he's one nimble old man. He was pretty clever, too - he was the only one there who spoke Chinese, and he had even picked up a few words of English. He asked me to teach him a couple more phrases in English; he did pretty well, especially for only having a couple of teeth.

The next day I got up early for a breakfast of, you guessed it, tsampa and yak butter tea. I caught the ferry back over - no horses this time, but it was much slower as we were going against the current. I was pondering the best place to stand and hitch a ride back to Lhasa, as the part of the highway where we were being let off wound along the side of a mountain and was not really conducive to cars stopping and picking me up. It hadn't occurred to me that all of the other people on the boat needed to go somewhere, too, and somebody would likely capitalize on that and provide transportation. Once we got off, there were multiple minibuses waiting right there to take us to any of several major destinations, Lhasa included. A slow and cramped (but cheap) ride later, and I was back at the Oh Dan, taking a very wonderful shower.

Up to top

Monastery Roadtrip, Part II: Mindroling

After our detour to the Yumbulagang, the rest of the ride from Samye was uneventful. My next stop on the itinerary was Mindroling Monastery, whose founder was famed as a scholar and eventually became the teacher of the 5th Dalai Lama back in the 1600's. I got off at kilometer 147 on the Lhasa-Tsetang highway, where there was a dirt road leading 7km up to the monastery. There was a Tibetan family sitting in the shade at the intersection; we communicated through hand signals that we were both going to Mindroling. We waited to hitch a ride for about half an hour, but then they eventually decided it was time to start walking. Luckily, part of the way up we got picked up by a big white van and got a ride the rest of the way. We got let off in the surrounding town, which was a collection of cement houses, dirt streets, chickens, dogs, and pigs - nothing too out of the ordinary. I met a monk halfway up who took me to the monastery office; I ended up waiting there for an hour while they sussed out the room situation. In the end they brought me to a compound next door owned by a google-eyed pig farmer who showed me to a bare room of dirty cots and scuffed up walls with piles of grain (and a large resident rat population) in clear view outside the window.

I wandered around town a bit and ventured up a neighboring hill, but there wasn't too much interesting around. I went to check out the main assembly hall of the monastery, where there were several men painting newly cast statues of Buddha and other important historical/religious figures. Most of the smaller chapels were closed, either for restoration work or because there wasn't anybody there to guard them. After a dinner of a snickers bar, a peanut butter sandwich, some raisins, and two plastic-packaged sausages, I resisted the urge to read in my room and instead went back to the monastery's main courtyard to write in my journal. I ended up in a conversation with a few of the monks there who could speak Chinese, and they invited me in to watch the chanting sessions that were about to be held. I sat in the back row next to three or four teenaged monks; it was funny to see that teenagers are teenagers, no matter their religious status. The row of boys just kept asking me questions and asking to see my books (which had pictures of Tibet) rather than following along with the older monks' incantations. Of course once one of the more senior monks came in and gave them stern looks, they all hid the books in their robes and started chanting studiously.


[1 - The family that hitched with me up to Mindroling, 2 - Painting new statues in the main assembly hall at Mindroling Monastery]

After a bit I went to go sit outside and write in my journal. Coming out of the chanting session, one of the older monks started up a conversation. Communication was difficult as Chinese was neither my nor his first language, but we got through some of the basic questions. Then he asked me if I'd been there before; I said that I hadn't, and he immediately took me up to his room to feed me a dinner of beef (yak?) noodles. This didn't make much sense at the time, but later I realized that he'd been asking if I'd eaten ("chi guo le ma?"), not if I'd ever been there before ("qu guo le ma?"). Neither of the sentences really made grammatical sense - "Chi guo le ma?" literally means "have you ever eaten before?" "Qu guo le ma?" literally means "have you ever gone before?" (i.e. referring to somewhere else; the correct way would be "lai guo le ma?" or "have you ever come here before?"). Oh well, if that's the worst of my language misunderstandings on the trip then I'll consider myself lucky - I got a second dinner out of it, as well as my first yak butter tea that didn't taste awful (I think he added about a cup of sugar to it).

Once I finished my second dinner I went back out into the courtyard to write in my journal, which I had not yet managed to do (darn those pesky friendly monks). Instead I ended up in another conversation with some of the younger monks until it got pretty dark and I decided to head back to my room and try to catch some sleep. It took me a while to drift off, as I was listening to the rats and wondering how long it would take to get me medivac'ed to Kathmandu for rabies treatment if I got bitten.


[1 - A young monk lighting yak butter candles, 2 - My friend, the "chi guo le?" monk, making me some tsampa]

Up to top

Monastery Roadtrip, Part I: Samye

I was sick of organized tour groups, so I looked through my guidebook for places that it seemed like I could travel independently without a permit and tour group. Since those didn't seem to exist, then I looked for places it seemed that I could travel independently without getting caught. I decided on a trip to the Yarlung Valley, an area to the south of Lhasa along the Yarlung Tsangpo (Yarlung River), which flows down into India and becomes the Brahmaputra. The Yarlung Valley is thought to be where the original kingdoms of Tibet were established; my attraction to the area was the number of monasteries that sounded worth a visit.

I was also looking to get out of Lhasa - what had started off as a pleasant afternoon walk around Nam-Tso with a group of monks ended up with a bit too much attention from one of the monks involved. He had asked for my cell phone number and suggested we meet up in Lhasa. I didn't think anything of it, but within the next couple of days he had called me repeatedly asking when we could meet up and sent me several text messages saying things like "I like you very much." It was kind of making me feel uncomfortable, but I figured I was just overreacting - he was a monk, after all. Then I found out that while most monks have to take celibacy vows, this guy was a lama, and lamas have an elevated status in which they can accumulate wealth and aren't necessarily celibate (except for in the Gelupga order to which the Dalai Lama belongs). Great. It also could have been that he just wanted to make an American contact, but either way he was coming on way too strong. Getting out of Lhasa and into an area with no cell phone reception was sounding more and more appealing.

Anyway, the first leg of my trip was Samye Monastery, one of the most famous in the region. It's meant to have been built as a mandala, or representation of the Buddhist universe. However, it was severely damaged (as were most important monasteries) by the Red Guard during the Cultural Revolution and is only now being extensively rebuilt. Most tourists go to Samye on a two-day tour with a Land Cruiser and guide, but I managed to get tickets on the pilgrim bus. The only drawback was that the bus left at 5:30am. I managed to get up and out of bed with time to spare; it turns out that I needed it. As I was walking to Barkhor Square to catch the bus, I spotted a police car parked right in front of the entrance to the square.

On a sidenote, the 40th anniversary of the Autonomous Region of Tibet being incorporated into the People's Republic of China is coming up in the beginning of September. When I came back from Nam-Tso I had noticed that every single building in town was flying at least one (if not 5) Chinese flag(s) - a forced show of allegiance to the "motherland." Not only that, but the Chinese government has taken the basic look of prayer flags (small red, green, blue, yellow and white flags along a white string) and made 40th anniversary flags with the Chinese crest and "1965-2005" decals, which they've strung up along all the main streets and highways. The police are also out in force, as I encountered in my attempt to catch an early morning bus. You can't walk half a block in Lhasa without seeing a uniformed goon giving you the staredown. Friends have told me that the Chinese government has not allowed any foreigners to enter Tibet since the 20th of August, and I noticed that they are building a giant stage in front of the Potala Palace with patriotic Chinese slogans painted on the backdrop and huge red and yellow totems.

So, maybe it wasn't the best time to try to travel independently and not get caught...


[1 - Forced display of patriotism to the homeland, 2 - Chinese imitation prayer flags to celebrate the 40th anniversary of the "liberation" of Tibet]

Anyway, I managed to slip into a side alley before the cop noticed me. It was dark and there were no streetlights, but eventually I found my way back out to the main road and onto the bus. I put my hood on over my head and ducked under the window as we drove out of town.

The rest of the ride was uneventful, and we got to Samye by 10am. I didn't try to get a room at the Monastery Guesthouse (I'd heard they check for permits), and instead found my way to a hotel on the edge of the small town next to the monastery. I spent most of the day wandering around the monastery complex; it's a lot more open and airy than a lot of the other monasteries I've been to, and the surrounding area is full of orchards and wheat fields. The monks were also particularly friendly; I sat down with a few and chatted for a bit. Once again, my Lonely Planet book came in handy - once I'd run out of the few sentences of Tibetan I knew, I could start a sign language conversation by pointing to pictures of the places in the guidebook that I'd been and asking which ones they'd visited.


[At Samye Monastery: 1 - Pilgrim adding yak butter to a lamp, 2 - a senior monk]


[Friendly monks]


[1 - The caretaker of one of the chapels, 2 - Prayer flags outside the monastery walls]

Later that afternoon I hiked up Hepo Ri, the hill where the Indian sage Guru Rinpoche apparently vanquished the demons of Tibet in order to pave the way for the introduction of Buddhism. It was a pretty easy hike and had great views of the monastery. Unfortunately on the way there I passed another PSB official and had to hide behind a tractor for 5 minutes until he finished questioning a tour group and went away. On the way back down to my hotel I could see everyone staring at me; I'm used to people staring at me because I'm one of the few foreigners in town, but in Samye I couldn't brush it off as easily. It seemed like I had a big sign on my forehead that said "No tour group, no permit - Fine me!"


[1 - View of the Yarlung Valley from Hepo Ri, 2 - Hepo Ri itself]


[View of Samye from Hepo Ri; the central building, the Utse, is meant to represent the core of the universe]

Back at the hotel, I felt a bit lonely and was tempted to lock myself up in my room and finish reading the book I'd brought along in order to occupy my attention until I could fall asleep. But my biggest pet peeve is when people lock themselves up in their hotel room and don't venture outside to see the place they've spent so much money to travel to. Hence my number one rule of travel: go outside. You never know who or what you'll run into. So I sat outside on the stairs, overlooking the courtyard where the family who owned the hotel was going about their daily business (washing clothes, doing dishes, playing around). Some teenage boys were playing with the Tibetan version of a hacky-sack: short plastic streamers knotted around a couple of washers. I decided to go and join them - even though I really sucked, at least it broke the ice. By the end of the night I was sharing the family's evening snack of potatoes and chatting with the girlfriend of one of the brothers about school and my travels in China.

The next morning I got up and hurried back to the monastery for the 7:30am return bus. I slipped through the gate (literally - it was still locked and I could barely shimmy through the opening). Turns out that there was no need to hurry - nobody could find the driver for an hour and a half. When we finally found the guy selling tickets for the bus, he informed us that it should leave around 10. In the meanwhile I hung out with a nun and her relatives, who offered me tea and made sure I didn't get left behind.

So at 10:30 we were on our way. The ride was a bit bumpy, compounded by the fact that I had no seat. A young couple let me share theirs, until we got to the Tsetang bridge and the driver instructed me to go duck down in the back and hide my face while we passed the security checkpoint. It was a lucky thing that I had got on the pilgrim bus, because it turns out that we were making stops at Trandruk Monastery and the Yumbulagang, two places that I had planned to backtrack and hitch to. I didn't get to go into the monastery (there was a PSB official, so the driver told me to go lie down on the back seat while everyone else went in). I did however get to hike up the Yumbulagang, as the PSB official guarding it was taking a bathroom break when we arrived. The Yumbulagang is reputed as the oldest building in Tibet, although most of it had been destroyed (I'll give you one guess by whom...) and rebuilt. It was originally a fort for early Yarlung Valley kings, but now it's been converted into more of a chapel. I was just happy that I got a free ride there instead of having to hitch, and having a bus full of pilgrims on the hike up made it an even more interesting experience. I helped an old lady down most of the way (although I think she was humoring me - she probably could have made it on her own, considering she got up there herself). After we got down, the young couple who had let me share their seat earlier and their family treated me to a lunch of yak momos (breaded dumplings). Luckily the PSB official was too engrossed in a game of cards to notice me on the way out, either.


[1 - Pilgrims hiking up to the Yumbulagang, 2 - The old woman who let me help her on the way down]

Up to top