Sakya to...?

June 11, 2012

This morning we wake with some uncertainty, not knowing where we will end up by the end of the day. But we have a plan, and we have another monastery to see! (By our count this is the 421st monastery of this trip...). At least this monastery is different...it is painted gray, which is different than all of the others we have seen and visited.

Hmmm...somewhere in this complex is the headquarters for Monks Inc., and they just got their new Herman-Miller office chairs...

The Sakye Monastery is very old and unique. It has two parts, the north part was built in 1073, and the south part was built in 1268. The rising sun shining through the windows above the main entrance doorway really made the monastery beautiful.

The monastery has an expansive collection of very old scriptures...some are located along the walls of the main assembly hall, and many more are stored behind the statues that make up the front wall of the main assembly hall. We were not allowed to take pictures of the expansive collection of scriptures which were stacked two or more stories high and more than 100 feet wide down a narrow corridor, but these are the smaller stacks out in the assembly hall...

We emerge from the stacks of scriptures at the far end of the main assembly hall, and there are more striking images that we try to capture on film...some gold-plated ornaments laid out for cleaning, one of the Buddha altars with the curtains pulled back exposing the expansive stacks of scriptures in the corridor behind...and then we hear the muffled sound of a horn.

In Buddhism, the conch shell is one of the sacred or auspicious symbols, and represents the voice of Buddha. We hear the sound of a monk blowing the conch shell, and our guide Nyima informs us that the monk is blowing the conch to release the spirit of a recently deceased person from earth, and send them to hell (yes, a central belief in Buddhism is that all the dead go to hell and then comes the final reckoning to determine whether you were a good enough person to leave hell...makes me glad I'm not Buddhist!) Nyima explained that after 49 days the spirit of the deceased person needs to stop walking around in the home of the people who took him or her to the sky burial site and get on with the reckoning process, and the horn gets them moving...

This drum gets a lot of attention because it is rumored to be made of human skin rather than yak hide...Ted is going to give it a test thump to try to determine the truth...

We spend a bit of time taking some photos on the roof of the monastery, and then make our way back to our Land Cruisers for the drive, hopefully to Shegar where we will stay before going to Everest Base Camp. We stopped at the public toilets adjacent to the monastery and find that there is a solar heat in use...we will not be waiting for the tea water to boil...

As we leave town, we see some of the homes painted in the same colors of the monastery...and more of the Tibetan landscape...

The vehicle of choice for getting around Tibet as a tourist is the Toyota Land Cruiser. They are tough, long lasting, and very capable when the roads get rough. The Land Cruiser we are riding in has over 420,000 kilometers on it...impressive! We see ruins and occasional snow capped peaks as we head up to the next pass...

The first pass of the day is Gyatso La, which has an elevation of 17,120 feet, the highest altitude we have reached on this trip so far. That's higher than any mountain in the lower 48 states, and only three or four peaks in Alaska are higher than this...Aside from the pass itself, there is really nothing else up here, and it is amazingly snow-free despite the high altitude.

As we head down from Gyatso La, we are on our course for Shegar where we are going to see another fort that became a temple and later a small monastery. On the way, we take in the sights, including nomad camps flocks of goats and sheep, and we begin to learn about Chinese road work. As we race along, we come upon small rocks painted red, followed within a foot or two by a section of missing asphalt. The painted rocks are the Chinese version of orange safety cones.

Another road hazard is livestock, usually sheep or goats, that graze close to the road, or have been driven by their shepherd across the highway...poor little black sheep was a little slow getting across...

At one point we stop because we have a chance to see Mount Everest...the clouds were not cooperating entirely, but we got a shot of the peak between the clouds. We waited a little while to see if the clouds would clear at all, and while we waited our drivers prepared us a snack of local melon...it tasted like a minimally tasty cantaloupe, but was nice and juicy and made a refreshing snack.

We arrive in Shegar and turn off the highway to get to to Shegar Dzong which is perched rather precariously on a steep cone of a hill. You can see the the monastery way down low to the right, and the brick walls that climb the hill all the way to the top...amazing, especially when you think about what it took to build those walls...Shegar Dzong began as a fort and then became a monastery.

Shegar looks a lot like the other small towns we have passed through or stayed in...dusty, and dusty...this is perhaps the dustiest time of year in Tibet because it has been dry for a long time and the monsoon season is supposed to begin in a week or two.

We have to climb up the hill to see the monastery, passing through the neighborhood at the bottom of the hill, then climbing the path up to the monastery, then climbing the steps of the monastery to get to the main building. The complex was much bigger in past centuries, much of it was destroyed and only a few of the monks quarters and the main assembly hall and chapels remain.

From the monastery we get a look down on Shegar, and then we make our way down the hill and back through the neighborhood to get to our vehicles. Steve is like the Pied Piper...the local kids always seem to find him and follow him...it must be his magnetic personality...

Our general reaction to this monastery was one of sympathy...these few monks are scraping out an existence high on a hill that makes it too much work for pilgrims to climb and leave donations and offerings. These monks look particularly needy compared to some of the more well-off monasteries we have visited.

We leave Shegar, and a few minutes outside of town we catch up with our Sherpas who, as usual, have been hard at work fixing us a terrific picnic lunch. So we sit down in a field and enjoy the nice weather and a great lunch.

No shade here...except for Nyima's umbrella...

Sitting out in a field in Tibet having a meal seems to attract interest fom passing locals...this gentleman parked his horse cart on the shoulder of the road and came over to see if we had any extra...and of course we did, so he scored a banana, some bread, and a cigarette! Well worth pulling over for...

Shortly after lunch, we reach a checkpoint, this time manned by Chinese Army soldiers rather than local police. Our guide Nyima takes our paperwork inside and then the army officers come out to our vehicles to check our passports. After waiting a bit, we are allowed to pass, but Nyima has shared the news with us that we are not allowed to go to Everest Base Camp. The officials at the checkpoint told Nyima that we were "stupid" to have come here...and then instructed Nyima to tell us that the reason we could not go to base camp was a landslide that was blocking the road. It is interesting to note, however, that somehow Chinese tourists were able to get through the landslide and visit Base camp...hmmm... The checkpoint officials also told our guide that we needed to proceed directly to the Nepal border and leave China, but Nyima was able to convince them that we should be allowed to make our last two overnight stops in Tingri and Zhangmou. Needless to say, our group is quite disappointed at the news about EBC...for many of us, Everest Base Camp was the highlight of the itinerary. To be denied passage to Rongbuk and base camp is a bitter pill to swallow.

As we process the finality of the news, and try to deal with the emotions that come from being caught in the middle of a Chinese political situation, we stop at the intersection where we should have been turning left to go to Rongbuk tomorrow...unfortunately, these pictures are as close as we will come to Everest Base Camp.

So now our Plan B goes into effect, and we make tracks for Old Tingri...the speck of a town where we were supposed to stay two nights hence as we came back down from Everest...

To say Old Tingri is small would be giving it status beyond what it deserves, and to say it is dusty and windy would not be giving it sufficient recognition. We pull off the road and drive down into a gravel and dust parking lot that is ringed by motel-like single story buildings on all four sides. Welcome to the Snow Leopard Guest House. The wind is howling and will grow as the afternoon becomes evening.

This is the first "guest lodge" we have stayed in during this trip, and we have steadily worked our way down the food chain of lodging options from four-star to thee-star, to two-star in Sakya, and now to the bottom rung...the guest house. However, the view from the parking lot is pretty nice, we must say...!

We check into our room...let's just say that we would have preferred to be camping somewhere outside...even with the wind and and dust. The room had a film of dust on every surface. There was a dusty footprint on the table, there was one light bulb that worked, and the wind whistled through the door frame and window frame bringing more dust with it. Then the power went out, so we had to use headlamps to light the bathroom...which at the moment had no water. It was probably just as well that we could not see the bathroom, because when the power was restored later we found out just how filthy the sink, toilet and bathroom were. And then there were the linens...the towels in the bathroom were hanging on hooks like they had been left by the previous occupant, and the pillow cases were definitely already used by at least one previous guest. The water and power came on sometime later, though hot water never materialized. And the room had no heat, but the real problem was the drafty door and window that would let in the cold overnight...so it would be another night sleeping in long underwear and curling up together in a single bed for warmth.

Before we faced the overnight in our quaint little room, we headed over to the dining room for a cold beer with some of our group...we managed to take the edge off of the disappointment of the day, and tried to focus on how fortunate we are to have been able to get into Tibet before all of the Chinese government overreaction hit. We realize that there are many groups whose plans to travel in Tibet were ruined just days after we arrived in Lhasa, and many more who now face the uncertainty of whether trips scheduled for the next several months will be possible. It seems like small consolation, but we agree that we are still very lucky to have traveled through Tibet in the face of great uncertainty.

Our Sherpas also help to make the evening tolerable with their attentive service and great cooking. We eat in the dining room with a couple dozen other travelers who are in the same situation as we are...we hear German, Spanish and Italian being spoken at the various tables across the room...all of these western tourists are in the same boat tonight.

We call it a night, and head back to our room...it will be a long night. We are able to "rough it" pretty well based on all of our camping experience, but the lack of basic cleanliness really gives us the willies...