Shigatse to Sakya

June 10, 2012

Today, we woke to another sunny daybreak...we really have been experiencing extraordinary weather, warmer than typical, and sunny every day. We will again begin our day with local sightseeing, and then hit the road for the next stop on our itinerary which is the small town of Sakya.

After breakfast we take a short drive to a spot near the Tashilumpho Monastery and get out of our Land Cruisers. As we have done several mornings, we will set the tone for our day by walking the kora with Tibetan Buddhist pilgrims. The majority of the pilgrims and locals who walk the kora do so first thing in the morning. There's really nothing like a peaceful walk in the morning with the pilgrims and the smell of juniper incense...the route of this kora goes around the monastery and extends toward the palace on the adjacent hillside.

There is a very large prayer wheel at the beginning of the path, and then hundreds of smaller prayer wheels throughout the course do the kora. On the kora, we walk with pilgrims in traditional Tibetan attire (men, women and children) as they spin their individual prayer wheels as they walk the path, stopping to place juniper into the incense burners, and chanting their prayers.

In Tibet, there are dogs everywhere...some are obviously pets, but a large number do not appear to have any home or family...we see stray dogs here as we have just about everywhere we have visited...these two were rolling around playfully as we passed by...

We continue along the kora and see a variety of sights...countless prayer wheels line the path as we climb along the hill on the back side of the monastery; stupas that rise into the morning sky and catch the rising sun; a yak skull that (if you zoom this photo you will see) has the Om Mani Padme Hum chant engraved into the bone; prayer wheels painted red and gold; the smoky haze created by the juniper incense that wafts through the narrow pathway; prayer flags that flutter in the occasional breaths of wind; and, of course, the Tibetan people wearing bright colored aprons and fibers in their hair, whose faces are lined and cragged from the sun and elements but always quick to smile...

As I think we all know, China is well known for producing cheap knock-offs of popular western fashion...we saw an example of that on the kora, we just didn't have the heart to tell the poor lad that this was a really really bad knock-off of a Puma sweatsuit...

Along the kora this morning we also saw some sheep and goats, which was different from our previous kora walks...now, these animals were smarter than your average sheep and goats, they hang around the kora because the pilgrims leave barley and sampas long the path at various places as an offering...and these animals just hang out and eat the free food...!

As we have seen on nearly every other kora, there are rock outcroppings that become small shrines with painted images, and then these become natural places for pilgrims to leave offerings of all sorts...

This guy clearly has staked out his favorite spot for watching pilgrims and keeping an eye on their offerings...

After we had walked for 15-20 minutes, we came across this man at a slight widening of the path. His small tent cover was tucked into the hillside on the left of the path, and he was hand carving little stone tablets with versions of the Om chant. Pilgrims will often purchase these mani stones and place them somewhere along the kora as an offering...as pilgrims, we decided to get a few ourselves...

Walking the kora can be exhausting for some of the smaller pilgrims...

From the descending kora path, we get some early morning views of Shigatse through the prayer flags...

We also get a view of the adjacent palace which looks a bit like a small Potala Palace. This palace was completely destroyed, and has been nicely rebuilt from ruins in just the last year or two. We cannot visit the palace today because the inside is not finished and therefore it is not open for tourists. As we round the corner toward the palace we meet another one of the locals who lives up here on the hill...boy are they good at hopping among the rocks...!

Near the end of our walk, we pass by a local home with the symbol on the door which means good fortune...it would be so nice to restore this meaning to this particular symbol...

We end our morning walk over by the palace, so our drivers pick us up on the street below and take us to the entrance of the Tashilumpho Monastery. This monastery is the seat of the Panchen Lama, who is the co-equal of the Dalai Lama but far less popular. The monastery was founded in the 1400's, and today has over 800 monks living in it. We learn from our guide Nyima that this monastery is quite well-to-do...they own restaurants, and own the carpet factory we visited yesterday...so they have some income above and beyond the donations they receive from pilgrims. As a result, these monks have an easier existence than those at other monasteries who have to rely on donations and offerings to supplement their existence.

Editorial note: this photo is looking across the street from the entrance to the monastery. Like we saw at the Potala Palace, the Chinese government loves to place big, new monuments to celebrating the Chinese "liberation" of Tibet across the street from major Tibetan Buddhist sites...it's really a bit like a dog marking its territory, if you know what we mean...

Like most monasteries, this one charges visitors for the privilege of taking photos inside the assembly hall, chapels, etc., but this monastery's fees are exorbitant...75 yuan or 100 yuan to take pictures with your regular camera... compared to the 10-20 yuan in most monasteries. The fee for a video camera is 1,500 to 1,800 yuan! Needless to say, no one in our group decided to support this monastery at that level; we kept our yuan and took photos outside. We also decided not to tell them that most digital cameras nowadays can take video...

We guess this is just in case a monk needs to call home in an emergency...

With all of the amazing visuals around us within the monastery complex, our resident botanist/ecologist is focused at the ground...tell us what you found, Dick...!

After the tour of the Tashilumpho Monastery, we grab lunch at the Triple Eye Restaurant...yes, there was yak meat involved...

We wrapped up our tour of the monastery and hit the road for a four hour drive to Sakya. Along the way, we discuss the growing rumors we are hearing from other guides and groups that the Chinese government has closed Everest Base Camp. We cannot confirm that base camp is closed, or closed to westerners, but this rumor is spreading and we are concerned about whether or not we will be allowed to go to base camp in a couple of days. As we travel west, we are treated to more of the extraordinary landscapes and scenery that is Tibet...

We must have seen a million trees planted along side the roads to control wind erosion of the sandy soil...

THis marker show that we are 5,000 kilometers from Shanghai...we were actually far more interested in the rest rooms...

As we drove through the rugged western Tibet landscape, our guide learns that the Chinese government has continued its clamp down on Tibetans. Her friend, who is also a guide, has been told by the government that he must return to his hometown in eastern Tibet within a week or face a 5,000 yuan fine. He is in the midst of leading a group so he has to figure out what to do about that, and if he is forced to return to his hometown he will not be able to guide and will lose out on the income that he makes during the tourist season. Because the tourist season in Tibet is less than six months, guides must make enough to last the year. Our guide is very upset for her friend and for her fellow Tibetans who work hard to try to make a living by sharing their home and culture with folks like us.

We cross another pass and again are greeted by prayer flags fluttering in the wind...this sight never gets old...

We arrive in Sakya and we meet our Sherpa cooks who will be with us for he rest of the trip. These two gentlemen are from Nepal, and they will be preparing all of our meals for the rest of our time in China due to the iffy nature of restaurants and hotel food from this point on. They have driven in this truck from the Nepal border with all of the provisions needed to feed our group three meals a day for about a week. We check in to our room, and then we gather for tea and snacks on the rooftop of our hotel, prepared by our Sherpas. The roof gives us a view of the monastery complex and the sky burial site for Sakya.

The sky burial site...no vultures at the moment...

Sky burial is part of the Tibetan Buddhist faith, and involves having relatives and friends take the deceased's body to the sky burial site where they leave it for the vultures to consume.

Dick and Nancy met another traveler in our hotel named Margaret who they invite to join us for tea and to share her story...Margaret, who is from Switzerland, was traveling with two friends in the far western part of Tibet via a northern route when one of the other travelers started to feel ill. The guide took the woman and her husband to Lhasa to get checked out by doctors, but they found nothing wrong. The woman continued to feel worse and worse, and she decided (against the recommendation of her doctors) to try to fly home. She flew to Chengdu and five hours after landing there she died. Margaret's guide tried to keep this information from her, but within a few days Margaret was receiving emails from friends in Switzerland who had heard the news. Now Margaret was finishing the trip on her own and was due to head back to Lhasa in a couple of days. In the course of our conversation with Margaret, she said that she too had heard that Everest Base Camp was closed just two days ago...so again we hear the Everest rumor.

Now we should talk a little bit about our accommodations for the night. First of all, we are staying in Sakya which is a small, dusty little town without a lot of immediately obvious redeeming qualities. Second, we are staying at the nicest place in Sakya - the Sakya Hotel - which, if you notice in the photo, is a two-star establishment. Based on the general appearance of the street in front of the hotel, Michael was reluctant to step out and take a picture of the front...What two-star means is that water and electricity are available, though not necessarily when you want or need them, and rarely at the same time. We are told that hot water will be available from 7-10pm.

Our room looks OK, though here is the irony of our room...the room has a TV, an electric tea pot, electric blankets on the beds, and a multi-outlet power strip for recharging electronics...but when we settled into our room there is no electricity! Electricity came on around 7pm, and the water was on briefly then disappeared, only to reappear around 9pm...

We gathered for dinner and the number one topic of conversation is the status of Everest Base Camp. Nyima our guide, and Steve our tour leader, both have heard from multiple sources that the base camp is closed, at least to foreigners, if not for all visitors. So we decide that we will proceed as planned to Shegar for the sights we want to see there, then we'll proceed on to the Everest Base Camp checkpoint to see for ourselves what the real situation is. If the base camp is indeed closed to us, we will continue on to Old Tingri which was to have been our stop after spending the night and following day at Everest Base Camp. There really is no reason to stay in Shegar if we are not going to Everest. If we are forced to bypass Everest, we will end up in Tingri two days early, and therefore will head to Kathmandu two days early. Steve says we can figure out what to do in Kathmandu for two additional days if need be...

After dinner we head back to our room, looking forward to a hot shower, only to find that there is no water. And when the water does come back on, we never get any hot water...In addition, our room is getting quite cold. So we get ready for bed, pull on our long underwear and socks, and cozy up together in a single bed to stay warm. We fade off to sleep to the sounds of feral dogs barking in the street and with hopes of being able to get to Everest, all the while understanding that the Chinese government can be and often is quite arbitrary and sudden in their decisions...we'll see...