Myanmar: bare feet and temples

We’d been told by many that Myanmar is a jewel in SE Asia so booked our flights out of Golden Week chaos a couple of months in advance.   Myanmar/Burma has had a turbulent past getting caught in the middle of the British Empires land grab, then occupied by the Japanese, then ruled by a brutal military regime before finally getting a democratically elected leader in 2015.  Aung San Suu Kyi (The Lady as she is known throughout Myanmar) is not the ruler as she is barred due to her foreign links however she is all but in name the leader.

Despite that, her government is still dominated by military seats so the fight for democracy is far from over and the internal battles between the 135 ethnic groups, military and civilians continue.  Most notably at the moment the persecution of the Rohinga people who have been living in refugee camps for over 20 years but a recent bout of ethnic cleansing has put the spotlight on them once more.

We debated long and hard as to whether to cancel the trip. Clearly the presence of 2 westerners in the other end of the country will not make a jot of difference to the welfare of thousands of displaced people on the Myanmar/Bangladeshi border but making a holiday destination of somewhere with such blatant human rights issues didn’t sit well.   On the flip-side we live in a country where people are still disappeared for their views, pay taxes in the UK that fund illegal wars, and have been to many countries under oppressive regimes before now. The fact that the BBC are covering this one now doesn’t really alter facts – just our emotions.

We’re still not decided whether it was the right thing to do, but we went. Myanmar is a big country and at no point did we see or hear anything that would give any indication of the conflict. There is also an ongoing war with China along the Northern State borders that is invisible to all but the fighters in that immediate area.  We did ask some Burmese people about the Rohinga situation and they were united in their view - it’s unfair that Myanmar and The Lady are being judged by the world because they’ve suffered terrorism at the hands of the Rohinga for years. They told us stories of children being raped and murdered, of towns being no-go areas for any non-Rohinga, and of the Rohinga people burning their own houses down to point blame at Myanmar.  They are convinced that it’s Bangladesh’s problem (believing them to have come from Bangladesh as economic migrants rather than being introduced by the British as immigrant labour and then abandoned).  Their government-led press has told them consistent stories for years and there is no sympathy for the plight of this tribe.  Even some UN workers we met (who were very reluctant to discuss it) told us that it was estimated 95%+ of The Lady’s supporters were anti-Rohinga so for her to denounce the military actions would get her kicked out of power, and the brutal military regime would take control again. 

So, with lots of heavy sighing we decided that we’d spend money on Mom&Pop guesthouses and restaurants only, and try and limit the amount of tourist money that feeds its way back to the government. Not sure how much more responsible travel can get in those situations.

Flying into Myanmar (we came in from Kunming so flew over the length of the country North to South) we were struck by how green it is.  The landscape of jungle was only interrupted by the glisten of a temple roof or the curve of a river.  It is the least built up country in SE Asia (as well as one of the poorest) and astounding to see so much land that untouched when it’s neighbours have well established super-cities.

We arrived in Yangon (Rangoon for those of us with Colonial history books) and immediately melted.  The humidity averages 80% and as we were landing in the tail-end of the rainy season the difference from dry Beijing couldn’t have been greater.

A fleeting visit as we were heading north the next morning so saw nothing beyond a local noodle bar where I brandished my ‘I am vegetarian’ sign at them and actually fared better than Chris as a result.  Myanmar takes its cuisine from neighbouring China, Thailand and India but seems to have taken the least interesting aspects of each and as such is pretty bland.   Super-cheap but more functional than enjoyable.

Bagan

Day 1 we got a local bus 10 hours north to Bagan – the highlight of Myanmar. Surrounding Bagan a little hippy enclave has sprung up catering for back-packers which makes it very easy to get good cheap accommodation.  We hired bikes and cycled round lots (didn’t count but after 2 days if felt like we’d seen most) of the 3000+ temples and stupas.  We got up early to see sunrise, we climbed to the top tier to watch sunset and while our camera’s will never do it justice it is indeed a very beautiful place.   

 Bagan isn’t a UNESCO site because it’s suspected that only about 5% of the donated funds to restoring the temples get anywhere near the temples. And that 5% isn’t done with much sympathy.  It is however just becoming popular with Chinese tourists. We didn’t see any Chinese in any other city so it must be a stop-off on a wider tour but the enjoyment of one temple visit was greatly diminished by 2 coach loads of camera wielding selfie taking hawking shouting kinsmen.  For 30 minutes the solitude was replaced with elbowing, shouting, shrieking, bunny-ears etc. then someone gave a command and 80 people vanished as quickly as they’d arrived.

We took a boat up the Irrawaddy River to see sunset and moonrise which was wonderful.  Our boatman had promised us treats and sure enough, local beer and tempura was provided.  I will never understand tempura but we partook politely (threw most to the fishes) and Chris saw the beer off before it got warm enough to taste.

Mandalay

From Bagan we took a boat to Mandalay. We broke down a few times, got hit with a downpour and due to the lack of shade got way too much sun but after 11 hours of looking at the same view we were there.  We were lucky as the river was high. In low-tide it can take 20 hours.

I had romantic ideas about Mandalay that I can’t reason. Something to do with Daphne du Maurier I think.   Anyway, in reality it’s a typical functioning city – polluted, crazy traffic, hot and humid. After the calm of Bagan it felt busy but in reality it’s only got <2m population. 

We were there for October Moon festival so lots of people flocked down to the stone temples to celebrate and of course we joined them.  The temples each hold a page of a book, only the book is made of stone so each page is a massive tablet of stone.  Lots of singing and dancing, sharing food and providing strangers with water going on. An incredibly friendly and welcoming atmosphere and while most people are too shy to engage in conversation everyone will say ‘mingalaba’ and smile.

More temples, monasteries, the country’s biggest un-cracked bell (that gives you an idea of how many non-temple things there are to visit), more boat rides and we got a bus to the cooler climes of Kalaw – a hill station town favoured by the Empire as an escape from the ferocious heat.

A note on Monks.  Unlike our recent trip to Tibet where being a monk is a lifetime’s devotion, it’s not quite as binding in Myanmar.  You can be a monk for a year then go back to civvie life, get married, get a job etc.  Then if you have a row at home you can bugger off to a monastery for a few months under the guise of self-reflection.  You can eat meat and drink alcohol in your ‘non-monk’ days before abstaining again when you re-enter the monastery.

Children with no parents or poor parents tend to get educated by monks/nuns so it’s very usual to see boys (orange robes) and girls (pink robes) collecting food and money donations door to door before going back to the monastery/convent for hours of lessons and meditation.

Kalaw

A drop of 10 degrees makes Kalaw more manageable but not very interesting!  Trekking is the done thing here so we set off with a local guide to take us through the hill tribes.  We were hoping to find out more about the local customs, languages etc of the different tribes but our guide turned out to be Myanmar’s version of Alan Titchmarsh and stopped to point out every plant we walked past.  

Interesting to begin with but we began to suspect he was taking the piss when he showed us the medicinal wonders of doc leaves.   After 4 hours of this horticultural expertise we got to stop at our first village for lunch and a respite from plant enthusiasm.

I don’t like mid-day eating when trekking as it makes me feel sick if there’s afternoon climbing but accept it’s necessary to keep going.  Imagine my delight then at being served curried eggs and green tea.  Lots and lots of curried eggs under the watchful eye of our host keen to make sure she’d done a good job.

The afternoon was all uphill as expected but thankfully Titchmarsh laid off the lectures and led us through tea plantations, poppy and rice fields before announcing our final climb.   To be fair he did tell us about the tribes but admitted he couldn’t speak with them as their languages don’t overlap sufficiently. In his defense he spoke Burmese, his own tribe’s language, and English so we couldn’t expect much more. Each tribe is closed to outsiders.  If someone marries an outsider they have to live in a hut by themselves as neither village wants them.  We walked through 3 villages in 1 day which shows how physically close together they are yet still see each other as strangers. In-breeding is rife but things are changing and outsider marriages are increasing, polygamy almost non-existent and the amount of people living outside of their villages will soon fill in the gaps between the boundaries.

The final climb was great – low cloud in jungle looks incredible. The insects are noisy (apart from the ones eating my legs), the heat is immense and underfoot becomes like a luge. Chris remained upright while my famed mountain-goat skills meant I reached the top covered in mud and scratches.  But happy.

At night Kalaw is pack-dog territory.  In the daytime they laze in the heat (although we were warned not to walk through them solo as they have been known to take on lone humans) but at night it’s turf war.  Canine Jets and Sharks make a lot of noise ALL NIGHT so despitetrek fatigue the bus ride to Inle Lake the following day provided better sleep.

Inle Lake

It’s big.  45 square miles big.  We spent a day being rowed around various villages famous for weaving (lotus root, silk and cotton), silver smiths, boat making and breeding Burmese cats.

Tourism aside, the lake provides livelihood for fishermen (famed for their one-legged rowing technique) and farmers who’ve created huge floating fields of vegetables by stacking soil on bamboo rafts bound together.

                               

So – back to the cats.  Purebreds died out in Burma in 1920’s and most people had bigger things to worry so while a few muggle-cats carried the genes on they weren’t recognizable as the regal looking creatures that used to the country’s national animal.  In recent years cat donations from Europe and Japan have led to them being re-introduced and to ensure the bloodline stays pure they are housed on a cat-only island until there are sufficient numbers to survive on their own.   If you like cats this is probably a nice island.  If you see nothing but evil in their eyes and find their smell overwhelmingly unpleasant this is not a nice island.

That night it rained monsoon levels for hours and hours. When eventually it stopped we grabbed some bikes and cycled up to a vineyard – Myanmar’s only vineyeard where we’d heard the wine was questionable but Blessed Be The Winemakers and all that so we felt we should lend our support.

We reached the bottom of the driveway when the rain started again. Drenched in minutes, we took cover in a security guards sentry box and there followed a very awkward hour of non-verbal communication with said security guard.  Eventually the eye-rolls, shoulder shrugs and ‘will this never end’ gestures got too much for all of us so we chanced a gap where it downgraded from monsoon to torrential and finished the journey.

Being rained into a vineyard should be fun but it’s a sad measure of Myanmars wine that it was a struggle.  We tasted all 4 of their wines – leaving 2 glasses undrunk.  1 white that had such a long finish that I could taste it days later, and 1 red that Chris thought was corked but actually was just so cherry-heavy it tasted poisonous.   As the rain was still doing its thing we ordered a glass each of the least offensive white and willed the clouds to move.   In the end we chose rain and cycled back accepting the lesser of two evils.  A sad day in the Scarth-Cogswell vineyard log book.

Next morning off to Heho Airport to get a teeny tiny plane back to Yangon.  More bus station than airport, we were given a sticker instead of a boarding card and when an official held up the coloured lollipop matching our sticker off we went.

Flying in China I’m used to having my vegetarian meal request either ignored or met with something fit for an ‘I’m a Celebrity Get Me Out of Here’ challenge so was very surprised that while still taking off with YangonAir we were all served a breakfast I could eat.  The flight was only 1 hour yet we were given not 1 but 3 cakes for breakfast.  I’ve never had an éclair for breakfast. Or a mango Danish. Or a nut chocolate thing.  But I did.   Then very much regretted it as we hit big old rain clouds…

Yangon

Last few days then to look at more temples, monasteries, markets and temples.  Safe to say we were templed out by this stage and going to the biggest one, with the most real gold on it’s roof, failed to excite us.

And that sort of sums up our feelings for Myanmar – it failed to excite us.  Maybe if we’d never been to SE Asia we’d feel differently but as it is we didn’t get the specialness that other people spoke of.  We enjoyed it very much; the people were very friendly, the air clean, Bagan is certainly very photogenic and the jungles the greenest we’ve seen on that continent. We had a lot of fun in our two weeks there but were quite pleased to put our shoes back on and wave goodbye to temples and stupa’s for a few months. 

7 days in Tibet

Lhasa

Tibet has been our #1 must-see while we’re in China but it can be quite difficult and expensive to get to.  It’s also bloody cold a lot of the time so you pick your month carefully.

There’s only 1 direct flight a day from Beijing but you can’t book a ticket until you’ve got a valid Tibet Permit. And you can only apply for those 2 weeks before you go.  We’ve got friends who’ve been refused permits for no given reason, and if there is any sense of political upheaval permits will be cancelled with no notice so it’s a bit of a gamble.  We got ours delivered (admin gets done in Tibet but if you fly in you have to have the original not a copy) on Wednesday afternoon and flew out Friday morning.

Foreigners aren’t allowed to visit Tibet without said permit (and there’s different permits for different parts of Tibet – we needed 3 for our route), or without a guide lest we take pictures of things that might show China is a bad light (imagine that).  We’re not allowed to travel with Chinese nationals either – not a problem for us but we met a couple (she Taiwanese which China considers Chinese, he USA) who had spent their first 7 hours in Lhasa police station negotiating how her US permit is the valid document not her expired Taiwanese one.  As it went they had to buy 2 separate private tours then persuade the guides to work in tandem.  A very expensive way of getting around the rules but it worked.

Foreigners aren’t allowed to take local bus or trains either – we only remembered this as we got off the bus from the airport to Lhasa city but no-one arrested us so no harm done.

In addition to this there’s a list of rules you sign – thou shall not take pictures of military stuff, talk about the current Lama’s, wear skirts in temples, point at things with your pointy finger…   Its almost like the People’s Republic want to dissuade foreigners from going…

Lhasa is a strange mix of Tibet (v similar to Nepal) and China. The greater city is a sprawl of empty high-rises and party slogans like any other soulless Tier 3 city but the old city is still very much Tibetan. The architecture is ornate, people dress traditionally and Buddhism is everywhere.

Our digs were right on Barkhor Street which is a kora (a route around a temple/palace/holy mountain) for Jokhang temple.  The street itself is decorated with prayer flags, prayer wheels and people completing their kora chanting mantra’s.  Depending on your level of devotion you complete the kora in a clockwise direction spinning your prayer wheel (created for illiterate worshippers who chant a simple mantra while spinning the scriptures in their hand-held wheel thus being equal with more educated types) an odd number of times.  The most devoted take 9 turns prostrating themselves as they go. Some wear knee pads and wooden sandals on their hands, others go bare foot with cotton gloves on. Either way the routine goes 3 steps forward then fall to the ground arms outstretched, gently bang forehead on the floor, get up, repeat. All while repeating the compassion mantra.  The Barkhor kora is only about 10 mins on (upright) foot so people of all ages do a lot of prostrating around it.  Some of other koras are 1hr on foot so you see prostrating kora’s less, but it’s still a common occurrence.

At 3680m altitude it doesn’t take much moving to feel flakey, and having had altitude sickness in Ecuador we weren’t up for risking it again so it was a very gentle evening of momos (dumplings) ginger tea and bed.

The first 2 days in Lhasa were spent visiting 2 of Tibet’s biggest monasteries: Drepung and Sera, both built in the 1440’s, and both now with a much diminished population thanks to the cultural revolution. 

Drepeng is huge (was home to 7k monks at its height) and overlooks Lhasa like a fortress would in other parts of the world.  Room upon room of scriptures, Buddha’s, stupas (large vase like things that sometimes act as tombs, sometimes just for decoration) and assembly rooms for debating.

The Dalai Lama was based here before he fled in 1959, and the 13 Dalai Lama’s before him considered this their monastery of choice too so it’s held in high esteem with the locals.

Sera is much smaller but holds debating sessions that foreigners are welcome to attend. 6 days a week the monks gather in the debating courtyard and test each other’s theories of Buddhism.  One sits on the floor while his partner asks his opinion of a scripture or philosophy. If the answer is pleasing the standing monk claps his palms together but if not he claps with one palm turned inward and the rebuttal begins.   Some seemed to enjoy the theatre of the event and performed elaborate claps, others seemed genuinely devastated if they got a wrong answer.

Next the Potala Palace– the Tibetan seat that ruled a significant chunk of its neighbouring land at one time, before China decided Tibet was Chinese, and nothing can be higher than the Communist Party so the Tibetan rule was disbanded.

Now 500+ rooms are shut and only around 20 rooms are open museum-style to the public.   Visitors are allocated 1 hour inside, no photos and no talk of the Dalai Lama allowed.   A bit rushed but still very interesting to see the Dalai Lama’s study room, bed room and meeting chambers where visiting dignitaries were entertained.   The main one is all cushions and embroidered mats, then there’s a smaller one with some chairs in used for westerners because we’re not able to sit cross legged for hours at a time. I liked the idea of stuffy UK PMs being forced into the lotus position but apparently it wasn’t so.

It’s around 500 steps up to the palace so we were feeling the lack of oxygen keenly.  It’s incredible how debilitating the altitude is but there’s nothing you can do but move slowly and treat it with respect.   Chinese believe that you shouldn’t shower at altitude but they’ve got some strange ideas about water/cold/health so we ignored that one but ate small meals and avoided booze.

Lamas

Like China, the most interesting aspect of Tibets history (in our opinion) is the recent part. In China it’s unwise to try and engage anyone in discussion about Mao, the Great Leap Forward, the cultural revolution etc. In Tibet it’s forbidden.   As such a lot of googling was done each evening to try and fill in our knowledge gaps but like all ongoing political unrest, who knows how reliable the sources are.

As non-believers of any faith system we soon got lost as to which Buddha was born out of a women’s armpit, which one from a Lotus flower, which one has 1000 arms (sometimes), which 2 women have 7 eyes… We were more interested in the current stuff and pieced together this:  

There are 3 Lamas who form the leadership team – Dalai, Penchen and Karmapa.   There are currently 2 Karmapa Lamas as the wider community can’t decide on which is the true incarnation of the 16^th . As this is a bit embarrassing no-one mentions them!

The current (14^th) Dalai Lama is exiled in India and it’s illegal to acknowledge his existence. Although things are pretty quiet at the moment trigger-happy Chinese soldiers and self-immolating monks have made this a very high profile issue in recent years so people tread carefully around it.   The Dalai Lama (top bod) is 82 and most people believe China are not so much hunting him down as much as waiting for him to die.   When he does a new Dalai Lama has to be appointed but it will be a baby and it’s hard to take a toddler as a serious political opponent. Unless you’re Herod.

The way the new one is found is fascinating. It’s up to the Panchen Lama to lead a team of head-hunters to find a selection of possible contenders.  The handful of infants are then shown relics of the recently deceased Lama and (on the basis that the soul reincarnates) the infant housing the soul of the last Dalai Lama will immediately identify which items belong to the last lama/himself.

If you wanted to find and stop the next Lama being appointed the obvious thing to do is follow the Panchen Lama around, particularly as the 14^th Dalai starts to look frail.  As such there’s a $33k bounty on his head.   In reality $33k is not enough for a bounty hunter to bother, and while it’s a huge amount to an average Tibetan the shame attached would surely outweigh the monetary reward.   Buddhism isn’t about material wealth so it’s not much of an incentive unless you’re lapsed and have no moral compass.   Either way – there’s been no takers yet.

The current Panchen Lama (11^th) is only 29 and believed to be in Beijing but that’s unconfirmed.   Interesting the 10^th Panchen Lama died at 52 leaving behind a Chinese wife and daughter who both live in New York.   Unlike monks or the Dalai, Panchen Lamas are allowed to marry but the association with China didn’t go down well with Tibet or China so his last few years were pretty miserable and mainly in hiding too.    Tough gig being a Lama. 

Yamdroktso Lake

Day 3 we spent 13 hours in a minibus travelling through Gyantse (4040m) to see the Yamdroktso Lake – one of the holy lakes, and the Karola glacier before hitting the sack in Shigatse.

Terrain means that Tibet is bloody hard to move around. Add to the that the speed restrictions put on foreign tourist vehicles, the multiple military check points, random road works and military blockades that happened to us on every journey and what should be a painful 7 hour journey easily turns into a 13 hour ordeal.

Plenty of stops for photo’s though and the time spent at the Yandroktso Lake was stunning. Being holy you can do a kora round it but it takes days so we gave it a swerve.

Burials

On the way to the lake we passed a river burial site and that unveiled a heap of information about life and death (mostly death) in Tibet.

When you die the undertaker (a generational trade passed from father to son(s)) employs a monk who will sit with your body for 24 hours chanting mantra’s and deciding whether you should have a river or sky burial.  The family or deceased can have no say in this but the important thing is to make sure the soul properly leaves it’s current body so it can continue to reincarnation.

If you get a sky burial the undertakers carry you up a mountain to a designated burial point. Here they disembowel the body and leave it for the vultures to eat.  When there is little but bones left they grind them up into a powder with some blood (collected as disemboweling stage) and leave that out for the vulture too.   Once that all’s gone the final stage is to collect all your belongings (your family holding on to material things might stop you moving on to the next life) and sell them in the temple.  The money then gets shared between the Undertaker and the temple.

If you get a river burial it’s a less convoluted affair – you’re taken to a designated point again, gutted and chucked in for the fishes.  We asked what happens to the bones, what if the body gets stuck in reeds/snagged on rocks/fished out by curious children but didn’t get any satisfactory answers.  I’m guessing either Tibet has some massively aggressive fish, or the vultures play their part here too.   Either way, not so keen on Tibetan Mineral Water now.

Marriage:

Increasingly people marry for love and stick to a 1:1 ration of husbands:wives however the tradition is that that eldest sons get an arranged marriage (normally a woman around 20 yrs old) who then becomes the wife of all the brothers.

Any children (traditionally around 15 p/woman – now reduced to 5) are considered to be the eldest brothers but will refer to all the brothers as father (1st father, 2^nd father, 3^rd father and so on, based on age).   It’s not really seen as important who the biological father is (again, Buddhism rejects the notion of possessions being important) providing you exist as one big happy family.    I’m fairly sure ‘happy’ isn’t the right word for the wife, not least for being reduced to the family sexbot and baby carrier, but also because they die pretty young.  Fortunately, this system means there’s plenty of other women to replace her.   

More fortunately this pattern of arranged marriage happens less and less frequently these days.

Mount Everest

Another long day via Tingri (partly rebuilt after the huge earthquake in 2015) to Everest Base Camp.   Whether you get to see the mountain very much depends on the weather and my fears that this might be another Northern Lights saga (we’ve had 3 very expensive trips now – seen nada) were unwarranted as we got very good views from afar, but by the time we got to basecamp it was perfectly clear.     We watched sunset in awe. At 5200m your body clings on to any moisture it can so tears aren’t really possible but it was deserving of them.  I had a nosebleed and one of our group turned quite blue but not sure where that counts in the appreciation stakes.

That night we slept in a dormitory that excelled in discomfort and dirt. The loo’s were a communal long drop (3 holes, no doors/dividers) that hadn’t been cleaned for years and had no air vents. Basically a concrete block overflowing in crap and maggots.  I’ve seen some rotten toilets around the world but these are in number 1 position.  The rock terrain outside meant that the au natural option wasn’t feasible so there was no avoiding it.  The beds were felt damp, the blankets filthy and no running water in or outside.   Altitude kept all but one of us awake – not just the limited breath (although turning over was only done after much consideration as the palpitations that followed were horrible) but unlike previous altitude trips, this time we were in real pain. Perhaps it’s something to do with the temperature differences but we all complained of killer headaches and whiplash like pain in necks and shoulders. Chris said it felt like someone had put his head in a clamp which summed it up well. 

Tibet is on Beijing Time despite being 3.5k west of it, so sunrise took an age to come but after the longest night it was another clear sky and we got to see the mountain in all its glory again.  It’s almost the start of the rainy season so there were no climbers at base camp but come April it’ll be packed with people far braver and with better lung capacity than us ready to climb the full 8844m.

A few cups of hot water, a leg stretch around the tiny monastery next to base camp and we felt a lot more human. Apart from the guy who had to be given oxygen but we saw him a few hours later and he’d rallied. 

Back in the mini-van for another 10 hours to Shigatse, this time arriving in time to see some of it.  However sight-seeing wasn’t top of the list so we ate, showered, and climbed into clean beds enjoying the benefits of 3800m air quality.

Our final stop before heading back to Lhasa was Tashilhunpo monastery.  We thought we were monasteried out but this one had real stand out.  Other than monks we saw no-one else, and unlike other chapels that were chockfull of people these were quiet, save for the chanting monks.  Unlike most monasteries, this one withstood the destruction/vandalism of the cultural revolution by painting pro-Mao slogans on the exterior walls and were passed over.   The result was some of the oldest, darkest Buddhist art we’d seen in a serene setting.  Perfect end to the philosophy bit of the trip.

Back to Lhasa for a final night where we toasted our trip with some weak lager and a tiny glass of red wine before starting the trip home along the world’s highest rail route.

I suppose after a wonderful trip something had to give and the route home was it!  It’s 40 hours back to Beijing so we decided we’d only go as far as Xining (22 hours) then fly the rest. 

The first 5 hours were fine – we had the 4 berth sleeper carriage to ourselves and the views were beautiful.  At the first stop however we were joined by a heavily sweating Tibetan youth, smelling like he was made of woodbines and sucking on a dried tendon.  The first of many he produced from his suitcase. 

Chris is nicer than me and suggested it might be his first trip away, and being housed with 2 foreigners was not his idea of fun either.  After a few hours of being stared at, and listening to him doing massive snook-sniffs I didn’t really care about his back-story.  Tibetans speak Tibetan not mandarin (unless they’re forced to for work in the cities) so we had no way of communicating and the journey suddenly felt a lot longer.

Then the rain started, followed by snow, followed by night fall.

At around 3am we got to the 2^nd stop where our 4^th passenger joined us. He was pretty efficient as climbing to his bunk quietly unlike the random woman who then came in demanding my bed. I faked sleep while she clutched at my covers and made a lot of noise until passenger #4 read her ticket for her and pointed her in the direction of her actual bed.

At 6am the conductor put on all the lights and insisted we get up. Hoping we were arriving early we obliged and then sat bleary eyed for 3 hours until we reached the next station.

After a long wait in a very low-tech airport, by 17:00 we were descending through the layer of filth Beijingers call sky and almost home.

Tibet was a tough physical endurance test despite it being a very sedentary trip but for all the headaches, blurred vision, shallow breathing, lack of sleep and nightmare loo’s it’s an incredible place to see.