You Win Some, You Lose Some

So far, I am not impressed with Tsagaan Sar.  Don't get me wrong, I understand it is family time, not a flashy festival involving wild and crazy stuff (unless you count sniffing one another's snuff bottles), but I was hoping for a little bit more.  Maybe it's Engrish's fault for suggesting earlier in the year that I might have students invite me to their homes.  I did try to hint to some of my classes that such an invitation would not go amiss - I even promised not to judge them if their buuz (mutton dumplings) were ugly, which is what Mongolians do - but, alas, none of them took the bait.  So I had resigned myself to a couple of quiet days before Sunday's more exciting events.

Then, I read this on InfoMongolia's upcoming events:
9:20 am Chief of Staff of the Office of the President of Mongolia P. Tsagaan and office officials to visit the Gandantechinlen monastery attending "Mandal" spiritual and ritual ceremony.

I've bitched before about how hard it is to find out what's going on in UB, and one of the things I've been wanting to see, ESPECIALLY since I didn't get to see it while I was in Tibet, was sand painting.  One of my students told me they'd seen it at Gandan once, so I made a wild guess, hoping that the ceremony in question was the painting of a mandala.

As I was leaving the apartment WAY too early (around 8, since I wasn't sure if the buses would run or if I could catch a taxi), I noticed that all the ovoos that I could see (quite a few, up here on the Hill) were surrounded by people.  I wanted to run up to the monument and see what was going on, but I was afraid that I would lose steam, and the game was afoot (yes, I may have watched the new season of Sherlock recently...)  I asked Enkhaa later what was going on, and he said that it's lucky to meet the first sunrise of the new year.  Damn it.  Well, I went on my way and found that the buses were, in fact running, and eventually made it to the monastery.

I poked my nose in a lot of places that I didn't see the first (and last) time I went to Gandan.  That time, I was on a city tour given by the school, and I was happy just exploring the main temple.  This time I was on a mission.  There was definitely something happening - there was a camera crew there - but I couldn't figure out exactly what.  However, it was kind of nice being there - it brought back memories of Tibet and Bhutan from this summer, and although the Energizer might be disappointed that the only thing I definitely  recognized were the protector gods, everything felt a lot more familiar, and that was nice.

I was giving up and headed for the exit when a Mongolian guy stopped me.  "Can I ask you a question?" he asked.  I passed over the well-worn response that he already had, and, since it was Tsagaan Sar, decided that I'd play nice.  "Sure, one question," I agreed.  He asked where I was from, and in the ensuing conversation I realized that he might be able to answer my question.  So I explained that I was there hoping to see them paint a mandala.  He went and found a monk to ask, and said, Wow, they're doing it today!  HA! - I thought - MY TREK UP HERE HAS NOT BEEN IN VAIN!!!  My new buddy Gampa told me it was supposed to be at 16clock (4pm), and he wasn't sure which building it was supposed to be in, but he showed me which one he thought the monk was talking about.  I chatted with him, happy about my decision not to be a bitch, and left for California (which was miraculously open) to have brunch, where I texted Enkhaa to see if he could drive me to Gandan that afternoon.

Well, part two was no more successful than part one, really.  I poked my nose into even more strange places, including this courtyard, which looked like it had been abandoned for decades and might be a good place to stage a zombie apocalypse film.  I wanted to leave no stone unturned, and I didn't, but I still didn't find any artistic monks.  The best clue I got was that the assembly hall that has the banners leaning against it in the above photo had monks chanting and banging drums and cymbals.  I stopped and listened, taking in the atmosphere (and warming up) for a while before calling Enkhaa, who told me he could come and take me home.  As I'm writing this, I have begun to wonder if perhaps that was the opening ceremony, as it were...according to Wikipedia, a cleansing ceremony including chanting and music is how the mandalas are started.  Unfortunately there is SO little in me right now that wants to go back to Gandan and see if they are working.  I'm going to start cleaning my apartment instead - usually about halfway through the process I want to do something else, so with any luck that will give me the motivation I need to get back out there...

The upshot to the whole fiasco is that, cold aside, there isn't a much better place to be during a holiday than a monastery.  Except possibly on top of the ridge behind my apartment, and since I can't cheat and drive up to the top, that probably wasn't going to happen, anyways.

Flied Rice

I was going to write you a nice, tongue-in-cheek blog about enlightenment today, but I'm too exhausted.  I ran a miracle mile yesterday to make my flight back to UB in time to say good-bye to Five and nearly had a breakdown in the Beijing airport.  I even yelled at a very nice Pakistani kid with the same name as an elephant from a children's book (not Elmer, btw), who was just trying to be nice to me.  I made it back and saw her off, and today I am playing tour guide to a girl who's here from Korea for Naadam, which is also quite tiring.  Perhaps I'll write about that too at some point.  But for now, you're getting a food blog.

I was a little concerned about the food in Tibet.  From what I had heard, bringing a variety of food to the plateau was just about the best thing China has done for Tibet.  Still, I wanted a Tibetan experience, and I told the Energizer that I wanted to eat at Tibetan restaurants.  The first place we stopped, on the way from the airport to Tsetang, she ordered me some pork fried rice, while she and our driver had noodles.  There was hot sauce on the table, which made me pretty happy, and I was just deciding that Tibetan food wasn't all that bad, when I came across the fly in my rice.

The lack of bugs is one of the things I have taken for granted in Mongolia.  I plan to appreciate it all the more, now that I'm back.  Anyways, never let it be said that I'm too picky an eater.  When you're in Tibet and ready for adventure, are you going to whine that there's a fly in your food and embarrass your guide and the cook?  Nope.  You're going to lower your standards, pick the fly out, and keep right on eating.  And here's my little plug for the Coca-Cola company, who should be contacting me ANY DAY NOW with the news that they want to sponsor my blog...if you want to make sure you don't come home with any parasites, be sure to drink coke when you're on vacation and the sanitary conditions are less than favorable!  Coke kills 99%* of bacteria and other parasites that may live in third-world countries.

Yeah.  That's totally why I've been on a bender for three weeks now.

Anyways, the fly in my rice aside, I didn't have as hard a time eating in Tibet as I was afraid of, and the yak momos (steamed dumplings) were mouth-wateringly delicious.  The worst that I can say about it is that it wasn't as spicy as I like my food, but that's alright, I was on my way to Nepal.  I told you before that Nepal is a lot like India, and it is.  You eat a lot of curry and daal and basmati rice in Nepal.  One of my more recent goals in traveling is learning how to cook a variety of dishes, and since Lonely Planet totally failed me this time - tsk, tsk - I asked my hotel, and they offered to teach me to cook whatever I wanted.  The problem was, I didn't KNOW what Nepali food I wanted to cook, so they suggested a chicken curry, which I jumped at.  Evil's maid tried to teach me almost this exact dish when I visited her in Hyderabad, but I didn't go and buy the spices or anything, and then I lost the paper I wrote everything down on.  Oops.  This time I bought all the spices before I left Nepal, so there should be a whole lot of chicken curry in my future.  I hope my favorite Indian takeout place here in UB, Hazara, won't suffer too terribly when I stop calling them every week.

Besides the great Nepali food, Kathmandu has an excellent range of restaurants.  I was in heaven when I came across the Maya bar in Thamel.  Real Mexican food?  Shut up.  The salsa was really spicy, and served in bowls made out of leaves that had been molded and pressed in that shape.  Impressive presentation, Maya.  Their burritos were mediocre, but the virgin strawberry margarita more than made up for that!

Not far away was Yin Yang, a Thai restaurant, which I stuffed myself on for my last lunch in Kathmandu.  Their spring rolls were more like the egg rolls I love to get from the Chinese place my family goes to back home, which suited me perfectly well, with a peanut dipping sauce that was just a little bit spicy.  The panaeng gai curry and rice was amazing, and between that and the spring rolls, I couldn't finish, which was a little disappointing because it was SOOOO good.

Finally, let me tell you about the food in Bhutan.  If you look into traveling there, you'll find out that it costs a whopping $250 per day, which seems really expensive.  However, that cost covers just about all your expenses.  You'll have to pay for soft drinks and souvenirs, and that's about it.  And when they feed you, they REALLY feed you.  I was embarassed by how much food they brought me - as if I could eat all that!  And in spite of all this, when I saw Five yesterday she was shocked because I seem to have lost weight.

The staples of the Bhutanese diet are red rice (I'm not sure what makes it red, but it doesn't have anything added to it, it just is) and chilli cheese.  This is just about the best thing I've ever tasted.  It's green chilies and I don't even know what kind of cheese, but it burns a hole straight through you.  I may have been a dragon in a former life, because I'm very happy when I feel like I can breathe fire, and that is exactly what chilli cheese does to you.  And the best I had the whole time there was at a farmhouse after a hot stone bath, but that's a story that belongs elsewhere.

*I may have made this number up, but the fact remains that I've never gotten a parasite.  Apparently alcohol is good for the same thing, but it NOT good for good little Mormon girls.  Coke is not effective against food poisoning.

Parting Shots and Starting Thoughts

My last night in Tibet I stayed in the shabbiest hotel - one star, and I'm surprised Zhangmu's Sherpa Hotel managed that! - I have ever had the misfortune of sleeping in.  Thank goodness I was so exhausted from the night before, or I might not have been able to sleep at all.  It was supposed to only cost me 100 kuai, but a bunch of Indian tourists got there before me and took all the cheap rooms, so instead I ended up in a more expensive one, which even after getting a discount from the proprietress was the same price as the 3-star place I stayed in Shigatse.

Zhangmu is one of the strangest towns I've ever visited.  It's the Chinese border town, and built going down the side of a ravine.  The Energizer asked me if it looked like Korea, and I had to admit that the buildings bore a strange resemblance to some that I'd seen in smaller Korean towns in the countryside.  She explained that there'd been Koreans settled here in the past.  The town itself wasn't much to look at, but the descent into it from the plateau was gorgeous.  It had slowly been getting greener, and then toward the top of the ravine turned to the most verdant mess of ground cover, with waterfalls breaking out of the rock at random intervals.  By the time we got to the town, there were trees and it was humid as hell.  The Energizer says this is what eastern Tibet looks like, over where it adjoins Chengdu.  Apparently a lot of Chinese tourists like to visit that region.

The next morning I made my third border crossing by land (which seems to me a lot more hassle than air crossings for some reason).  It took a long time to actually get down to immigration.  The streets of Zhangmu are narrow and clogged with tour buses and Nepali trucks.  After we got fairly close, our driver parked and said goodbye, then the Energizer and I went on down where seemingly MILLIONS of people, mostly Indian, were milling about in a rough semblance of a line.  The Energizer found me the back of the line (sort of) then went off for a while.  When she came back, she moved me to a group with some other Western tourists, which I was led to believe I'd been given permission to join, and then she went away again.  A few more minutes later she came back and ushered me to the front of the line.  Don't ask me how all this came to pass - my best guess is that she's so chipper and energetic - not to mention rare, because guiding seems to be more of a male occupation - that people just give her what she wants, because this was not the first time I saw her twist people to her will.  Somehow I went from the end of the line to through immigration before the people I'd been standing behind had moved ten feet.  And then she was waving me on my way across the bridge to Nepal.

Yes, we drove over that.

That was strange in and of itself.  When you get to the Nepal side, they just let you through.  There is no officer standing there checking everyone's credentials.  If I'd wanted to, I could have walked right past the visa office and no one would have stopped me (of course this might have proved problematic when I tried to LEAVE the country, but still).  They gave me my visa on the spot, and then I had to go find transportation to Kathmandu.  Lonely Planet said it would cost me 350 to ride the bus.  Even as early in the morning as it was (probably 10:30 when I left Tibet, but 8:15 when I entered Nepal...no, the bridge wasn't that long.  Tibet, as well as all of China, is on Beijing time, which means I've been suffering from a mild case of jetlag despite not having been on a plane in nearly two weeks) it was hot and humid, and I decided I'd take a jeep, if I could find one to share.  And it's a good thing I did.  For the second time in a week, the rain had caused road problems, and it was a little scary going over places where there'd been landslides, not to mention that the roads were so rough that I was NOT feeling well by the time I finally got to my hostel, the Monumental Paradise on Freak Street, at 4 that afternoon.  In fact, the roads were so crowded, and the air coming into the jeep so polluted from big trucks belching black smoke straight into the window, that I was worried that I was wrong, thinking that Nepal was going to be the best part of the trip.  Find out one way or the other tomorrow...

Whenever, WherEverest

Something I discovered around 3 in the morning at Everest Base Camp, after trying unsuccessfully to sleep for 5 hours, is that I have a second hypochondriac tendency: fear of dying from Acute Mountain Sickness at Everest Base Camp.  I also realized that I missed having someone to travel with.  I go on adventures alone because I can't stand the thought of not doing something just because no one else can go with me, but at 3 in the morning when you're afraid you're about to die because there's not enough oxygen in the air and you can't even go to sleep to dream about more pleasant things, you realize just how much you wish someone else was there with you.  The Energizer was great, and she happily got up when I woke her at five in the morning to get my other bottle of water and can of oxygen, which I'd stupidly left in the car, but she wasn't family or friends.

Our driver, taking the river like a boss.

The drive to Everest was almost as stunning as the destination.  We had to go over three passes to get there (one of which was actually higher than base camp) and the mountains stretching out as far as the eye could see were just breathtaking (and even considering how little breath I had at that point, that's saying a lot).  Before that, though, not far out of Shigatse, we came to a little snag...there was a long line of trucks and buses waiting.  Our incredible driver stopped and assessed the situation - rains two days ago had washed out the bridge we needed to go over - and then decided he was driving through the mother lovin' river.  I learned a valuable lesson that day: never underestimate the value of four-wheel drive!

After a long drive up and down hills, we arrived at our stop for the night, the third base camp (and yes, I almost made a joke about getting to "third base").  This is the one for the tourists.  From third base camp we had to board a bus and go over a few more hills to second base camp, which is where the serious mountaineers get their start, after however long they sit there waiting on the weather.  In view of the second base camp is the original camp.  The Energizer explained that we're not allowed up there; not only is it a cemetery for the people Everest has claimed over the years (the ones whose bodies were recovered, at any rate), but this is also where some tourists flew the Tibetan flag several years back, upsetting the Establishment and consequently screwing the rest of us over (it's their fault that all tourists must now have a guide).

We were really lucky.  I was pretty okay with the fact that the forecast for my entire trip was "rain," but I wanted to see that peak.  I'd been praying, but was still apprehensive until we stopped just after we first came within sight of the mountain, and the clouds very serendipitously trailed their way off the top.  As we were getting ready to go back to our camp, the whole thing clouded over; in fact, it was still cloudy as we drove away the next morning.

And, of course, one must-do experience at base camp is hanging prayer flags.  You're better off bringing them from Lhasa...the Energizer and I both failed on this, and the guy selling them there wanted 30 kuai for them (which is outrageous).  So we split the cost and hung them together.  Lit - these ones were for you.

Temple Fatigue

If you ever decide you're going to visit Tibet, there's something you should know about: Temple Fatigue.  It will come on you unexpectedly, without any warning.

On the first day of your trip, you'll be fine.  Everything will be bright and colorful and wonderful.  You'll be too busy taking pictures to worry about the possible of consequences of going to temples several hours a day.

The second day will go alright as well.  The beautiful ceremonies and symbols will captivate your imagination. 

By the third day, maybe you'll try something new, a nunnery perhaps.  On the other hand, maybe you studied Asian art history in college while your classmates were taking African/Pacific/Native American (largely considered the easy option), and you already know a few things about Buddhist art.  In that case, you might begin to be bored of your guide's explanations of which Buddha is which, and want her to leave you in peace so you can focus on taking cool pictures.  But you'll probably be too afraid of offending her and let her just keep going on.

On the fourth day, if you're lucky, maybe you'll see some different Buddhas.  Maybe you'll see ones that were imported from India, or that are made out of wood, or both.  Maybe your guide will start quizzing you on the different Buddhas, since she's told you enough about them.

A visit to the protector gods' chapel will help.  Scary and gruesome - that will break up the monotony for sure!

And then your guide will take you up the stupa at Kumbum monastery where there are SEVENTY-SEVEN separate chapels.  And you will look at Buddha after Boddhisatva after Tara.  And after one level of beautiful art it will all blur together and you will decide to just skip to the top, which is a shame, but really all for the best, because you'll feel even worse if you get cranky with the people you are hoping to benefit by being in Tibet.

On the fourth day, you might just lose it, particularly if you find yourself in Shigatse and it's a busy day at Tashilhunpo Monastery.  At first you may be excited to see MONGOLIANS (if you've been living there at any rate - they do not have quite the same sentimental attachment for you that Koreans have, but to see them in their finest deels so far from where you usually see them will thrill you nonetheless and you won't be able to resist a happy, "Sain bain nuu!")  Then you will start seeing the monastery.  Or rather, start being pushed and shoved through the monastery.  At this point, you won't want to play "Past, Present, or Future?" with your guide anymore, although you will be happy when you get to trade your pen with one left by an earlier supplicant for a creative blessing in the chapel of the Maitreya Buddha.  You won't be able to distract yourself by taking photos because the camera fee for the chapels will be exorbitant (150 kuai was the cheapest one I can remember).  After being separated from your guide by people who DON'T KNOW HOW TO FORM A DAMN QUEUE and have almost pushed you down the stairs, you will give up.  Not even the hope of seeing the chapel built where the sky burials used to be (the closest you'll get to sky burials on this trip, in spite of how gruesomely fascinating you find them) will lure you onward.  You'll say screw it, and go shopping, where people will pat your ass and laugh at how big you are, but at least you'll have room to breathe what little oxygen is in the air.

At this point, it is best for you and your guide that you just say NO to more temples and monasteries.  You may be tempted by Rongbu Monastery, up next to Everest Base Camp (the highest elevated monastery in the world).  Maybe you'll pull it together for one last monastery.  Or maybe you'll have a helluva night in your tent and want nothing more than to get to a lower elevation and smoother roads. 

If you decide to visit Tibet, learn from my fail.  Do a little more advance planning, and figure out what else you could be doing besides seeing temples...I could have seen the horse racing festival in Gyantse if I'd planned my trip so that I got there on the 20th of July.  Or else plan to see things that are happening at the monasteries.  For example, Sera and Drepung have debating monks during the weeks (sadly, I was only in Lhasa during the weekend).  Kumbum and Tashilhunpo monasteries both have huge thangkas (religious paintings) that they display at certain times of the year.  One of my huge regrets was that I didn't get to see sand painting; I just taught mandalas to my students and would have been thrilled to be able to see the process in action.

But my most essential piece of advice: suck it up, bitch.  Temple Fatigue is a first world problem.  Thank your lucky stars, your Heavenly Father, or whatever else you might believe in that you were born into the auspicious circumstances that led you to be able to visit Tibet.  And remember that the next week will bring you an all NEW set of temples and gods and goddesses, because variety IS the spice of life.

Head in the Clouds

My father is very fond of telling me I've got my head in the clouds (when he isn't telling me to pull it out of my ass), so this post is dedicated to him.  However, I would like to preface that it is hard NOT to have your head in the clouds when you spend a week at over 3650 meters (11,975 feet - for some reason I am much more comfortable talking in meters when it comes to altitude...maybe it's less daunting).

Day 1: Yumbulagang Palace, the one non-standard sight I wanted to see.

I was really worried about the altitude.  I had problems with it last summer, and Puno was only at 3830 meters (the highest I got last week was Everest Base Camp, 5200 meters above sea level).  Of course, my body then was used to being near sea level, whereas for the last year I've been living comfortably at UB's 1300 meters.  On the other hand, los farmacias around Puno carried all sorts of wonderful drugs for dealing with altitude, while nowhere in all of China, let alone Tibet, can you purchase Diamox.  I am stubborn and I didn't WANT to spend a few days acclimating, so I did some research, and came up with my own altitude cocktail...a coke twice a day and two Advil three times a day, at least for the first few days.  Caffeine and ibuprofen both help relax your blood vessels, so even if I couldn't breathe, at least I wouldn't be crippled by headaches.

For the most part, it worked pretty well (that or I was better acclimated, or perhaps it was the blessing I got from my home teachers).  The first few days I had a very slight headache, and then I was alright until the day we got to base camp.  At the top of the pass to Yamdrok-Tso (a scorpion-shaped lake) it was a little hard to breathe, but I learned circular breathing helped me some - a long breath in through the nose, quickly expelled through the mouth.  Is there any science behind it?  Who the hell knows...all I can tell you is it helped me feel like I wasn't about to suffer an anxiety attack, and helped me to catch my breath a lot faster.

Yamdrok-Tso is supposed to be an exceptionally beautiful lake.  From what I could tell, it actually was.  However, those clouds I had my head in blocked out the sun for most of my trip.  I can't really complain about this, because the one hypochondriac tendency I have deals with skin cancer.  Still, it would have been nice to see the lake all stretched out turquoise under the sun.

All of the photos in this post except the top one are from the fourth day of my trip.  We covered a lot of miles that day, going from Lhasa to Shigatse (originally I was only scheduled to go as far as Gyantse, but the Energizer suggested we go on, and I decided this was fine with me.  We passed several glaciers along the way.  Snow in the summer never fails to amaze me.

Gyantse was probably the most Tibetan place of anywhere we went during the week.  We went to Kumpum Monastery, and saw the palace on the hillside facing it (which is currently shut for repairs, which made me happier than ever that I decided to see Yumbulagang - Domestic Goddess told me she went here on the tour she did, but I wanted to see the other one ever since first seeing a picture of it).  After visiting the monastery the Energizer and I walked down a backstreet, where cows were hanging out, and dogs, and just enjoyed the quiet.

A Lass in Lhasa

If Dorothy had been Korean, she could have said, "We're not in Bundang anymore, Toto."  That is what I want to say, sitting here in a Kathmandu internet cafe.  It is nowhere near as comfy as a PCbang in Korea, nor is their speed as fast, which is why I'm actually typing this into my hotmail account while blogger is uploading my photos.  Luckily my feet need a break from wandering - I walked from Patan's Durbar square to Kathmandu's Durbar square to the end of Thamel and back to my hostel yesterday, which is a lot of walking on damaged feet.  Totally worth it, even if I did feel like I was melting, but a nice, chillaxed day of blogging and (later this afternoon) a cooking class will make a nice change.

Anyways, more about Tibet.  I got to Lhasa on the second day of my trip.  I had been looking forward to it for.  ev.  er.  I could see Potala Palace before we even got close, and that was thrilling.  And then we got closer, and it looked like just another Chinese city.  That was disappointing, to say the least, realizing it was not the Shang-ri-La I'd been dreaming of, no matter how much I'd been expecting it.  Then we got to the area I stayed in, just outside the Barkhor Kora (pilgrim circuit), and the Chinese part of the city was blocked out.  The buildings are very traditional, and either white-washed, or yellow-washed, or red-washed, or some combination of the three.  It is some kind of wash.  I found this out when I brushed my hand along the edge of a temple and it turned my hand a bricky color.

 

The Barkhor circuit is built in a square around Jokhang temple, and with three hours to spare between being left at my hotel and meeting my guide, the Energizer Bunny (yes, that is the nickname I'm giving her - she keeps going, and going, and going), I decided to go exploring.  You'd think that between it being a square and my incredible sense of direction, that it would be impossible to get lost.  Well, I didn't get lost, but it was a near thing.  Mostly because my hostel wasn't actually ON the square, so I couldn't just keep going until I stumbled across it.  Also, something new I learned - you can save a map on a Galaxy note.  It remembers what you've panned over, anyways, but having a saved map of where you're going is actually really convenient if you don't want to look like a total noob dragging your guidebook with you everywhere.

As I mentioned in the last post, I think the Tibetans are the most pious people I've ever had the privilege to meet.  The first day with the Energizer Bunny, I was impressed, because not only did she KNOW all sorts of things about Buddhism (which makes sense as a guide), she actually practiced it, buying butter to add to the lamps and doing her prostrations before telling me about the chapels we were in.  When we got into Lhasa I got to see this on a greater scale.  Everywhere people were burning incense, rotating prayer wheels, even completing the Kora by prostrating themselves every few steps.  That means that they kneel down, stretch themselves out fully, press their head to the ground, drop their prayer beads, stand up, take a few steps to where their prayer beads are, and repeat until they have circled the temple.  And besides this outward manifestation of their faith, they really seemed to be a kind, patient, peaceful people, actually living what they believe, which is more than I can say for practitioners of some religions. 

As peaceful and kind as they are, they aren't total slaves to tradition.  I loved the colorful hairdos that they women (and some men) had - they braid colored thread into their hair and around their head like a coronet (I tried this myself, but my hair is not quite long enough yet).  Energizer Bunny explained that this was something married women do; that before they marry, most Tibetan girls wear jeans and t-shirts, only trading them in for more traditional clothes when they get hitched.  Everyone everywhere had cell phones, too, and most of the hotels had wifi, although it didn't always work.  Dhondup actually has his own facebook page and organizes things independently; it was part of the reason I decided to book my tour through him, rather than a Chinese agency - I wanted my time in Tibet to benefit the Tibetan people as much as possible.  Also, he had a lot of good feedback on Lonely Planet's Tibet forum.

Oh, and apparently the hairstyle isn't just for married women - I came across these little girls while I was exploring, with threads braided into their hair, too, and they were too dang cute!  Most of the Tibetans I met didn't mind me taking their photo, which was cool.

Visiting Potala Palace was probably the best part of my stay in Lhasa.  It just has so much history, and is stunning.  The colors inside it were unbelievable, and the view you get from up there, while not what it would have been sixty years ago, is still pretty spectacular.  However, this was the saddest part of my trip as well.  The Energizer showed me the different tombs of past Dalai Lamas, and you can't help but think about the fact that the current Dalai Lama, the man whose house this really is, is in exile, and when he dies, will probably not be laid to rest here.  I know it's just a house (okay, a palace, in fact, and in part a temple), but if I think about not being able to go home and see my family ever again, it breaks my heart.

One other thing I learned about Tibetans last week: they actually like cats.  As a general rule, Asians don't like cats.  Koreans don't, Chinese don't, Mongolians don't (yes, I know that's not all of Asia, but it's a significant chunk, right?)  Tibetans don't mind them, and that was nice to see.  The Energizer said that Tibetans keep cats in their homes and take their dogs with them on their pilgrim routes, and while the cats I saw weren't spoiled like their American counterparts, they didn't run off scared when you try to pet them.  And you've got to love a people that like cats.

Top Ten Reasons You Should Visit Tibet this Year

So after a very, VERY long week, I've crossed over from Tibet to Nepal.  Tibet, in case you didn't realize it (and you should, since I mentioned it in the last few posts), is technically part of China, so I was ecstatic to sit in front of a guesthouse and check my facebook this morning while waiting for a jeep to take me to Kathmandu.  Now, whether it is right or wrong that China owns Tibet's ass, I won't go into, so if you are here looking for one of my classic angry blogs, you're going to be disappointed.  A few days before I set off on my adventures my blog registered a hit from China.  Now, as I mentioned before, China blocks blogs as well as facebook, so I'm guessing whoever read it was somehow involved in the government, and that freaked me the heck out.  Now that I've been to Tibet, I'm not as worried about whether or not they will turn me away at the airport, but on the other hand, my guide and driver were fantastic, and they never said a bad word about the government, and I'd hate for them to get in trouble because I went shooting my mouth off for your entertainment. 

Anyways, without further ado, here's your top ten list, according to me:
10. Because people will smile at you, laugh at you, smack your ass...basically they will be thrilled you're there.
9. Because there's nowhere else on earth you will find people so dedicated to living what they believe.  Trust me, I know; I've seen quite a bit of this planet.
8. Because you've never tried yak.  And you should.
7. So that you can fully appreciate the wonder of toilets...well, basically anywhere else.  I'll dedicate a whole blog to toilets later.
6. Because you love colorful shit.  (I do - as an artist I can proudly say that I'm a whore for color, and everything from the walls to people's hair is colorful).
5. Highest mountain in the world.  'Nuff said.
4. Because "Temple Fatigue" is a real condition, and we need to spread awareness.  Did you know that long-term travel in Buddhist countries can lead to a syndrome called "Temple Fatigue?"  In an upcoming blog I will share the symptoms, and what you can do if you are suffering from it.
3. So that you will realize - when you are getting pissed off at being pushed in a huge crowd of worshippers at Tashillunbo Monastery - that as devoted as they are, Tibetans are still just people.  And people everywhere are pretty much the same (annoying!)
2. So you can have a better understanding of the situation.  So you can see the good things that have happened as a result of Tibet being part of China as well as getting pissed off over what isn't so great about it.

and the number one reason you should visit Tibet this year:

Because you can, dumbass.  The government has pretty much dropped all the permit restrictions.  How long do you think that's going to last?