Free Tibet

Getting into Tibet was quite a mission. After getting Chinese visas and getting into China we then had to apply for Tibet Travel Permits to enter the region. Even then, getting the train tickets to Lhasa was difficult and we had to spend the first half of the journey (20 hours) trying to sleep in the packed-out hard-seat section because these were the only tickets we could get. After an unscheduled six hour wait in Lanzhou – whose only claim to fame is that it is the most polluted city in China - we finally made it to Xining, the halfway point on our journey, where we met up with Vali and Alex, two Austrian guys with whom we had arranged to travel to Tibet. The second part of the journey was much easier as the four of us had managed to get a sleeper compartment, which we shared with a Chinese couple who invited us to share their bottle of snake-penis wine - very good for male virility, apparently. The railway is the highest in the world and climbs to over 5000 metres above sea level, passing through beautiful mountain scenery. The train was fitted with oxygen masks in case any passengers suffered from altitude sickness – it was lucky that none of us had any problems as none of us could understand the Chinese instructions.

In Lhasa, we visited lots of Buddhist temples, monasteries, and the Potala palace, the home of the Dalai Lama before he fled to India. Inside there are golden statues of Buddha and other gods such as scary protector deities with three heads or chains of skulls around their necks, tombs of past lamas, and photographs of current lamas – the notable exception being the current Dalai Lama, whose image has been banned by the Chinese government. Most monasteries have some signs of the damage inflicted by the Chinese during the Cultural Revolution, and according to our guide many tombs and statues have since been rebuilt.

Pilgrims come to Lhasa from all over Tibet and always walk around the monasteries and temples in clockwise circles, spinning prayer wheels as they go. The monasteries are dark and windowless places, lit only by yak-butter candles which are kept alight by pilgrims who add spoonfuls of yak-butter from plastic bags that they carry with them on their pilgrimage; these make the monasteries smell of yak, and the floors slippery from butter spillages.

The one thing we don't miss about Tibet was the food. The Tibetan diet mostly consists of tsampa, a stodgy, tasteless mixture of barley flour with water or yak-butter tea. Yak-butter tea tastes salty, oily and yakky, and we could barely finish a cup of the stuff. But probably the worst crime against food we have ever tasted were yak-cheese sweets – dried yak cheese coated with sugar, which somehow manage to taste worse than they sound. We mostly survived off instant noodles, as every hotel gives free hot water to guests and they tasted better than most of the food we ate in restaurants.

After leaving Lhasa we travelled overland through Tibet to the Nepali border, stopping at lakes, monasteries and mountain passes decorated with prayer flags on the way. We passed herds of yaks, and nomad tents with 'cute' little children running out towards us with open palms, shouting the only English words they know - 'hello, money'.

Everest Base Camp was the highest point of our journey, at 5,200 metres above sea level. We spent a night in a yak-skin tent, which was surprisingly warm despite the freezing weather outside, and the following morning we walked to base camp itself for an amazing view of Mount Everest, or Qomolangma as it is called in Tibetan.

The next day we drove down the very steep road to the Nepali border. The road took us down from the cold, dry Tibetan plateau to the tropical Nepali climate in the middle of the monsoon. There were beautiful views of the valley (when the mist cleared) and we drove under waterfalls which were cascading down directly onto the road. Because the end of the road was closed due to roadworks, we walked the last few kilometres in to town, wading through ankle deep water where a waterfall had taken over the road.