From Bangkok to Lhasa

My friend Alice is Taiwanese American and an expert linguistic anthropologist, a sister major to my major of foreign language education. We met at an aerobics class at the University of Texas when my Japanese cohort, also a linguistic anthropology major, Risako invited both of us to have a carrot juice after the class. Over that first carrot juice, Alice and I decided we wanted to travel together.

The relationship from the carrot juice and chats about language did blossom, and in four years time, we did travel together. I finished my dissertation, and Alice began work research on hers, recording TV talk shows in Taipei. I had been invited to give a paper in Hong Kong, and I wanted to do some research of my own in Japan. Alice had said that she always wanted to go to Tibet before the Chinese Communist Party ruined everything. I had always wanted to go trekking in Nepal and see Mount Everest. As a result, since Nepal and Tibet are right next to one another, we decided to combine the trips into one. We decided we should meet in Bangkok. There I would buy our tickets to get to Nepal, and in Nepal we would arrange our tour through Tibet.

After my research ended in Nagoya, I flew to Bangkok and arranged our flight schedules. I also prepared Alice’s one day in Bangkok in celebration of her 30^th birthday. She arrived on a Saturday noon. I met her at the Bangkok airport and we took a taxi to our hotel in the Sukomvit area of town, an area known for nice restaurants, good tailor shops, and embassies. When we arrived at the hotel, I presented her with a burgundy colored silk robe I had the Nepalese tailors down the street make. I thought the color beautifully accentuated Alice’s brown skin, deep brown eyes, and straight medium length hair. I suggested that we take a nap before the evening’s plans. She agreed, and we rested until 6:00. When we woke up, we dressed up for a night on the town. We took a taxi to the A** River, and then hopped another taxi; this time the taxi was a riverboat that took us for a tour of the city at twilight. As the sun set, Alice’s face glowed against the purple and orange streaked sky. The boat sprayed a light mist over us, and the drizzle on our faces combined with the smells of diesel fuel from the boat and other passengers’ open Coca-Cola cans.

We exited the boat at the Banglamphu area of town. This is the most famous part of Bangkok for tourists, particularly since it is maintained as one of the cheapest places for tourists on Earth. It is also the center of Thai history and where the king lives. Here one also finds Kao San Road, perhaps the most famous street in the world that is only three blocks long. Shoestring travelers to Asia, Africa, and Australia congregate here. For some who have been traveling for two years, it may be their first time to have a shower in weeks or to see a video on one of the TV screens. Many of these travelers prefer to camp on beaches or stay in hostels or guesthouses, attempting as much as possible to spend no more than a dollar a day. And Kao San Road allows them to do that. There are hotels where people meet up and figure out how to spend no more than one dollar. These are the cheapest restaurants in Bangkok, and they are consequently the most crowded. The meals are simple, nothing more than rice with Thai sauces, pancakes, and lemonade, but for many travelers, such is luxury. Besides, in spite of the prices, the food is generally really good. One passes the hotels and smells marijuana brimming from some of the rooms. Europeans are decked out in soft long-legged pants, some of which have not been washed in several days, maybe even weeks. Many of the men sport scruffiness, and many of the women wear scarves to cover their stringy hair. From store to store, reggae music blares and tapes are for sale on the street. All items are available, though the most popular place seems to be a 7-11 convenience store, known in town for its availability of ice cream and chocolate. Street vendors sell radios, hats, swimsuits, suntan lotion, toenail clippers, and any other item a traveler might be in immediate need of. In our case, it was pillows. Alice spotted two Vienna sausage shaped pillows, both decorated in mustard yellow, burgundy, and bottle green. We each bought one for two dollars each in preparation for long plane rides, waits at airports, and possible hard seats on buses. Alice found a woman who could fix her shoe, too. Alice had had a problem with the heel, and the young woman fixed it right there. I had bought our plane tickets on Kao San Road, as well, so I wanted to show her the cubby hole where I forked out my credit card.

Two blocks from Kao San Road is the Monument to Democracy—a traffic circle with a large statue in honor of Thailand’s ability to not be conquered in all these years. In the median of the large street that approaches the Monument were 20-foot tall posters of the King of Thailand in honor of his 50^th year in reign. The posters were framed in gold, and spotlights lit the posters for all drivers by to see. Alice and I hopped in a taxi in front of one of the posters and rode back to Sukhumvit where dinner was waiting for us. I had made reservations for Indian food on the 27^th floor of a hotel in that area. We were given a table next to the window, and all of Bangkok was lit in front of us. We shared naan, curry, wine, and coconut desserts in the name of her birthday.

During dinner, Alice said, “Wow! If this is just the first day in Thailand, I can’t imagine what tomorrow will be like.

Didn’t I tell you?

Tell me what!

What we’re doing tomorrow!

No!

Oh, we’re flying to Bangladesh. So, do you want to go to Bangladesh?

Well, OK!”

And the next day we did. We left Bangkok in the mid-afternoon. We landed for an hour in Yangon, Myanmar. We looked out upon a single runway for this capital city and looked at the reeds that separated the runway from the rest of the country. We imagined Ang-san Su Ki being just a few miles away, under house arrest by one of the most oppressive governments in the world. A British woman got on the plane and sat next to us. She greeted us with a smile and a hello. She had been an English teacher in Japan and was shoestringing her way back to England over the next year or so. She had a rule to not spend more than six dollars in a day. When we told her our hotel in Nepal would cost us each three dollars a night, she said, “Ooh, too heavy for my pocketbook!” We asked her if she liked Myanmar, and she replied that as soon as she really got into the idea of traveling in the country, she realized that all the money spent on going into tourist sites were going directly into the pocket of the country’s leader; as a result, she pretty much stayed in her hotel. Alice asked, “So what is the name of Myamar’s leader now?” and the British woman spat, “Bastard!”

It wasn’t clear to Alice or me what we were to do upon arrival in Bangladesh, even though we asked officials at the gate in Bangkok and flight attendants on board. They said to just go on in, whatever that meant. As we arrived in Dhaka, the summer sun was just setting, and I understood why Bangladesh’s flag is green with a red dot in the middle. That’s how the sun looked as it set into the wet marshes of Bangladesh: a red dot in the middle of green pasture. As the plane landed, I also saw marsh after marsh of water, and I understood how the country was so easily flooded so regularly. The country is actually mostly water, I realized. It is also the most crowded: 125 million people in an area the size of Indiana, and 16 million of them live in Dhaka, making it one of the ten largest cities in the world. Still, in spite of Dhaka’s size, when we arrived at the airport, we realized that there were only four gates. Here we were in one of the largest cities in the world, and its only airport had but four gates, making it actually just one quarter the size of the airport in Austin.

Alice and I got off the plane first and looked for the signs leading us to passport control. We saw a sign that said visas, and we went up and started filling out forms. Then the woman behind the visa desk told us that a visa would cost us each $45. We said, “But wait! We’re here for just one night, and Biman Airlines told us there wouldn’t be any cost.

No, each visa costs $45 no matter how long you stay. You can stay as long as you want, but you have to pay $45.”

Neither one of us wanted to pay, certainly not for just one night at an airline hostel when we were to leave for Kathmandu early the next morning. We weren’t really going to see any of Bangladesh, so $45 for each of us sounded like a lot. Finally, I showed the attendant our tickets, and she said, “Oh, you’re in transit. You’re not officially entering the country. That’s OK! You can go. But wait! You’ve already started filling out the forms, and each one is numbered. So you have to pay.”

Then I said, “Look, I understand you have to be accountable for each form. Can’t Alice and I each write a letter of apology and then staple it to your form so that it goes into the right drawer correctly?

That sounds like a good idea. Let’s just do that!” said the attendant. So Alice and I got out some notebook paper we were carrying and scratched a quick letter of apology and explanation for why we started filling out the form without paying the $45. We signed it, and the visa controller sent us to customs.

We put our bags through x-ray machines, had police officials look at our passports, walked to tables to have our bags inspected, and walked out a set of revolving doors. We were in the main arrival lounge of the airport.

“Now where do we go? And where are the others that are supposed to go to the airport hostel with us?” Alice said. We couldn’t see any of the other people we had met on the plane. We hadn’t seen them at all through this entire process. What did they know that we didn’t know? We saw a sign for Biman Airlines, so we walked up to the official. We showed him our tickets, and he said, “My God, you’re in transit. How did you get through passport control?

We walked up to the officials, they looked at our passports and bags, and they let us through.

You’re not supposed to go through. You’re supposed to be in the transit lounge.

Where’s the transit lounge?

Upstairs!

OK, so how do we get upstairs?

You can’t go upstairs. You’ve already entered the country, and you have to go back and officially leave the country again in order to get to the transit lounge.

How do we do that?

You have to go out these front doors, go down the ramp, go around the fence, go up the ramp to the departure area, go to the Biman desk, get a stamp for your ticket, go through security, and then up another set of stairs to the transit lounge.

You can’t just walk us up a set of stairs?

Hold on! Let me make a phone call.”

The Biman official called the transit desk. They were waiting for us.

When the official hung up, he said, “I’m sorry, but you have to go around.”

We sighed and said, “OK and started for the front doors of the airport.” Just as we opened the doors, at least 100 men started yelling as if we had just scored a goal at a soccer match, all extending their arms, begging to let us let them carry our bags. “Can I help you? Can I help you?” they cried. There were so many men that they were blocking the down ramp, and we were trapped between the exit door and the ramp with nowhere to go. I turned around.

“Eric, where are you going?” Alice yelled, following me back through the double doors.

“To get help! I’m not going through this without help.”

I walked in and went back to the Biman official. “I’m sorry to bother you, but can someone go with us? We prefer to carry our own bags.”

“That would be fine, sir!” and the official whistled for a tall thin police officer wearing an olive green beret and night stick to accompany us. He opened the door for us, and the 100 men started yelling again. The police officer yelled at them to step back, and Alice and I started walking down the ramp. The policeman walked with us, asking people to step back. The 100 men continued to follow us and reach out in an effort to carry our bags. Some were children perhaps eight or nine years old. Others were tall enough to put their hands in our faces, nearly batting our noses as we walked by them. While the noise was probably offers of help, they seemed more like loud chaos to me. The bags had been getting heavy after nearly five minutes of trying to walk down the ramp, and Alice asked me if I wanted to stop and rest as we walked down the hill. I said, “I don’t care how tired my shoulder gets, I’m not putting these bags down.” It was a good 100 yards down the end of the hill where the chainlink fence ended. We turned a 180-degree turn around the chainlink fence and walked back up another ramp and another 100 yards, just parallel to the lower ramp we had just descended. As soon as we turned around, the yelling stopped, and we heard nothing more than the sound of a few cars passing on roads nearby. We could even hear our own footsteps as we ascended this second ramp. We opened a set of double doors and were greeted by security guards and an x-ray machine. We put our luggage through the machine and proceeded to the Biman desk. When we arrived, we said to the official there, “Hi, we’re the two passengers who inadvertently entered the country.

Oh yes, let me call downstairs to confirm.” He called, and nodded. “Yes, they’re waiting for you in the transit lounge. Let me see your tickets please.”

We handed him our tickets, and he placed a small red stamp on each of them. Then he wrote a note in Bengali that supposedly allowed us to go through security and up the stairs to the transit lounge. He directed us to our fourth security check point. There we handed the officers our tickets and our notes, and they let us through. We still had to have our passports checked in order to officially leave the country, so we had to had a police officer at that door the same set of tickets and notes. We asked him to direct us to the transit room, and he showed us a flight of stairs, a flight of stairs that was just adjacent to the person who was going to give us our $45 visas. If we had just gone up those stairs, we would have been in the right place. But there was no sign and no person to direct us there. We walked up the stairs and saw the British shoestring traveling English teacher. She said, “My God, it took you a while! Where have you been?”

“On an adventure!”

We waited on a set of sofas until one of the Biman officials said, “The van is here!” All of us got up. Alice went to the desk to ask if she could get a Bangladesh stamp in her passport. She got one: a little red circle that said “Bangladesh” on the top and “transit” on the bottom. All of us were excited, so we raced to the desk to get similar stamps marked in our passports, as well. After we all got our passports appropriately and proudly inked, a Biman official walked us down the stairs to passport control. We met the same people who checked our passports, put our bags through x-rays, and inspected our bags before. Each time, the official looked at us oddly. One even said, “I think I just saw you, didn’t I?” Alice explained that we had goofed and that we had to do it all over again.

I said that I wasn’t sure I wanted to encounter the droves of people we had met before, and Alice said she felt the same way. We told the people in our group that there were masses of people, all hoping and begging for the mere opportunity to carry our bag. Their eyes widened and we even saw a couple of gulps from some of the passengers. But when we opened the door from customs and from the arrival area, no one was out there on the ramp, only a van with a single driver waiting for us. Not one yell, not one person extending their arm in desperation! Just the van!

We rode not even one mile to a set of concrete buildings, guarded by wire fences. A guard opened the gate, and we rode in. We checked in with a front desk clerk, and he gave Alice and me a key to our room. A bellhop took our bags, and we walked through the compound to a room with white walls, two beds with green bedspreads, a ceiling fan, and a clean bathroom. We dropped our bags on the floor when the bell hop said, “May I ask you to leave the room for a moment.” We walked out, and as we walked out the door, the bell hop sprayed the room for a minute in an effort to keep mosquitoes out. He said, “Please don’t go back in for five minutes.”

After our wait, we took off our shoes after a long day and cleaned out the lint between our toes, saying “Ah!” with each cleaning. It felt so good to sit down. Suddenly the bell hop returned and said, “Dinner is ready!” It was nearly midnight, but the hostel and airline had arranged for all of the passengers to share a meal of curry chicken, rice, potatoes, 7-Up, and Pepsi ready for us. It was good.

At 8:30 the following morning, there was a knock at our door. It was the bell hop, announcing that breakfast was ready. We walked upstairs to the same dining room with the same passengers and had a breakfast of curry chicken, rice, potatoes, 7-Up, and Pepsi. One person at the table asked a waiter if it would all right if we went on a walk. He said it would be fine so long as we returned to the compound to take our ride to the airport by 11:30. We were all excited, for it meant that we could walk in Bangladesh and at least get a glimpse of the country. We all raced to our rooms and collected our cameras.

We walked with a Japanese woman named Ayako who brought her digital camera with her. We learned a couple of things from Ayako. First, she wasn’t afraid to photograph anyone. We were actually awestruck with the gusto with which she took photos of people. Then we noticed that as people looked at her with her camera, she would point at the camera and raise her eyebrows, trying to ask permission. Perhaps the people nodded a yes and perhaps they did nothing. In any event, if Ayako took the photo, she would then bow a thank you to the person being photographed.

Alice decided to do the same. We saw women working on construction sites. It was hot that day, perhaps as hot as 100 degrees. The women were wearing colorful scarves and were cracking concrete with large pick-axes. Some were stacking bricks. Some were doing both while holding onto a baby at the same time. As Alice photographed these women, she pointed to her camera. As they looked, she snapped the picture and then closed her eyes as she made a slight thank you bow. The women didn’t seem to mind, and no one complained.

The hostel was located about 20 kilometers to the north of the city, but we could see the airport down the road. We walked in that direction on a set of semi-asphalt, semi-dirt streets. As we walked, we collected large groups of children. Ayako attracted their attention by taking their photograph. A couple of kids came to yank on her pants to get her to take their photograph too. Right after she snapped their picture, she would show them the image on the back of her digital camera. It seemed like some of the children were seeing their picture for the very first time. They cheered and jumped up and down. They didn’t speak English, but they were happy to run in front of us and pose. Ayako took many pictures and then showed the children the results. Each time she showed them the picture, the children would jump and down. One girl in particular followed us for about a mile. She wore an emerald green dress and was barefoot. She had shortish brown hair and big smile. As we walked alongside a pond, she would yell for other children to come and see their picture, and Ayako was pleased to help them enjoy the pictures. However, as soon as she ran out of memory on her camera, she had to disappoint any child that came. She shrugged her shoulders. Others then asked me to take their picture, which I was happy to do; however, I had no digital image to immediately show them.

As we walked back to the compound, tuktuk drivers would stop and ask us if we wanted a ride. We had no money from Bangladesh, and it was only a matter of half a kilometer, so we declined. However, all of us wanted to get into one of those tuktuks. They were essentially motorcycles, but what motorcycles they were, all with back seats big enough for two people with a canopy separating the passengers from the rain or sun. Each canopy was painted bright acrylic colors, usually greens, yellows, reds, and pinks, often with images of men and women, perhaps characters from favorite romantic Indian movies. On bumpy potholed streets with dust and diesel pollution dominating the dull hot air, these tuktuks made for spectacular contrast.

Even though we made it to the airport on time for our 11:30 flight, our plane was delayed until 4:00. Biman sent us to the third floor lounge of the Dhaka airport where we enjoyed a lunch of curry chicken, rice, potatoes, 7-Up, and Pepsi. I fell asleep on the couch under my Vienna sausage pillow, and Alice and Ayako had fun photographing me while I was asleep.

When we made it through customs in Kathmandu, I marveled at the cow in the front door of the airport. I was making certain bags were in order while Alice followed a tout. She came back to me and introduced me to Arjay. Arjay was the owner of the hotel we would call home for more than a week. He drove us to the Thamel section of Kathmandu, remarking that one would get far more time in jail for running over a cow than for running over a human being. I remarked at the cow I saw in the fairway of the airport golf course, and I wondered if it counted as a movable hazard. For six dollars, our hotel room was nothing short of spectacular: two beds, private shower with hot water, room service, laundry service, left baggage service, and a view of Thamel and the Himalayas. Our bell hop asked us if we wanted to have some Nepali tea, and what a treat it was: a creamy milk base with spicy tea, just the perfect thing to have while stretching out on our bed and reading our Lonely Planet guide.

We loved Kathmandu. We walked the narrow streets of a city marked with four-story red brick buildings. Often people lived above the business that they ran on the ground floor. We changed money in a rug shop. We followed bicycles stacked with twelve stories of eggs hinged on their back. We said “Good morning” to elephants. We sniffed at wild marijuana growing on the sidewalks. We watched India MTV videos in coffee shops, marveling at the love stories and male-female duets contained in each video. We played with monkeys at the Hindu temples. At Pashupatinath Temple, perhaps the second most important of all Hindu temples in the world, we were invited to watch a cremation of a 35-year-old woman who had died of tuberculosis. TB is still manageable in Nepal in that the antibiotic resistant kind hasn’t hit this country yet. Still, the country is ravaged by it, and it remains a terrible problem for the people there.

A man had snakes in a small park outside Pashupantinath, and I sat with him as he placed his pet python around my neck. I had always been afraid of snakes, so I thought this might be an opportunity for me to deal with my fear of them. I had seen the same thing on MTV’s Real World, so I thought it was probably safe. In fact, I found the snake to be rather sweet, its face full of personality, like a pet that one would give a name to. I decided I should be differently about snakes. I always respected them, but only because I knew from science class that I was supposed to. I still had bad dreams about snakes, so I thought perhaps this would be a way to take care of them, and I enjoyed having this python around my neck, and I laughed as I moved my arms up and down as its tail writhed over them. Then the man took a grass basket with a lid on it in his hand, extended his arm as far away from his body as he could, and tapped the lid with a stick. The lid came off, and a cobra stuck its head out of the basket, looking directly into my eyes. Its neck was in full flame, round like a convex hourglass, and when it twisted the neck, I could see the large black omega design on its back. It was a cobra. I cried out a mediocre “Oh my God!” and the crowd that had gathered to watch me from the sides laughed. The man with his arm extended said that it had been defanged and depoisoned so I didn’t need to worry if it bit me. I said, “My, that’s reassuring!” and the crowd laughed again.

We walked through one of Mother Teresa’s hospitals, and bought dye and tea outside its walls. We bought a book about erotic sculptures at Hindu temples. Children and adults saw us with the book and asked if they could look through it. We soon had a line of ten people, waiting to look at our book. At the Monkey Temple, Alice touched a bell for female intelligence, and I touched a prayer wheel for male virility. We laughed that we needed as much as possible, and we took pictures of each other sighing “Ah!” as we each respectively acquired mystical smarts and strength.

We played with homeless children in Durbar Square. The square is a series of extraordinary temples, and it is lined with children who offer to guide tourists throughout the area. Many of them speak extraordinary English, though they may have never attended a day of school. Many have no family, and many live in the alleys of Kathmandu, fending for themselves by asking for money or by being cute. A few have figured out it’s better to work for their keep, and they often draw pictures to give to tourists. At Durbar Square, we gave two children mangoes, and they took us for walks to the tops of a couple of temples for views of the city and the area. The summits of the temples often smelled of urine, and one of our 9-year-old guides indeed peed off the roof. We couldn’t accommodate all that invited us for tours. In fact, we turned all down except for the college student who guided us through Pashupatinath. One child drew a picture of him and his sister and offered it to me. I said, “I would be honored to give you some money for you are truly an artist.

I don’t really want your money. Can I just have milk for me and my sister?

Sure. What do I need to do?”

The boy walked me to the nearest grocery store where there was a box of powdered milk for $4. I bought it and handed it to him.

“Don’t you want my picture?

I love your picture, but I hope you can use it again for someone who will help you go to school.

I can’t go to school.

You have to believe you can go to school.

I don’t believe I can, but I want to.

You can go to school if you want to, but you have to figure out how.

I can’t go to school.”

Perhaps the child was right, and I was putting unnecessary optimism into his head. Perhaps it was impossible for him to go to school. But his picture was an example of talent, his English was tremendous, and his heart was not that of a nine-year-old’s, but rather that of an adult, taking care of his sister in any survival means possible. He said thank you and goodbye and walked with his box of milk down the street. I saw his silhouette disappear into the glare of the evening sun.

We took a two-day camping trip up the K** River so we could go white river rafting. We joined a group of eight other travelers and ventured on two large inflatable rafts on the Friendship Highway, nearly in Tibet. The river was rated a 4, which meant it was just two steps from the most difficult of rivers to be managed, and just three steps from death. We had a practice run the first evening, and then shared a campout meal of macaroni and cheese, prepared by one of our hosts, aptly named Omlet. Omlet often went to the side of our boat in his own kayak, going up and down the stream like a salmon. He said he wanted to represent Nepal in kayaking in the Olympics, and we hoped he would. At the end of the first run, Omlet and Alice soaked themselves in a pat of mud, just off the campground, covering themselves completely in mud. Alice said it felt therapeutic and refreshing after a hard workout on the raft. It was indeed a workout. When rapids were rough and the raft was in position to turn over, we had to listen to our guide to know which way to paddle. And when we paddled, we paddled with all our might. We got wet, and we made our pectorals sore. Then we woke up and did it even more the next morning, harder and steeper and faster. It was a thrill, and Alice called it her new love and immediately started thinking about all the great rivers in the world she could raft down. In the evening, the other tourists settled down to smoke hashish, but I was more in the mood to stay in the tent and sleep. Alice joked that she didn’t smoke hashish because she couldn’t inhale, but she let the others enjoy their hedonism and spent the evening talking to Omlet.

After river rafting, we decided it was time to go to Tibet, the principal goal of the trip. The agency for river rafting had been so wonderful that we decided to work with them again for our Tibet trip. They were indeed nice, but the trip didn’t sound easy. We had to relinquish our passports so that the Chinese embassy could place all our names on one group visa. The cost of transportation, visas, guides, and accommodation, including a flight back from Lhasa to Kathmandu was over $600 for each of us, and the cost slapped us hard. Still, it was our goal. We had come so far, and we had done so much, we didn’t feel like we could quit and just stay in Kathmandu. Besides, we felt we had to see Tibet at that moment or we might never get to see the mystical Tibet we had dreamed of.

We left at 8:00 in the morning, meeting at another hotel where we met two of our group members, an Italian gentleman named Giulio and a French woman called Francine. Later at a rest stop just before leaving Nepal, we would meet up with last group member, Linda, a British woman living with her Chinese husband in Hong Kong. The bus took us as far as the Nepal/China border, and we walked across a large concrete and stone bridge marked with the phrase, “Welcome to the Friendship Highway.” On the China side of the bridge was a large red gate guilded with gold paint with the official kanji marking the entrance into China.

We had to wait on the Chinese side of the bridge. Even though Tibet lies north of Nepal, the time zone difference is 2 hours and 45 minutes different because all of China runs on Beijing time. It wasn’t a long wait, though, and we walked through customs, filling out the forms that military officers, dressed in olive green outfits with red and gold regalia, gave us. We left an inordinate number of blanks on the form. Two in particular had to do with the names of the medications we were bringing and a reply to whether we were bringing in gifts or not. No official said a word regarding the blank lines, and we went through.

The five of us, in addition to a number of other travelers going in their own respective groups, were corralled into an army truck and asked to stand up on the sides, holding onto a bar. There were nearly 35 of us in the truck, and it was difficult to catch hold of the bar. There were no windows, but there was a slat in the side of the truck that we could just barely look out of if we were tall enough. As I boarded the truck, I noticed the dirt road and the ten to twelve switchbacks we would be making, going up a steep mountain. The truck started off, and many of us slipped as the truck jerked forward. The road was muddy and filled with holes, and the truck bounced all of us up and down with each hole and hillock it went over. If we weren’t holding on tight to the side bar or weren’t barred in by other travelers, we were certain to fall with a thud onto the dusty truck floor. With each turn around each switchback, the truck swerved from side to side, leaving all 35 of us to shout, “Wo!” wondering if the truck would somehow slide over the side. The ride lasted 20 minutes, but it seemed like 20 days. Nevertheless, we arrived at the border town of Z***.

A young Tibetan man named Tenzing Jigmey greeted us as we got off the truck. Tenzing was of medium height, thin, dust mop of black hair parted in the middle, and a big smile. He wore a a light gray V-necked T-shirt, tan trowsers, a blue baseball cap, and brown hiking boots. He showed Alice and me our hotel, and gave us a key to walk upstairs to our room. As we approached the top of the stairs, I said to Alice, “Wow, those are interesting trash cans, and there are certainly a lot of them.

They’re not trash cans, Eric. They’re spittoons—something disgusting the Chinese haven’t quite figured out yet.”

I must admit that I thought they were spittoons, but I couldn’t bring myself to accept that they might be. Alice thought I was dumb for not recognizing them—at least that’s how her comment sounded. But then I realized that she was the daughter of a ranking member of the KMT, the Taiwanese political party that favors unification of Taiwan and China but under a democracy. She was sure to have some strong, strong comments about China for me in the coming days, I was sure, and this was just the first of them.

I needed to take a nap, and Linda wanted to walk up the hill some. Alice wanted to go too, so I snoozed while the two of them got acquainted. When I woke up, I felt as hot as I’d ever felt. I was drenched in sweat, and my pillow was wet. I kicked off my blanket and I grabbed a towel out of my bad to wipe me down. I had never been so hot before that my pillow was wet, and I thought I had become sick from a horrible illness. It scared me terribly. I ran downstairs and went outside. We were at approximately 9000 feet, and the wind was blowing. It was cold. Then I knew I was sure to have trouble because I was going from unbearable heat to unbearable cold, and we had been in Tibet for all of two hours. Tenzing saw me and invited me into a small tourist restaurant for dinner. He said, “I’m talking to each one of you individually so we can talk about the next week. First, I need to know where you’re from.”

His English was just beautiful, I thought. “I’m from Miami.

And what is the altitude of Miami?”

I thought for a second since I realized that he didn’t know where Miami was, so I smiled and said, “One!

One thousand meters?

No, one meter!” And I motioned to my waist to show that the altitude of Miami Beach was about half my height.

Tenzing’s eyes widened as he sat back and grabbed his forehead. “Wow! You realize that you’re going to go over 5000 meters on this trip, and we have to take care about the altitude.” I was nervous because we hadn’t even reached 3000 meters yet and I was already having hot/cold problems.

All of the sudden, I realized that the restaurant was blisteringly hot. I looked up and saw heaters blaring air throughout the restaurant. What a relief! I suddenly understood that it wasn’t my body that was having trouble, it was that the building controllers had set the heater thermostat at 90 degrees Fahrenheit. I asked Tenzing if he could ask them to turn it down. They did so, and I was far more comfortable. Thank God, I thought. I thought I was getting sick there, and it was just over-zealous heating, sort of the same way the US Sun Belt is about air conditioning in law offices, malls, and university buildings stretching from Florida to California; you have to take a parka inside with you, especially in July, because the people minding the thermostats think it luxurious to have snowy weather inside. Well, China was the opposite. Proud of their ability to heat places in cold times, they blared the heater at over 30 degrees Celcius, causing me to sweat more that I did during an hour of aerobics.

“Please make certain that you drink a lot of water, Eric,” Tenzing said. And if you have any questions or health issues, please tell me. We’ll do what we can to make certain you’re OK.” Knowing that Tenzing was going through this conversation four other times made me have a lot of confidence in him, and I smiled when he said, “Do you like Bob Marley?

How do you know Bob Marley?

Oh, Bob Marley is my hero.

And how do you know English so well?

Well, that’s a long story, and I promise to tell you when it’s a good time.”

I said, “OK!” smiled, and accepted that my question might be something he couldn’t tell me about just at that venue, so I let it go.

The next morning, we shared a quick breakfast, and Tenzing greeted us with a white bus. We boarded the bus and started on our way up the mountains and into Tibet. We passed through another set of switchbacks, taking us well over 11,000 feet to an emerald green corridor or moss and pine trees. The switchbacks ended and we started to drive straight, or at least as straight as we could, on a dirt road taking us past waterfall after waterfall. In fact, the initial stretch of the Friendship Highway in the Himalayas is almost all waterfalls. At first, they seemed to all be on the other side of the canyon, but occasionally we would see one on our side. Some would come close to the road, and we opened the windows to feel their spray as we drove by. As the road nestled itself next to our side of the canyon, occasionally a waterfall would be splashing water on our road, and we would have to duck inside the open windows to keep from getting totally soaked with the icy water. We stopped several times to take pictures, but it never seemed like enough. There seemed to be no end to the waterfalls.

However, waterfalls have their consequences, and in our case it was landslides. Before long, we saw mounds of dirt and rocks in the ditches to the side of the road. After three or four of these mounds, one mound covered the road in front of us completely, and we had to stop. Tenzing and the driver got out and started to move rocks. I got out of my chair and started toward the exit. Linda shouted, “Eric, where are you going?”

“To move rocks!” I replied.

“But they’re doing it.” Linda said.

“Yeah, but if we just stay here, we’ll be here all day.” I got off the bus, picked up a boulder and moved it to the side of the road. Alice hopped off the bus and similarly starting moving rocks. Linda said, “I’m not sure I can do this.”

Tenzing looked back at Linda and shouted. “That’s OK! Please look up at the side of the mountain. If you see anything falling toward us, please let us know.”

The threat of falling rocks was real, though we never saw a rock fall in front of us. We had to stop at a bridge to assert that it was safe. There was even a sign written in Chinese on it, saying “Danger” and I took a picture of Alice hanging onto it as if she were a proud radical adventurer.

We came to another rock pile, and moved it, and we came to another rock pile, and we moved that one, too—each stop taking about 20 minutes. Up in front of us, we could see the set of switchbacks leading us out of the canyon, up to about 14,000 feet and to the next town of Nyalam. However, there was one rock pile we could not get past. The landslide had placed a new mound as high as the bus in front of us, and there was only canyon left to its left side. We were blocked. Tenzing said, “Wait here! I’ll be back in a little while.” We found an area outside the bus that seemed to give us enough space to run if we saw any avalanches, and we waited for two hours while Tenzing walked up ahead. Where he went exactly, we weren’t sure. He disappeared into the mountains.

When Tenzing returned, he said, “We have to walk! There are about six or seven more landslides like this, and the bull dozer isn’t coming until Tuesday.” He brought several Tibetan sherpas with him, and we paid them to carry our bags. Not that any of us were out of shape, mind you. We were, but none of us had been at that altitude, and the sherpas, small and thin though they were, were far more capable to carry any of our stuff than we were. I was actually a bit concerned about the altitude, and when I saw the 3000 foot ascent we had in front of us, I was worried that I wouldn’t be able to make it. But Giulio, who had been complaining of stomach cramps, said, “We don’t have any choice.” And Alice looked at me and said, “You’ll make it!” Besides, the sherpa with my bag was already halfway up the mountain, running like a gazelle over the rocks and lavender flowers, and so I was committed.

It took me a long time to get up the mountain, but I did. However, my lungs were still recovering from an allergy breakout I had had in Japan, and when I reached the summit, I started to cough. It was a loud explosive cough, and Linda ran to me with a steroid inhaler she had brought. I said, “I don’t know that this is an asthma attack,” but she encouraged me to take it anyway. I did, and I was fine.

We still had to walk along the road and past another landslide to make it to a car that would be miraculously waiting for us. We weren’t the only group in the predicament. One tour was an Austrian family of three, including a very large mother. They seemed to enjoy the adventure of hiking up the mountain, and the mother’s girth didn’t seem to impede her getting up it at all. She fared far better than I did. However, her pleasure was temporarily extinguished when we came to a waterfall hitting the road in front of us. In order to get to the car, we were going to have to run through the waterfall and the wide river it was making on road in front of us. There was no avoiding. We were going to get cold. However, the Austrian mother motioned for one of the Tibetan sherpas to come over to her. And the short thin sherpa carried the tall fat Austrian through the waterfall and over the river with her barely getting even a drop of water on her. Alice and I didn’t feel right about asking the sherpas to carry us, so we braved the water, glacial though it was. The near ice permeated our socks and trowsers, and we shivered our way past the last landslide to a land rover that was waiting for us. There, we were greeted by Mr Liu, our new driver and friend, and he drove us to Nyalam.

Though we were scheduled on our visas to go further than Nyalam that first day, the trek through the waterfall forest and landslide adventure had taken the entire day, and Tenzing arranged for our accommodation at a small inn. Alice and I walked with Francine and Giulio to our rooms, as they were side by side. As we walked toward the rooms, Giulio said that he was feeling very sick and that he needed to lie down. In the meantime, Alice and I had been sporting wet socks from icy water in a breezy mountain village at 14,000 feet for nearly three hours, and it was time to stop shivering. Behind the hotel was a barrel the innkeepers were using to roast vegetables. We asked if we could dry our socks on top of it, and they gave us permission. It was a relief to take off the wet clothes. Tenzing found a group of friends who were watching an Indian movie, and he seemed very happy to watch. He seemed to understand it, as well, which peeked my curiosity about him and language even further.

The next morning, Francine knocked on our door to alert us that Giulio had had a terrible night. He was vomiting and could not sleep. He had a very high fever, and aspirin and cold compresses were not helping. We ran to the dining room to find Tenzing to alert him of Giulio’s condition. Tenzing said he wanted us to press on since we were already behind schedule according to our visa, but he raised his eyebrows in new awareness when we said we would not proceed until Giulio was better. Tenzing then realized that we needed a doctor and immediately went to look for one. He returned a few minutes later, saying that the doctor’s office would be open at 9:30. Francine prepared Giulio for a walk to the doctor’s office up the hill, while Linda, Alice, and I drank tea in the dining room. Alice accompanied Giulio, Francine, and Tenzing to the doctor’s office. They discovered something that Giulio already knew—that he had a serious urinary tract infection. He said he had a touch of it in Kathmandu but didn’t realize that it would become so serious. As it was, he was unable to travel. We said we would stay in Nyalam as long as it took for him to get better. However, the doctor said that Giulio needed to get treatment as quickly as possible or he was facing death.

The news of the prospective death of a co-traveler sent the rest of us into meetings about what to do. We asked Tenzing if we could get back to Kathmandu. He said he would check. When he returned he said that for Giulio to go back to Kathmandu, all of us would have to go back to Kathmandu with him under the terms of our group visa. We would have normally returned on the bus, but the landslides behind made that journey impossible. Furthermore, there was no helicopter in the area large enough to transport all of us at one time. We asked if it would be possible to get a small helicopter just to transport Giulio and perhaps his traveling companion Francine back to Kathmandu; however, after his inquiring, Tenzing was told that if Giulio couldn’t leave with all of us, no matter his condition, he couldn’t leave at all. News of such from the authorities sent us into a slight panic and immediate brainstorming of ideas. Even though we were in a small town in the Himalayas in southwestern China, we wondered if it might be possible to call the Italian embassy in Beijing. Tenzing said he could try. He got through, and Francine spoke with the Italian officials. She left a phone number and awaited their call. Half an hour later, the phone rang and it was a set of Italian doctors in Lhasa, the Tibetan capital. The Italian embassy had called a hospital in Lhasa, and there just happened to be two doctors from Italy who were working at this hospital. They spoke to Francine. They told Francine they needed to figure out a therapy for Giulio, so Francine motioned for Alice to come over. Francine started taking notes in Italian, she translated them into French for Alice, who subsequently translated them into Mandarin. Together, Francine and Alice returned to the doctor’s office up the hill to chat with the doctors there and Giulio. Linda and I walked with them, and Giulio said to me, “You know, I hope this works because I really don’t feel like dying here.”

The doctor’s office was in a long concrete corridor. It was four concrete walls with a poster of the human body on it. In the next room were some viles of various colored liquids as well as items such as gauze and cotton balls. The rooms were small, and Linda and I decided we were more help if we left the room and went for a walk up the mountain.

There were trails up the mountain, past sheep and cow fields. We saw the dry dirt Himalayas on both sides of us, rising well over 8000 meters high. They seemed to talk as the wind whistled past us. The wind was sharp, and we could feel it feel the dry sky off our faces, literally feeling it turn our cheeks red the higher we climbed.

After enjoying the views of the village and the mountains, we decided to walk back to town. There we were greeted by a man tending his yak. The man introduced me to his wife, and they invited us to his second floor apartment. She was wearing a long blue dress, garnished with ***. Upon entry into the apartment, we saw beautifully decorated and carved dressers and tables, and we marveled at the paintwork of the beams and ceilings. The man’s wife and sisters treated us to yak butter tea, a delicacy the Lonely Planet guide warns will be a burden of taste for any traveler in Tibet. Such a warning only made me want to try it, and I happily gulped down the tea, which tasted like a nice sweet Nepali tea with a blob of butter in it. I liked it! I couldn’t believe I liked it so much that when the man offered me more, I was happy to accept his kind gift. However, on this gulping, I could actually feel the butter coagulating on the roof of my mouth, the back of my tongue, the back of my throat, and I swear even down into my esophagus and stomach. Then I intellectually began considering the idea of voluntarily injecting large quantities of saturated fat into my body, as I was. I enjoyed the taste of the tea again, but the butter flavor, as well as my imagination, was starting to overwhelm me. I made the mistake, though, of finishing the tea, and again the man refilled the cup, inviting me to even more. I smiled and said thank you, this time, taking the tea to my mouth, opening my lips up just slightly, and letting the butter coat my upper lip without really letting the tea go in—a trick I had learned in Japan when I didn’t want to drink any more alcohol. I put the tea back on the tray, signed a large “Ah, that’s good” and smiled, stating how I appreciated his gift.

When Linda and I returned to the doctor’s office, Giulio had been given a therapy of injected antibiotics. The injection itself had been a challenge in that Giulio insisted on watching the disinfecting of the syringe over a Bunson burner. During the nurse’s sanitation exercise, she appropriately heated all sides of the needle and let it cool without the needle touching anything. However, after she placed the antibiotics into the syringe and squeezed the excess amount out of the needle, she took a rag sitting on the table and wiped the outer moisture from the needle. Giulio screamed “No!” and made her do the entire process over again. He said it took nearly an hour for the needle to be prepared to a point where he was willing to take the shot. Giulio said he was grateful to have a dentist brother who explained how shots and disinfection work, but he was afraid he was going to die while waiting for it all to come together.

An hour after the shot, Giulio said he didn’t feel better. He didn’t feel worse, but he didn’t feel better. Francine then ran back to the hotel to call the doctors in Lhasa back. Upon return, she said that they recommended that he just add on one more shot.

Linda, Alice, and I left Giulio in the doctor’s office with Francine and walked to the corridor outside the office. Across the plaza in front of us was a school where we could hear children listening to a recitation from their teacher and then repeating the teacher word for word. This listen and repeat routine went on for more than an hour, and Alice reminded us that the education system in China could have children doing that for as many as five or six hours in a day. In our case, we caught the end of the school day, as the children ran out of the school to walk home. A couple of children stopped to stare at us, and Alice struck up a conversation with them in Mandarin. Linda said she had candies she could offer them, and Alice asked them if they wanted any. They all jumped up and down, but I looked down and noticed that their hands were caked in mud. There was a large well and pump next to us, so we asked the children to come with us to have them wash their hands. All but one complied. The one left looked at us in defiance, then looked down at a fresh green yak pie on the ground. I reminded him that he could not have a candy unless he kept his hands clean and that putting his hands in the yak pie was not a good idea. He leaned down as if to sarcastically tease me. I said, “No!” and Alice again warned him that putting his hands in yak dung was a means to getting sick. He faked putting his hands in the excrement once more, and again, I flinched and shouted “No!” The other children had their candies and were happy to ask for more. The naughty child looked at him, crunched his face in anger and stuck both hands plop into the yak pie, rolling his fingers in it, and then taking his green grassy hands and threatening to rub his hands on our clothes. He stuck his head out in one last defiant pledge of strength and then ran off with his friends.

When we returned to the doctor’s office, Giulio had color in his face, and Francine was smiling. I said, “I think you feel better.”

Giulio smiled and said, “I think it’s time to return to the vacation.”

“Already?” we gasped. And Giulio stood up and started walking back to the hotel. Tenzing then went for Mr Liu and the rest of us gathered our things. I couldn’t believe that only four hours previously, we were contemplating how to get a helicopter to airlift Giulio out of Tibet, and now we all were back on schedule to resume our trip, this time as an united band.

We left Nyalam in our van and drove past nomadic camps. We drove up as high as 5200 meters, or 17,000 feet, certainly the highest place I had ever been in my life, even hiking up Mount Cotopaxi in Ecuador. This time, I didn’t use a trail or my feet; I had motorized aid, and we were actually on a road that people use regularly. Giulio commented that we were higher than the highest mountain in Europe, I commented that I was feeling a bit drunk, and Alice commented that she had a headache and wasn’t feeling so well.

At the summit, we found tented formations of Tibetan Buddhist prayer flag. Tied to a stick in form of criss-crossing triangles, the mound of flags were the colors of the Earth--***, ***, and ***--each with Tibetan writing on them. Even though we were at 17,000 feet, in front of us lay the Himalayas, towering snow caps over dry desert brown, cresting against a bright blue sky. The brown of the mountains was broken by low lying cirrus clouds, and some of the mist kissed our faces with the seering wind that beat on it. We were greeted by Tibetan women who were making their stay there.

I wanted to take a picture of myself at the highest elevation of my life. Alice was going to take it, but she wasn’t physically ready. Still, she decided to stand by me for our photo. Just as a newly healthy and happy Giulio was ready to snap our picture, Alice ran out of the picture’s frame and threw up. I, on the other hand, stayed for Giulio’s snap, and I have an inebriated smile on my face that says, “Hi Everyone, look at me, I’m at 5200 meters up and I’m losing brain cells by the second.”

Tenzing came over to notice Alice’s discomfort and said that with her altitude sickness, we needed to go to lower altitudes as soon as we could. This would not be a problem since we were already at our summit. Sure enough, as soon as we traveled the switchbacks to the valley floor, Alice felt better and continued to prove healthy for the rest of the trip. I, on the other hand, started to feel just ever so slightly light-headed and tired—not really sick or having the feeling of nausea, but just slightly tired, not completely able to take in a lung full of air, but just enough to keep me walking and functional.

When we reached the valley floor and the straight lined road leading us west to Lhasa, Mr Liu accelerated to a velocity none of us had experienced in Nepal or Tibet yet. Dust kicked up from the front and back wheels and choked us as we immediately raced to close the windows. The dust was still coming in the van, so Giulio and Francine reached in their backpacks where they had five dust masks waiting for us. They were prepared for such dust.

We drove for a couple of hours before one of us felt like stopping. We looked out across the Tibetan desert. We hadn’t seen another vehicle for over an hour in either direction, and we seemed to be the only people for miles in any direction. We looked out and saw the dusty moonlike land walled in by the similarly tan and black crusty mountains. Just below our van was an oasis of grass, and we stopped and took photos. As we marveled at the view, we suddenly saw to the northeast three children running with all their might to meet our van. When they arrived, three girls, probably all members of the same family, and wearing only shirts, started to say “Hello” repeated but very softly, almost whispering, “Hello, hello, hello, hello, hello, hello, hello, hello, hello . . .” Each hello remained soft, but each was quickly stated and immediately followed by another one. They held their hands out for gifts, and Linda had brought dolls from Hong Kong, just for this very situation. She handed a doll to each child, and they smiled at their new acquisitions. They then started the series of hellos again, and Tenzing recommended that we get going.

As we drove, Alice and Giulio appeared to have completely recovered. I still felt drunk, and Linda continued to show no signs of altitude agitation at all. However, as we drove around sharp corners, Francine started to look green. She started to breathe hard, and she finally motioned for Mr Liu to stop the van. She jumped out of the van, and she started to vomit. Francine needed about ten minutes before getting back in the car, and we were happy to wait. When we got back in the car, we offered her water, which she drank. However, only five minutes later, she asked Mr Liu to stop again, and she threw that up, as well.

We drove through the town of T** and then took photos of Mount Everest. We spent the night in the city of Xigatse (?). Dinner was at a second story tourist hotel where we enjoyed soda and yak burgers. We walked in the pitch black of the night and marveled at how the valley floor had been so hot we wanted to derobe completely and now it was so cold we couldn’t wait to get under the thick blankets of our hotel.

However, the hotel managers turned up the heat again, and yet again I awoke in the middle of the night, feeling sick, with a pillow soaked in my own sweat. Francine had had a difficult night, as well, continuing to throw up, and not being able to keep anything down. I lost my appetite, but I managed to eat half of my breakfast. Francine ate, but ended up running to the bathroom. Alice, Linda, and Giulio were hungry though, and were frustrated that the hotel restaurant didn’t open until 9:30.

In Xigatse (?), we went to the *** Temple. Here . . . Just before entering the temple, Tenzing asked us to be discreet regarding political statements as a number of monks might report such comments to the Chinese authorities. He added that we should be careful, even around very young monks. As we entered the temple, we saw young boys dressed in long burgundy and rust colored robes. One even had a metal milk jug roped over his back. The walls of the temple was painted white on the outside but were adorned with multicolored wood sculpture and artwork. *** The inside was even more a festival of color, with rust red as its foundation color on doors and walls, bright yellow as the foundation color for wainscoting and ceiling trim, just perfect for light blue and red flower adornments, and powerful royal blue beams holding up the ceilings and floors above. When the sun from the windows wasn’t the light source, yak butter candles served as not only illumination but also the temple’s perfume. With each whiff of the yak butter candles, I could taste the butter in my throat from the tea in Nyalam a couple of days before. The taste was inescapable, though not completely unpleasant—just very, very buttery. (To this day, I sense yak butter as a part of my senses, easily recalling that smell whenever I think about it. The sensation is so strong that even a million miles away from Tibet, I feel that yak butter is literally in my room with me.)

Tenzing accompanied Alice and me through each room, many of which displayed a different Buddha or tribute to a Dalai Lama important in the history of Tibetan Buddhism. Tenzing was truly a scholar, and he explained in detail which Buddha was which, and which lama was which, naming many of them by number in the order of their procession. I enjoyed how he recounted the important lessons to be learned by each Buddha and from each Lama. He taught us to chant two important chants, one for peace, and one for intelligence.

On the way back to the van, Alice stopped at a candy store to buy gifts for children that would approach us. She wished to join Linda in the gift giving. I was leery. It was against my policy to give away such gifts, as I felt under normal circumstances it was encouraging terrible behavior, especially in children. I don’t normally cater to begging, and I almost always say “no.” Even in Kathmandu, I would only give something to someone if they were doing something I considered positive. But this was Tibet, and two new considerations had to come into my head, considerations that I was not accustomed to giving attention to. First, it was clear that the Chinese authorities were segregating Tibetans from Chinese, leaving the Chinese with the means to make the money and be successful oppressors of their overcome minority. The Tibetans were fenced in by their borders, and consequently not given the chances to make money or make contributions that I would normally expect. Second, it was my understanding that in Buddhism, if one is poor, then one has the right to ask for a handout from one who has more. For Alice and Linda, the act of giving was important and to a degree dutiful, I believe. They seemed to feel the calling to reach out, and they smiled as the children smiled when they received their serendipity. I spent most of the trip watching them, trying to figure out whether it was a good idea or not. I never did come to a complete decision, but I decided that if I had questions about the giving, it was probably not morally right for me personally to change my policy too much. Nevertheless, I could see Alice and Linda’s feeling that what they were doing was correct, and in my mind there was no reason to question them, either. As a result, I generally stayed my course and refrained from gift giving but enjoyed Alice and Linda’s contributions.

The children, and even the adults, seemed to appreciate the gifts, though a few asked for more rather than being satisfied with just one item. Occasionally, children would fight over an item that happened to fall to the ground, and we would call Tenzing to come and calm the children. At one stop, six children pinned Alice and Linda against the wall of the van, each raising an arm in their faces, and each reciting the lists of low-volume but never-ending hellos. Linda and Alice ran out of items in the bags they had, and they couldn’t get the children to stop putting hands in their faces or whispering hello. Alice tried in vain to explain in Mandarin, but the hellos and hands kept flying. Finally, I heard Linda kindly cry out, “Jigmey, please make them stop!” and Tenzing ran over and calmed the children down in sweet but firm Tibetan requests. When the children finally put their arms down and walked away, Linda, red-faced and exhausted, blew a sigh of relief. However, she uttered not one word of complaint or resentment, nor did Alice for that matter. They seemed to accept this behavior as one of the consequences of giving, hoping in total earnest to make a positive difference in the children’s lives. I wasn’t pinned against the van. I took pictures and watched in disbelief, feeling guilty that I wasn’t helping out, either by giving dolls and candies or by pulling the children away from my pinned in friends. I didn’t know what to do, as to me the situation had no good solutions, and I felt helpless, not to mention increasingly tired to my constant wanting to catch more air in each breath.

In the van, we asked Tenzing how he learned English. He then said it was all right for us to talk about it. He explained to us that when he was five years old, his parents feared the oppression of the Chinese Communist Party and its crackdown on residents in Tibet. They helped him escape to India. There he grew up with friends, being educated in both English and Hindi (thereby explaining why he enjoyed the Indian movie). When he was 19, his parents sent message to him, asking him to return to Tibet. In doing so, he knew that he would be giving up his freedom, not able to return to India or to even pass through the Chinese borders. Nevertheless, he felt the obligation to be with his family, so he returned to Lhasa for the first time in 14 years. In staying in Lhasa, he studied Tibetan Buddhism on his own. His knowledge and study became useful, as did his English and Hindi skills. He was hired as a guide by a tourist agency, and had been working with them for nearly three years. He admitted freely in the confines of the van that he thought Tibet should be independent, though he never expressed hatred for the Chinese. In fact, he and Mr Liu seemed to have a nice relationship. They communicated in Tibetan, for Tenzing did not speak Mandarin. Tenzing finished his story with a joke:

There were four men sitting in a roof garden of a 27-story building: an American, a Japanese, a Tibetan, and a Chinese. The American took out a cigarette, took just one puff on it, and then tossed it over the roof garden wall, letting it fall the 27 stories. The Japanese was surprised and said, “Why did you throw the cigarette over the wall?” The American said, “Well, I’m from America and we have millions of cigarettes, and I can just get another one if I want to, so why not just throw it over the wall.” The Japanese said, “Hmm!” and pulled out a radio. He turned it on, but after a couple of seconds, he took the radio and tossed it over the wall. The Tibetan was surprised and said, “Why did you throw the radio over the wall?” The Japanese man smiled and said, “Well, I’m from Japan and we have millions of radios, and I can just get another one if I want to.” So the Tibetan threw the Chinese over the wall.

We all laughed, including Alice, and Tenzing smiled as he put a Bob Marley cassette into the van’s tape player. We all bobbed our heads and clapped as we listened to each uplifting reggae song. Mr Liu tapped his fingers on the steering wheel as he drove. Giulio then wanted to know more about Mr Liu and asked Alice if she’d be willing to translate. He was originally from Chungdung (?), but had lived with his wife and daughter in Lhasa over the last 20 years. Giulio asked why he didn’t have any more children, and Alice translated the question. Alice then translated Mr Liu’s answer: “One child policy!”

We spent the night in Gyangtse, and we visited the *** Temple. The next morning, after about an hour of continuing to drive west toward Lhasa, Mr Liu stopped the car in the middle of desert. He looked down under the car and said that the tire was low, that it looked like it had a puncture, and that he had to go back to Gyangtse to get it fixed. Tenzing asked us to wait there while the two of them drove back to Gyangtse. It was around 10:00 in the morning, and the sun wasn’t hot. We looked over our environs on the Friendship Highway, and we seemed most abandoned. The sky was bright blue with just a couple of cirrus clouds in the distance. The wind whistled by us, but it was light and comfortable. There was a small stream to the side of the road, and light green grass stretched from the sides of the stream to the road. The barren mountains around us were tan and lavender, but seemed incapable of sustaining any life form. Giulio took off his shirt and stretched out on the grass for a nap. Alice went for a walk and I stayed on the side of the road, reading my Lonely Planet guide.

Francine still wasn’t able to keep anything at all down, not even water, and we were becoming more and more worried about her. On the side of the road, Francine still wasn’t feeling well, but as long as she didn’t have to eat anything, she didn’t seem to be in too much distress. Not that she advocated starving herself, but she stated that by not eating, she felt better. We all wondered how long that could last, and we told her we would do whatever was necessary to make certain she was all right.

As Francine sat by the side of the road with Giulio, two children, a sister and her younger brother, came and sat a yard away from Francine. The girl was dressed in a mousy brown coat and carried a lime green shoulder bag. Her brother wore a sky blue shirt, and both of them had sunburned cheeks. Francine motioned a hello to them, but the two kept a distance. When Alice returned, she said that it was such a beautiful day that we should enjoy walking in it, and we all agreed, even Francine. We figured that as long as we stayed on the highway, the only one in the area, Tenzing and Mr Liu would surely find us, even if we were a couple of miles down the road from where we were. So we started walking west, as if we were casually sauntering our way the next 200 miles to Lhasa. I could see as Giulio and Francine walked ahead of me, the two children were walking a yard behind them. Francine looked behind her and motioned for the children to come and join her. She walked hand in hand with both of them, not saying a word, but all three smiling and enjoying a day’s outing. As we walked, children would seemingly pop their heads out of the green grass, run to our sides, and join us in our walk. A small tractor drove by, and the driver smiled a hello to all of us. One by one, children, and even a number of adults, joined us until we had our own parade going down the Friendship Highway. After a while, Giulio and Francine had a crowd of 16 children walking with them. I had my own crowd, as did Alice and Linda. During this time, we didn’t give gifts. We just enjoyed each other’s company and the vividness of the day in a glorious march. I didn’t feel like a zoo animal, as I had in other countries, and I didn’t feel like a resource. I felt part of a community, one ensemble, one team that was meant to enjoy the day and the world. When Mr Liu and Tenzing finally arrived with a fresh tire, we looked at Giulio’s watch. Four hours had passed as we waited for them, and we had hardly noticed.

We had one more pass of 17,000 feet to drive over before reaching Lhasa, and there was a glacier to be seen en route. The glacier stretched glossy white and steep toward a dusty enclave where sherpas and yaks met us. Tourists were stopping to ride the yaks and take photos of children, and we couldn’t resist joining them. Two children approached Alice and tugged on her pant led, one child about five years old and his brother about two, both wearing beige parka vests. The older child had a magic marker haircut while his brother sported a dust mop. Both had sunburned and wind-swept dirty faces, almost as if they had rubbed black gravel into their own cheeks. Alice photographed them and gave each of them a sweet and a smile.

Then Alice ran to ride a yak. She couldn’t wait, as if it had been a long lost dream of hers now suddenly recaptured. She paid a sherpa, and the sherpa assisted Alice in getting on a large long-black-haired yak with half-moon shaped horns, adorned with a saddle decorated beige and black triangles, yak bells, and a necklace and head ornament made of red yarn. She paraded around the enclave, bursting with joy, as if it were some guilty pleasure. At this point, she didn’t care that it was a tourist trap. She was into it. When she got down, she asked me if I wanted to ride, but I wasn’t in the mood. She said, “Oh, come on, Eric! When is the next time you’ll be able to ride a yak?” But I felt this was Alice’s moment, and I had enjoyed her enthusiasm to the degree that I already felt the moment to be rapturous.

We drove over the mountain, coming down our last set of switchbacks and sharve curves. We marveled at Mr Liu and the ease with which he maneuvered the van around cliff sides, pot holes, boulders, and lanes seemingly less than one-vehicle wide with no guard rail to keep us from toppling down the mountainside. It felt like a roller coaster, and we smilingly descended our last mountain with Bob Marley singing in the background.

Upon entering the Lhasa valley, we found the *** Botra Kosi, the longest river in Asia. It starts in Tibet and worms its way through the Himalayas through India and to its delta in Bangladesh. Alice and I had actually already been at the mouth of this river, so it was fun to see it again from up top. Giulio wanted his picture in front of the “mightiest river in Asia,” so we made a stop. There were also pastel Buddhist drawings on cliff sides that he had to see, and there were plantations of linseed plants, all dawning bright yellow flowers.

We arrived in Lhasa in early evening, and we made our first stop by dropping off Francine and Giulio’s luggage at their Holiday Inn. However, this was not where Francine would be spending her time in Lhasa. She had not had any food or water for almost three days, and she needed to go to the hospital. Tenzing called the hospital where the Italian doctors were, and they said that Francine could be admitted immediately.

I myself was not myself, either. I was continually fighting to take a full breath, and I felt exhausted. Nevertheless, I certainly did not have the stomach distress that Francine was suffering from, so I counted my blessings. Still, I had no appetite, and I could actually feel pounds of my own weight melting off my body each day. The altitude was difficult, and climbing stairs seemed to be a challenge. When Alice, Linda, and I arrived at our Lhasa hotel, I was confronted with 20 stairs to climb, and I wondered each time I came to the foot of the stairs whether I’d be able to make it up or not. I did each time, but I took puffs of Linda’s steroid inhalers to keep from coughing every once in a while. I also had a very shallow headache at the back of my neck that didn’t keep me from walking around and enjoying the sites, but gnawed ever so slowly at my happy attitude.

We all needed to change money, but we were told that we wouldn’t be able to until 9:30 the next morning.

The Portola is the principal destination for any traveler in Tibet. A temple of pilgrimage for Tibetan Buddhists, it is a white trapezoidal palace that sits on top of a hill overlooking Lhasa. It looked so big to me, and I was intimidated by the idea of climbing up all those stairs. Still, we had come so far and through so much that I didn’t want to miss it. I decided I would just take my time.

As we rode in the van toward the Portola, we drove through a large concrete square, set in front of the Portola as if to be a large park for the locals to appreciate. It was adorned with statues and brass curly-cue street lamps. I marveled at its size and said to Alice, “Wow, this is impressive!

No, it’s not, Eric! It’s disgusting. This is supposed to be a lake, and the Chinese Communist Party paved over it.

A lake?” I raised my eyebrows. Then Alice took out a post card she had found in the gift store of the Holiday Inn. It was an old picture of the Portola before the concrete square had been built. And she was right. As we ventured through tourist areas of Lhasa, we found post cards of the Portola, and all of them had the lake in front of it. There actually is water to be seen in the concrete square, but it seemingly is no bigger than a living room—certainly not the historic natural splendor that greeted lamas, monks, and pilgrims for hundreds of years.

The authorities had arranged the temple to be open to tourists at different times of day than it was open to pilgrims. Therefore, we saw no Tibetans, apart from our tour guides and the monks, inside the temple. The Dalai Lama has not been in the Portola, the place he should actually call his home, since the revolution in 1959. There is a teenage boy, known as the Ponte Lama, who is to be the next Dalai Lama, but he was kept in Beijing by the authorities.

In the Portola, we met travelers we had seen throughout the week, including some who rode that first truck up the first Tibetan mountainside and the Austrian family with the woman who had been carried through the waterfall by a sherpa. ***

The infinite knot . . . ***

In the parking lot of the Portola, Alice and I waited for the others in the van. There were street vendors, selling various Tibetan art and jewelry to any tourist. They were rather aggressive, coming up to the van, each repeating “hello” is a whispery and incessant puffs, much as the children had been doing. One woman came to our van and continued to say “hello” while pushing her small woven rug into our window. I said “no” and looked out a different window, trying to ignore her persisted whispers of hello. I turned to her again and said a bit more firmly, “No!” but I didn’t want to become cross or louder.

Finally, Alice turned to her and said in Mandarin, “Qing zu” Please go! The woman’s face immediately turned forlorn, and she turned around, slowly walking back to the other vendors. “I shouldn’t have done that,” Alice softly murmured.

“She was bothering us, and we couldn’t communicate that we needed her to leave,” I said, trying to console Alice.

“Yeah, but I told her to go away in the language of the oppressor, so what does that make me?”

I rubbed Alice’s shoulder. She stared at the floor of the van, and I looked out the side of the far window, trying to understand how a bad situation just couldn’t have any good solutions.

We had lunch at an Indian restaurant downtown, and I ordered a chicken curry, rice, naan and a lemonade. The plate looked immense to me, but I knew I was losing weight, so I told the others that I wasn’t leaving the table until every piece of food was gone. The others finished in 15 minutes, and I still had 90 percent of my food left. I had bought some post cards, so I thought I would stay in the restaurant, work on the food and the post cards. Each bite was a challenge. It tasted fine, but I still couldn’t get a full breath of air, and the combination of struggling for oxygen and coupling it with food seemed like aerobics. It took me three hours to finish the meal, but I finished it.

I found Alice in the central shopping area of Lhasa. There we went shopping. We bought prayer flags, yak bells, yak wool sweaters, and indigo curtains with the white infinite knot. We joined Tenzing for tea in a terrace overlooking the central shopping square. There Alice gave him a photo of the Dalai Lama. Though Tenzing smiled and said thank you, he also quickly placed the picture in his bag, saying that it was forbidden to have such pictures. Nonetheless, he was glad to give the picture to his father. Alice then said that she wanted to meet his father, and Tenzing said we might be able to later.

We chatted about Lhasa. Tenzing had given up freedom to live there with his family, but he had a very real love for the city, its tradition, its religion, its history, and its people. At one point in the trip, the van was so dusty that we could actually write notes on the van walls. Tenzing wrote I © Lhasa on the back window. He said he wished things were different, but he at least had his family. Alice and I understood that in Lhasa, Tenzing also had his scholarship and his identity. We finished our sodas and Tenzing turned to us for one final comment before we resumed touring the city. He said he was sorry but he had to be honest and let us know that it was forbidden for his father to meet us, and he hoped we would understand. Alice was quick to comfort him, saying we wouldn’t ever wish to put him or his family in a difficult situation.

Alice and I found a Tibetan medicine hospital. We walked up stairs and found an extensive library filled with Tibetan philosophies on how to cure illness. We saw jars of herbs and weeds and other powders and objects we couldn’t identify. Hanging on the wall was a series of 25 mandalas, all with detailed drawings of people, but each mandala with different instructions and illustrations. We talked to a Tibetan doctor who worked in the hospital. He said that much of the Tibetan medicine does work, but it has its limitations. Unfortunately, many Tibetans will only do Tibetan medicine, and he felt bad that they didn’t turn to the other alternatives available in town.

The next day, we visited Francine in the hospital. It wasn’t the same without her. As we entered the hospital, nurses handed us plastic bags of assorted colors. I started to try to wiggle it on my head, but Alice smiled and shouted, “Eric, no! You put those on your foot, not your head!” My bags were light green, Alice’s were light blue, and Linda’s were pink, and we slid on the floors, enjoying the bags like children running on slippery slides in their socks. We found Francine’s room, and she looked better. They had her on oxygen, and had given her an IV to get her some nourishment. She looked like she had a comfortable bed, white sheets, big fluffy pillows, and a lime green hospital gown. She seemed very happy to see us, and she said she was better.

We then ventured downtown to the Dalai Lama’s summer palace, perhaps the most beautiful of all temples in my opinion, perhaps because it was so simple. We walked through double wooden doors to a long alleyway, lined with three long rows of small butter candles. There were the typical rust, blue, yellow, and white drawings everywhere, along with monks and dark libraries. Up the stairs, though, and actually on the roof of the palace was a bronze sculpture of two deer. The bronze shined so brightly under the Tibetan sky that it beamed of gold. On top of the palace, we could see the rooftops of all of Lhasa, shining against the Himalayas to the south. The houses seemed so close together that one could play hopscotch from roof to roof, and the deer would be the referee of the game.

I walked back to the hotel, and I was greeted by the waitress who had been giving us meals there. She asked me what time we were to leave for Kathmandu the next morning, and I told her we had to leave at 5:00. She said we had paid for breakfast and that they would be willing to get up for us if we wanted. I felt bad that I couldn’t ask the others for their opinion at that moment, but I went ahead and made the decision for all of us, saying that I thought that was unreasonable for them to go to that trouble, but I thanked her for the generous gesture.

Tenzing had arranged for an ambulance to take Francine to the airport, to be sure that she was safe. The drive to the airport was over 100 kilometers away, so we had to leave early. However, we judged the time too early, and both we and the ambulance arrived at the airport before anyone was there to open it. We waited in the van. Finally, we saw a janitor with a key, and Tenzing ran to talk with him. He turned to us in the van, motioning us to get our bags and come in. The janitor opened two metal doors and we walked into a large hall, barely with enough light to shine on the plastic waiting lounge chairs in front of us. It took the janitor a couple of minutes to turn on the lights, so we sat in the dark. We would be sitting there for another couple of hours before we got the go-ahead to go through customs. During that time, other travelers meandered their way into the airport, as well.

I was nearly dozing off when Tenzing said, “Eric, it’s time to go.” He led me to an x-ray machine and security check, shook my hand, and waved goodbye. I wasn’t ready to say goodbye to Tenzing. I looked back, puzzled and surprised that he wasn’t going through security with us. He smiled and waved, and then he turned and walked around the corner. My eyes teared up and a lump started growing in my throat. I still felt out of breath, and I was just so, so tired. And now, the foundation of our week was around a corner. I looked at Alice, Linda, Giulio, and Francine, and they were all staring at the China Southeast ticket counter, not uttering a word. We kept silent for more than 10 minutes. The only talk we made was to assert our plane tickets and seat numbers were correct with the airline agent. Other than that, Tenzing was on my mind, and it seemed so unfair that he, the leader of our team, the scholar and teacher we had held on to for seven days, was not able to go with us. It was wrong that he couldn’t go, that he could only peer through the security check and watch us walk through as he saw that x-ray machine as a gate and fence.

Giulio was first in line, and after getting our tickets checked, we still had to pay the airport tax: 90 yuan. A female military officer in an olive green uniform and a metal money box sat at card table and asked Giulio to sit on the other side. Giulio sat down, and the officer asked him for 90 yuan. Giulio gave her a 100 yuan note, and she said that she didn’t have change and that he needed to pay in exact change. Giulio stood up, threw up his arms, turned to us and the crowd waiting for the ticket agents and shouted, “They’re all crazy!” The four of us rushed to him and asked the officer if it would be okay if we came up with 450 yuan for all of us, since we were all on a group visa. We figured that among the five of us, we should at least be able to put together that kind of exact sum.

We arrived in the departure lounge, and Linda said, “I miss Jigmey.” We all nodded our heads.

The flight to Kathmandu was like no other I’ve ever taken. The snack was pieces of white bread cut in squares with the crusts shaved off. There was nothing on the bread at all, and there was nothing to drink with the bread. It was just bread. There was no safety announcement or demonstration, but there was a film. In the middle of the flight, a screen came down, and a film of 45 female flight attendants, dressed in white uniforms with red pillbox hats and white gloves, sang us a song. They even had gestures, and I ached to understand the Chinese that accompanied their raising their hands to the sky or swinging their right arm from left to right. They even bobbed their heads left and right from time to time with the music, and at one point, they put their right gloved hand to their mouth, as if to call something. I laughed. I thought it was so hokey, but completely memorable. Alice just cringed and said, “Oh brother!” The song lasted no more than four minutes, but that was our in-flight entertainment. The song ended and the screen went back into its compartment. And then it came back down again, and the film started over again, and we got to see the song again. After the second time, the screen went up for good, just in time for the captain to let us know that we were flying past Mount Everest.

When we landed in Kathmandu, I stepped off the airplane and took my first full breath in a week. The altitude was finally at a point where I could breathe normally. Suddenly, I felt the slight headache in the back of my neck disappear, and I spread my arms out and smiled as I saw my wonderful, wonderful Kathmandu again. I looked down at my body, which was nearly 20 pounds lighter than it had been just a week previously, and I was hungry for the first time in a week.

I had survived the most physically draining journey of my life, and though I wasn’t certain that I liked it, I was sure it was one of the most important trips I had ever taken. I was challenged by a new look at poverty and how people are either able to or not able to get out of it. I experienced Communism for the first time in my life. Alice had wanted to see Tibet before the CCP ruined it, and in some ways, our reaction to what we saw was that we were too late; excess damage had already been done. I marveled at how a thin short man 12 years my junior could be a such a strong role model, hero, and teacher. I would think of Tenzing often in the coming months. My memories of Tibet would be founded in his happiness, his bliss, his ease, his patience, and his smile—not the superficial paint jobs of the CCP. Besides, Tenzing introduced us to many kind and generous Chinese people, many who took genuine interest in his opinions, and we were happy that we had met them, as well. And even though the sun and altitude pounded us, leaving indelible marks on our bodies and memories, especially with that omnipotent blue sky crashing onto glacier covered mountains, the rust, royal blue, yellow, and clean white of the temples will be colors that never leave my retinas, and the ubiquitous smell of yak butter, in both its tea and candle forms will never leave the lining of my nose. I longed to have Tenzing become a guest professor of Tibetan history and philosophy at my university, thinking it would such fun to combine book study, photography from Tibet, and Bob Marley music into a course syllabus. I missed him. It didn’t seem right that I was in Kathmandu and he wasn’t, but I was so pleased that he could be a force in my life, if only for a week. I would write this song for him:

@@@

In the meantime, I wanted to get back to the Hotel Discovery in Thamel, find Arjay, and get some Nepali tea and some curry. I walked down the stairs from the airplane to the runway, and I turned to look at Alice, Linda, Francine, and Giulio. From the runway, we could see the golf course next door, and in the middle of the fairway lay a cow. We all smiled. We were home.

Insert Lessons from a Tibetan Guide