Nyingchi, Tibet
Wake up call was pretty early to catch a 7:30 a.m. two-hour flight from Chengdu to Nyingchi, a town several hundred kilometers east of Lhasa in Tibet. I knew we were flying up to a pretty high altitude, so I was curious when on the plane the altimeter on my watch read above 9,000 feet. Usually planes pressurize the cabin to about a 6,000 feet equivalent, which is still easily a comfortable air pressure.
After we landed and de-planed, the altimeter was at about 9,600 feet, so I think the pressurization on the plane was intentional. Flying into Nyingchi Airport was pretty incredible. When I think of planes flying through mountain valleys, I'm more apt to imagine smaller planes – not jetliners. I can't imagine it being relaxing for the flight crew winding through the mountains, or how they knew the way to the airport.
From my window seat, landing came pretty suddenly. One moment we're flying, albeit pretty low, through mountain valleys, watching scenery, cattle and roads go by below, and suddenly we touch down.
The modest airport was pretty much just an
airstrip, which I assume was built by the Chinese primarily to ferry tourists back and forth to poison and dilute Tibet with Chinese influence. Ours was the only plane there, and as we got off, there were passengers waiting to get on that plane, ostensibly to go back to China. It looked like it might've been a one flight in, one flight out per day deal.
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| 9:33 a.m., Nyingchi Airport |
It was pretty darn chilly at 9,600 feet at 9:30 in the morning, and I was still dressed for late summer nearer to sea level, so the first thing I did was get my jacket out of my luggage. We were met by our tour guide for Tibet, a mainland Chinese guy, and ushered onto our bus. Altitude sickness was the first thing explained and canisters of oxygen were handed out.
The landscape was striking as we traveled along the valley roads. The mountains were grand, the rivers were grand, as were the clouds and the sun and sky. Over the course of the trip, I think I found I loved the rivers the most. Whether vast sprawling rivers or tributary streams, they were ubiquitous and consistently powerful and impressive.
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| 9:57 a.m., from the bus |
Our first stop was at the Lamaling Temple, a former monastery and currently attended to by a handful of monks and resident Tibetans. The former monastery was sacked by the Chinese during the Cultural Revolution in the 1960s, and the current structure was rebuilt in a different location. Not a glaring tourist trap, but likely a fabricated tourist stop by the Chinese.
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| 10:39 a.m., tiny spider |
The Chinese will likely say it is to help them economically, but the Tibetans would probably say they would rather not have the tourists. I'm more likely to agree with the stance that this is part of establishing Chinese hegemony, and also to keep Tibetans in their place as a sideshow attraction, and to emphasize that their places of worship are just for show as far as the Chinese government is concerned.
Afterwards we headed into town, stopping in
Bayi town for lunch, a Chinese-style, multi-course banquet, before going to our hotel for the next two days, directly south in the town of Nyingchi.
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| 12:37 p.m., a nothing shot of where we ate in Bayi. Doesn't everyone shoot everything early in a trip? |
It was early afternoon and we had the rest of the afternoon free until dinner, so I headed out to explore the area. I did feel some effects of the altitude as I slowly walked, noticing the effort required to get my feet fully off the ground every step.
I did choose my first direction well, as I shortly came across the clear waters of the impressive and lovely Nyang River and walked along it for a while. I never got very far from the hotel, but it was all new terrain for me and I was walking really, really slowly because of the altitude, so I was out wandering for a bit.
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| 2:13 p.m., Nyang River |
Another reason why I didn't go further along the river was because at one point I started feeling raindrops. Then it developed into a slight drizzle. Then heavy drops and into a steady rain. I took shelter under one of the small trees along the river and that seemed to be sufficient, but then the rain tapered off and it was all over within 10 minutes.
Because I was afraid it might rain, I didn't go further and headed back in a direction that wasn't going distinctly away from the hotel. Aside from those trees by the riverside, there was no shelter to speak of in case the skies opened up.
I think I witnessed later from a distance the type of rainfall I experienced. From town, I was looking towards the mountains across the river and saw a sheet of what looked like mist below the cloud bank. It looked like precipitation and if I were under that, I would probably experience it as a brief, localized rainfall.
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| 3:24 p.m., it's raining over there. |
Nyingchi is a quiet town, and our hotel was in an even quieter part of town. There were plenty of signs of life once I found it, just a lot of space in between. Traffic was run on a honkocracy, but mostly because traffic is sparse enough that anything goes, and people constantly honk just to let other people know they're coming through.
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| 3:14 p.m., roundabout north |
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| 3:14 p.m., east |
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| 3:21 p.m., south |
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| 3:14 p.m., west. I also shot nw, sw, se, and ne, but I know how to show restraint. |
There was an eerie feeling about the quiet of Nyingchi, though. There was a juxtaposition between blocks of urban ruins, buildings having been torn down, and newly erected government buildings and the feeling of ongoing, low-level construction. There was still a deceptive "new" feeling there.
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| 2:46 p.m., urban ruins |
Many times I came across a block of buildings that I couldn't tell if they were just constructed and were awaiting occupancy or if they had been abandoned in fairly good shape, but were awaiting demolition.
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| 3:48 p.m., the last shot on this walk. Abandoned or yet to be occupied? |
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| 3:44 p.m., second to last shot on this walk. |
Early in my walk I came across two schoolgirls who headed across a debris field, either to or from school. I proved myself a poor photographer once more, as I had a chance to ask them if I could take their picture, but instead just stood by like an idiot as they walked by, looking at me curiously with my camera in hand.
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| two girls |
In the evening, we had dinner at the hotel – a Chinese-style, multi-course banquet – and that was the first time I wondered whether we were ever going to try Tibetan food. No activity in the evening, either, so I just stayed in and read. Not that there was anything to do in Nyingchi anyway.
Black and whites
Pentax ZX-5n Nikon N70, Kodak BW400CN film:
Rainbow V 22mm lens toy camera, Ilford XP2 Super:
