Tibet Trip Day 7

Lhasa, Tibet

We left Shigatse first thing this morning and backtracked on the same roads to Gyantse, but then took a different route to Lhasa that passed by numerous gorgeous alpine lakes that show up impressively on the map. We still had to climb to altitude, again to over 15,500 feet where we stopped to view Kharola Glacier. 

9:34 a.m. - same shot of Gyantse Fort and the wall ruins from the previous day, hoping for better composition. Proof that we backtracked to Gyantse, but the curious thing is, looking at the map, there is no "different route" to Lhasa. So ostensibly the following photos are all on the same road we took going there, but everything looked and felt different. 

10:10 a.m. - Tibetan road hazard

10:15 a.m. - Movement and perspective, two shots taken within one minute on a moving bus. The peak on the right of the light patch across the lake moves to the left in the second pic. 

10:17 a.m. - there are ruins of a structure in the middle of the lake. I'd love to know the story behind that! 

10:29-10:30 a.m. - harvest time? Can't imagine much of a story behind these.

10:54 a.m. - distant snow-topped peaks. or the glacier we're heading to?

11:00-11:05 a.m. - scenery that looks completely different from when traveled before, if it's the same road.

11:08-11:18 a.m. - Kharola Glacier. Don't remember passing a glacier before, although it's possible I just didn't notice what I wasn't expecting and the stop was planned only for our return.

11:30 a.m. - photo dump of Tibetan travel scenery without commentary follows. Probably a bit travel-fatigued and the altitude never wasn't an issue.

11:40 a.m.

12:34-12:40 p.m.

1:06 p.m.

1:11 p.m.

1:24 p.m. - descent back into Lhasa.

We got back to Lhasa in the mid-afternoon and had several hours free, so I wandered again, mostly back around the Jokhang Temple area where I finally managed to sneak some pictures of Red Army soldiers. On Chinese tourism sites, they warn not to take pictures of soldiers, and I have no doubt these warnings should be taken seriously. But when they're marching through a highly touristed area, I considered them fair game and it was pretty easy, albeit from a distance and with a zoom lens.

Chinese Communist flags every few feet apart to remind the locals they are under occupation.

5:45-5:46 p.m.

In the evening we went to the dinner that included the Tibetan cultural show my cousin mentioned a few days ago. They didn't go that night, so it turns out I didn't miss it. The food was Tibetan, and again really, really good, and the show was something a tourism bureau would put on. I had seen something like it in Thailand. The difference is that Thailand is free, and Tibet is not. 

6:29 p.m. - It was a big decision to try beer because of the altitude, but it was our last night and I couldn't resist trying the local brew.

6:30 p.m. - (yak) butter tea. If you read enough about Tibet, you'll come across monks mentioning butter tea (and tsampa and (yak) butter candles) in the affectionate, so I was curious to try it. Safe to say it's probably an acquired taste. I'd switch the vowel in 'yak' to a 'u'.

7:23 p.m.

The performance was very good and nice, but under the political climate, I wondered how much they really wanted to be doing these performances and putting a good, smiling face onto Tibet for tourists. It was their art, and I'm sure they wanted to to perform it, but I had my doubts about whether they really had any choice due to economics or what level of Chinese coercion was in the background.

Certainly they couldn't include any political content about the threat to Tibetan culture posed by the Chinese presence. This cultural show couldn't make any mention of the cultural genocide that Tibetans and international human rights groups accuse China of.

The last night in Tibet, and there was really no point in going out. I already knew what Lhasa was: a Chinese-made, urban shithole. It was no surprise to see Chinese littering and tossing their garbage about, that's the way the Chinese are even in China (although that's changing in larger cities).

But I also saw Tibetans cavalierly chucking litter onto the street, even though there are garbage bins on every street. I even saw Tibetan children unwrap things and without a thought or a glance to see if there was a garbage bin around, chuck the litter onto the street.

And I can't say I blame them. The Chinese just litter, but even if they weren't like that, Lhasa isn't their home city, they came from wherever in China. What do they care about how the streets look? But even the Tibetans don't care because it's not their city anymore. The Chinese have invaded, why should they care about keeping the city clean?

black and whites:
Pentax ZX-5n Nikon N70, Kodak BW400CN:

Rainbow V 22mm lens toy camera, Ilford XP2 Super: