Monthly Archives: August 2012

Not able to find a ride out of town, we sat down for a meal at a local Tibetan restaurant. After breakfast, we headed to another…. you guessed it, a monastery! And the road there was, once again, extremely bumpy. We’re pretty much used to 3+hrs of bumpy roads nowadays, and time really moves by quickly.

When we got to Gatorsi (嘎拖寺), we realized why it put a name for itself. Not sure how it was built, but the whole thing was built off the side of a 4000M tall mountain!?!? And this monastery was built back in 1159AD !!!!! Seriously, this monastery is so far away from any pockets of civilization, it would’ve been great for solitary study but, how did they get there in the first place!?!?!?

History Lesson: This monastery is also 1 of 6 most important monasteries for Nyingma sect,宁玛派（红教）六大寺院之一. It was said that Guru Rinpoche (蓮花生大士) studied in the area and blessed the mountain, and beneath the monastery lies a large rock with a naturally occuring word, “Ga”.

Being easily spotted as outsiders, the locals were very friendly once again and helped us lock down a lama to unlock the doors to show us around the mandala. The mandala was ridiculously opulent, as it is plated with gold! It as so shiny, I was sort of glad the sun didn’t shine too bright this afternoon….

On our way back, we passed by a village famous for its craftsman in the art of Tibetan sword-making. From the outside it was just like any other village, but when we asked around we were lead into a local craftsman’s house. Unfortunately, just like most crafts of prior generations, there are very few people willing to continue on this way of life, instead choosing other higher paying jobs.

And then we were ‘stuck in traffic’ for 1.5hrs….. Not that there were too many people, but there was construction going on and they wouldn’t let anyone pass through the ONLY road leading back into the city. I really don’t know what they’re constructing, because it’s still bumpy was hell….

Another day of bumpy ride, another round of interesting people. Today, we rode with a lama and his thuggy friend. As mentioned before, most young Tibetan locals look a bit like GUWAKJAI（古惑仔）.I’m not sure how to describe this, but the lama had some scars on his head and looked like he’s got a past of his own. The ride was long, so the lama suggested we grab lunch first. We sat down for a bowl of noodles, and the lama went ahead and paid for all of us. Later, he saw our iPhone and he whipped his out too!

Lama Note #1: They have disposable income…(sometimes quite a lot from people’s 供养!)

Apparently the lama have some friends going to the same place we’re heading, so he’s going there to show them around the area.

Lama Note #2: They don’t always study/meditate, they have vacation too!

During the ride, the lama joked with us the whole time. His thuggy friend was even more friendly, telling us local stories of the land, telling us how to get around etc. At the end of the ride, the lama even paid more to compensate the lack of the full car!

Seriously, so far all the people we’ve met, no matter what age, no matter how ghetto they looked, they are ALL VERY NICE! Let’s hope we don’t meet any bad apples!

Leaving early in the morning, we got into a team of 4 vans, and we were seated with a group of local teenagers. Apparently it was back-to-school for these kids, so for the next 7 extremely bumpy hours, we had some interesting conversations with one particularly interesting teenager.

The kids were a bit rowdy, but they were extremely friendly, even treating us to two bottles of coke! Their mandarin wasn’t great, and our Tibetan is non-existent but they were very nice to the both of us. We feel that we are getting pretty well acclimatized, as one of the kids actually had pretty severe car sickness from the bumpy road!

The van though, was pretty shady. I now understand why some cars are so cheap…. the chassis of the van is actually 5 pieces of metal binded together like a kit kat bar… W T F?!?!? How did I find out? Well, because 1 of the pieces kept protruding out of the car and they stopped every 30minutes to hammer it back into place…. It wasn’t the van I was in but didn’t make me feel any better as we zipped up and down mountain roads with no guard rails….

We stopped at the top of the mountain at above 4500m, and everybody got out of the car to conduct a Tibetan culture of scattering scriptures (风马）into the wind as an offering to the mountain. The mountain is actually a ‘saintly’ mountain to Tibetan buddhist practitioners (despite having a road blasted along the side).

The Kid:

One of the teenagers spoke fluent mandarin, and was very talkative. He didn’t look like the other kids, carrying a more fluid motion of someone with lots on his mind. Speaking softly and confidently, he surprised us when he said he was only 17….

He would enthusiastically inform us about the details of his culture (he’s Tibetan), and within his voice you can feel a sense of uncompromising pride. Several times he would suggest to us that, spending a year or two to learn the Tibetan language, and help the locals improve their standard of living would be a gracious thing to do. We asked him what he’d do after graduation, and he spoke softly, without thought, “I’d like to improve my language skills, and continue to learn Buddhism. This way, I can promote both my religion and my home land to the world.”

Coming from a 17 year old, with such conviction…. especially when all his friends were throwing tree moss around, it was a pretty impressive sight.

In the morning, we headed up to the mountains to round the mandal with the locals. It was also a place for locals to go take a picnic with two buckets of yogurt and a bag of bread! Coming back down from the mountain top, our hospitable host tried to take us to get blessings from a 活佛, but timing didn’t work out…rather unfortunate. Honestly though, we were kinda freaked out at her enthusiasm!!! She was sincere to begin with, but sorta freaky!

We took a ride to the city of Serda. The city itself only has about 10 thousand people (half of that in the monastery!), and literally has one road going in. There’s no trade, no manufacturing, no tourism but somehow the city is extremely clean and new. When we took a stroll around town, we went into their town hall, and found their 2012 infrastructure budget posted outside. I am no urban planner, but through a combination of government and private entities, a whopping $700M RMB was invested into this small area this year!!! Putting things into perspective, this is a ridiculously small town with a ridiculously small population…!!!

Riding with us into the city were 4 teenage lamas, and we chatted up with them for a bit. So when they enter the monastery, it is like going to school, but instead of learning something like fluid dynamics or calculus, they learn how to achieve nirvana…haha cool! And every 5 days they get 1 day off, and today was their day off! The funny part is, only females were allowed into the town today so they were breaking the rules to head into town! And what for??? TO PLAY BASKETBALL!

We spent the afternoon watching them play a bit of basketball, and reminisced about stuff at a local tea shop. I don’t know how it works, but this town has a ridiculous abundance of tea shops…. The motel we’re staying in was built 3months ago. Seems like every city we’ve been at was built within the past year. So just an FYI, I’m pretty sure infrastructure investment here is going to be finished soon…. We just hope they build some better toilets.

Riding the bus from 7-3pm, our bums took a ridiculous beating once again. The craziest part was, for the most part we were driving along the national highway 317, the northern route into Tibet. The lane is ridiculously small, and weaves itself between a jagged mountain and a river without any guard rails. The scary part is, THERE IS ONCOMING TRAFFIC TOO!! Props to the drivers on this route, as there were no accidents at all the whole way through, unlike a typical day on the 401?

Arriving into the monastery, you realize the sheer size of the thing. To put into perspective, there are about 20 thousand monks/nuns living in this monastery, whereas the town itself has around 10 thousand! Little houses carpet the whole mountain side, with several large temples within. Some temples focus on Tibetan teachings, while others focus on Mandarin teachings. There is also a large mandala at the top of the mountain for people to turn their sins away and bring more fortune.

The monastery is like a bustling city, with restaurants, convenience stores and its own market. Continue reading →

We weren’t able to buy a bus ticket out of the city, so we spent the day reading novels and eating fried chicken! Seriously, this place was awesome…

Then some Szechuan hotpot for dinner, and we called it a day. It’s so hard to find good Szechuan hotpot outside of China!!!

Walking across the street to the Tibetan Chieftain’s ‘castle’, we were welcomed by a fire truck hosing off the street. A bit confused, we asked what the heck they were doing, and apparently a gov’t official is coming later in the day.

The chieftain’s mansion was pretty cool, built over 5 stories tall. The chieftain was a way of different dynasties to ‘control’ the local tribes by electing a local leader, and it started during the Yuan dynasty, spanning 17 generations until the current govt pwnt them. We recommend anyone that’s interested to read the book, “尘埃落定”, written by 阿来 – son of the last chieftain. One interesting thing though, is that the chieftain’s bedroom is actually smaller than his jewelry collection room. Does anyone else find that strange? Continue reading →

Taking a morning bus, it was another bumpy 5hr ride before we got to a village outside of Ma’erkang called 卓克基–嘉绒藏寨. This village is unique in that the houses were built for the servants of a Tibetan ruler’s castle. The castle is now a museum, but the village itself is also very cool! The homes here are all built with rocks, while most Tibetan homes are built with mud, or wood. Each region seems to differ, and apparently even their languages are different as there are many different Tibetan dialects.

Once again we are staying with a local family as every home in this village seems to be open to travelers. There isn’t much to “see” per say, but the atmosphere and people here really make it a neat place to be and is somewhat hard to describe.. It’s more like a Western-style suburb bed-and-breakfast as every home has beautiful flowers growing out front, and are usually three stories tall!

Dinner and breakfast was included with our stay – for $70RMB per person, and we had 3 dishes + a soup for dinner! I have to say, high-altitude potatoes are REALLY good! They just taste….more like potatoes haha. One story of why people here are great, is that they seem to have good faith. True story: After dinner, we bought some sunflower seeds from the store which sells them in bulk, so we grabbed a few handful and it came up to $1.92 RMB, so I already pulled out $2 to give to the owner. Without hesitation, the owner goes and drops another handful to top it up to $2! It may be a small thing, but it’s the little things that sometimes leaves the biggest impression…

So we sat on the roof top with a beer, $2 worth of sunflower seeds and chatted away until dark. And as I type away on my laptop, the power is actually out and the whole village is without light. First world problems, I guess. =P