Monthly Archives: September 2012

Sleeping in (one of few days!), we were on the road again and back into the great landscapes of Ali. On our way, we saw several packs of wild Tibetan donkeys. Apparently, these donkeys are the bane of nomads existence. Being a protected animal, hunting is disallowed, but when they pass by vegetation they pull the roots out and leaves nothing but patches of empty dirt! So all along the way, you see massive areas of fencing, keeping these donkeys out =P

History Note: Our destination, Mount Kailash (冈仁波齐) and Lake Manasarovar (玛旁雍错), is considered one of the holiest places for several religions including Buddhism, Jainism, Hinduism and the local Tibetan Bon religion. Almost daily, people from all over the world come to circumambulate the mountain. In Buddhism, to do so once, would be to cleanse yourself of all your sins for 500 years. For devout Buddhists, they would aim to circumbabulate the mountain 13 times. Folklore says that, a young woman accidentally drowned her child in the rivers, and to cleanse herself of this sin she continued to circumbabulate the mountain, and it wasn’t until the 13^th time that her sins were cleansed. NOTE! If you come here in the year of the horse and circumbabulate once, it is equivalent to doing it 13 times… Again, don’t know why but that’s what they say.

As we got close towards the mountain and all passengers in a semi-drowsy mood, our Tibetan driver slowly raised his hand towards Mount Kailash and said “Everytime I come here, I feel so calm and serenity from within.”. We took a detour and visited the saintly lake of Lake Manasarovar and the ‘ghostly’ Lake Rakshastal. These two lakes, although separated by a mere 4kms, is vastly different. The saintly lake, is a freshwater lake full of fish and vegetation and in the shape of a circle, while the ghostly lake is a SALT WATER lake, where no life forms are found. The strangest part? THEY USED TO BE CONNECTED BY A RIVER! I’m no geologist, but this is pretty freakin’ cool!

So we wandered around the lakes, taking in the amazing scenery. Any day in Tibet, when you have blue skies, you’ll have some amazing scenery you’d wish you can take with you wherever you go… The only thing is it gets really chilly once the sun sets!!

Our Tibetan driver, continuing his awesomeness, managed to bypass two ticket booths and worked some off-road magic (almost hitting the ticket salesman in the meanwhile) and saved us $800 worth of tickets! Respect. Super awesome!

Tomorrow: Cleansing our sins!

The village itself is just like any recently renovated Chinese village, with a main street full of shops, KTV, bars and Sichuan cuisine. The coolest part about this village was that, it had a temple dedicated to the Princess Bhrikuti Devi back in 650CE, well over 1400 years ago!

Historical Note: One of the most powerful Tibetan ruler, Songtsan Gampo (棄宗弄贊), had two wives. One was the famous Wencheng Princess (文成公主) of the Tang dynasty, while the other was Princess Bhrikuti Devi of Nepal. One of his most important contributions to Tibetan history, is the fact that he introduced Buddhism into Tibet, and also invented the written Tibetan language as we know of today. Skills.

The temple, built in Nepalese style of architecture, definitely stood out even amongst monasteries. The coolest part though, is that there are TWO temples in this village that was built for the Princess’s arrival. The other temple is situated deep into the woods through several villages in a little place called Jeep Village (XXX)..hehe excuse the translation. The locals call this place, Heaven’s Valley, and we were quick to understand why. Crossing a suspension bridge towering 270m over the ravine below, we entered the village and were astonished by the lush environment it was in. Every household has a massive field, growing corn, apples, pears, some red droopy vegetable we’ve never seen, wheat. It felt like we were in a sweet piece of farmland, NOT in Tibet at all! Continue reading →

Reluctantly crawling out of our cozy sleeping bags and into a +5C tent at 7:15am was not fun, but getting outside to see morning glow of Mount Everest made it all better. We took some shots, then headed back inside for some hot water and cookies before climbing onto a ‘environmentally friendly’ vehicle and into the actual ‘base camp’ for Mount Everest on the Chinese border. Guarded by more border patrols (who we feel sorta bad for, being camped out in the middle of nowhere freezing cold with random tourists asking irrelevant questions), it felt like we could cross into Nepal anytime we’d like…. except you’d have to climb through the Himalayas, shouldn’t be that bad right?

On our way back out of EBC, we visited the world’s highest altitude monastery, Rongbusi (绒布寺). There’s about 30 or so lamas residing in there, and apparently there’s an even higher monastery, which is a cave where a single lama resides as he studies in solitude. There were also two very cute sheeps foraging around. Reminder: we’re about 5200m above sea level! Everytime we see goats/sheep, it always reminds us of the little guy Bacon back home….

Driving onto our next destination of Jilong Ravine, we passed by the typical Ali scenery: Green pasture fields full of nomads and their yaks/sheeps, roads bisecting mountainous ranges, and most awesome of all, the snow-capped Himalayas from afar. Before coming around Tibet, I always thought all mountains looked sorta like, well, mountains. That’s where you’re wrong, each mountain seems to have a different story to tell, a different eminence not really captured through the numerous pictures you’d see. On the road, we saw the Shisapangma, a mere 27m above 8000m..hehe. During this trip, we are fortunate enough to see 5 (although one never shown its true facade) of the world’s 14 “Eight-Thousanders” (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eight-thousander). We’ll see the 6^th when we do the Annapurna Circuit in Nepal later in Oct. Continue reading →