Vamos á Lhasa

Vamos á Lhasa

28 September 2010

Lhasa, Tibet Autonomous Region, China

This morning, Carissa and Greg picked me up in a taxi, and we headed to Pudong Airport. There we met with our fellow travelers, Yves from Switzerland, Richard from Melbourne, Felipe from Brazil. Check-in was only complicated by the fact that Richard’s passport number had been listed by his booking website as “123456789.” This was potentially a big deal. The gate agent told Richard he had to call the booking agent (which conveniently does not seem to have a phone number, or at any rate not one that is listed on their confirmation email). At length, we convinced the gate agent to change it in his own computer, and we were left to wonder why he wouldn’t do that in the first place if he could… at any rate, the lessons learned were 1) make sure your passport number is right when you travel in China and 2) if you do not like the first answer, ask and ask again.

The second slight complication was that our permits to enter Tibet were actually one permit covering all six of us. This was lesson three of the day: travel together if you are headed to Tibet and make sure no one misses the plane! (Alternatively, make sure the agency provides divisible permits.)

We had a layover in Xi’an, a place I would like to revisit. For now, though, I can report that the Xi’an airport had great noodles and horrible beer. It tasted like carbonated dirty water and had big bubbles like happy Heidsieck. Anyway, it’s a good thing about the great noodles because the airplane food was less edible than any I’ve ever seen, with the exception of the Haibao dessert cake.

The views into Lhasa were beautiful, though the mountains didn’t challenge my memories of flying over the Andes in Peru. What I’ll remember more vividly is the wide, muddy, and seemingly shallow rivers coming from slivers between mountains into a superhighway that we followed to the airport. On the banks, families of birches were green and turning yellow, and there was not one boat to be seen. Up here in the middle of the Himalayas, the river looked like a delta fanning out before it meets the sea.

Our guide, Bemba, greeted us with white Tibetan scarves and led us to our van, which looked like something Jerry Garcia would love. Our driver’s name was also Bemba, which means Saturday in Tibetan. We stopped at one sacred place on the way into town, and there we checked into the Cool Yak Hotel. For dinner that night we went to a Tibetan steak house and tried yak for the first time. Richard ordered best, and his yak steak tasted as good as a fine beef steak. After dinner, we went to a bar called Texas Bar, where some of the guys took burning shots while country music played. Then Yves impressed me by taking the guitar off the wall and playing the blues. We could have been anywhere.

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Pictures: Team Tibet; the view flying into Lhasa (2); inedible airplane food with one adorable and yummy Haibao dessert cake (Haibao is the mascot of the Shanghai World Expo); guitar waiting on the wall at Lhasa's Texas Bar