China, Tibet (police, yak, glacier and monasteries)

November 3, 2010

Enough acclimatizing. Today we left Lhasa and set off for higher things - towards the highest mountain in the world. But only a few kilometers down the road we were stopped by the police, and our car and driver were grounded against our will - for three days - or so the police wished.

What had happened? Because the growing volume of traffic had led to more road deaths, the police had introduced speed checks on many country roads. You have to stop at every police checkpoint, where the car’s details and the time are written down on a trip slip. At the next checkpoint, the travel time is set against the distance to work out the average speed. Well, we definitely had the fastest driver in Tibet. During our last few days in Lhasa, not a single car overtook us! Honking rhythmically and cursing every now and then, our driver slalomed us through the city traffic. A police car with flashing lights? - Our driver knew better gaps in the traffic and overtook that one too. He was also the one who told us about the speed checks on the country roads. So we wondered why, even outside Lhasa, he was driving what felt like way too fast. Oh well, he’ll know what he’s doing - or so we thought… Wrong! The police worked out that we’d been speeding and issued a ticket plus a driving ban for the next three days. Cursing the police, our driver took us to the nearest police headquarters to talk about the ban. An hour later he came back out, shaking his head. Nothing doing - the driving ban stands. Understandably, Michael, Ingrid and I were extremely annoyed at our driver’s boundless stupidity: he knew perfectly well how clear-cut the speed checks were (first you stop and register in person, so that the time can be checked at the next stop) and what the penalties could be, and still he hadn’t kept to the speed limits. Stuck in Lhasa for three days? Impossible! My Tibet permit and my Chinese visa are only valid for less than a week, and then I have to leave the country and the region. Michael’s and my attempts to talk the police round failed as well. In no uncertain terms we told our guide that we did not accept this situation and that he’d simply have to conjure up a new car and driver, because we definitely wanted to see more of Tibet. Apparently that wasn’t so easy… After further talks with the police, our driver was advised to take his case straight to the police chief in charge. So we waited another two hours by the roadside for the outcome. We recognized our driver straight away by the unmistakable honking, headlight flashing included, as he approached. He had managed to get the penalty converted into a fine - 500 Yuan - a quarter of his entire earnings from our tour. Had he learned anything from it? Nope! Curious, I kept an eye on the speedometer. Although it felt like we were going much faster, the needle mostly hovered between 40 and 45 km/h. I couldn’t be that far off. To settle the matter, I switched on my GPS, and a few minutes later my jaw dropped. While I was measuring, we were doing between 130 and 140 km/h on Tibet’s roads… Asked whether he wasn’t driving a little too fast, our driver just laughed it off and pointed his index finger at the speedometer.

I quickly took a photo of the situation and thought to myself: Fine, maybe this way we’ll make up for lost time - as long as the next police stop doesn’t ground our car again. This time our driver + guide were smart about it. They now kept an eye on the travel time and simply stretched out the photo and meal breaks between the police stops (which was very pleasant) until the time for the distance came out right at the prescribed speed limit - 70 km/h…
In the picture above you can make out a small camera in the middle of the dashboard, which sends a picture of us tourists to the government authorities via the mobile network every few minutes - purely for our own safety, of course, as our guide assured us… Unfortunately, he couldn’t tell us whether our conversations were being listened in on as well…

Not particularly bothered by this, we enjoyed the drive and wound our way up the mountains,…

…down again,…

…gazed at the breathtaking landscape…

…and took in the unique views.

I asked our guide whether I could take a photo of one of the many yaks. No problem - we stopped at the next yak herd, and the herder let me have his most beautiful yak for my photo shoot. Hmmm, the backdrop and this handsome yak make the perfect advert for my road-trip snack…

Can anyone guess (or make out) what I’m advertising in my right hand? ;)
After giving the herder some of my snack as a thank-you, we moved on…

…to the sacred Lake Yamzhog Yumco, at an altitude of 4,441 meters.
For our lunch break we drove to the nearest village,…

…where hyped-up schoolchildren greeted me in the friendliest and sometimes cheekiest way, but turned extremely shy the moment they saw the camera.

After lunch we drove on to the Kharola Glacier, where I tried…

…to make a bit of Alpine music on the „sign horn“. ;)

How can you possibly top a picture like this at an altitude of 4,500 meters?

… Like this! ;)

In the late afternoon we reached the town of Gyantse and visited the Baijiu Monastery (the one with all the names),…

…where we were greeted by children at play.

The view from the top of the monastery over the surrounding town…

…and the nearby fortress.

Inside the monastery you were allowed to take photos for a fee of „only“ 100 Yuan. The building consists of more than 70 small rooms, each with…

…its own different Buddha statues.

Benevolent,…

…music-making…

…protective (yes, really, that’s supposed to be what the statue above is all about…) and countless other Buddha figures. Roughly how many are there? „Tens of thousands of different ones!“ was my guide’s answer. …

Around the monastery, a few scattered worshippers were busy with prayer wheels…

…and prayer exercises. The woman above kept at the sporty version of praying for the entire 1.5 hours we were there (praying towards the sky, towards the monastery, lying down, and back to the start) and, although drenched in sweat and panting, she showed no sign whatsoever of stopping. With her prayer gear - mat, „hand-slide protectors“, red head cushion - and her dogged persistence, the whole thing looked strikingly like a workout. A remarkably intense faith - and, from a fitness point of view, a healthy one too. Is that why some people here live to such a ripe old age?

Later, having arrived in Tibet’s second-largest city - Shigatse - I admired the luxury of my room…

…and the well-equipped bathroom…

…and enjoyed the view over the city at sunset.