A Wild Ride on the Roof of the World

Tags

base camp, driving, EBC, Everest, Friendship Highway, Himalayas, Lhasa, Tibet

We are nearing Day Zero, the day we drive away from one house and start the move to another, so I’m posting an entry from my blog’s earliest days today. The perspective from atop the world, almost literally, does my mind good at this bittersweet time.

***

Driving in countries around the world is always an adventure. From the careening traffic on the autobahn and the peripherique, to the stop-and-go progress on a Scottish Highlands road full of sheep, to the heart-attack cliffs with no guardrails in mountains the world over, there is always a story about our international brothers’ driving habits. Penjo, our driver on the Friendship Highway – the route across the Tibetan Plateau (the “Roof of the World”) from Tibet to Nepal – was no exception.

We left Lhasa early one morning for a cross-country adventure in a 4WD Mitsubishi SUV. A few hours out of Lhasa, we experienced the first of many so-called “pee breaks” which were really designed for our guide, Pasang, and our driver, Penjo, to take a smoking break. Timed passage on the road also meant that if we were going to arrive at a checkpoint too early, we had to either slow down or stop and wait until the time was OK. (This happened at every checkpoint since the law, meant to slow drivers down, really seemed to signify “drive as fast as humanly possible and then stop and wait until enough time has passed.”) Even using this finely-tuned strategy, Penjo managed to get a speeding ticket as we approached Shigatse, a hellhole (at least at that time) we discovered we should have been in no hurry to reach anyway.

Getting to our hotel and dinner in Shigatse was like a barrel race as we were stymied by street after street under construction. We drove in circles through an apocalyptic landscape, a bombed-out scene of heavy construction equipment and vehicle-swallowing holes in the powdery streets. Penjo showed some serious moxie by driving on sidewalks, down one-way streets, in front of bulldozers, and through numerous barricades. Shigatse is a dusty town by nature, and all this earth-moving and car maneuvering left a deep coat of grime on the Pajero and a sneeze-inducing mass of dust in our nostrils.

The next day, after lunch in Tingri, we turned off onto a dirt road for the next three hours. This was a true washboard road, with constant ridges and bumps, along with switchbacks, steep climbs and descents, and barely two lanes across. Penjo did not disappoint, spending large periods of time on the oncoming traffic side of the road and squealing to dustcloud-raising stops in the loose gravel, precipitously close to various drop-offs, as he attempted to pass large trucks, SUVs and, really, any moving vehicle, beast, or human on the road. Penjo finally slowed down and the air finally cleared as we crossed our third and final high pass for the day at 17,500 feet, with a view of the entire Tibetan Himalaya range, including Makalo, Lhotse, Everest, and Cho Oyu.

On our way back to Lhasa, we took a different route through a gorge along the Brahmaputra River. Penjo was at his finest today, offroading anytime the main road was closed. In Tibet, barricades indicating road closures are apparently simply something to drive around. This road was clearly closed, but Penjo decided we would take it anyway, which meant that at certain points we had to totally drive off the highway and go through pastures, fields, and people’s property. Many others had the same idea, including giant 18-wheelers! Penjo passed semis in a blur of dirt, drove through sagebrush, which we dragged along behind us until it shook loose, and swerved even more than usual.

Penjo’s driving was truly a thing to behold, with brake slamming, high speeds then incredibly slow ones, random veering, and aggressive crowding of other vehicles. Somehow we never worried too much; we decided people here drive like maniacs and have constant near accidents but never any actual accidents. At one point, Penjo almost nailed a dzo, but neither he nor the female owner of the dzo seemed the least bit perturbed as he screeched to a halt mere inches from the animal in the middle of the road.

Penjo was a soft-spoken (Tibetan language only) man who was quite mild-mannered out of the vehicle. He had a sweet, shy smile and since we are alive to tell the tale, we have only the fondest memories of him!

More posts on our Tibetan adventures:

A Love Affair with Lhasa

Face of a Pilgrim

Not for the Squeamish

Face of a Pilgrim

Tags

face, Lhasa, prostration, Tibet, Tibetan Buddhism

Although I was tempted to submit many of the dozens of portraits I have taken around the world in a giant mosaic for this week’s photo challenge, I chose to post just this very special one.

This beatific woman allowed me to take her photo alongside the wall of prayer wheels surrounding the Potala Palace in Lhasa, Tibet. She is one of the pilgrims who have traveled to Lhasa to pay their respects at the home of the Dalai Lamas of the past, as well as the temples and shrines in this most holy of Tibetan Buddhist cities.

What I don’t know about her is how she got here, or from where. Many pilgrims arrive in Lhasa after journeys of several months from faraway rural areas, and the most pious of them do it by prostrating themselves the entire way. They sink to their knees, push their arms and hands ahead of themselves to lie down flat on the ground, then slide their arms and legs together again to stand, only to repeat the supplicating motion over and over again for days, weeks, and even months. (And I think yoga-barre-Pilates is hard!)

Other pilgrims arrive in this city at the top of the world by car, bus, horse, farm vehicle, or on foot. It is a humbling vision to see them in our midst; we are there to try to absorb this mysterious country’s culture for a short time while they have waited a lifetime to get the chance to come to Lhasa. They are everywhere, twirling their hand-held prayer wheels, prostrating outside the temples, and walking circle after circle around the Jokhang Temple, the Potala Palace, and other sacred sites.

This dear woman was but one of these gentle, devout people that make up the Tibetan population, but her sweet, weather-worn face is a poignant memory of all of them.

Plus ça change, …

Tags

change, Colombia, Cuba, Mexico, Nepal, Tibet

I’ve been thinking about change a lot these days.

After decades of living in one place, many of them in the same house, we are poised to make a move in the near future. I don’t know exactly where or when at this point, but the idea of uprooting myself is both terrifying and thrilling. Change is good, and change is scary, but having lived through upheaval before, I know that “the more things change, the more they stay the same.” I also know we can change our external surroundings, tipping ourselves precariously into new situations, but equilibrium always seems to right us, swinging us back to the mundane similarities of daily life, wherever we are.

Beyond the home front, I’ve been thinking about change in the world as well. As an avid traveler to some unique places, I’ve occasionally found myself in a hot spot, a place where climactic forces or social and political tensions boil over before, during, or after I’ve been there. The change in Jerusalem came to mind this morning as I read about clashes on the Temple Mount between Israelis and Palestinians. I was there this summer during a period of relative peace, and I spent some quiet hours in this sacred place one morning, feeling lucky to have missed the previous summer’s violence there. But just when we think things have calmed down, they can change in a heartbeat and erupt yet again.

Likewise, I think about Nepal, where my recent photos and memories contain scenes that no longer exist after last spring’s devastating earthquake. Or Tibet, where whole portions of the Tibetan quarter get gobbled up year after year by the Han Chinese as they take over the mountaintop city. I feel like I was just basking in sunny, relaxing Croatia, thinking about little more than a cold drink on a ledge over the Adriatic, and today it is stressed by hordes of refugees at its borders. In an opposite swing of the pendulum, there is the heartening re-blossoming of economies and tourism in places like Mexico City or Colombia – cities and countries long excised from my travel list – now back on it after years of drug-fueled violence.

Durbar Square, Bhaktapur, Nepal

Photo credit: Aljazeera.com

Sometimes I feel it’s a race to see parts of the world that may change before our eyes – like Cuba, where the inevitable influx of Americans in coming years may simultaneously revive and potentially ruin the Caribbean nation. I am eager to get there soon, before the change, knowing even so that the transformation will be both good and bad, and that it is not my place to judge that as an outsider.

More painful to me as a student of the world, I know my visit and my presence itself cause change in both positive and negative ways. By visiting the Arctic before it thaws, do I accelerate the melting? By walking through Machu Picchu before the government further limits visitors to protect the ancient stones, do I wear them down myself and exacerbate the dilemma?

For now, I jump in where I can, keeping my conscience and safety in mind as much as possible, knowing that Mother Nature will continue to rumble capriciously through regions unknown, that politics and social forces will disrupt life in places we can and can’t predict, and that these winds of change will continue to blow through the world as they have for millennia.

Walls

Tags

Lhasa, Sinicization, Tibet, walled cities, walls

In recent weeks, I had been planning a post about the walled cities I’ve visited and was busy digging up photos of Dubrovnik, Xi’an, Kotor, Tallinn, and others. These (often) medieval towns have a historical charm that makes for both an interesting visit and great photos.

Kotor, Montenegro

Tallinn, Estonia

Xi’an, China

Dubrovnik, Croatia

But the Weekly Photo Challenge went further, asking us for an image of a wall that reveals something about its place or about me.

I knew my wall photo had to be from Lhasa, Tibet, to reveal something about me. Visitors to my blog can see that I’ve traveled a good deal, but no trip has meant as much to me as my two visits to Tibet, especially Lhasa. For years, I had an inexplicable and deep-rooted captivation with Tibet in general. It started with reading Lost Horizon, The Snow Leopard, and Into Thin Air, and continued with Seven Years in Tibet and a growing fascination with Lhasa in particular. As I read about the young Dalai Lama’s years in the Potala Palace looming high above the city, this building and its forbidding walls came to symbolize for me the mystery and inaccessibility of this kingdom on the roof of the world. I vowed to see it someday before it was ruined by tourists (of which I would paradoxically be one, of course!).

Potala Palace, Lhasa, Tibet

Now I look at the mighty walls that surround the Potala Palace and hope that they can metaphorically hold off the onslaught of Sinicization that is rapidly overtaking Tibet as the Han Chinese flock to the city as tourists, residents, and government officials. The city’s face is changing, and the traditional Tibetan quarter shrinks yearly. I see this imposing wall as a last bulwark against the overbearing Chinese assault and their attempt to control this proud civilization.

Potala Palace, Lhasa, Tibet

“The Real and Powerful Buddha Head”

Tags

Barkhor Square, Buddha head, Jokhang Temple, Lhasa, Tibet

My apologies to any followers of my photo blog who will see this post there as well today. That blog is normally photos only, but today I had to tell a story to explain my picture, and I knew I wanted to share that story here, too.

The photo challenge this week was to use the Rule of Thirds (and the bokeh effect, if possible) to capture an up-close view of something or someone. I try to always stick to a travel theme on both blogs, so I wandered my house this afternoon in search of a travel memento that I could experiment with.

This beautiful Buddha head is from Lhasa, Tibet, and his journey home to me was a long and arduous one. I found him initially in a small store behind Barkhor Square, on the buzzing circular path that is part of the kora (circumambulation) around the Jokhang Temple. He is quite heavy and as I always travel with only a carry-on bag or backpack, I knew I could not get him home with me. I bought him anyway and scribbled my name and address on a scrap of paper to have him shipped, feeling all along that there was a very good chance that I’d never see him again. As minimal protection, I did take the name and email address of a young woman in the shop who spoke a bit of English.

I returned home a week or so later and then many months passed. Finally, one day an enormous package arrived for me. Its sides had caved in, the tape was snarled or completely missing in spots, and there were stamps marching across nearly the whole surface. The head was made of metal; what real damage could be done, I thought hopefully? Alas, I removed the Buddha head from its nest of packaging, and as soon as I moved to place him on a table, I heard a loud rattling sound. Something had clearly broken inside.

In a very non-Buddhist mood, I wrote to the young woman and (a tiny bit) crankily told her about the ridiculously long wait and the fact that my purchase was damaged as well. Her response (below) was so touching and beautiful that I’ve kept it forever as a reminder of both the dear, sweet Tibetan people and the need to expect the best of others.

  “I understand that you worry about it , for me, i hope you trust me , even you come to our store by yourself , but we Tibetan never cheat our friends from other country , and also what you bought is the Buddha head! 

   It is good to know that you got it! Please don’t worry about that , the sounds from inside are some barley beads and prayers , because this Buddha head has been blessed before and worshipped by pilgrims many years ago , the new Buddha head is empty and nothing inside , if we want to invite a Buddha head at home, we must bring it to the Old temple and invite a Lama to put the Barley beads and prayers inside ,even the dry butter which has been offered to the Buddha Shakyamuni as offerings inside, then the Buddha is the real and powerful Buddha head which can protect us ! 

   If you look the bottom carefully , you can see the marks of fixing the bottom when the Lama finish blessing the Buddha head , it is our traditon to put things inside the Buddha and Buddha head , or else it is just the statue ,not the Holy Buddha !”

So what I have is better than a mere statue or sculpture; I have “the real and powerful Buddha head”! He occupies the front table in my entrance so that I pass him dozens of times a day, and he greets each and every visitor to our home. Picking him up today and hearing the rattle of barley beads and prayers inside made my day a little brighter.

Friday Photos: Circles of Life

Tags

Beijing, Boudhanath, Canggu Nunnery, China, Kathmandu, Lhasa, Nepal, Tibet

Circles of life …

At Canggu Nunnery, Lhasa, Tibet

At Boudhanath Temple, Little Tibet, Kathmandu, Nepal

Market in Beijing, China

Friday Photos: Doors

Tags

Argentina, Beijing, Buenos Aires, Cape Town, Cappadocia, Chile, China, Forbidden City, Goreme, La Boca, Lhasa, Norbulingka, Paine Circuit, Palermo Soho, Robben Island, South Africa, Tibet, Turkey

Going with a door theme today …

Forbidden City, Beijing, China

La Boca, Buenos Aires, Argentina

Palermo Soho, Buenos Aires, Argentina

Cell door, Robben Island, Cape Town, South Africa

Norbulingka Palace, Lhasa, Tibet

Hiking the Paine Circuit, Chile

Cave hotel, Goreme, Cappadocia, Turkey

A Love Affair with Lhasa

Tags

Barkhor, Dalai Lama, Jokhang, Lhasa, Norbulingka, Potala Palace, Tibet, Tibetan Buddhism

Back to the archives …
Between trips, I like to go back to my travel journals and find some old gems, and Tibet is always a treasure trove of stories. I’ve been to Lhasa twice now, a fact that continues to thrill and astound me. I had wanted to go to Lhasa for so many years, and when I finally went, it was far better than I could have ever imagined. Lhasa is a very, very special place; these are some of my favorite recollections from both trips.

First of all, Lhasa is brilliant! There is color everywhere in this city at the top of the world – luminous yellow sun, cobalt skies, brightly painted wood balconies, windows, doors, and signs. Even the clothing is multi-hued. Lhasa is one of the most visibly vibrant places I’ve ever seen, yet its pulse is a distinctly mellow one infused with a palpable Tibetan Buddhist spirit.

Mornings here are glorious – with crisp blue skies, a nip of cold in the air, and undiluted sunshine – and there is no better place to spend one than the Norbulingka, the Dalai Lama’s summer palace. The grounds are gorgeous, with miles of walking paths, ponds and small lakes, trees just beginning to turn autumn gold, and flowers everywhere. Vermilion-and-saffron-clad monks swish their brooms over the paths and chant in the nooks of buildings and courtyards.

Just being in the rooms where the Dalai Lamas spent their summers is awe-inspiring. Staring at the mundane, dingy old bathrooms, and seeing a clock forever stuck at 9 p.m. (the exact time when the current Dalai Lama fled to India in 1959), one feels an overwhelming sense of both their presence and a lingering sadness. There is only one public photo of the Dalai Lama in all of Lhasa, and it is here in one of the last rooms, where a Buddha of Compassion statue looks sadly at visitors, all of whom can be in this place of the Dalai Lama’s happy childhood summers, while he himself cannot be and might not ever be able to be again.

Barkhor Square is the heart of Lhasa. Here, every sense is flooded. Smoke pours from giant urns in front of the Jokhang Temple, monks and Tibetans of all ages prostrate themselves before the temple, and stall after stall of vendors with their brightly-colored wares surround us. The mantras of the prostrating pilgrims mix with the calls of “Hey, lady, cheap!” from the stalls. The stupas, meditation and chanting rooms inside the temple are all breathtaking, but in many ways, the highlight of the Jokhang is the rooftop with its views of Barkhor Square, the Potala Palace, and the mountains surrounding all of Lhasa. The view from up here is astounding and both times, I have lingered there for a long time, soaking up the sun, the smell of incense, and a feeling of peace and solitude.

I also love doing the kora (circumambulation) around the temple and wandering in the back alleys behind Barkhor Square, where I find small local shops and dozens of kids eager to kick a ball with me. In the two times I’ve been to Lhasa, I have probably done the kora 50 times, joining the throngs of pilgrims walking clockwise around the temple, stopping in at a plethora of shops or, eventually, just walking, mesmerized by the crowd and the spinning of the prayer wheels in their hands.

One of my favorite memories of the kora was an encounter with an older, quite talkative Tibetan lady who was showing me a set of prayer beads. She enthusiastically used both a knife and a lighter – hacking at the beads and trying to light them on fire – to show us the stones were “oldie, oldie, not Chinese-y!” She was quite a character and even surreptitiously showed us a locket around her neck that held two photos – one of the Dalai Lama and one of the 10th Panchen Lama. She was very brave and trusting to show this to us right there in the square because having a picture of the Dalai Lama is absolutely forbidden and potentially damaging to her entire family. She asked my daughter, “no money, baby?” and held out a bracelet she wanted to give her for free. She was a very special lady and we are happy to have her beads in our house and on our wrists as a memory of how strongly the Tibetans love the Dalai Lama and how much pride they take in being Tibetan.

Of course, the pièce de resistance in Lhasa is the imposing Potala Palace. Words cannot do justice to this massive, commanding structure. We climbed the palace ramps and stairs at 12,000 feet to visit many of the government and religious rooms (there are 1000 of them in all), including the Dalai Lama’s reception room, his private study and bedroom, and the thrones and other private rooms of many former Dalai Lamas. Some of the stupas have gold ornamentation weighing hundreds of tons; it’s fortunate the palace’s foundation is an entire mountainside. The Tibetans from the countryside who have made the journey to this most holy city of Lhasa are humbling to see – old, stooped women, young children, and others bowing low, praying, chanting, and touching their foreheads to the images and shrines.

We left the Potala moved and astounded; it exceeded my astronomically high expectations by a great margin, as did Lhasa overall. Although it takes time, money, and quite a bit of hassle to get to this mysterious “place of the gods,” my fondest hope is to return there yet again someday.

Friday Photos: Random Old Favorites

Tags

China, Dusseldorf, Germany, Iceland, Lhasa, Reykjavic, Tibet, Yangshuo

It is Friday, right?  I’m in Reykjavik, Iceland, and I’ve sort of lost track of time after an overnight flight, 12 hours in Dusseldorf, Germany, and a late-night flight into Keflavik, Iceland. I’d pre-loaded a few photos for today not knowing if I’d have any new ones uploaded yet (it made perfect sense to post a couple of oldies-but-goodies from Tibet and China, I thought), but I do have a few colorful views of Reykjavic today. Stay tuned for more on Iceland!

Norbulingka Palace, Lhasa, Tibet

Irrigation system and limestone karsts, Yangshuo, China

 

What’s in a Name?

Tags

China, foreign language errors, fun store names, Ghana, Tibet, Turkey

As a linguist, former ESL teacher, and current English instructor at a bilingual college, I am more aware than most of the vicissitudes of language. I adore grammar and semantics and can sometimes be a little judgmental when it comes to native-speaker errors, but I take great pleasure in a “bad” translation or just a more creative use of English when I am traveling. Here are just a few of my favorites:

In the old hutong sections of Beijing, China, we saw some curious restaurant names, such as Easy Fun, Heavenly Festival, and Home Pizza, but these were far outdone by the packet of “Aviation Food” – emblazoned with the baffling slogans “Childhood Memory” and “Leisure Share” – that we ate on a flight out of Chengdu. While that elicited a chuckle, the fact that this tasty treat “does not lose hand” (see photos) generated a laugh that almost caused us to spray the crisps right out of our noses. (Perhaps airline food is a linguistic as well as culinary joke around the world. On Aerolineas Argentinas, we were repeatedly offered “ham-flavored mini-crackers,” a combination I do not need to ever taste again.)

In Lhasa, Tibet, we chortled as we strolled by shops called Antique Thing, Jewel Ripehouse, Homely Treasures, Merit of Jewel, and Many Love Lake. We also loved the sign at the Norbulingka Summer Palace, which exhorted us to “please consciously accept the security.” And in Turkey, we enjoyed an errant apostrophe and grammar error in some remarkably apt graffiti – “Idiot’s was here!”

That’s for sure!

But perhaps the greatest collection of fun names ever was found in Accra, Ghana. Ghana is a very Christian country and they believe in keeping God and Jesus front and center, even in commerce. Here is a much-abbreviated list of our favorite Ghanaian store names:

Jesus My Redeemer Buckets and Bowls
Come to Jesus Taxi
Through the Gates of Heaven Bank
The Lord is my Shepherd Fashions
Jesus is my Last Hope Saloon
Victory in Jesus Taxi
Only Jesus Can Do Business Center
Ask God Glass Venture
God’s Way Metal Company
God First Electricals
Wonderful Jesus Coca Cola
Passion of God Hair
In God We Trust Motorcycle Shop

Religious views aside, the juxtaposition of God, buckets, and motorcycles just has to bring a smile, doesn’t it?!

Friday Photos: Pictures of Peace

Tags

Camp Seron, Chile, monk, Paine Circuit trek, Patagonia, prayer beads, Sera Monastery, Tibet, Torres del Paine

I thought I might skip Friday Photos today because I posted so many yesterday, but … there can never be enough photos, right?!

Monk with prayer beads at Sera Monastery, Lhasa, Tibet

 

Camp Seron on Circuit Trek at Torres del Paine National Park, Patagonia, Chile

Faces of the World

Tags

faces, people, Tibet

Spectacular scenery makes for great photographs, but what really connects me to many of the places I’ve visited are the people I’ve seen and met. For me, their faces mirror the wonders, difficulties, and nuances of their lands, and it is these photos I always seem to return to when I need a fix of another time and place.

Today’s faces are from TIBET

Not for the Squeamish

Tags

Everest North Base Camp, Tibet, toilets, travel

We all discover when we travel that there is some luxury or convenience that we really miss. For some, it is gourmet food, fine wine, and upscale shopping; for others, it is simply a comfortable bed and a hot shower. In Tibet, we realized it was even more basic: the availability of toilets and any form of paper product.

(CLICK ON PHOTOS if you want to see them full-size)

Other than the mother of all mountains herself and the wonderful coziness of our tent in the whipping Himalayan winds, the only other big stories from Mount Everest’s north base camp revolved around basic human needs. Starting with the less graphic, I would like to expound for a moment on the extreme preciousness of all forms of paper on this trip! Toilet paper and Kleenex were totally unavailable outside of major cities and even sometimes in them; throughout the trip, we found ourselves scavenging for napkins, hoarding toilet paper from hotels, rationing our limited supply of soft, luxurious Kleenex, and laughing at the ridiculousness of our paper product obsession.

One night at base camp, we found we had used up the last bits of toilet paper I had wound up from our hotel roll in Shigatse a day earlier, and I now wanted nothing more than to blow my itchy, runny nose and have some toilet paper to use in the outhouse. I foraged in my backpack and purse, finding any little scrap to use, even going so far as to re-use a scrunched-up ball of Kleenex from my bag when I went to the “toilet” facility (more on that later). At one point, we saw our tent owner, Lobsang, pull some tissue out of his shelf area for his stove fire and we hungrily watched where he put the roll in case we could steal some later. Alas, the opportunity never arose, but I did suddenly remember an American Airlines kit with a small tissue pack we had gotten on the plane … never have I been so excited to find a paper product! We parceled out that Kleenex over the next few days, allowing ourselves mere scraps for each necessary usage.

Now, speaking of that toilet facility … well, nothing in our many world travels could compare to this (literal) sh–hole. The shanty had two holes in the floor, with about a 10-foot drop to the ground below. Of course, there was no side-to-side privacy between the two holes; one had to go right next to someone else. (Squeamish readers may want to skip the next few sentences … ) In these 10-foot-deep holes, the waste (human and paper) had gotten piled up so high that a small mountain of disgustingness had risen ABOVE the level of the hole in the floor! Avoiding the conical heap of waste was no easy feat, but I’ll leave the details out of this story for fear of losing my audience! I do have to add that on our last morning at Base Camp, my daughter and I went to this horrid building together and were waiting in line while two Chinese ladies used it. Suddenly a young Tibetan girl ran up, pounded on the door, began untying a rope belt around her rough wool pants, audibly passed wind while hopping up and down, then flew into the building once the first lady had merely cracked open the door. Needless to say, we were none too pleased to have to follow this gal into the outhouse. But we did have paper!

Friday Photos: Queens of their Domains

Tags

Nepal, Peru, Tanzania, Tibet, Travel Himalayas

I have so many photos to share, and I can’t imagine I will write a post about each and every one of them.  I thought I’d pick a few favorites each Friday and post them with simple captions only.

Ama Dablam, from Everest Base Camp trail, Nepal

Serengeti, Tanzania

Peruvian woman, Chinchero, Peru

A Wild Ride on the Roof of the World

Tags

base camp, driving, Everest, Friendship Highway, Lhasa, Tibet

Driving in countries around the world is always an adventure. From the careening traffic on the autobahn and the peripherique, to the stop-and-go progress on a Scottish Highlands road full of sheep, to the heart-attack cliffs with no guardrails in mountains the world over, there is always a story about our international brothers’ driving habits. Penjo, our driver on the Friendship Highway – the route across the Tibetan Plateau (the “Roof of the World”) from Tibet to Nepal – was no exception.

We left Lhasa early one morning for a cross-country adventure in a 4WD Mitsubishi Pajero SUV. A few hours out of Lhasa, we experienced the first of many “pee breaks” which were really designed for our guide, Pasang, and our driver, Penjo, to take a smoking break. Timed passage on the road also meant that if we were going to arrive at a checkpoint too early, we had to either slow down or stop and wait until the time was OK. (This happened at every checkpoint since the law, meant to slow drivers down, really seemed to signify “drive as fast as humanly possible and then stop and wait until enough time has passed.”) Even using this finely-tuned strategy, Penjo managed to get a speeding ticket as we approached Shigatse, a hellhole we discovered we should have been in no hurry to reach anyway.

Getting to dinner in Shigatse was a barrel race as we were stymied by street after street under construction. We drove in clover-leafs through an apocalyptic landscape, a bombed-out scene of heavy construction equipment and vehicle-swallowing holes in the powdery streets. Penjo showed some serious moxie by driving on sidewalks, down one-way streets, in front of bulldozers, and through numerous barricades. Shigatse is a dusty town by nature, and all this earth-moving and car maneuvering left a deep coat of grime on the Pajero and a sneeze-inducing mass of dust in our nostrils.

The next day, after lunch in Tingri, we turned off onto a dirt road for the next three hours. This was a true washboard road, with constant ridges and bumps, along with switchbacks, steep climbs and descents, and barely two lanes across. Penjo did not disappoint us, spending large periods of time on the oncoming traffic side of the road and squealing to dustcloud-raising stops in the loose gravel, precipitously close to various drop-offs as he attempted to pass large trucks, SUVs and, really, any moving vehicle, beast, or human on the road. Penjo finally slowed down and the air finally cleared as we crossed our third and final high pass for the day at 17,500 feet, with a view of the entire Tibetan Himalaya range, including Makalo, Lhotse, Everest, and Cho Oyu.

On our way back to Lhasa, we took a different route through a gorge along the Brahmaputra River. Penjo was at his finest today, offroading anytime the main road was closed. In Tibet, barricades indicating road closures are apparently simply something to drive around. This road was clearly closed, but Penjo decided we would take it anyway, which meant that at certain points we had to totally drive off the highway and go through pastures, fields, and people’s property. Many others had the same idea, including giant 18-wheelers! Penjo passed semis in a blur of dirt, drove through sagebrush, which we dragged along behind us until it shook loose, and swerved even more than usual. Penjo’s driving was truly a thing to behold, with brake slamming, high speeds then incredibly slow ones, random veering, and aggressive crowding of other vehicles. Somehow we never worried too much; we decided people here drive like maniacs and have constant near accidents but never any actual accidents. At one point, Penjo almost nailed a dzo, but neither he nor the female owner of the dzo seemed the least bit perturbed as he screeched to a halt mere inches from the animal in the middle of the road.

Penjo was a soft-spoken (Tibetan language only) man who was quite mild-mannered out of the vehicle. He had a sweet, shy smile and since we are alive to tell the tale, we have only the fondest memories of him!