Tibet - Nepal overland

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It was a lovely 10 day trip from Lhasa to the Nepali border. Our guide was so wonderful I fell in love with her and wanted her to be a member of my family. Lahkdun, she was so sweet, and really gave us a great tour. I have seen as many monasteries as I want to for a while but just travelling through Tibet with such a nice guide really was an enlightening experience. .

After Lhasa we drove out towards Gyantse, passing the Yamtrok Lake. It was really my first taste of rural Tibet not through a train window. The lake is incredibly blue (and massive), making it seem like a caribbean patch of water and for several minutes I was thinking about jumping in it. Then I got out of the jeep to take a picture and realised how frigging cold it was outside.

We headed onto to Gyantse, stopping for lunch along the way in a little town. I had yet to dress properly; as we were travelling in the jeep most of the day I had travel comfort clothing on. Thick woollen socks pulled up over my jeans to knee level, and on getting out of the car I slipped on the trusty old flip flops, wedging them over my wool-clad toes. The sight brought a woman over who began to stroke my socks, and asked my guide if I was married, because if not she had a friend who was looking for a wife. It must be something to do with chunky knitwear out here. On every other level I was looking like a proper wrong 'un. But still, it felt a better and more dignified prospect than the one in Egypt ten years back where I was offered 5 camels for my hand, whereas my friend standing next to me was offered 60. They asked me after she said no too. Bitter? Yes.

But still, it was nice to know that if it all goes wrong, I can smuggle myself back into Tibet and become a yakherder's wife (!?!) It does mean I can wear all manner of clashing knitwear and no one will bat an eyelid.

Onto Shigatse, Tibet's second biggest city. We were taken to a rather glitzy-looking hotel that looked very out of place. On entering it became apparent it was more in keeping with a communist vibe of all polish and no substance, but still I slept well enough. The lack of wifi forced me out to a smoking internet cafe where I inhaled for one hour and left with a hacking cough and eyelids like sandpaper.

From Shigatse we were due to swing by Everest Base Camp. I was not entirely looking forward to this. It has never been on my list to do before I die. Too much machismo and self-proving involved. It really doesn't mean anything to me to make it up there and I am only on this tour because it was the only way I could get through Tibet on my timescale. So it was with delight that I received my canny guide's suggestion that we don't actually go there, and just drive by it instead. The weather was really bad up there, and it would save us the 180yuan entrance fee. I began to love her even more. So it was that we did this, and headed onto Old Tingri to spend the night.

Old Tingri is a huddle of brick homes in the middle of nowhere, gathered under the impressive and imposing Everest skyline. It is dusty, remote and has extremely lairy livestock. But it has a loo with the best view – a stone shack over a hole in the ground with open views to Everest.

We stopped off in one of the old brick courtyards which had rooms round the edge to rent. No heating of course but a huge pile of megablankets were on offer. The 'restaurant' was a little shack where the family ate, cooked, watched TV and sat around chatting. I was in there like a shot and they fed me up with very sweet masala tea. They were watching a ridiculous kung fu film in chinese with tibetan subtitles. It had a gang of kung fu kids in it, an alien in a motorbike-less side car, and Jet Li in his early 20s. The children got properly beaten up by the alien, blood spurting out of their faces etc. It was wonderful. No western censure here. I got the name – Shaolin Shouts – and now it is my mission to get it with english subtitles to enjoy in my own time.

There was a rather dead-looking newborn calf lying in the corner of the courtyard on arrival, and some cows were sniffing round it, but it was gone when I went to dinner. I hope there there was no correlation.

After a fantastic night's sleep trussed up in yak's wool, we left to head for Zhangou, on the Tibetan side of the border with Nepal. Today was when the pain started. we got as far as a one-horse town called Nyalam, about an hour before Zhangmou. There was a back up of trucks and the road was closed, apparently. We waited for about 3 hours and then finally got let through, only to be told vehicles could not pass after all. We got our stuff out of the jeep, bid farewell to our driver, and carried everything across the damaged road. It was one of those windy ones that clings onto the side of a mountain like a helter skelter. Well this one had a huge crack across it, it looked like it could snap off the side of the mountain at any minute. It was rather nervewracking.

On the other side of the crack was a steady stream of people awaiting lifts. We didn't manage to get one. It was spectacular scenery, right in a crevice between two mountains – there was a tibetan sky burial site up to the right and the clouds kept closing in and reducing visibility to a few metres. It was getting very cold and dark and I began to wonder if I was to die up here, when Lhakdun waved at me and we got into a truck that took us down the potholed track, 20km, to Zhangmu. It took about 90 mins to get down there because the road was so bad. On arrival at Zhangmu it was dark, late, there were loads of people trying to get a room for the night and we ended up in a horror of a place with bedbugs crawling over everything. Luckily we found somewhere else, right next to the chinese immigration at the end of town, and bedded down there.

Next morning we headed through chinese immigration and down to the Nepali border, got through pretty painlessly, said goodbye to Lhakdun, and walked across the Friendship Bridge into the Nepal side. It immediately felt very different. Nepali immigration was fairly quick also. The visa took 5 minutes and cost 2500 rupees and is a dodgy bit of dog-eared cardboard stuck in my passport.

I bartered with an old dude on getting a lift to Kathmandu and we agreed on 1500 rupees per person. For a 5-7 hour drive that seemed fair. As we descended down the windy, mountainous track away from the border, rural Nepal opened up all around and the colours of the houses, people, food, and countryside etc really hit me. I hadn't realised how subdued some parts of Tibet felt looking back – mainly due to the chinese military presence of course. Even the Nepali pop on the radio was groovy. Which is a good thing because any more chinese pop and I was ready to jump off the nearest precipice.

And so we came to a town about an hour into the drive, and the familiar sight of trucks parked up along the road came into view. We pulled over just by a cafe so I got out and ordered some food. It was a pleasant place and lots going on in the street to keep me occupied. Apparently there was a traffic accident on a bridge ahead that was blocking the road, so we were waiting for an update.

4 hours later, nothing had happened. I walked up to take a look and a truck was indeed on its side, blocking off the bridge, but by now there was a burning tyre right next to it, people were sitting inside the truck eating their lunch and an angry crowd of people were shouting a lot. A truck of policeman sat next to it doing nothing, and most nepalis seemed to carrying on their journeys by foot.

It was becoming apparent that unless a miracle happened, I would be spending the night on the roadside. I had learnt that the driver had killed an old man washing on the roadside and that the angry mob were his family arguing with the driver for compensation. The driver was so far refusing to pay up, and until he did the villagers wouldn't let the road be cleared. The tyre was a sign from the villagers that it was all about to kick off – apparently a fairly usual sign of protest in Nepal!

Then, a miracle happened. A young nepali dude walking past took pity on me and invited me onto his bus, which was the other side of the crash, and heading back to Kathmandu. I was delirious. His bus was meant to be taking tourists rafting but they could not get past the crash so were heading back to the city. I climbed on, sandwiched betwen some wetsuits and paddles, and off we went, with people hanging off the roof, and even sitting in the dinghy on the roofrack. I was saved, by strapping young nepali watersports enthusiasts. Bravo.

They pulled over after an hour at a little roadside shack and ordered some food, then informed me they were staying there for the night. I didn't care, I ordered in the beer and settled for kipping there for the night. Then another rafting bus came past and offered a lift to KTM so luckily the beer hadn't taken over and my sense prevailed, and I hopped on, and made it to KTM around 10pm. The bright lights of the city were a real shock after the last week in mountains with minimal electricity. I found a room at Hotel Karma, and fell into a very deep sleep indeed.

Kathmandu is a real assault on the senses but pretty safe as far being a tourist is concerned. Thamel is the tourist strip, loads of bars, hotels and cafes, western hippies and trekkers everywhere and the amount of fake North Face clobber on sale is quite inspiring. Everyone speaks english, nepalis are seriously good-looking lot and really friendly, everything is cheap, and the Himalayan Blues Fest is currently on. I have definitely landed on my feet. There is an amazing selection of second hand bookstores and I have found one with an amazingly eclectic section of holistic health books from the 70s. Some of the titles are freaking me out – including the classic “Self Urine Therapy” and other horrors.

The food here is lush and I have just checked into the Tibet Guest House which has satellite TV and dirt cheap room service. I am lapping it up. I was meant to get on a 10hr bus to the border at 7am this morning, stay the night in a godforsaken border town called Bhairawa, then cross the border by foot in the morning, take a 3 hr bus to Gorkhpur then try and get on a train to Delhi (16hrs). I did look at flights but none were available. Then yesterday something in me told me to get online and have one more look – I found a Jetlite flight to Delhi on Tues for US$200 so I booked it and am now relaxing in KTM til then.

I made it to KTM from Bristol without flying – except for a little internal flight in China due to all the trains being booked up – so I am more than happy to hang up my hat and stop flogging myself for principle's sake, and am now looking forward to a 90 minute flight and an airport pick up at the other end. All the while I can give myself shivers at the thought of the alternative route I very nearly took from Kathmandu.

And I meet the Carnegies tomorrow night as they arrive from Heathrow – a spectacle I cannot wait to encounter.

Lhasa

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Hmmmm...where do I start? This place is something else! The train was comfortable, and oxygen masks were supplied. I didn't get round to using mine. I was kind of relieved at that for they were of the type that have two small tubes that go up your nose. At one point I looked around my cabin at my fellow travellers and it looked like some weird adult version of Great Ormond Street hospital, with oversized children sitting around on cabin beds looking pale and weak. The highest we got was about 4972m I think, although it could have hit 5000m at one point. I spent most of my time playing Solitaire on my laptop (having only just bothered to look at the games applications on it!) and being abused/ignored in the restaurant car by the superbitch waitress/matriarch dictator of the catering area.

Lhasa is now one ugly city, similar to Ulan Bator in terms of (lack of) modern town planning. The han have ploughed roads as wide as motorways through and around it, thus carving up the place like spaghetti junction. But still the Potala Palace looms overhead, ramshackle and massive, surveying the city like a watchful buddha. Inside it is a rabbit warren but quite honestly one of the most amazing sights I have ever seen.

The tibetans are as a rule, so friendly it makes you think they must be a longlost relative. The poverty here is obvious; people look hungry, haunted and cold, but the spirit is very high. I have discovered the Summit Fine Art Cafe, which is really out of place amongst the rest of the tibetan quarter, which could be unchanged from 500 years ago. It's like a one-off tibetan take on Starbucks. It has wifi which is really handy and the people who work there are so nice to me I think I might move in.

On the traveller/tourist front, Lhasa seems pretty quiet. My two travelling companions and I had the Potala Palace to ourselves yesterday morning, except for few tibetans doing their thing with candles and prayers. And I am noticing that tour groups that I do see are mainly of 'mature' americans or scandos wearing beige and/or head to toe logo-d hiking garments. I have only seen about 5 people of my age group who are not Tibetan so far.

Altitude sickness finally caught up with me yesterday and I conceded to a temporary period of madness, looking back. My travelling companions have been dosing up since we left Chengdu with pills, oxygen canisters, and god knows what else. A pill is being popped every other minute as far as I can see. Apart from horrific heart palpitations when I attempted to walk at my normal pace to a shop on the first day, I have been relatively untouched by it. But yesterday evening I got a pounding headache, and looking back I was babbling nonsense for much of the afternoon. Maybe that was why they took me under their wing at the Summit Cafe... Also I was out in the sun most of the afternoon and my skin was chafed and sore last night even though I put on loads of suncream. I keep forgetting we are so high up here! So that explains it. Heatstroke and altitude sickness. Marvellous.

I have yet to find deodorant. I cannot believe that it is the singular thing I need so spectacularly, yet no shop seems to sell it?!?! I can't get used to the disgusting smell of B.O, I find it disturbing and repulsive on other people, but now I am the culprit I have reached a new level of self-loathing. I even went into a big shiny supermarket yesterday. As usual, there was no obvious section for deodorant, so I did the universal sign language for it (lifted arms up and motioned a spraying action) and they shook their heads rapidly, saying "No no no", like I was asking for some kind of rare tea made out of essence of yak's bladder. That was that.

The food has been lush so far: lots of soups, lush dumplings called momos, sweet tea, and more dumplings. There is a comedic amount of yak meat on offer but so far I am finding veggie options everywhere so no need to resort to it just yet. Have just ruined an excellent breakfast though by sprinkling what I presumed to be shredded coconut on my pineapple and yoghurt. One mouthful confirmed that it was actually pungent pungent shredded cheese.

*heave*

Goodbye to China

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I'm off today, finally getting the train to Lhasa tonight, onto the Promised Land and beyond to Nepal and then Delhi. China has suprised me endlessly. I knew it would be fascinating but I didn't expect to like it so much. It is so accessible for travelling, public transport and domestic travel is really good value, you can survive on street food for next to nothing if you need to and it will be tastiest thing you could have, and the chinese people are really quite welcoming. English isn't spoken outside the major cities but then why should it be? I have been holed up in Chengdu for the last week and it's given me time to reflect on my time here. I would definitely come back - there is so much more of China I want to see.

The birthday excursion to the giant buddha and onto Emai Shan, the massive mountain, worked out lovely in the end. I hooked up with a dude from Plymouth on Sunday (5 October) and we met in the cafe at 7am for a bracing breakfast to prepare ourselves for a hectic 36 hours ahead. He casually said, "Do you know what day it is today?". On this trip, this has always been a valid question to ask, because anyone travelling for longer than a few weeks genuinely has no idea what day it is, an is always really keen to know the definitive answer once the suject is brought up. I simply answered "Sunday?", and he replied "My birthday". I nearly fell off me stool. "Bugger me, it's my birthday tomorrow!!" I screamed. We gawped at each other in amazement. And so there we had it - a perfect yet completely unplanned birthday crew on a mission. Excellent!

The giant buddha at Leshan was... too good. He has the most amazing eyes, lazily peeking open with lovely big soft dark eyes sleepily looking out from his low slung eyelids. He looks like he is pleasantly stoned, or from Bristol, or both. Carved out of the cliff face, and 71 metres tall, he sits at the point where 3 rivers meet. The mad monk who started the project decided to create him to help fisherman pass safely at this dangerous clashing of undertows and currents. It is a lovely idea but having been there, I can't see how this buddha can do anything but increase water traffic accidents. How the hell you are supposed to sail past without looking at him I don't know, and if you do look at him you become mesmerised, leading to certain capsizing and drowning (surely?)

When I got to his feet I fought off the chinese tourists to get a shot reclining up against the front edge of his big toe. The top surface of his big toenail was about 1 metre above my head. That's a big pair of feet right there (as my good friend Texan Bob would say).The rumour that his fingernails are the size of a man is untrue, unless you are talking chinese midgets (there were none about so I couldn't be exact on this). But the fingernails are definitely equal at least to my waist height.

Then we got the bus to Emai Shan, but missed the last bus up the mountain so stayed at the bottom for the night. It was a relatively uninteresting village so we felt slightly crestfallen, my travel partner so because it was his birthday, and me because I had really wanted to wake up on my birthday up the mountain. We found a bar and sunk some beers but admitted defeat early. We got an early night and took the 6am bus up to near the top. It took 2 hours, and we got a cable car up to the top. Nothing could have prepared us for what was up there. The summit reaches out above the cloud cover and there is a HUGE golden temple thing up there. It is a pilgrimage site so loads of chinese tourists and buddhist monks up there having epiphanies and quite honestly I can understand why. The cloud rolls out below you like a carpet out to the horizon and the golden, blinding sun above makes the whole place seem otherwordly.

What wasn't otherworldly was the monkeys that are trained to pick your pockets that we encountered on the way down. We walked some of the way as had the whole rest of the day to get to the bottom, and had heard about them. One bloke at our hostel came back from this trip last week with his bag ripped where a monkey tried to lift his camera and drag his bag off of his back. I didn't see any on the way up so was presuming they were having a day off, but on our descent there they were.

The adult ones are pretty big - I didn't want a scrap with one, put it that way. They are tibetan macaques, and seriously lairy. If you loiter near one for too long it assumes you are fairgame and will just launch itself at you, taking anything in your hand, or your bag off your back, or just goes for your pockets. It is most unnerving. An old chinese litter picker with a massive stick provided one of the most bizarrest moments of the day when he fought off the monkeys in a mister miyagi stylee and then turned to us and shouted "Mon-keh!" in uncanny Johnny Vegas style, before cackling to reveal minimal teeth and nearly falling over because of himself. Someone must have taught him this saying. It freaked me out for the rest of the day.

So now I'm packing up and pissing off. I am going to miss China. I still haven't managed to change any of my redundant currency on this trip, and the further I go, the more useless wedges of bank notes I find stuffed in any crevice my bulging rucksack offers. I tried a bank in Chengdu the other day to change it up and they merely laughed at me in mandarin, loudly. I still have 16,000 mongolian tugriks (I got excited when I counted them out but it is actually only £9.98) and a shitload of rubles. I am on chinese yuan through Tibet and then I will get some Nepali money, whatever that is, and then will end up with rupees coming out of my ears when I hit Delhi.

I'll just stick it all in a pot for one of those very dark depressing mornings in the UK when I realise I am so skint I can't afford toilet roll, or washing up liquid. Then I can remember my useless pot of foreign currencies and spend all morning finding a bank who won't laugh at me and will actually change it up.

I arrive in Lhasa on 10 October and will still be on China time (UK +7 hours) until I hit Nepal. My route takes in Everest Base Camp which I am not really prepared for, but ain't that the story of my life. I do have some superb purple legwarmers and my woollen poncho from Mexico so although I will look like a total gyppo I should make it through the night without contracting frostbite. Will also stock up on local booze to help the cause too...

I have run out of deodorant today and am uncomfortably smelling vile very early on in the day. I must go and get some before I get on this train otherwise it could be highly unpleasant for all involved...

Tibet or bust...

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I have found a way to Tibet!!! Although I had already been told it was a no go on my timescale by several agents, yesterday everything changed, mainly my luck! I had resigned myself to not doing it and was researching ways to get round Tibet from China. It was looking like getting myself across to the south east of China by hideous train route to Hong Kong and flying into Kathmandu from there. I realised that Nepal is still a wonderful place to be my backup choice and that I should stop being a spoilt brat and stop sulking. And then I could pick up my original route from there over to the Indian border. But deep down I was really gutted. If anything this trip was about going through Tibet, as the longer time goes on the more the place is being irrevocably changed by the Chinese occupation.

So there I was, surfing the net looking for cheap flights to Kathmandu, when someone came into the hostel looking to do a Tibet trip as soon as possible, arriving in Nepal by the 17 October. The timing was perfect. But I didn't let myself think it was going to happen as so many things could still get in the way. I went downstairs to meet them, a jewish couple from NYC, and as we got talking it was apparent we had the same itineraries in mind. We both wanted to get the train into Lhasa, not fly, and both of us planned to head to the Nepali border, and bizarrely onto Delhi. It was fate intervening, I like to think! The other good news is that we can leave on 8 October, unlike the 12th, which is what I was originally given as the earliest that my Tibet Travel Permit could be issued.

So it does mean hanging around til 8 October, which was slightly annoying, but the trade-off of getting to Tibet means I am more than happy to do it. I am nervous about my budget now so will try and lie low, do lots of reading, hang out in tea houses and avoid beer for the next 5 days. There are definitely worse places than Chengdu to kill a few days. I am going to rent a bike, check out some temples, and try and get in with the old people doing tai chi and playing mah jong in the park. They ooze coolness.

My 30th birthday (6 October) is also on hold til I get to Lhasa. I will arrive there on the 10th I think so it's going to be shifted back 4 days. It's good as I haven't really celebrated my birthday massively for most of my 20s as I didn't really feel like it. This is a nice way to get the ball rolling for the next decade and get back into it!! And no I don't feel old. It's only 30. Come back and ask me that when I'm 90. Everyone asking me if I feel old needs to get a grip. To an 80 year old I am barely out of the womb. Let go of your age-ist hangups and you will be free, like me! (Also get some good moisturiser to help the cause)...

But 5 days doing nothing is a long time, so I am going to make the trip to Emei Shan and stay here at the Teddy Bear Hotel on sunday night in order to wake up above the clouds on my actual birthday, give thanks to the mountains, and also to mum for squeezing me out all those years ago, despite the linen strike at Derby hospital (I was born into a paper bag, after being pulled out by pincers - hence the paperclip marks on my cheeks that involved me being asked on a daily basis at school if I have been sleeping on a paperclip). And also visit the giant buddha at Leshan, whose fingernails are the size of a man. That is probably the best birthday setting I will have had yet. And then official celebrations when I get to Lhasa!!!

Chengdu, Sichuan

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Chengdu is great!!! It's got a really nice feel to it. Very laidback. Maybe it is the Bristolian city of China?? It is in Western China if that is any help. My Hainan Airways flight from Beijing was excellent. Considering it was only a 2.5 hr internal flight, I got a lovely hot meal, a free newspaper and beautiful stewardesses coo-ing over me the entire time. It certainly beats Sleazyjet and Ryanair back home.

As soon as I beat off the taxi touts and got a decent deal at the airport, I felt a warm feeling at being in Chengdu. It was early evening and darkness had fallen. Although it was hard to tell because Chendgu has the most magnificent taste in over the top, rave-tastic neon lighting. It is everywhere. All the buildings are lit up, some things that move are, but it is in an aesthetically pleasing way. Lot of complimenting soft pinks and cool blues emanate from intrcate tubes that curve softly and create an ambient feel, as opposed to tacky and head-ache inducing. I was lulled into a dreamlike state within 5 minutes. Then I arrived at Sim's Cozy Garden Hostel and the ecstasy kept on coming. This is a great hostel. More of a full on travel centre. It is huge, has an excellent bar/cafe with amazing terrace overlooking a chinese neighbourhood, and the beds in dorms are custom made bunks that are at least one and a half width of a single bed, and brilliantly come equipped with curtains round each one. Thus you can climb inside your oversized bed, pull the curtains (mine are green silk) and you have your own den/lair. In a hostel environment this is golddust. It means I can have my bedside light on without anyone telling me to turn it off, get changed without having to take everything into the bathroom with me, and experience the feeling of privacy that I forgot existed since leaving Bristol due to living in train carriages and open plan dormitories. All this for £2.48 a night.

Last night I went to the chinese opera. Oh.My.God. Wasn't too sure what to expect and to be honest, I wasn't really in the mood for it, but off I went, and it might be one of the best evening outings of this trip!!! It was like a showcase of chinese and Sichuan opera and entertainment. 5-10 minute acts came on and did their stuff, all the while my tea cup was being refreshed by a cute lady in traditional chinese dress standing 4 rows away from me with her watering can with a really long and thin 4 foot spout on it.



The hand shadow show was my favourite. He did INCREDIBLE things with his hands!!! And also a great little dude in an amazing midnight blue and gold jacket came out and played a strange string instrument that looked a tin of paint with a long stick and string coming off it. There was a dubious act towards the end that involved something like the village idiot/jester playing the fool. It was quite pantomime-esque - he kept putting a small bowl with a flame coming out of on his head and limbo dancing under a bench, whilst being screamed at by a geisha-type with foot inch thick make up.

This morning I hit the panda breeding centre. It did not disappoint!!! AGGHHH! They are too cute!!!