Travelin Tibet

Tashilumpo sounds like a dark ancient monastery high on a mountain crag. Tibet has such sights but Tashilumpo is rather mundane. It is a large monastery in a dry open area of central Tibet. Tashilumpo has been completely rebuilt following the cultural revolution that destroyed so much of Tibet's history, and welcomes any and all visitors who can contribute a few dollars to the -ah- monastery.




The Panchen Lama, traditional tutor of the Dalai Lama, lived at Tashilumpo when the Chinese let him, which wasn't often. The Panchen Lama remained in Tibet when the Dalai Lama fled to India and tried to work with the invading Chinese to help his people, only to suffer greatly in Chinese prisons. For many years he was feared to have died, but a few years before my visit he was released, although his activities were carefully controlled by Chinese attendants.

I stayed in the nearby town of Shigatse (Shigatze), the second largest town in Tibet, although it is hardly very large. A wonderful Tibetan family had opened a lodge there and it quickly became well known on the travelers' grapevine.

One more place deserves mention before I get back to our Lama: The "Friendly Small Restaurant of the Plateau" (name in English). Not to be confused with the competing "Friendly Small Restaurant of the Plateau" two doors down. The grapevine was on to this one, too, and every afternoon it was filled with backpack tourists from all over the world. The good natured little Tibetan man and the two sisters who ran it never seemed to believe their good fortune, for they surely were making very good money. (Were they both his wives? Nobody could get a clear answer.) Their secret was hot chocolate, not available elsewhere for 300 miles in any direction.




Shigatse was not yet a major tourist destination, so seeing foreigners about was still quite new for the local people. This made for a strange scene. The locals knew just as well as we where the tourists' restaurants were. That was their best chance to see us, so they would come and jam up the windows - twenty or thirty of them at a time - and stare at us, endlessly stare. A few would beg leftovers or cigarettes, some would talk quietly among themselves, but most, particularly those from the hills, would look at us as if we were some exceptionally exotic new creatures, which I guess we were.





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Panchen-Lama
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Lhasa