Wednesday, March 12

Yesterday morning we left very early in the morning to start our trip to Tibet. We booked a tour for 8 days. We would have liked to go by ourselves, but currently it's not allowed to enter Tibet individually from Nepal side, you have to be part of an organised group.
Until the border we were in a bus with the 12 other tourists, all from different countries and ages. At the border we had to take our luggage and walk across the Friendship bridge to the Tibet side. There were all kinds of checks and formalities, even our temperature was measured to see if we didn't have a fever or SARS or anything. We were not allowed to take pictures and we had to be careful not to bring "Free Tibet" t-shirts, pictures of the Dalai Lama or books that are negative for China. It felt a bit scary, but we were allowed in.
In Tibet we changed to 4x4 landcruisers and we soon found out why....the road was a muddy sandroad with big potholes and rocks. The scenery was beautiful, big green canyons with the Bote Koshi river in the deep.

Today we started our trip from Nyalam to Lhatse. A long trip of 250 km, mostly on gravel roads, all above 3800m. The scenery was stunning. Rocky red-brown hills, blue sky, with the tall Himalaya peaks in the background. We even had another look on Everest, now from the Tibetan side. We were still acclimatised from our trekking, so had not many altitude problems, only Jeroen had a small headache when we were at the pass at 5200 m. Several of our groupmembers have now major headaches and feel sick.

Saturday, March 15

Only a few days have passed, but a lot of things happened. Let's start with the easy part: Lhatse was not interesting, just an overnight stay in a local guesthouse. We shared a bedroom with a German couple. The day after we went to Shigatse, Tibet's second most important city. It has a large monastery, Tashilunpho, which was beautiful. We also walked the kora around the monastery. Some Tibetan ladies we met there were very interested in us, but we couldn't understand each other. So they just held Marloes' hand while walking. The first messages about trouble in Lhasa reached us via our guide, but nothing to worry about yet.

From Shigatse we went to Gyantse yesterday. It also has a beautiful old monastery which partly survived the Cultural revolution. However, when we were halfway up the Kumbum Stupa, we were called back down by our guide. He had received a call from his agency in Lhasa saying there were major troubles in Lhasa and that we had to return back to Kathmandu. The whole group immediately protested against that plan, because we did not want to take the same terrible road back and wanted to try to reach Lhasa. Many discussions with the group, the guide and his agency followed.
We also looked on the internet (yesterday, Friday) for news about the trouble, but found not much. Tibetan monks had protested on Monday and Tuesday, which had escalated the rest of the week. 3 Main monasteries in Lhasa had been closed and were guarded by Chinese police, there were riots in the streets.
According to our guide, Lhasa was closed for tourists to enter. The airport is 60 km outside Lhasa and on our way to the city. In the end the group decision was that we would go to the airport today and see what would happen the next few days. Some people of the group want to take a flight to China, some want to take the train or go back to Kathmandu with a flight.

This morning (Saturday) we checked the internet again. And even though many websites are blocked by the Chinese government, we found out much more news than yesterday. The situation in Lhasa is seriously bad. The riots and protests apparently are the worst in 20 years. Cars and Chinese shops are on fire, protesters are beaten and shot, teargas is used. Unofficial reports talk about 5 to 80 deaths. Tourists have to stay in their hotel rooms. The news now also arrived in the western world, because as of today, several countries are advising their people not to go to Tibet and to avoid Lhasa. And there are some images on the tv in Europe and the US. Families and friends are getting worried, many people in the group received SMS and email messages asking if they were ok. But we are still fine, in Gyantse we noticed nothing of the trouble and Chinese media don't talk about the troubles. We decided the airport was still the best and safest option to go to with the most options to leave Tibet.

So this morning we went on our way to the airport. But not after we picked up one of the Argentinian girls from the hospital. She had been to the hospital in Shigatse as well because of altitude sickness, getting some kind of glucose injection. Last night it got worse again and this morning she had another injection and extra oxygen.
Underway we passed through the most beautiful and dramatic scenery so far during the trip. High mountains with enormous glaciers next to the road, valley's with white mountains on the background, turquoise lakes, just fantastic.
We encountered no problems with police or checkpoints. Only when we got close to the airport and the exit to Lhasa there was police, checking us. We didn't try, but it seemed like we would not have been allowed to go to Lhasa. Now we're in the Airport Hotel, in a small town. We hope the situation will improve so we can visit Lhasa maybe the day after tomorrow, before we fly back on Tuesday. It would be so disappointing to miss the city and the Potala palace (former resideny of the Dalai Lama)!

Monday, March 17

We're still at the airport and we have finally accepted the fact that we won't see Lhasa, we'll have to come back for that some other time. Several times a day we meet tourists that have been taken from Lhasa to the airport by the police and who mention some very scary things about what's happened. Shops, cars and hotels on fire, tourists can't go anywhere and had to stay in their hotelroom. Many Tibetans are dead, wounded or arrested.
The Chinese tv shows tiny bits about it and talks about "rioters who attack innocent civilians" and that "the military has entered Lhasa to help clean up the city". That last thing should be taken literally, because apparently there are razzia's going on and not only protesters are arrested, also people who help them (for example bringing them to the hospital).

In the meantime, we're killing our time by eating, talking, walking around town, working on these texts and pictures. We visited an interesting monastery yesterday, but there is not much else to do. There is a lot of police in the streets. There is one internetcafe, but it is checked by the police. Yesterday they shut down internet and electricity 3 times and had to close the cafe in the end. Via the backdoor we could still get in however. Also when we're in the internetcafe, there is somebody standing behind us to check what sites we're looking at, or if we don't have any pictures of Lhasa. We could read some news on Dutch websites and the Lonely Planet website, but several sites (e.g. CNN, BBC) are blocked. Today the internetcafe is completely closed.
We're looking forward to fly back to Kathmandu tomorrow, because it's a terrible feeling not to be able to do or say what you want, that other people decide where you may go or what you may see or read. We eat our meals in a Tibetan restaurant and use the Tibetan supermarket. All Tibetan shops are recognisable by the white scarfs they hang on their doors. China seemed interesting to us, but for now we're completely done with it and would not recommend anyone to go there. We feel very sorry for the Tibetans and get a touch of how they must be feeling all the time.

Tuesday, March 18

We're back in Kathmandu. Yesterday evening we met some people who just arrived from Lhasa and they told us some pretty scary things. They'd been in the center of the riots and saw terrible things, death, killings, tanks, lots of military force. We're glad we haven't witnessed that. This morning we had our breakfast again in the Tibetan restaurant, and when we left we all received a white Tibetan scarf. We proudly wore it until we were in the hotel in KTM, to show support to the Tibetans.
From the plane we had a beautiful view over the Himalaya, with Everest standing out. The next few days we'll spend preparing for Japan.