Shigatse 2 september 2006
Shigatse Temple, our third Tibetan temple in two days, is a magnificent sprawling edifice with one huge Buddha. The man next to me whispered to himself "The bigger the Buddha the better" and caused a small ripple of chuckles. I guess the statue was twenty or thirty feet tall. It was cool and smelled of yak butter candles in the dimly lit great hall.
Red robed monks kept the entrance and enforced the camera fee of 75 Yuan (10 dollars). In front of them on small tables were piles of Chinese notes. In all the monasteries so far there had been piles of paper money in the laps of the Buddhas, around the flickering butter lamps, even stuck to the walls with yak butter. I could not helping noting the irony of it all, every single note printed after 1999, (and that was nearly all the notes there) had a large picture of Mao on the front.
Our Cho Oyu expedition is well under way. It consists of the Christmas Mount Vinson team: Doug, Wim, David, Sam(antha) and myself. It was great to meet up again in the flesh pots of Kathmandu; inspite of the usual morning headaches. The local beer just is not clean enough. The headaches, though, are clearly very good training for the first signs of altitude. It is best to get used to the headaches as soon as possible.
Flying in to Lhasa we were met by our travel LO (Liaison
Offiicer) Dorji, who remembered me from our 1998 Sepu Kangri expedition. He asked me how Chris Bonington and Charlie Clark were doing, and how old they now were.
Eight years older , I replied. We had just passed through immigration, in the background David's stock of books was rasing unusual interest. Odd really as there was nothing particularly high brow there. Perhaps he just looks a wee bit of a subvert. Turning his back on the commotion, Dorji said he would only be with us till Tingri. After that he was going to be the LO for Shishapengma.
Outside the airport the clean clear Tibetan air filled our lungs. It was fabulous to be back. The sky was that colour of blue you only get at altitude, azure.
And it was dotted with clouds that resembled the cotton balls you seed in Tibetan paintings. It was just over a year since I had last been here. We drove down past the Tsangpo, past the Drepung Monastry, once home to 10,000 monks and now inhabiteed by 700 monks and 10,000 tourists. Well, maybe a thousand. Most of the tourist are now Chinese, and this is different. This is new. Earlier this year the Beijing to Lhasa railway project was completed, and a daily influx of up to a thousand Chinese visitors arrive by way of Chengdu. You can feel the sense of national confidence that is now surging through this developing economy.
David, anesthetist by profession, had led several travel groups to Mongolia and Tibet, and in the monastries took the job of tour leader. He recognized the different Buddhas and Bodisatvas, the White and Green Taras, and a large part of the hagiography. It was truly impressive. We all wandered dazed round in his wake. Yesterday the Drepung and Sera by Lhasa. Today Shigatse. We make quite a group. Wim, shaven headed and tank topped, looks like Vin Diesel. He is from Belgium and rolls his "R"s like no one else I know. Doug from Oklahoma in a pressed shirt and black loafers dressed as if on a business trip. Sam, well she at least looks like a normal Californian teenager, tee shirt and jeans. And me; all following Dave in awe. The slightly subversive Dave with a slightly Jonny Cash quiff, and the slightly unshaven chin. We follow as he explains the icons and statues.
Tomorrow we head off to Old Tingri, 4300m, for two nights and a day of acclimatising treks before driving to up the to the road head camp at 5,000m. There we will experience headaches, lethargy, and loss of appetite. And we will look on these symptoms as old friends, precursers of the changes the body must undergo to climb to 8,200m.
