February 12, 2025 • 21 mins
Come with me over the plains of Amdo in a little blue and white bus 30 years ago.
We have a couple of dozen pilgrims, two Chinese drivers and a supply of diamox. Should be fine!
Stupa at Benchen
Words or phrases you might want to look up:
- Amdo
- Kham
- Benchen
- Tsurphu
- Lhasa
#Buddhism #Vajrayana #DoubleDorje #Mahamudra #Dzogchen
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:12):
Let's set out across the vast High Plains of Amdo.
Come with me on a little blue and white bus over the plains of Amdo. We have a couple of dozen Pilgrims, 2 Chinese drivers and a supply of diamox should be fine.
Hello, brave listeners. Thank you for lending an ear today to a travellers tale. In this episode of the Double Dorje Podcast. I'm Alex Wilding. And today I invite you to share a memory from 30 years ago when a couple of dozen of Chime Rinpoche’s students had the luck - or fortune -
(00:49):
to visit his home monastery in the remote reaches of Kham, the eastern part of Tibet.
Before we climb aboard this bus, the usual quick reminders. First, please pause for a moment to like this episode. Even better to subscribe, and better still to share it with your friends. And secondly, I almost always include some extra material, such as words you might like to look up -
(01:12):
- if you don't find that material on your listening platform, take a look at Podbean where the episode is first hosted.
The last night in Xining was to have been the last so-called luxury for some while. I remember saying shortly before bedtime that I expected that in the morning we'd hear reports of bad sleep due to the altitude.
(01:37):
I too felt that I would sleep badly, and that turned out to be correct, but I was quite sure that the cause was something other than the altitude.
We were still far away from the places we'd really come to see, but all the same impression overload was setting in. As I lay half dreaming, an unstoppable stream of scenes, faces and impressions from the journey kept me from real sleep for a long time.
(02:03):
We had climbed on the Great Wall of China. We had toured the Forbidden City in Beijing.
We had been observed with amazement bordering on horror for our height, the colour of our hair, and our dead, fishy eyes. Especially mine, which are blue.
We had been served sumptuous dishes featuring ingredients we preferred not always to identify.
(02:29):
At breakfast, Rinpoche said that he had slept very badly too, having felt the spirit of his father all night. This was a sobering reminder of what had happened in Tibet.
It was in Xining jail that Rinpoche’s father, having been a significant landowner, had sat waiting for twenty years for his death.
(02:50):
Rinpoche, however, told us how on an earlier visit, he had said to the authorities that they did not need to apologise for destroying his monastery and his family, but that now he wanted to see the promised schools, hospitals and workplaces.
If they were not now to be seen, then that would be the time for him to become angry.
(03:14):
There had been changes to the bus we were going to use.
One bus had been booked, but a lot of head-shaking led to the result that this first bus was thought not to have been tough enough for what lay ahead.
A strong-springed Chinese model had been substituted.
There was subdued excitement in the air while our luggage was packed under tarpaulin and rope nets on the roof of the bus.
(03:41):
It was in this little blue and white coach that we were about to enter the areas where only a few outsiders had penetrated before, legally or illegally.
As we set out, we were given a present - a surgical mask.
Wearing face masks was not a familiar thing for Europeans in those days, long before COVID. But they had a specific purpose.
(04:07):
They were to be used as the extra long nose in the dry high altitude air.
Breathing out, the mask is moistened by the breath, and the result is that when breathing in the air is slightly moistened again.
Natives of the region don't need this help so much, but even they sometimes use a cloth or leather mask for the same purpose.
(04:33):
That morning, we climbed through the back end of China. Near the airport, we'd seen a landscape of near desert, but here everything was wet and green. Terraced fields and trees. To be honest, the villages, surrounded by walls of mud and straw,
had a depressing appearance, but we, being isolated in our tin and glass bubble, we had no idea what life within them was really like.
(04:59):
Driving up to the mountain mist, we reached a pass marked both with pavilions on either side and with the inevitable telecommunications relay dishes. This was a real watershed, and we stopped here
for a pee break.
There was indeed an actual toilet. By that stage of the trip I'd learnt to recognise not just the ideograms for Beijing, Exit and Entrance, but also those for Men and Women.
(05:30):
The facility even had a roof, but otherwise it was what you might expect. A wooden platform with bum-sized holes.
Two metres below the holes, a pit opened out to the hillside below. Our official guide, Pamela, told us how in the 7th century, by our Christian reckoning, the Tibetan king Srongtsen Gampo married the Chinese Princess Wen Cheng.
(05:57):
She herself had been a bit iffy about the idea of leaving the civilization she knew for such a remote and barbaric land as Tibet. Well, you know what princesses are like! Her parents therefore gave her a mirror to remind her of home.
But when she and her party reached the place where we now stood, she said that she was going into a new future, that from then on Tibet was to be her home, and she deliberately broke the mirror. Here at this pass was the beginning of Tibet proper.
(06:35):
Behind lay terraced fields, in front stretched grasslands.
Leaving was slightly delayed because our doctor Charlie had disappeared from view. He'd discovered that he could buy yoghurt from a small hut beside the road, and was getting stuck into some.
We were yet to ascend quite a lot higher, but the road at first led downwards, revealing a totally different landscape.
(07:02):
One rough, narrow road and a line of telegraph poles stretch out in front.
If the air is clear, mountains can be seen in the far, far distance.
Yaks, some sheep and occasional goats or horses graze now and again. We see the low black tents of nomads with lines of prayer flags on either side.
(07:26):
Clouds, if there are any clouds, hang in the sky, as if moulded from the proverbial soft ice cream.
The ground is home to innumerable marmots, a rodent that, to my ignorant eyes, looks halfway between a rat and a rabbit. First, you have to pause patiently and look carefully, but once your eyes have adjusted, you see them in plain sight amongst the stones.
(07:51):
These animals are presumably the main food of the large birds of prey. These themselves are most easily seen in the evening when they roost on just about every second telegraph pole.
There aren't any trees there, and I think these birds must have been delighted by the coming of the telephone.
(08:13):
In an attempt to blur the distinctions between the two countries, a large number of Chinese have over the last 40 years, been moved into areas of Tibet, and by lunchtime we reached a township which had been built for this purpose.
Quite how most of the people who live there make their living, I do not know. At first sight, animal husbandry and all the associated industries like cheese making would be
(08:42):
the only productive possibility. But to be frank, I did remain ignorant about that.
A significant minority of the townsfolk were nevertheless Tibetan, and this was the first time we experienced their national style of looking at strangers. Fundamentally, they do just that.
(09:03):
They look.
They seemed more surprised than shocked that human beings could look like us. Let's not rush, but if we offer a small smile after a few breaths, we are likely to get grins of recognition in return.
It's true they really are humans. Then they become inquisitive.
(09:24):
It didn't take long before one of the women had persuaded Jackie to swap malas. The mala, of course, is the string of 108 beads we use for counting mantras. I don't actually know who got the better end of this bargain. Maybe both of them felt that their new mala had come from somewhere almost magical.
We all stood around the bus for some while examining the slightly smoking wheels and generally staring from one culture across to another.
(09:54):
It had been arranged that we would eat in a simple restaurant and we were followed in, presumably because watching people as strange as us eating was bound to be interesting. One of our number, Carol, had red hair and that became a substance of fascination to two of the women.
Although it was red, they seem to conclude that it was in fact just hair, but then the management brought the food and shooed the onlookers out of the front door.
(10:23):
Bright light filled the plains as we rolled and bumped our way through the afternoon.
Leaving was sometimes delayed a bit as our English monk Tenzin, who was a bit of an amateur botanist, would wander into the distance fascinatedly taking notes about the plant life.
As a rule, someone would have to yell Monk and he would appear, still scribbling on the back of a cigarette packet.
(10:51):
At first I didn't recognise what was happening to me, but by the time we reached the much smaller township where we were to eat the evening meal,
the steadily increasing altitude was beginning to take effect. One or two of us were already feeling quite ill. My own experience was rather like having a small, hard cold stone in my head.
(11:12):
I'd actually jotted that description down in my little diary before I later heard that local people described this sensation as being bitten by the ghosts of the stones.
There was no Chinese restaurant here, or if so, the style of cooking was too Tibetan to serve to us with safety.
(11:33):
Muslim restaurants are, on the other hand, by no means uncommon, and we were taken to one of these. The manager, if that's the right word for him, was a young man, maybe 20 years old.
And as he rushed down the road to obtain extra green vegetables, we waited outside.
When you're running a business, it's often a good idea to use a sign or a window display to let people know what it is that you do. And here, a goat's head lay casually on the window sill for just this reason.
(12:03):
Local horsemen, rifles slung across their backs, or swords from their waists were keen to pose and be photographed with us.
Meanwhile, the manager had returned and the sound of a diesel engine being started came from behind the building.
And there was light! Coloured bulbs decorating the front of the house.
(12:24):
Inside, while the staff furiously chopped and cut, a kind of tea was now served to us. A crystal of sugar as big as a walnut sits in the middle of the lidded cup. The tea and other dried vegetable material is sprinkled around it, and then hot water is poured on.
Some said it was delicious, but then you know what people are like.
(12:49):
Plenty of smoke was now rising from the stove, darkening the room, but daylight was fading too.
Our manager climbed onto the table and fidgeted in vain with the cord leading to a fluorescent tube, jumped down again and went outside. The coloured lights at the front grew brighter. The engine note rose as he opened the throttle.
(13:12):
Coming back in, he had a second go at fidgeting with the cord, successfully this time, and the fluorescent light flickered on.
We reacted with cheers and claps. He grinned, made a small bow and said something before jumping down. Pamela translated for him. “What's the matter? Haven't you seen electricity before?”
(13:37):
By now we had learnt that the guide's estimates of how long each stretch of the journey would take
were more than optimistic. We put this down to the Asian unwillingness to bring bad news. We'd already come across a number of roadworks, most of which meant that the bus had to leave the road and drive through a small
(14:00):
but somewhat deep and muddy trench.
Inexperienced travellers like us thought “Jeep OK, saloon car a bit doubtful.
But bus - no thank you.
Nevertheless, our drivers knew what they were doing, and pulled us through every time.
It was well after midnight before we reached Maduo, in whose guesthouse we were to spend the night.
(14:26):
A few dim electric light bulbs were turned on for 10 minutes while we, cold and tired as we were, splashed over muddy courtyards and stumbled down concrete corridors to find the rooms.
It would be nice if we had had access to our luggage for spare clothes and sleeping bags, but to ask the drivers to spend half an hour in the rain at that time of night unpacking and another half hour putting it all back early the next morning
(14:56):
was just too much. The room had a stove, but no way of lighting it. And in any case no fuel, as far as I can remember, though, we did have a candle.
Piling up all the blankets for maximum warmth, sleep came straight away.
An hour later, I was glad to have a clear memory of where my clothes were, because I woke up convinced that I must soon vomit. Crossing the mud to the toilets, I was reassured by the thought that at this high altitude
(15:27):
there was next to no chance that horrible, creepy things with numbers of legs that don't bear mentioning would be lurking in the dark around the hole. But the nausea had passed and I was able to sleep two or three more hours before it was time to get up.
Unsurprisingly, I felt as if I had a hefty hangover. But as the other pilgrims tottered towards the breakfast, a breakfast that no one could in fact stomach, I realised that, relatively speaking, I was in fair to average condition.
(15:59):
Tom and Rinpoche were at the hospital having spent the night on oxygen, while Tenzin clearly should have done the same. He was obviously suffering badly, had been violently I'll throughout the short night, but worried mainly that he would hold the rest of us back.
At this point, it was being seriously suggested that we might have overreached ourselves, and that perhaps we should turn back.
(16:23):
We drove to the hospital with the idea of letting Rinpoche decide, but he wanted us to decide. I felt that I had to keep out of the discussions.
I would have been so, so disappointed if we'd turned back, but of course the safety of the more fragile members of the group was much more important.
(16:46):
At length, it was decided that the seven hours worth of oxygen that we were able to take from the hospital should be enough, provided it was carefully shared between the most needy.
Sometime in the late morning, we passed the highest point at something well over 5000 metres.
Like every high pass in Tibet, it was marked by a cairn decorated with prayer flags. This one we were really glad to leave behind. I fear that by that point Tenzin felt just about ready to leave everything behind!
(17:20):
He made no fuss, but the way he was holding his head spoke volumes.
Some of our pee breaks took a bit longer than they should, since the nicotine addicts - and I have to admit that in those days I was one of those addicts - still wanted to take their chance for a quick puff.
Rinpoche's urgent calls for us to get back on the bus and drive lower, however, meant that quite a lot of 1/3 smoked nubbins were left beside the road. Disgusting, isn't it?
(17:50):
It's easy, given the benefit of experience, to say that we had been foolish to go quite so high quite so quickly.
But now came the good news. As we began to drop, the symptoms steadily - and really quite quickly - just evaporated.
Along the way, we stopped at another muslim eating house for a late lunch, and even the majority of us who had been really badly affected were already feeling quite fine. Tenzin was grinning, joking and running off in his shorts to examine flora.
(18:24):
One or two of us were still suffering, but even they were more in a state of severe discomfort than of actual pain.
In the afternoon, the landscape changed. The high plateau had looked endless, but now it gave way to mountains. To my eyes, they looked more like Scotland than the Himalayas, for all that their altitude was so much greater.
(18:48):
Trees, a few terraced fields, houses. These all appeared. The few tents were decorated and looked as if they'd been set up for a festival, rather than as dwellings.
We had reached Kham. The sheer physical geography, however, was not what excited me the most. The fact was that this looked at last like Tibet is supposed to look! The difference? Monasteries nestling against the hillside,
(19:17):
chortans or stupas at the heads of valleys, local people turning prayer wheels as they bring the yak herd home.
This part of Tibet is deeply furrowed by rivers that wind through China and finally empty into the sea, with thousands of miles between their estuaries. The Mekong, the Yangtse, the Salwain, all of these run parallel to each other through this part of Tibet.
(19:48):
What was important for us was our descent to the headwaters of the Yangtze, which in this area was a turbulent brown knife cutting deeply into the mountains.
More important still was the tributary flowing into it from the West. The sharp edge where those bluish opal waters meet the Yangtse looked as if they were painted in some kind of oil colours that wouldn't mix.
(20:15):
This tributary was the Kuchu flowing down from Jyekundo.
Ah Jyekundo (20:20):
decent food, shops, possible beds and only a short ride from our true destination, the monastery of Benchen.
So that was the crossing of Amdo! Once more, please remember to share or subscribe - I need say no more. And remember - things can get pretty weird out there.
(20:44):
Bye.
Let's set out across the vast High Plains of Amdo.
Come with me on a little blue and white bus over the plains of Amdo. We have a couple of dozen Pilgrims, 2 Chinese drivers and a supply of diamox should be fine.
Hello, brave listeners. Thank you for lending an ear today to a travellers tale. In this episode of the Double Dorje Podcast. I'm Alex Wilding. And today I invite you to share a memory from 30 years ago when a couple of dozen of Chime Rinpoche’s students had the luck - or fortune -
(00:49):
to visit his home monastery in the remote reaches of Kham, the eastern part of Tibet.
Before we climb aboard this bus, the usual quick reminders. First, please pause for a moment to like this episode. Even better to subscribe, and better still to share it with your friends. And secondly, I almost always include some extra material, such as words you might like to look up -
(01:12):
- if you don't find that material on your listening platform, take a look at Podbean where the episode is first hosted.
The last night in Xining was to have been the last so-called luxury for some while. I remember saying shortly before bedtime that I expected that in the morning we'd hear reports of bad sleep due to the altitude.
(01:37):
I too felt that I would sleep badly, and that turned out to be correct, but I was quite sure that the cause was something other than the altitude.
We were still far away from the places we'd really come to see, but all the same impression overload was setting in. As I lay half dreaming, an unstoppable stream of scenes, faces and impressions from the journey kept me from real sleep for a long time.
(02:03):
We had climbed on the Great Wall of China. We had toured the Forbidden City in Beijing.
We had been observed with amazement bordering on horror for our height, the colour of our hair, and our dead, fishy eyes. Especially mine, which are blue.
We had been served sumptuous dishes featuring ingredients we preferred not always to identify.
(02:29):
At breakfast, Rinpoche said that he had slept very badly too, having felt the spirit of his father all night. This was a sobering reminder of what had happened in Tibet.
It was in Xining jail that Rinpoche’s father, having been a significant landowner, had sat waiting for twenty years for his death.
(02:50):
Rinpoche, however, told us how on an earlier visit, he had said to the authorities that they did not need to apologise for destroying his monastery and his family, but that now he wanted to see the promised schools, hospitals and workplaces.
If they were not now to be seen, then that would be the time for him to become angry.
(03:14):
There had been changes to the bus we were going to use.
One bus had been booked, but a lot of head-shaking led to the result that this first bus was thought not to have been tough enough for what lay ahead.
A strong-springed Chinese model had been substituted.
There was subdued excitement in the air while our luggage was packed under tarpaulin and rope nets on the roof of the bus.
(03:41):
It was in this little blue and white coach that we were about to enter the areas where only a few outsiders had penetrated before, legally or illegally.
As we set out, we were given a present - a surgical mask.
Wearing face masks was not a familiar thing for Europeans in those days, long before COVID. But they had a specific purpose.
(04:07):
They were to be used as the extra long nose in the dry high altitude air.
Breathing out, the mask is moistened by the breath, and the result is that when breathing in the air is slightly moistened again.
Natives of the region don't need this help so much, but even they sometimes use a cloth or leather mask for the same purpose.
(04:33):
That morning, we climbed through the back end of China. Near the airport, we'd seen a landscape of near desert, but here everything was wet and green. Terraced fields and trees. To be honest, the villages, surrounded by walls of mud and straw,
had a depressing appearance, but we, being isolated in our tin and glass bubble, we had no idea what life within them was really like.
(04:59):
Driving up to the mountain mist, we reached a pass marked both with pavilions on either side and with the inevitable telecommunications relay dishes. This was a real watershed, and we stopped here
for a pee break.
There was indeed an actual toilet. By that stage of the trip I'd learnt to recognise not just the ideograms for Beijing, Exit and Entrance, but also those for Men and Women.
(05:30):
The facility even had a roof, but otherwise it was what you might expect. A wooden platform with bum-sized holes.
Two metres below the holes, a pit opened out to the hillside below. Our official guide, Pamela, told us how in the 7th century, by our Christian reckoning, the Tibetan king Srongtsen Gampo married the Chinese Princess Wen Cheng.
(05:57):
She herself had been a bit iffy about the idea of leaving the civilization she knew for such a remote and barbaric land as Tibet. Well, you know what princesses are like! Her parents therefore gave her a mirror to remind her of home.
But when she and her party reached the place where we now stood, she said that she was going into a new future, that from then on Tibet was to be her home, and she deliberately broke the mirror. Here at this pass was the beginning of Tibet proper.
(06:35):
Behind lay terraced fields, in front stretched grasslands.
Leaving was slightly delayed because our doctor Charlie had disappeared from view. He'd discovered that he could buy yoghurt from a small hut beside the road, and was getting stuck into some.
We were yet to ascend quite a lot higher, but the road at first led downwards, revealing a totally different landscape.
(07:02):
One rough, narrow road and a line of telegraph poles stretch out in front.
If the air is clear, mountains can be seen in the far, far distance.
Yaks, some sheep and occasional goats or horses graze now and again. We see the low black tents of nomads with lines of prayer flags on either side.
(07:26):
Clouds, if there are any clouds, hang in the sky, as if moulded from the proverbial soft ice cream.
The ground is home to innumerable marmots, a rodent that, to my ignorant eyes, looks halfway between a rat and a rabbit. First, you have to pause patiently and look carefully, but once your eyes have adjusted, you see them in plain sight amongst the stones.
(07:51):
These animals are presumably the main food of the large birds of prey. These themselves are most easily seen in the evening when they roost on just about every second telegraph pole.
There aren't any trees there, and I think these birds must have been delighted by the coming of the telephone.
(08:13):
In an attempt to blur the distinctions between the two countries, a large number of Chinese have over the last 40 years, been moved into areas of Tibet, and by lunchtime we reached a township which had been built for this purpose.
Quite how most of the people who live there make their living, I do not know. At first sight, animal husbandry and all the associated industries like cheese making would be
(08:42):
the only productive possibility. But to be frank, I did remain ignorant about that.
A significant minority of the townsfolk were nevertheless Tibetan, and this was the first time we experienced their national style of looking at strangers. Fundamentally, they do just that.
(09:03):
They look.
They seemed more surprised than shocked that human beings could look like us. Let's not rush, but if we offer a small smile after a few breaths, we are likely to get grins of recognition in return.
It's true they really are humans. Then they become inquisitive.
(09:24):
It didn't take long before one of the women had persuaded Jackie to swap malas. The mala, of course, is the string of 108 beads we use for counting mantras. I don't actually know who got the better end of this bargain. Maybe both of them felt that their new mala had come from somewhere almost magical.
We all stood around the bus for some while examining the slightly smoking wheels and generally staring from one culture across to another.
(09:54):
It had been arranged that we would eat in a simple restaurant and we were followed in, presumably because watching people as strange as us eating was bound to be interesting. One of our number, Carol, had red hair and that became a substance of fascination to two of the women.
Although it was red, they seem to conclude that it was in fact just hair, but then the management brought the food and shooed the onlookers out of the front door.
(10:23):
Bright light filled the plains as we rolled and bumped our way through the afternoon.
Leaving was sometimes delayed a bit as our English monk Tenzin, who was a bit of an amateur botanist, would wander into the distance fascinatedly taking notes about the plant life.
As a rule, someone would have to yell Monk and he would appear, still scribbling on the back of a cigarette packet.
(10:51):
At first I didn't recognise what was happening to me, but by the time we reached the much smaller township where we were to eat the evening meal,
the steadily increasing altitude was beginning to take effect. One or two of us were already feeling quite ill. My own experience was rather like having a small, hard cold stone in my head.
(11:12):
I'd actually jotted that description down in my little diary before I later heard that local people described this sensation as being bitten by the ghosts of the stones.
There was no Chinese restaurant here, or if so, the style of cooking was too Tibetan to serve to us with safety.
(11:33):
Muslim restaurants are, on the other hand, by no means uncommon, and we were taken to one of these. The manager, if that's the right word for him, was a young man, maybe 20 years old.
And as he rushed down the road to obtain extra green vegetables, we waited outside.
When you're running a business, it's often a good idea to use a sign or a window display to let people know what it is that you do. And here, a goat's head lay casually on the window sill for just this reason.
(12:03):
Local horsemen, rifles slung across their backs, or swords from their waists were keen to pose and be photographed with us.
Meanwhile, the manager had returned and the sound of a diesel engine being started came from behind the building.
And there was light! Coloured bulbs decorating the front of the house.
(12:24):
Inside, while the staff furiously chopped and cut, a kind of tea was now served to us. A crystal of sugar as big as a walnut sits in the middle of the lidded cup. The tea and other dried vegetable material is sprinkled around it, and then hot water is poured on.
Some said it was delicious, but then you know what people are like.
(12:49):
Plenty of smoke was now rising from the stove, darkening the room, but daylight was fading too.
Our manager climbed onto the table and fidgeted in vain with the cord leading to a fluorescent tube, jumped down again and went outside. The coloured lights at the front grew brighter. The engine note rose as he opened the throttle.
(13:12):
Coming back in, he had a second go at fidgeting with the cord, successfully this time, and the fluorescent light flickered on.
We reacted with cheers and claps. He grinned, made a small bow and said something before jumping down. Pamela translated for him. “What's the matter? Haven't you seen electricity before?”
(13:37):
By now we had learnt that the guide's estimates of how long each stretch of the journey would take
were more than optimistic. We put this down to the Asian unwillingness to bring bad news. We'd already come across a number of roadworks, most of which meant that the bus had to leave the road and drive through a small
(14:00):
but somewhat deep and muddy trench.
Inexperienced travellers like us thought “Jeep OK, saloon car a bit doubtful.
But bus - no thank you.
Nevertheless, our drivers knew what they were doing, and pulled us through every time.
It was well after midnight before we reached Maduo, in whose guesthouse we were to spend the night.
(14:26):
A few dim electric light bulbs were turned on for 10 minutes while we, cold and tired as we were, splashed over muddy courtyards and stumbled down concrete corridors to find the rooms.
It would be nice if we had had access to our luggage for spare clothes and sleeping bags, but to ask the drivers to spend half an hour in the rain at that time of night unpacking and another half hour putting it all back early the next morning
(14:56):
was just too much. The room had a stove, but no way of lighting it. And in any case no fuel, as far as I can remember, though, we did have a candle.
Piling up all the blankets for maximum warmth, sleep came straight away.
An hour later, I was glad to have a clear memory of where my clothes were, because I woke up convinced that I must soon vomit. Crossing the mud to the toilets, I was reassured by the thought that at this high altitude
(15:27):
there was next to no chance that horrible, creepy things with numbers of legs that don't bear mentioning would be lurking in the dark around the hole. But the nausea had passed and I was able to sleep two or three more hours before it was time to get up.
Unsurprisingly, I felt as if I had a hefty hangover. But as the other pilgrims tottered towards the breakfast, a breakfast that no one could in fact stomach, I realised that, relatively speaking, I was in fair to average condition.
(15:59):
Tom and Rinpoche were at the hospital having spent the night on oxygen, while Tenzin clearly should have done the same. He was obviously suffering badly, had been violently I'll throughout the short night, but worried mainly that he would hold the rest of us back.
At this point, it was being seriously suggested that we might have overreached ourselves, and that perhaps we should turn back.
(16:23):
We drove to the hospital with the idea of letting Rinpoche decide, but he wanted us to decide. I felt that I had to keep out of the discussions.
I would have been so, so disappointed if we'd turned back, but of course the safety of the more fragile members of the group was much more important.
(16:46):
At length, it was decided that the seven hours worth of oxygen that we were able to take from the hospital should be enough, provided it was carefully shared between the most needy.
Sometime in the late morning, we passed the highest point at something well over 5000 metres.
Like every high pass in Tibet, it was marked by a cairn decorated with prayer flags. This one we were really glad to leave behind. I fear that by that point Tenzin felt just about ready to leave everything behind!
(17:20):
He made no fuss, but the way he was holding his head spoke volumes.
Some of our pee breaks took a bit longer than they should, since the nicotine addicts - and I have to admit that in those days I was one of those addicts - still wanted to take their chance for a quick puff.
Rinpoche's urgent calls for us to get back on the bus and drive lower, however, meant that quite a lot of 1/3 smoked nubbins were left beside the road. Disgusting, isn't it?
(17:50):
It's easy, given the benefit of experience, to say that we had been foolish to go quite so high quite so quickly.
But now came the good news. As we began to drop, the symptoms steadily - and really quite quickly - just evaporated.
Along the way, we stopped at another muslim eating house for a late lunch, and even the majority of us who had been really badly affected were already feeling quite fine. Tenzin was grinning, joking and running off in his shorts to examine flora.
(18:24):
One or two of us were still suffering, but even they were more in a state of severe discomfort than of actual pain.
In the afternoon, the landscape changed. The high plateau had looked endless, but now it gave way to mountains. To my eyes, they looked more like Scotland than the Himalayas, for all that their altitude was so much greater.
(18:48):
Trees, a few terraced fields, houses. These all appeared. The few tents were decorated and looked as if they'd been set up for a festival, rather than as dwellings.
We had reached Kham. The sheer physical geography, however, was not what excited me the most. The fact was that this looked at last like Tibet is supposed to look! The difference? Monasteries nestling against the hillside,
(19:17):
chortans or stupas at the heads of valleys, local people turning prayer wheels as they bring the yak herd home.
This part of Tibet is deeply furrowed by rivers that wind through China and finally empty into the sea, with thousands of miles between their estuaries. The Mekong, the Yangtse, the Salwain, all of these run parallel to each other through this part of Tibet.
(19:48):
What was important for us was our descent to the headwaters of the Yangtze, which in this area was a turbulent brown knife cutting deeply into the mountains.
More important still was the tributary flowing into it from the West. The sharp edge where those bluish opal waters meet the Yangtse looked as if they were painted in some kind of oil colours that wouldn't mix.
(20:15):
This tributary was the Kuchu flowing down from Jyekundo.
Ah Jyekundo (20:20):
decent food, shops, possible beds and only a short ride from our true destination, the monastery of Benchen.
So that was the crossing of Amdo! Once more, please remember to share or subscribe - I need say no more. And remember - things can get pretty weird out there.
(20:44):
Bye.
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