Trip to mighty Tsurpu, home of the Karmapas

I took this picture while sitting on the top of a giant stadium-like staircase built into the side of the hill opposite the Tsurpu Gompa ('tshur phu dgon pa). The staircase is used for the unraveling of a giant thanka painting at least a hundred feet high. Below me is a small green with nomad tents and a beautiful river with a small bridge so covered in prayer flags that traveling across it becomes a delicate dance of trying not fall in and not step on them at the same time.
On the front right side of the monastery there are 13 windows and the farthest right window is where Ephriam and I stayed over for a Saturday evening. The guest house is quite clean and comfortable and the caretaker and his children where a delight to meet.
This is Ephriam, a friend from Hong Kong, and Tope-gyal (stobs rgyal) with one of his (four?) children. Tope-gyal cooked all our meals fresh, mostly a noodle soup called tuk-pa. He helped us find our room and taught us new Tibetan words by candle light when the electricity went out at night. Two more of Tope gyal's children watching us eat lunch.
The first monk we met on arrival at the front gate of Tsurpu. He led us around to each of the lha kangs, or small temples, many filled with protectors and the constant chanting of old lamas and young monks.

Ephriam and I made it to the bus pick-up point near the Barkor in Lhasa at around 6:35, a half hour early for the supposed bus, but ten minutes late for the actual bus. Luckily so many pilgrims wanted to go to Tsurpu that day that another bus was organized. We were accosted by competing prayer flag sellers, a boy and a girl who came on to the bus and placed their wares in our faces for a good twenty minutes, while they argued with each other and screamed at us to buy, buy, buy! The sun came up while we waited for the bus to fill up and we didn't buy anything. The trip up to Tsurpu gompa is pretty easy, but your breath is easily taken away by the time you step off the bus across the stream from the tall stone steps of the main gate.
The stairs in these monasteries are extremely steep, but perhaps it shouldn't be easy to get into them. At one of the pilgrimage sites on our journey an old woman had to be carried up old wooden stairs as steep as ladders, each time she would try to make it up herself, but the rest of us would come to her rescue before she tipped over backwards.
Tsurpu is quite an amazing place, and quite large really. The local people were working hard on the construction underway in the main courtyard:
This little one was trying to help his mother sift dirt. At this altitude it takes a day to be able to do work. Running through all the temples and prostrating at all the shrines on the first day made Ephriam a little sick, but we rested in the afternoon and slept early enough. The next morning I woke up with the sun and hiked up above the monastery:
It was a bit cold at first, but as the sun touched the yak dung strewn mountain side the heat became too much for my coat and hat. That is not morning mist in the picture above, its too dry here for much of that. It is the morning sang, or incense offerings at the main temple, rising high into the valley's sky.

It doesn't look like it, but to get to this spot I had to do some class four/class five climbing. At the point that I took this picture I had no idea how good climbers yaks are. Since then I had a little adventure hiking near Shungsep nunnery, and believe me, if I could get yak hoof shoes I would.
A meditation retreat area high above the main temples and houses of Tsurpu.
I wish I could tell you this picture does some justice to the cliffs and the view of the monastery from here. The photos from above didn't come out well, so you'll just have to visit, wake up before sunrise and hike up behind the monastery in the dark until the sun begins to hit the golden caps of the monastery buildings.

A sea of prayer flags zigzag up the side of the cliffs above Tsurpu.

I came down from the north side around 9am and began a kora around the four main chortens, (or stupas), first green, then white, then yellow, then red; the blue being hidden somewhere in the center of the monastery. Each stupa is associated with a buddha family, an element, a direction, a particular history of practices, and a particular Buddhist cosmology presented in the abhidharma literature, related to the Indian cosmology of mount Meru and the four continents and eight subcontinents. We are supposed to live in the southern continent of Dzampuling, or Jampuling. Elvis still lives, just over on the south-western continent next to Dzampuling.

I narrowly avoided a dog and some yaks, jumped across a stream and came down by the green stupa.
White.
The yellow stupa with yaks and the eight small stupas representing the eight manifestations of Padmasambhava, aka Guru Rinpoche, aka Big Pappa, aka Pimp Dady Padmajungnay, aka Demon Slapping Pimp, aka Pimpin Loppon (he had many of "consorts" workin' the mountain sides, they are called "Dakinis").
Red.

The view from the red stupa.

Chillin with Guru Rinpoche.

In a few weeks I will be trekking past Tsurpu and over that mountain in the background on my way to hot springs, a nunnery, and another monastery called Yangpachen.

A close encounter after lunch.
Our accommodations at the Tsurpu guest house.
How about an afternoon stroll, past the mani stones and yaks, into the linka by the nomad tents and to the monument built for a little party for the birth of Karmapa.


The Karmapa's Birthday celebration spot.


The famous ancient stele in the main courtyard:

Time to hitch a ride back to Lhasa via one of the Karmapa's heart son's monastery. We had to stand on a bus for four hours but it was worth it.
Bye bye Tsurpu! See you soon.

Here's the Karmapa's retreat, there were plenty of legos in one of the rooms and a beautiful garden with a monument to the third Karmapa who also spent time here.


A young boy on pilgrimage playing in the garden where the Karmapa probably played when he was young.

The heart son's place.
Now it's finally back to Lhasa.

The Barkor area from an upstairs tea house in front of the Jokang.

My Web

Lhasa, Ground of the Gods

So here I am in the Chinese city of Lhasa studying at a Chinese university. The other night I attended the 58th anniversary of the founding of the People's Republic of China. In case you were wondering, the autonomy of the Tibetan people is really... really...
Well anyway, the third in command of the TAR is Tibetan by birth. Also, in case you were wondering, nomads and farmers have a much better life now and everyone is "vigorous" about implementing scientific advancement and economic reform in TAR. Everyone's life is really improving every day and I'd just like to personally thank the military police in TAR for all the hard work they do...They're real nice.
TAR is the Tibetan Autonomous Region, a province of the People's Republic of China. Tibet University is a state school, like SUNY Lhasa, only it would be spelled SUTAR Lhasa. So six days a week we awake in the morning to the state approved news and exercise songs blasted from loud speakers throughout the uni buildings.
'Uni,' the fastest way to tell someone is not from the states: The Australian or European question: "Where did you go to uni?" The American response: "Uh, I didn't go to "uni," I went to college." Apparently our Tibetan uni is under review so the students have extra class, less holidays, and the campus ground crew is working overtime...sort of. Take a look though, they have done a great job because the big dog from Beijing will be coming soon.

The main gate: to walk most places, like the Barkor (a huge market area), we leave from here...
...unless we are going to The Wonderful Vegetarian House or the bike mechanic. Then we walk this way:
...past the music school and...
...by the teacher residences...
...and out the back gate.
These are my comrades at the Foreign Student's Department:
From left to right starting in the front row: Janna and her son Agem shalev (Israeli), Martin (Swiss), Janine (German), Sibili (Brazilian), Michelle (Floridian), Cham pa (Tibetan, he's the maintainence dude), Second row, left to right: Doris (Swiss), Ephriam (Hong Kong), another Swiss lady, Me, Anne (Australian), Rita (German), Gael (Swiss), Back row: Daniel (Spaniard from Barcelona), Joe (Chicagonian), Atisha (Indian from Deli), Julia (Italian), Lucas (German). Missing are Alice from Paris (she's taking the photo), Mayumi from LA via Japan, a Korean, two Japanese, and I am forgetting someone else but I'm not sure who. Here's everybody out at The Lucky Horse Restaurant for Daniel's birthday:


Here at the birthday dinner you can see Ephriam in the left foreground, I would be sitting next to him if I wasn't taking this picture. Now, as I'm sure you can see from the photo, Ephriam is a spritely fellow, and when he was told that Daniel had left the table to "go to the bathroom," he vaulted the bench-chair thing we were sitting on and ran across the room and down the stairs like his life depended on it. Noticing his surprise, Alice also ran, attempting to beat him to the "pa se" (bill in Tibetan). You see, it is a common tactic to go to the bathroom part way through dinner and then pay for everyone's meal. This is because fighting over the bill is a full contact sport in China. However, on this occasion, Anne the Australian had beat everyone to the punch and had snuck out to pay the pa se soon after the second round of ordering food was finished. This made the look of surprise on Ephriam and Alice's winded faces all the more hilarious when they returned to the table to find Daniel wondering where they had gone. Now, in Barcelonan culture, the birthday boy pays for everyone's dinner, so he didn't understand what all the fuss was about. In the end, the damage was 13.5 Yuan a person, which is not quite 2 dollars.
That night we all assembled on the roof of our building for real chai that Atisha brought from India and chocolate cake Michelle generously baked for Daniel's birthday.

I think that is Atisha and me about to climb up the ladder to the second roof area. You can see the Potala Palace all lit up from there, it's quite a sight. I couldn't get a proper picture of it though, so here's a picture of the Potala up close in the day time, just to prove I was there.


One of the most interesting sights one sees in Lhasa is the prostrating pilgrims. Some started their journey hundreds of miles from Lhasa:
Here's a group resting in a shadow before arriving in front of the Potala. This is what they were sitting near:
Here is another unique piece of Lhasan culture, the NangMa:

It is basically a strange sort of night club where the occupants of the large stage change every five minutes and the audience is allowed full participation. Everyone drinks Budweiser or Lhasa Beer out of shot glasses and there is a constant flow of audience members getting on stage to present singers or dancers with Khatas (a long white scarf originally given to spiritual teachers or only on special occasions).
Uploading is taking forever so that's all for now folks.

The Train to Lhasa September 10th--12th

I said goodbye to Xiao on the Subway because he left for art school from the main Beijing train station and I left from Beijing West. Before I could leave however, I had to retrieve the rest of my baggage from LeoHostel and meet up with Anne Done who would become my comrade in arms as we traversed the Chinese countryside. To make a long story short, the taxi driver almost left us on the side of the road and when we finally did make it to the train station we had to drag all our baggage across the entire station (two football fields?) up and down stairs. Now, a normal person would have packed a reasonable amount of clothing and made sure that it would not take a herculean effort just to walk down a flight of stairs with one's luggage. However, I seemed to lack the normal gene and I packed everything I could think of, leaving me with a 74 pound bag along with my huge traveler's back pack full of camping gear (thanks to Matthew and Betcie who got me the bag for my Europe trip in 1999), my large computer bag with books in it, my new Mao "Serve the People" shoulder bag, and another random bag full of tea and Chinese herbs for altitude sickness. In any case, I think the people in my cabin were afraid when they first saw the amount of stuff I had to store above our berths. But as it turned out, there was an empty berth on the top for the entire trip so my over-sized bag that didn't fit in the storage compartment slept there.
Chinese trains have four types of seating: Hard sleeper, soft sleeper, hard seat, and soft seat. A couple of English girls that provided me with bread and jam for breakfast on the first morning were on soft seats the whole way to Lhasa. It looked like living in a nomad's living room on an uncomfortable armchair for two days. I actually saw a guy with a huge piece of raw yak meat just chilling on the floor, I don't know if he even had a proper seat. Luckily Xiao had purchased my ticket in advance and found me a middle hard sleeper, one of the better possible seats. The soft sleepers still have six beds like the hard sleeper but they are nicer and have doors on their cabins. There were a bunch of chill older Germans and some crazy weird Southerners staying in the soft sleepers. But the fun was generally had in the hard sleeper areas and the one dining car.
This is the site of the attempt to convince me to pay 14 Yuan for 2 Yuan rice. There is a police officer sitting directly to my left and the head waiter stood right in front of him and tried to cheat us for lunch. The best part was that Peter, the Swedish surgeon staying with the Tibetan rock band we met, had payed differed prices for the same food every time he went into the dining car. Luckily Anne was with us and she was used to this kind of behavior.
Here's Anne and Peter. Peter was traveling to Everest Base Camp on holiday. He was in the same cabin as these guys:
I tried to speak to them and they got very excited and offered me beer and chips, but they soon realized I couldn't say very much. So they found a Chinese interpreter to write the name of their band, their new CD, and the place they would be playing for seven nights in Lhasa.

So, in China, Pabst makes water:


Here's Anne tickled pink that she is hanging out with hot Tibetan men. We also met a man and his wife who spoke only Amdo kay but were very friendly. This other kid seemed to be related to them but I wasn't sure exactly how.
The man to my left saw that Anne and I were practicing the Tibetan alphabet so he came and sat next to me and helped us with pronunciation. I asked him simple questions but many words were different because he spoke Amdo kay (a mdo skad). We asked him what the words for "bottle" and "tomato" were, and he asked me to teach him to count to ten in English. As we were counting in Tibetan and English, a police officer walked by, became excited, and began counting in Mandarin very loudly. He seemed to be implying that we should be studying Chinese words and not Tibetan, but I just smiled at him and showed him that I could count to three in both Tibetan and Chinese and since Anne knew all the numbers very well he seemed to calm down and wander off. The Chinese seem to have several maxims they assume are agreed upon by all: 1) Chinese is the best language and everyone should learn it 2) Foreigners of any kind are good for business but not much else 3) Everything that could be done by one person should be done by at least four people moving at half speed.
The train culture was very strange indeed but I found that most people were very nice and interested in whatever it was this strange bearded man was doing in China. One random guy even invited me to his home in some industrial town in southern China. I think he was a chemical engineer of some sort. We tried to communicate through his broken English and my Lonely Planet Mandarin phrasebook. All the younger Tibetans we met spoke both Chinese and Tibetan and knew a few words of English. But when I tried to write out Tibetan phrases, they seemed to understand what was written in the Mandarin phrasebook better than the Tibetan one. I am not sure if this was because of the poor quality of the Tibetan phrasebook or because they read Chinese better than Tibetan.


Here we are at :

That's meters we're talking about.

An inch and a quarter shy of 14,695 feet.










Every car has a little glass-encased elevation reader with information about oxygen flow, regulated by what was usually a sleeping uniform likewise encased in glass. Between walking from my cabin at the front of the train and the dining car at the back I saw scenery like this:

A small village in the hills.


Mountains, mountains, and more mountains...

There were often quick storms and even a little bit of snow on our journey.
Here is the brand new Lhasa train station at our arrival:
After 48 hours on the train I was glad to arrive in Lhasa, but mostly I just wanted to sleep in a real bed. A young man in my cabin gave me this Kha-ta and said "Welcome to Lhasa" in his best English.
Anne and I got in a taxi and had to wait for another passenger, who happened to be a monk. We made it to the University very quickly because the driver passed most vehicles on the left in the middle of the city with the oncoming traffic of tour buses, bicycles, and taxis. Apparently staying in one's lane, or even on one's side of the street is not the norm here in Lhasa.
Upon our late evening arrival we found a darkened hallway and our dorm rooms with the help of Ngodron, the sometimes secretary, sometimes nightclub trip leader.

Here's my new pad: # 218
And here's the sights from the front step of the Foreign Student's Building:

A road we rarely walk on and a new green apparently cleaned up because the "big boss" from Beijing is coming to town in October to inspect the University.

The foreign student's building, home away from home:


The first foreign students arrived to study in the Tibetan Language Department in 1993 and in 1999 the department acquired the building I now live in as the "Foreign Student International Exchange and Cooperation Center." Later a separate department was created as the Foreign Affairs and Foreign Student's Department, now separate from the Tibetan Language Department, but still under the wing of the School for Humanities at Tibet University. The University itself has three campuses and about 5,000 students. It began in 1951 as a PLA school, became a teacher training school in the '70s, and then finally acquired its title Tibet University about 22 years ago. Terms go from late August/mid September to Dec 23rd and early (?) March to July 20th. Next year the foreign students will be moved to a new building in the new university campus outside of town, which will have nicer accommodations that are more expensive but probably actually function year round.
There are six main staff in the Foreign Student's Department, WH and HM work in the office with ST who gets our permits and organizes travel for us foreigners; HP is the head teacher and the other two staff are not around yet so I haven't met them. There is also our wonderful maintainence man, CP, who was just let the gas get turned off again for several days. Most phones don't work, although several can receive calls. The laundry machine is in the bathroom of the restaurant on the bottom floor of our building and most of us stay on the second floor. The third floor being reserved for movie watching, awkward meet and greet sessions, and the clothes drying area, a.k.a., the roof. The view from the roof is beautiful at night, as both the stars, and Lhasa's red Eiffel tower are visible most nights. I'm not kidding about that, there is a huge military radio tower visible from everywhere in the city that is covered in red lights so that at night it looks like the Eiffel tower.