MORE TIBET

Above: monks in a restaurant - Yajiang
12th August 2007
My friend Ludovic Hubler, the first man to pursosely hitchike around the world not spending a penny on transport and passing Antartica on the way, said life is not a restaurant but a buffet - you stand up and take what you want. I agree with him, life IS a buffet, but at the same time you have to fight the ninjas who are jumping out of every corner trying to make you give up all your energy and relax into the drugged river of conformity. A strange buffet! Only today, for example, I was offered horse cheese, one of the stranger foods I declined here in the Tibeten autonomous region of Western Sichuan. Yes, I am now 4000 meters above sea level - now that is a big dive! I'm gonna get on my speedo swimming pants and make several thousand tripple twists and salto mortals before I hit the brine!
Triin and I are in Litang, Western Sizhuan - I slept in the bus next to a woman who was mumbling over her prayer beads in Tibetan the whole way. We stopped at a restaurant - well, a stone house in a valley with some dogs, a few yaks and a temple not far away. To go to the toilet you had to judge the length of the chain holding two dogs to opposite sides of the gateway and dash through - something like a computer game except you dont get cramp in your legs but dogs jaws. I went to look at the temple because the food I had already in my belly was already not agreeing with the wiggly-woggly pothole-massive road. The temple turned out to be a nunnery - lovely bald nuns showed me around - i dont know, do you take you hat off or leave it on in a buddhist temple? The temple stood in the centre of a walled complex and the nuns had their quarters in cells along the high walls. There was a tree or two but otherwise all you could see were bare green rolling mountains and a sparkling stream running down the middle. However, when you look closer the earth is like a carpet of flowers. Star-like yellow and white flowers, little orange buds and clumps of colourful heather.

We pulled up in Litang and chose a way too spicey bowel of noodles - I could feel the end of every single hair on my head and waves of heat echoing through my brain and making my finger nails tingle. Then we struggled to find a place to stay - one hotel cost 350 yuan but after a bit more searching we found a guest house for 10 yuan each. It sits on the main road above a yak butter tea cafe which looks nice but seems not to have anything vegan on the menu apart from hot water. I am in no hurry to go back to the room - it was dreary enough in the day time - four mattresses on pallets with strange traces of dripping down some of the walls, graffitti in chinese and tibetan and a blue light just strong enough to drink vodka by. Anyhow, it is a bed and I am tired. The 20 steps to the first floor leave me panting like a porn star.
We did a show and made 100 yuan - which was the cost of our bus journey and hostel so that is OK. It was quite a show - I have to take huge breaths to get any sound out of the clarinet - I think it is working no worse than it ever did, but it is hard to blow up here. When I get down to sea level it will sound like a trumpet and my singing will make Pavarotti sound like a shy footballer trying to remember his national anthem.

Among our audience were a few really outstanding specimens, a woman in a long robe with a coin belt and sitting on her long plaited hair was a big fury orange hat giving her an extra foot of height! Some really dirty people - I heard Tibetans dont wash and I believe it now - some rough characters have mud and soot on their face and many of the kids have little Hitler moustaches of snot but all so smiley and nice. And although they may not wash much they sure do look dope - some really smart dressers - about 70% of the men wear a broad white kind of cowboy hat on one side of their head and never seem to put their arms down the sleeves of their jackets, just draping them here or there over their body. Many women also wear cowboy hats but many wear blamonge white cakes on their heads like the English aristocratic women wear to the big horse races or women of African origin in the Southern United States wore to chuch on Sundays back in the Charleston days... ahh! Wow - they look so good!

A few guys have long knives and pretty much everyone has long flowing black hair except the monks who have it cut short and often wear a long golden visor like a welding mask pulled up. The horse seems to have been replaced by the motorbike but they deck it out with bizarre finery - flowers on tall metal stems, streams of coloured leather from the handlebars, stickers galore and metal studs all over the mud guards, small carpets over the saddles, stereos blasting Tibetan folk techno and even a Chinese flag to add colour. These are riden by monks in full purple robes or kids looking as young as 12 years old. The skin of some locals is almost central African brown but with shining bright red cheeks shining like toffee apples! Some women take care to keep pale skin and they look almost ghoastly with their bright red lips and red cheeks shining out of sheet white skin. We took a stroll out to the plain - a totally flat expanse of emptiness with mountains rising up in the distance. a few horses and yaks stood about and a nomad tent or two. Very impressive.

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I have been now roughly 6 months in china and only 1 week in tibet and although in all this time I have never dreamt of chinese my dreams recently have been full of Tibetans: trying to steel my passport, Tibetans staring at me, long hitch-hikes and more. We played again in Litang - 4000m above sea level and I found it much easier to play this time - I was not panting after each song like a dog in the sahara. Triin and I went for quite a stroll - up the mountain behind litang - I mean up and up and up. I think we must have ascended another 1000m when we came across a nomad camp. The dogs were barking but further away from the tents than us so we approached carefullly and asked for some water. The air is a little dry sometimes up here. The husband was about to set off on his motorbike somewhere but dismounted and asked us inside. The tent was held up with hundreds of ropes - like a Hornblower schooner - and the black material had an inside lining of black plastic bags to stop the rain getting in. I guessed that they collected the rainwater somehow because it was probably a little scarce up there on the mountain. One child lay asleep on one of the many blankets that lined the inside of the tent. Two others hid behind their parents slowly getting used to our presence. The father was the one who invited us in, his wife seemed to be the lady who gave us tea and some food and then there was an old lady who waved her prayer wheel constantly sometimes hitting the bell weight against one of the two inner tent poles. There were three children and one more young woman. The eldest child, a six year old girl, was really communacative after being at first very shy and she insisted on pouring my tea and laughed and smiled a lot and surprised me by suddenly spitting in the face of this other woman. Perhaps she was the second wife or even the slave. She stood at the back with a big smile but did not say a word or even laugh with any noise. They husband asked if we were hungry and we said we were a little hungry so they took out two bowels and opened a canvas bag hanging by the earth oven - it was full of a powder which they mixed with sugar and some hot water. Triin was amazed - "Hey this is Kama" - that is an Estonian finely milled powder mixture of roasted barley, rye, oats and pea flour. It is basically Tibetan Haferflocken or porridge. And just as delicious as its western equivalent! I declined the nob of yak butter but it still tasted great. I did some but bongos and crab walking and even a handstand which almost brought the tent down on the Sampa high - for that is the name for this basic meal in Tibet, maybe spelt samba! I dunno.
Anyhow, they did not accept the offer of money for the food or my huge pair of sunglasses for the man of the tent hold, so we departed and headed up the big mountain waving at them as we left and calling out TASIDELI - which means hello, goodbye, goodluck and everything in tibetan for me cos it is the only word I know, and Samba of course. We walked backwards up the mountain, more interesting and less tough than walking right ways - and very slowly we headed up. I even carried Triin a couple of times. I have a new walking stick which I found in chengdu and which is as precious to me as Frodo Baggins magic ring of power. Despite all my misgivings I let her carry it and felt my energy wane! Anyhow we made it to the top where a pile of stones stood and some tibetan prayer flags and a fantastic view over .. you guessed it... more and more and more mountains! There seemed to be some clouds closing in our way so we headed off down hill which was tough because it was too rocky to rolly-polly and Triins filp-flops fell off when she ran. We followed a little river in a steep gorge like the river than leads into Smaulgs misty mountain and apart from the many yak on the way we spotted some small round marmots running into their holes in the distance. The yak are really much smaller than western cows - about the size of a seaside donkey but with long tails that almost touch their necks and thin necks and strange shabby growths of often dreadlocked hair. Some have white patches but if they do have a white head their eyes are always ringed with black like an executioners mask. They run more often then western cows do and the bigger ones have long bending horns. Enough yak chat.
We made it back to Litang and after our last night here started walking out of town. We had walked about 6 km uphill along the empty road with all our bags before we got a ride. I think our chauffeur dude was some general in the army because he was very glum and only waved at a group of soldiers on the whole journey. He did not talk to us at all after the first 5 minutes during which time he told us he was on holiday which sounded as credible as our assertions of being from Zimbabwe.
Although he was going to Chengdu let us out where he stopped for lunch - that is ok - he had a comfy big american 4x4 but I guess we can find another ride as good. Litang was a town half tibetan and half chinese with a big army presence. The army baracks are guarded by young boys with what look like potato guns - but I guess they fire haki sacks or something. I dont feel able to judge on the free tibet issue but I was amazed by the amount of building work going on in the two big temples we visited. A lot of money is coming in from somewhere to make some of the most beautiful places of worship I have ever seen. Amazing wood carving and huge statues of buddha and fantastic wall frescos. really astounding. Unfortunately I left my camera charger in chengdu for the whole of this adventure so Iwas not able to take photos but I did many paintings

<- painting of temple in Litang by Vegan

Lots of love

Jimbino

Decked in full-tibetan attire, white stetson,

long side buttoned robe and chinese army boots!