We gathered at 5am in the Traffic Hotel lobby in Chengdu with about 12 other tourists. Four or five minivans shuttled us to the airport. We got one van just for us and our stuff. The bikes stuck out the side door. Traffic was light so our driver rarely used his horn!

Strangely, our driver dropped us off 100 meters from the front of the airport. All the other vans stopped much closer. So we had to lug everything over. Lots of stuff. So at 5:45 a.m. I was already angry. It reminded me of the flight from Jinghong to Chengdu, where the plane parked 200 meters down the tarmac from the gate--and there were no planes or other things blocking his way. "Almost but not quite" is typical in China.

Check-in was easy. We had to get a bus to the plane (has anyone heard of ramps?). Somehow we managed to be almost the last people on this almost full 757. I don't know how they ALL managed to get on before us but they took almost every inch of overhead space. It was 6:45 a.m. and I was angry again. Fortunately a nice stewardess put our stuff in a few empty seats in the back row. Another nice person from our 'tour group' traded seats so we could sit together.

After we landed and fought our bikes off the conveyor belt we found out the Lhasa airport isn't in Lhasa. It's two hours away. I climbed the ladder on the back of the bus to haul our bikes to the top. The driver helped me tuck them under a cargo net.

The ride from the airport had awesome scenery. Wide, somewhat flooding, braided rivers filled the valley between lifeless rocky hills. Deciduous trees grew, though not tall, along the river. The hills were just rocks. We stopped once on the way so the driver could take a whiz and the 'tour' could see a 20-foot tall Buddha face carved into a rock. A few Tibetans reached into the bus windows to beg. It was a sign of things to come.

Our first time in Chengdu, we met a couple we now call the London Lawyers, Ben and Sarah. They were from England, but had been working in Tokyo and were on their way back to England. On the way, they took six weeks off to cycle in China and Tibet. They had left for Lhasa just as we left for Chongqing, and they had arrived in Kathmandu by the time we made it back to Chengdu the second time. From Kathmandu, they emailed an excellent set of road notes, including tips for the Lhasa arrival.

One thing they had warned us about was the Lhasa hotel where all the tours land, the Tashi. The Tashi is cheap but dumpy (dingy, smelly, stained carpets, dirty bathrooms). When Ben and Sarah arrived, they got stuck in a dorm room. They mentioned that in e-mail. So back in Chengdu, we asked our travel agent how to get a private room. He said to just ask, and that we might have to pay extra. It turns out that the Tashi gives out private rooms for no extra fee until it runs out. Then it starts giving out dorm space. So if you fly from Chengdu to Lhasa, try to rush off the bus into the hotel to grab a private room. We were lucky, we got the last one. The woman behind the desk was very quiet about giving it to us because she didn't want to cause a riot among the rest of our tour.

Outside the hotel, Lhasa was magical. Bright BRIGHT sunlight. White, white clouds. Prayer flags on sticks, clumped like bamboo in the top corners of every building, flapping in a stiff breeze. Roughly square black and white brick buildings like something out of medieval times. Tibetans wearing heavy, dark suit coats and fedoras. Every sculpted, weathered face just like on the cover of National Geographic. Old men with canes creeping clockwise around the town's main temple, the Jokhang, spinning prayer wheels as they went. Little kids flying small kites made of sticks and newspapers. Other kids grabbing my hand asking for something, probably money.

The Jokhang is about the holiest Buddhist site in Tibet. It contains 7th Century Buddha images. We walked around the outside of the Jokhang with lots of Buddhist pilgrims and their prayer wheels. These handheld wheels are like a short fat can on a stick. The ‘can’ is usually made out of metal with an intricate pattern etched in (Tibetan words). Inside the can is a paper with a prayer written on it. Attached to the outside of the can is a short chain with a weight on the end. The weight makes it possible to spin the can around and around. Each rotation makes a prayer.

The pilgrims' route around the Jokhang is lined with stalls selling prayer wheels, fur hats, calculators, electronic alarm clocks (constantly beeping), beaded necklaces, sheep and yak skulls decorated with stones and silver, Coke, sheep skins, Nike hats, Adidas duffel bags, Chicago Bulls caps, etc. Lots of monks amble among the pilgrims. They wear heavy, dark robes. Many want money. "Hello? Hello? Money? Money?" they say, and hold out their hands. Sometimes they hold out a big clump of Yuan notes and boldly ask for more. Sometimes they grab your arm or camera. We call the physical incidents monk muggings. (Joan: sometimes Eric would snap at them, "Are you a monk, or a mugger?")

After taking this in during a quick walk around the Jokhang and a short lunch, we went to sleep for six hours. When I woke up I had a headache. We went out for dinner and I felt queasy. It was dark by then and all the lights looked really bright and chromy to me. I think, on top of the bronchitis we were both fighting, I had an altitude headache. Lhasa is abut 12,300 feet above sea level. The next morning my head really hurt. It lasted until afternoon the next day. After that I got better.

We ate dinner the first night at a restaurant called Tashi. We missed the main entrance and walked through a side door. It was dark. My oversensitive eyes could see a bright wood burning fire. Through my stuffed-up nose I smelled urine and worse among the smoke. And was that really wood they were burning? It didn't smell like wood. We think it was yak dung. It wasn't an appetizing entrance. Luckily we found a stairway that led to a fairly clean, crowded dining room. It smelled good up there so we stayed. Dinner was fine. We ended up eating there several times.

We usually ate veggie bobies (fried potatoes, onions, etc.) served with chapati. Kind of a Tibetan burrito. For breakfast we ate banana pancakes, which were more like crepes. Those came with honey. We also got momo's, steamed dumplings that are usually filled with yak meat--only we got them with apple filling. They were like apple tarts.

This description may make Tibetan food sound good. It wasn't. The food was good, but a bit bland and heavy, yet not quite filling. I much preferred Chinese food because they use spices and have far more variety.

Lhasa has clear blue skies. No haze and smog like we saw in Chengdu. But it stinks way more. Tibetans make lots of fires with wood and who knows what (yak dung, at least), and they don't have proper chimneys. Often we walked by doorways and got blasted with smelly smoke. Or, we'd be walking down the street and we'd see grown men standing against a building urinating. (We saw kids do this a lot in Chinese city, but never adults). We eventually got used to all this.

Next: We grow comfy in Lhasa.

Tibet Main Page World Trip