day: 01 02 03 04 05 06 07 08 09 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 epilogue

29 May 2007

to Tibet - Day Eleven: Punching a Path to Gyantse

Hoo boy. Okay, up and out of Lhasa early. Ten hours to Gyantse if you count the sidetrack to Yamdrock Lake. One of four holy lakes located, like everything else here, high in the mountains away from everything but the souvenir whoring windigos. The simple colourful farmers with friendly smiles had transformed on the peak into gnarl faced opportunistic cannibals with vicious talons. We barely made it out of the tour bus alive; i fed one of the other tour members to the throng as a decoy and darted hard right for an open stretch of crusty beige lawn on a hill away from a pulsing wound of cancerous leches and crotch rubbers. Sick pus flavoured tongues licking at our eyes and our wallets, yanking on tourist dongs for a squirt of fertile coin. My bladder was at capacity and agitated by a lengthy bump ride up the switchback roads and no whorish visions of native handicrafts would keep the urine in check from the hot splash eruption behind the pool table and sign. How do i get stuck like this? In a bathroom limbo constantly? My dad later shared his account of two Tibetan ladies getting irate with a tourist from one of the countless other buses that had not shelled out some photo-bucks and were beating him with rocks. Can you blame them? Do you really want to spend your days by a holy lake pandering its virtue and the virtue of your people to the likes of us armchair travelling consumeristic parasites? I mean a precident has been established; if you photograph the locals you pay them about ten yuan. Twenty if it's a child or an extremely weathered old lady. Naturally a raisin skin old hag carrying a grubby chubby baby is going to come at a premium.

The escape up the incline to see more of this great salty lake and less of this shitty cesspool drew attention to the pounding tightness on my head from the extra altitude we had driven and the returning shortness of breathe. Brother was rotten to the guts from some of the routine oil drink they have been feeding us. The sad show up there, what with the local dogs dressed up and their necks in some kind of fuzzy traditional do, had defeated my spirits. I felt like an asshole as much as any of these chumps for being here and doing this. I stuck in my headphones to take a break from the hell ride back into the valley. As the loving plang of beats consumed me i sort slipped into a half sleep.

I'm not sure why i woke up at all. My arm was warm in the light and these in-ear headphones shut out EVERYTHING. I looked across the bus at one lady with her gums flapping rapidly to her flopping body language and arm waving. Pointing she was and leaning to the front of the bus. What the shit? I popped out my headphones in time to overhear "controlled area" and "occupied zone." Things about India, Kashmir, China and Tibet. I was thinking "shiss, this is a little heavy of a topic for this lot" then looked to the bow of the bus and the one guy was barking into the mic and pointing firmly at one tour member. Next thing i saw was the mic dropping WWE style and he was marching down the aisle at the tourist, arm outstretched as if to make a go at choking him out. I was a beat away from jumping up headlong to intercept but was too flabbergasted while a closer more active guy broke it up.

Meanwhile, with all of the pushing and shoving we're plummetting down zig zagging roads that barely allow for two tour buses to co-exist. I'm glad the drivers out here have nerves of steel. A lot of yelling and tears later there was some agreement to stop encouraging our pilot to pitch us into a deep unforgiving ravine.

I managed to bolt from the group at one stop to wade in the river where it was still clean next to the Tibetans planting trees. Most of the day is a horrible tarnished memory, the politics and diplomacy and committees that followed made me wish they had left me on the roadside to rot the rest of my days away with silt between my toes. Those shallow waters i prefer to this.

joel

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