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30 May 2007

to Tibet - Day Twelve: Gyantse Loves a Good Belt Buckle

Tallest building in the highest city in the world.

Our tour of Gyantse was brief. A wonder if it was worth the soul crushing heartbreak to get there. The walled Palkour monastery claimed consolation.

The first courtyard lay freckled with dogs, mostly for the world looking keeled over dead in the morning heat with the clever ones prone in the shade minus where the orbit had shifted their cover. These are said to be have been bad monks reincarnated. The interior of the monastery was refreshing from our previous experiences. The monks were in action sounding chimes to chants and prayers. A familiar heavy sweet incense raged to cloud the air and choke out our breath. There is a marked difference of being in an active monastery. Suddenly i felt like a creep. It's not a good feeling to see monks glancing around mid utterance at a gaggle of goons leaning over their shoulders flashing photographs at their funny hats. Speaking of hats, mine fell off when leaning my head to get a good look through the view finder on my camera. It rolled down the barricade that i was weighted on and into some display of candles and religious iconographies. Out of reach short of attention grabbing hijinx. I rounded up this one guy to grab my hat for me and all was well. He promptly collected ten yuan from me once noticing i was taking pictures, showing a piece of paper instructing me to pay said amount for photography within these two zones. And suddenly i didn't feel quite so awful about taking some respectful photos of some chill dudes singing Buddhist things. As long as i wasn't leaning on their shoulders blasting flares off in their faces and yelling "Kumbaya!" We'd found a way to co-exist as benign tumours on a willing host.

The boy at the toilet wanted one yuan. Sure that's somewhere between a dime and a quarter but it still didn't seem like it was worth it. From the sight of it my imagination triggered a far worse odour than my high and dry blood clotted olfactories were registering. His mother provided the change for my ten bill and i was quick about getting in and out of there. I think i pissed one spot of the urinal trough clean. The boy was in the doorway prolonging my displeasurable stay in camp contamination, fascinated by my belt buckle.

Sure having an eight year old boy play with your belt buckle in the doorway of a dirty men's room has all the ring of a scandal but i assure you our interchange was earnestly innocent. He clapped and laughed to discover how the buckle worked and then turned his attention with equal awe to the chain holding my wallet to my jeans. Another traveller was garnering similar amusement as i was and all of us were trapped in a dark waste hole for a child's curiousity.

We politely managed our way into the cleaner and much sunnier front steps of the washroom. Next on the kid's agenda was more of my overall do. He took a tug on my beard then the wings of my flowing mullet and rocked back and forth with pointy fingers on either side of his head. "Where would this soiled little kid have seen a bull?" was what i was wondering when his mother said "yak" and i instantly remembered i was in Tibet, not outerspace. There has been yaks in every field we've passed, which have been a lot, and every kiosk and corner store is selling yak treats and yak butter. I think that i even had yak yoghurt for breakfast. He shifted back to the wallet chain and we attached it with some difficulty to the yellow cord tightly wound around navy blue jogging pants. Briefly i wondered at who dresses their child in four heavy layers of clothing in thirty degree weather but the tug of war was on.

It became aware to me that i ought to go before the staying became meaningless. The little critter seemed deadset on taking that chain. I searched through my wallet for some trinket to leave in my stead. Ultimately i passed onto him a torn corner of paper, a memorandum of sorts, given to me by a friend years ago that has been greying in my wallet ever since. "Running about with your head in the sky. You make me smile." Deeply profound and beautiful to me, the mentality of most tourist stops made it hard not to think that he was a little disappointed that it wasn't cash. I didn't look for a reaction and i never looked back.

Outside the tour bus more dirty children were getting kicks off of chainsaw belt buckles and cut off jean shorts. What gives? Have i not been tucking in my shirt like always to proudly display the chainsaw that paradoxically holds my pants together? Even more delightful to them was discovering that i could lift one on each arm and swing these ankle biters thus transforming my foreign self into a mobile tilt-a-whirl. It was a more flattering popular vote than when i had initially attracted these schools of piranhas like a naked side of raw beef by shelling out a buck earlier.

Finally at the internet cafe in Shigatse that night a group of pre-teens lost their shit over this 1978 Bergamot clasp and i started to wonder if anyone in Tibet under the age of sixteen had ever seen a belt buckle before. "Chainsaw," i said in case they'd never seen one of those either and mimicked the throaty rattle while pantomiming sawing the desk in half. Then they posed for a picture and a couple of other of their friends called out for the same.

I like these Xigatse people.

joel

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