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

20 Jun 2007

to Tibet - Epilogoue

The tour ended flatly. Over the last few days people were trickling off and i think we were burnt out. Burnt out on the sights, burnt out on the photography and on the personalities. Burnt out from fighting and burnt out from not fighting. Even when the Tong Dynasty lineage got into a taxi to leave another typical lunch in Shanghai there were a few handshakes, the odd hug, but mostly distant waves.

I had been to Tibet. Some representation of it anyway. And i had been to some surrounding areas. A lot of monasteries. I have a newfound understanding if not apathy for Buddhist monks and anything to do with their fuzzy heads and my opinion of tour groups has been galvanised. Oh great holy fuck has it ever been galvanised. Never again. Maybe this ought to be a prologue instead of an epilogue, to make sense of my cynical attitude. Let's pretend this is the beginning before you may have read anything about this trip. Maybe you're reading the blog from the top which will make this a prologue followed by a strange time travel tale where i become decreasingly frustrated before nearly crapping my pants.

As i typed out the daily logs and especially now that i look back i think "what a brat!" How bad could it have been? Who am i to trust, though, a younger me that was there and writing sincerely and sometimes pulling the punches or an older me looking back objectively from the safety of civilisation. As much as i can discern as true is that a tour group is not the way for me to travel. Tour groups should not be associated with traveling. I should change the category on this to "baby sitting" or "sight-seeing" but they don't seem to be listed. You're fed constantly. Someone makes your bed and picks up after you. Tells you when to sleep and when to wake and when to go. I'm not ready for retirement and the idle life drives me buggy after a few days of inactivity. The democracy of movement is laborious. I prefer a dictatorship over one's self. Travel light, travel fast. The higher the numbers the lower the common denominator. I cut all bonds loose in Shanghai. We had three days there with just the four of us. I took it to decompress. I laugh now to think about it and all my talk of living to the fullest and seeing all you can see. I was more or less paralysed with indifference in our hotel room. While the family was out seeing gardens, french districts and Bunds i reclined in bed and watched movie after bad movie on the tube. I had seen Shanghai before. I hadn't been up the Jing Mao tower to see the city from 88 storeys up so i gave that a spin. Other than that i wrote striving text and read when i wasn't doodling. Took the occasional walk around the block to just figure out where i was or to check my e-mail in a typical dim internet cafe. Someone had left a plate of oily soy sauce drenched noodles next to the overflowing ashtray. I could feel my skin becoming sick.

I'd like to say there was an exciting conclusion but i think it's already apparent there wasn't. The trip grinded to a halt with a great deal of biding my time and biting my tongue. I suppose that after a week back home i have insights that reflect greater meaning on the whole event. Like take a moment, even if you feel no need, to wait a breath or two to think. Not about anything in particular. Just to be thoughtful. But that's the shit for fortune cookies and i still feel like i never want to see Chinese food again.

Other than a long wait in the airport and all that nonsense of catching a plane, my last memory of Shanghai, China and our trip to Tibet was sitting in the hotel lounge ordering cake after cake after ice cream after different kinds of tea for an hour or two with my brother as we tried to use up my remaining soon-to-be foreign currency. On the surface a rather dull sounding moment in a particularily sterile polished white marblish environment of wooden constructs, couches and moody lighting placed to emphasise the dollar value of the lobby's design, listening to silly jazz music and chuckling about the abundant solos. I don't know if i will ever forget it and i don't know if there's any particular reason to remember.

joel

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