My travel diaries
Friday 27 April, 2007 - Shigatse, Tibet
On the road and heading west en route to Everest Base Camp. I share a Landcruiser with Mark and Chris. All day long I'm looking for the classic Tibetan photo of a blue lake in the foreground, brown and yellow hills behind, and snow-capped mountains in the background. Meanwhile Chris is snapping away at anything and everything. At one point he asks our driver to stop so that he can photograph a flock of sheep. Mark and I glance at each other thinking the same thought (that Chris is Welsh and sheep are involved) and wondering which one of us is going to be the first to say anything. In the end it's Mark, but his remark is relatively tame.
"Of course, there aren't in sheep in Wales," he says.
Chris realises what he's gone and done. "Oh no, you're not going to go down the sheep shagger route?" he replies. We're already seven days into the expedition, and this is the first time anyone's mentioned sheep shagging to Chris. He must have been expecting it to happen much sooner. "All I'll say to put the matter to rest," he continues, "is a few of them were quite attractive."
Later on we see discs of flattened yak turd drying out in rows on a hillside. A discussion follows about the environmental pros and cons of burning yak dung instead of wood. I forget the arguments but once again Mark proves to be a mine of information on this obscure topic.
We reach Shigatse, Tibet's second city, at about 4.30. I'm not sure quite what I was expecting, but it wasn't this. After we've driven for a few minutes along modern boulevards and are approaching the heart of the city, Mark breaks the silence.
"Is it me or are we back in Lhasa?"
Somehow, I had expected Shigatse to be 'the real Tibet' (whatever that means), but once again we find ourselves driving through a modern Chinese city. When we arrive at our hotel, Mic, who came to Tibet last year, tells me Shigatse appears to be about a third as big again as it was the last time he was here.
Late in the afternoon Mark and I decide to go for a wander around. Opposite our hotel is Tashilhunpo Monastery, the biggest in Tibet and seat of the Panchen Lama. The Panchen Lama has traditionally been Tibet's second most important spiritual leader after the Dalai Lama, and was originally the tulku (incarnation) of the Dalai Lama's teacher. However, since the 10 th Panchen Lama died in 1989, the position has been disputed, with the Chinese government and the Dalai Lama's Tibetan government in exile each producing their own rival candidates. Tragically, the Dalai Lama's candidate, Gedhum Choekyi Nyima, has not been heard from since he was taken by Chinese security forces as a 6 year old boy in 1995.
Tashilhunpo Monastery compound dominates the western side of the city as it stretches wide across the foot of a hill. It may be something special, but we're both monastery veterans and neither of us feels like going inside this late in the afternoon. Instead we walk down the road to explore the old quarter of the city. We wander between buildings huddled beneath the old fort, down narrow passageways with open drainage systems running down the side of them. The fort itself stands on a hillside overlooking the old town. It has recently been renovated and looks like a much smaller version of the Potala Palace. As we get further from the fort, the passageways become wider and the houses a little larger, situated behind walled compounds. This is clearly the posh part of the old town, though the buildings still retain their traditional character. Posher it may be, but open drains still run alongside the passageways, and while we are having a conversation about sanitation we walk round a corner and see a man pissing up against the side of a wall. A little while later we pass a woman carrying a baby and rolling a petrol can along the ground in front of her as she goes. Then we emerge into the modern commercial Chinese streets once again. I check my e-mails in a horrible poky, smoky black hole of an internet café before returning to our hotel. I've received a message from my friend Tony inviting me out for a beer, and take great delight in replying to say I'd love to but am in Tibet.
At dinner that evening Bunter relates an incident which occurred earlier while he was exploring the city. He stopped to take a photograph of Tashilhunpo Monastery when a young Tibetan woman walked up to him and put her foot right up alongside his own to compare its size. His was about twice as large. She muttered something to her friend and they both roared with laughter.
"I've no idea what they were saying, but it must have been funny," Bunter tells us, at which point about three of us simultaneously give the same reply. "I know what she said: 'big feet, small dick'!"
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