Saturday, June 2, 2001
No time for a real journal entry right now,
but I wanted to post something before I disappeared for a while, so here's
a letter I wrote to James:
Camping was great -- Karakul lake was gorgeous; we camped right next
to it in a pasture which is home to tons of sheep and yaks during the
day...at night I guess they go to karaoke bars or something. The
weather was bizarre; it would snow for five minutes, then rain for
five minutes, then the sun would come out for a while, then it
would get really windy. Overall not too bad, though a little cold.
It was a good warm-up for Tibet, though; both Juliette and I bought
a few extra layers since then. The tent is perfect...still heavy,
though I'm getting used to the weight. The sleeping bag isn't quite
as warm as I'd hoped, but I think if I wear enough clothes at night
I'll be okay around freezing.
The people are nice, though not quite as warm as Tibetans in Dharamsala
on average, perhaps. But many are really nice, and just a few aren't very
nice. We hitched back from Karakul, and first a local guy driving a pickup
with five passengers picked us up...after a while, as is typical, he stopped
the truck in the middle of nowhere to ask for money. He didn't accept what
we offered him so we got out. Our next ride (five minutes later -- we were
having an extraordinarily lucky day) was a stylin' four-wheel-drive
Mitsubishi jeep. He was quiet (no English) and grim the whole trip, and
we expected him to try to make a lot of money from us, especially when
he drove us to the door of our hotel, but he drove off without asking for
a single mao.
The countryside here in Kashgar isn't so exciting, it's flat with some
dirt hills on the horizon. A bit south towards Pakistan starts being
interesting with some beautiful snow mountains behind the crumbly
rock hills, and a lot of landslides and riverbeds.
Today Juliette and I go to Yesheng, on our way to Kailash.
I expect we'll be out of touch for as long as we're in Tibet, and
possibly a bit longer until we get back to a city in China.
We're planning to go back to Yesheng afterwards, but there's some
small possibility we end up going to Lhasa instead -- who knows.
Anyway it will probably be at least three weeks, and possibly six,
before I can email again. If it's longer than that, send out the
national guard, or the search yaks, or whatever. There are some
risks in this trip (primarily being sent back at a PSB checkpoint),
but confronting the challenges is a large part of our motivation...
we accept all possibilities.
A quick note on Mount Kailash.
This is a huge mountain in Western Tibet, very beautiful and
very high altitude, It's considered one of the holiest mountains
by Buddhists, Hindus, and the ancient Tibetan Bon religion,
and is a sacred pilgrimage site.
Juliette and I are planning
to hitch to Kailash surreptitiously, hopefully avoiding checkpoints
on the off-limits road, and at Kailash where they require all
sorts of permits. It can take as little as three days to get to
the first town, but we've got food for over a week in case we have
trouble getting a ride, or if there's a breakdown en route.
This route is a little unorthodox, but has been completed successfully
enough times that we're optimistic and excited. Once we arrive at
Kailash, we plan to circumambulate the mountain on the pilgrimage
kora, which takes maybe three days. After that it's up to the piggybank
to decide.