Back from the “Top of The World”

I came back from my trip to Tibet, Bhutan, Nepal and Thailand last week. Being in awe for three weeks during the trip, it is hard to come back to the routine of everyday life in Los Angeles. I got used to being a tourist: kept wondering where I would get my next meal in a city I had never been in before and in a country where people don’t speak English; wondering if my next hotel room will have hot water, or how much I will suffer from the altitude sickness, or how many wonders I will see that day.


The trip had many highlights.


I was in Nepal when the Maoists called a national general strike and I had to travel across country to the border with Tibet during that event. I had to pass through protesters’ many ad-hoc Maoists check points where non-governmental Maoists were making the decision whether to let my group pass or not. Luckily they did let us pass but later on I found out that there were some incidents where the tourists got beaten. The tourists were disrespectful, the rumors went, and failed to stop at a check point.


Near the end of my trip, I was in Bangkok during the bloodiest uprising in the contemporary history of Thailand.


I walked on the streets of Lhasa avoiding at all costs looking suspicious to the Chinese soldiers in full riot gear stationed at many corners of the Tibetan section while the Tibetans were going about their business buying yak butter and vegetables, conducting business and sipping cups of yak butter tea in the tea houses.




I had a private audience with His Holiness Demjom Tenzin Yeshey Dorjee, a highly revered Rimpoche of Bhutan and talked about the shape of Buddhism in the West and how Buddhist ideas are merging with the industrialized world in a complementary rather than adversarial way and the role of spirituality in a technologically evolving world. His Holiness, open minded and visionary, believes that “compassion is the way to connect with one another and with the entire world in a meaningful way and the best way out of suffering.”




I went over mountain passes of over 16,500 feet altitude on my overland drive from Kathmandu, Nepal to Lhasa, Tibet, on the Friendship Highway, touching or gazing at the tallest mountains in the world in complete wonder while my lungs were desperately expanding to their maximum capacity in the thin air.




I was fortunate that the clouds cleared when I flew China Air over Mount Everest (8848 m) and K2 and was able to see firsthand the tallest mountains in the world.




In Tibet there are many powerful rivers, turquoise lakes at 14,000 feet altitude and patches of barley farms.

Our hotel in Lhasa--The Lhasa Yak Hotel, owned and run entirely by Tibetans--was in the Tibetan section of Lhasa, five minutes from the Jokhang Temple.

A street in Lhasa on the East side of the Jokhang Temple, the most revered religious structure in Tibet. Pilgrims come from great distances to prostrate in front of this temple. They also do koras, circumambulate around the temple while chanting prayers, most commonly OM MANI PADME HUM--the most sacred mantra of Tibetan Buddhism, which embraces generosity, pure ethics, tolerance and patience, perseverance, concentration and discipline of the mind and achieving wisdom to overcome suffering.

The snowy peaks you see above the clouds are the Himalayan range of mountains with Everest among them. But there are others. Seventeen of the tallest mountains in the world are there as well.

Potala Palace--the former monastic spiritual and administrative heart of Tibet before the Chinese took over in the 1950's, the winter residence for Dalai Lamas. Now it is a museum. All the rooms are empty of staff conducting business and of monks chanting and praying. There are only a few monks allowed to remain at Potala. They are considered not monks but "caretakers" of the place. They are also not allowed to wear the monk's traditional red robes but ugly, dark blue, knee long trench coats. Nevertheless, they still quietly chant while cleaning the windows or shining the silver bowls; and they bless, with a smile, the tourists peering at them in the shadows of the sacred chapels and corridors.

Monks debating at Sera Monastery in Lhasa. Every Tuesday, they have this big meeting where they debate various Buddhist concepts and existential dilemmas. They are animated, talking loud, clapping their hands in approval or disapproval of an answer they receive from the opponents. Our Tibetan guide explained that I if someone gives an uninspired answer, the other debater gives a hand jesture that implies with good humor: "Your brain is yogurt. Think harder!"

Completely dominated by the powerful landscape surrounding it, Lhasa has suffered a radical transformation. Outside the Tibetan sections, it has become a rapidly expanding complex of glass and cement--the vision of a "modern" city in the Chinese leaders' minds, who are erasing the Tibetan culture, tradition and unique architecture from the city.

The Potala Palace, as we are getting ready to climb the monumental staircases to go inside. Only a small portion of the rooms are open to visitors. The most moving for me was the section where the current Dalai Lama, the 14th, lived as a child and teenager. They are unpretentious and cozy. We saw his throne hall, his meditation room, the room where he was studying or giving private audiences. It seemed that everything was awaiting his return. In his "day room" we saw the clock he liked to take apart and put back together. He was and remains intensely interested in technology and science.

The Summer Palace of the Dalai Lama, in Norbulinga Park. It is a complex of summer residences of Dalai Lamas. It has a pond with swans and a large library. In this picture you can see the palace built by the 14th (present) Dalai Lama in 1959. This is the place from where he fled Tibet in the same year, under artillery fire from the Chinese, who were suppressing a large Tibetan uprising by shooting them at point blank range even as they sought refuge in the temples. To this day, the Dalai Lama has never been allowed to return. He only enjoyed his new palace for a few troubled months.

In this palace, I saw pictures of cats and dogs given to the Dalai Lama as gifts because his love for animal was well known. I saw two big radios from the 50s given to him by the President of Russia at the time because of his passion for technology was well known too. In his throne hall, there is a painting of the young Dalai Lama on one of the walls that tourists are only allowed to view from the distance. He looks like the Dalai Lama we know. He is surrounded by his family and he places his teachers above his head, portraying them as if they continue to give him guidance and teach him fundamental wisdom. Everything is taken care of by the Tibetans in deep reverence even though the Dalai Lama lives now in exile. A big part of who He is remains in the hearts of his people and in rooms and hallways of his old dwelling places.

I was surprised to see a painting on a wall of this palace depicting the Tibetan origins story of their people. They believe that a monkey and a goddess got together and had offspring that multiplied over time and populated Tibet. Could it get any more Darwinistic than that? I remembered then that the Dalai Lama often had said that Buddhism is not in conflict with science but goes hand in hand with it, and that spirituality and technological advancements--without going against each other--are both dimensions of the human mind and identity.

You can see in this picture Everest (left) and K2 (right), surrounded by the tallest peaks in the world, and a glimpse of the valleys below.

There is much to say. The list goes on. It will take me a long time to process what I have seen and experienced.

Some things can only be seen or touched to fully experience them. I can only say that being a globe trotter is amazingly enriching, however taxing, exhausting and expensive it may be.

Have you ever had an irresistible desire to visit a particular place in the world? Have you done it? What have you learned from the experience?