“I don’t remember much about it now,” he recalls, “just walking.”

He was just five years old.

Illegally crossing the border, they smuggled themselves into India, finding work in hopes of making money to restart a better life once they could return to Tibet.  Eventually, his mother would return home, leaving Tenzin and his brothers to work and send money home.  Finally, five years ago, and nearly eighteen years since he arrived in India, it was Tenzin’s turn to return home—leaving one brother in jail and the other working in New Delhi.

I sat in their humble two room home in Lhasa, as Tenzin translated his mother’s version of their family story for me.  Framed by long strands of gray shoulder-length hair, the broad smile that had greeted me dissolved into despair as she spoke of Tenzin’s younger brother, still working in the outskirts of Delhi, who she hadn’t seen in years.

After finishing my seven day tour of Tibet, I had hoped to find a ride to India via Nepal, but I was having a surprisingly difficult time securing such transportation.  This predicament left me to wander the streets of Lhasa for a week, hoping an opportunity for a ride would turn up.  Due to the confusing permits required to travel within Tibet (see previous post), I had abandoned any thought of public transport or hitchhiking, as I didn’t want to be caught in a place I didn’t have permission to travel through.  I had come to Tenzin to ask his help in arranging such a ride.  “I want to go to Delhi,” I told him.  “My brother lives there,” Tenzin responded, and this conversation had led me to his home.

After his return to Tibet, Tenzin took a job with a tourism company.  Because he had lived in India for part of his life (his Indian accent being a telltale sign) he was not allowed by the Chinese government to be a tour guide in Tibet, one of the better paying jobs in the country, because of the risk that he may be working on behalf or have met the Dali Lama (who has been living in exile in India for years).

“There are monks who are spies in the temples and monasteries and they would turn me into the police if they caught me in the temples with tourists,” he said.

Tenzin’s brother was still in New Delhi, hoping to raise the necessary $4600 USD to pay a company that said they could get him a work visa in the US—a dream that held up all the hope the family seemed to have.  $4600 to a family that makes less than $100 per month is a fortune—and that was just for the visa.  I couldn’t find the courage to tell them that the plane ticket could cost $2000, living expenses in the US might be a few thousand dollars a month and that, is all assuming the promise for the visa was not a scam.

As I sat there on that couch across from Tenzin’s mother, being poured endless cups of hospitality and butter tea, I could see sadness in her eyes that came from the space separating her from her youngest son in Delhi, but I could also sense the hope in her voice as she spoke of her faith that her son would, one day, find passage and work in my country.  When she heard the news that I was headed to Delhi, she turned to me and looked deeply into my eyes before speaking.  Holding my hand, I could not understand the meaning of what she said, although I could feel the emotion that enveloped her words.

Tenzin translated, “She says, please when you get to Delhi, help my son if you can.  You are his hope.”  She continued, “I must ask you to give him something if you get there.”

“Of course,” I responded.

The broad smile returned to her face, wiping away any hint of despair, and she began exchanging words excitedly with Tenzin.

“My mom wants you to come back tomorrow.  After she gets done with her morning prayers at the temple, she will go buy something for you to take to Teslling, my brother.”

We sat together in the family room for another hour sipping tea and exchanging bits and pieces of our lives, before I said good night and slipped into the shadowy ancient streets of Lhasa, to return to my guesthouse.  I stopped by the next afternoon and though Tenzin was no where to be found (or to translate), his mother greeted me with a big hug, a smile and an offer once again for more butter tea.  Despite the fact I didn’t speak her first language and she didn’t understand mine, it seemed we both knew enough basic Chinese to have a rudimentary conversation for a few minutes, before she handed me a box.

“For my son,” she said with a proud smile, reaching out to touch my arm.

Inside was a simple pair of cheap white basketball shoes, but as I stood their in their humble home, in front of a kind old woman who possessed a faith that had carried her through a lifetime of struggles that I could never truly understand, I sensed that between the tissue paper and rubber soles in that box was not just a pair of shoes but a little piece of her family’s hope.

“Thank you,” she said with her eyes, as I tucked the box tightly under my arm and turned to walk out the door to begin the long journey to India.

(photo: carrying the shoes across Tibet, Nepal to the outskirts of New Delhi)

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If I were to say the word ‘Tibet’ to you, it would likely conjure, in your mind, images of temples, monks and mountains. It’s unlikely it would make you think of dance clubs. To assist you in such future visualization exercises, we bring you the next in the ongoing series of ‘What It’s Like’ videos, this one from Lhasa, Tibet. Breaking with normal form, in which I usually do not add much commentary to these videos, this one requires a bit of a setup.

After seven days of touring monasteries and temples, praying with monks and crisscrossing the Himalayan foot hills, we decided to try to get a glimpse of the contemporary life of young Tibetans and found ourselves chasing an invitation to one of Lhasa’s most popular dance clubs.

We arrived fashionably late and after the formalities at the door, we entered a cavernous room full of hundreds of rowdy, young Tibetans, mostly between the ages of 18 and 30—all crammed in circular booths drinking what else but cans of cheap, full strength American Budweiser Beer (Tibet is the country outside of America, where I’ve seen (and drank) the most of America’s favorite King of Beers).

We found a table on the upper floor, one of the last left in the place, despite it being only 8pm. Over the next six hours we’d be entertained with all types of amusement, including traditional Tibetan dances, karaoke, stage plays, pantomimes, drummers and singers (some of Tibet’s most famous), among other things. Every four or five acts, a Tibetan pop hit would explode from the speakers and the crowd would rise from there beer can covered tables to cram the stage for an all-out MTV Grind-style dance party, returning to their seats every single time after just one song. More amusing acts would follow, then once again a club-wide, single song dance party would ensue. I was actually quite impressed, as I realized a few hours into the evening, that they had not played a single American pop song, an experience you’d never have in Beijing, Bangkok, Buenos Aries, Pretoria, Paris or Perth. All the entertainment at this thumping Tibetan dance club was, surprisingly, Tibetan.

The menagerie of spectacle, the heavily pulsating lights, the cheesy re-creation of the Potallah Palace (the home of the exiled Dali Lama) on the stage backdrop under the clouds of cigarette smoke, left my head in a drunken state of confusion akin to a hallucinogenic trip on acid, on crack—or maybe it was just the Budweiser.

As our host would explain to us, the entertainment lineup would be the same night after night, the same songs, plays, performers and dances. Despite the fact that the audience could lip sync to all the songs, knew all the punch lines of the plays (and still laughed) and had done the same dances a hundred times over, it was all because everyone—all 400 people in that club—were in fact just waiting for one performance, and then its likely most people would leave for the night.

The promoters of the club were smart and put this one performer on stage about 3am. The anticipation of arrival grew as the hours passed on and the beer cans emptied. I knew we couldn’t leave until I figured out what had all these young Tibetans so damn excited, to come each night to put themselves through a show they’d seen a hundred times before and to drink beer that was about a half step up in flavor from the other ubiquitous Tibetan drink: butter tea. This performer, I figured, would have to be a show stopper.

I’m not going to tell you what happened at 3am, you’ll just have to watch the video and see who arrived for yourself.

Click here or the video player above to see the video.

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• See past videos on ‘What It’s Like’:
  • In A Karaoke Bar in Hong Kong
  • To Cook Chinese Cabbage In A Restaurant In Tibet
  • To Fire A Machine Gun In Vietnam
  • To Climb Down The Temples of Angkor Wat, Cambodia
  • To Walk Through a House in China
  • To Buy A Duck In China

Traveling on one of the main tourist highways in Tibet, between Lhasa and Lake Namse, we decided to stop to take some photos at a particularly beautiful point in the road. As our driver pulled over to the shoulder, we hopped out and began making our way towards a grass field full of sheep, that were being tended by what seemed to be a pleasant-minded nomadic Tibetan family. As our group of six split up, the father came over with his two children and immediately started begging for money (this was fairly typical of what we had experienced at nearly all other stops on the road), while a few of us snapped photos of the mountains and sheep. Suddenly, out of nowhere, the father of the family began to push around one of my traveling companions and began speaking quite forcefully in Tibetan. She screamed back at him, “Get away from me!” as our Tibetan tour guide tried to stepped in.

“You took a picture of my sheep, you give me money,” the father repeatedly said in Tibetan, as our tour guide attempted again to intervene. “I didn’t take any pictures of your sheep,” my friend shot back. Out of the corner of my eye, I caught the two small children, who had originally been begging with their hands out, now pushing another one of my traveling companions around, while trying to wiggle their hands into her coat pockets.

The argument between the father and our tour guide escalated, and without much warning, the man pulled out a dull blade from under the blanket that covered him and demanded, “She took a picture of my sheep, she must give me money.” At this point, as a few of us were swatting the kids hands away from our own pockets, we realized it was time to leave. We briskly walked back to the van, as the man continued to yell.

This became my first of many lessons on this trip about the human impact of living a life in despair under the passing shadows of buses loads of digital camera wielding tourists.

Give that father and his family a dollar and it encourages them to beg, don’t give them anything and be ready to see the manifestation of such desperation.

What was the right thing for me to do in this situation, I am not sure.

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• Leave a comment on the video in the box below.
• See past videos on ‘What It’s Like’:
  • In A Karaoke Bar in Hong Kong
  • To Fire A Machine Gun In Vietnam
  • To Climb Down The Temples of Angkor Wat, Cambodia
  • To Walk Through a House in China
  • To Buy A Duck In China
  • In a Tibetan Dance Club
• Learn more about my 7 Days In Tibet or read some short stories
• See my photos galleries of Tibet in widescreen or regular size.
• These videos are intended to give you windows into places, read about another window I found in Cambodia

(all images are copyright 2008 Andy Stoll, and should not be used without prior permission.)

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• See my normal sized photos from elsewhere in Tibet
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• See some more of my photos from Japan, Beijing, Hong Kong and Vietnam

 While I thoroughly respect Buddhism as a religion and, with all due respect to the Tibetans, after two weeks traveling in Tibet I couldn’t help snag the lingering thought that the Buddhism that Tibet is so famous for, might actually be what’s holding Tibet back.  Tibet was, and still is, one of the least developed places I’ve visited, where most people live in extreme poverty with little access to medicine, food and shelter, let alone the more modern amenities of life (e.g. jobs, trade, computers).  “In Tibet,” I was told by a man living there, “you have three options for your future: a nomadic herder, a monk or working in the tourist industry.”   Spending a week touring temples, monasteries and holy places, it amazed me how devout these people are, often spending 2-3 hours a day 1-2 time a day (or more) visiting temples, praying and giving alms.  I’d also guess that many people spend significant portions of their limited incomes on giving to monks and buying offerings (prayer flags, incense, butter candles) for their religions rituals.   Seeing them spend all of this well-meant time on their religious devotion, I began to wonder if it was keeping them from spending their time on other things that might help them develop the things that they need to prosper as a culture.

*  *  *

2. China, The Last Great Colonizer

My time in Tibet did not provide me with any experience that would allow me to comment with any authority on human rights abuses by the Chinese government in Tibet, but I can say that my time there gave me a much greater understanding of the concept of “colonization.”  Human rights abuses aside, it is clear to me that the Beijing government is putting a lot of effort into expanding Chinese influence and culture within the borders of Tibet (e.g. the new state-of-the-art train system direct from Beijing), while trying to suppress more traditional Tibetan culture (e.g. it is illegal to posses any images of the Dalai Lama).  Regardless of whether you think this is good or bad, my advice is, if you want to experience the Tibetan part of Tibet, get there on a visit before it is no more. For those readers who will immediately try to defend the actions of the Chinese government as an effort to grow one of the world’s poorest and least developed places, I’ll side with you in the fact that Tibet needs China to grow its economy and continue to provide basic goods and services to Tibetan people (in a land with few natural resources or industries to allow Tibet to be self-sustaining).  But I think the Chinese government uses these efforts to mask some of their intent to essentially blend the traditional Tibetan culture out by adding more Chineseness to the mix. Would I advocate they free Tibet (and make it is own country)?  No, because I think Tibet would sink deeper into poverty and probably become a new bastion of instability in a region of the world that’s already a bit shaky.  (Besides I believe China would never give up Tibet, which is currently a huge portion of its land mass, in a country whose past emperors were always judged on how they expanded or contracted the size of the empire).  I’ll side with the the Dalai Lama here, keep Tibet as part of China, but stop the cultural suppression and the shady business and make what is presently known as the “Tibetan Autonomous Regions,” actually autonomous.

*  *  *

3. The Little Boy With The Big Heart

 Since the above stories seemed to be a bit ‘doom and gloom’ I’ll leave you with a short story I received in an email from my friend Colleen (from New York City) who was traveling in Tibet about three week prior to my arrival. In an email, she writes: …Be sure to say “tashi dalay” (spelled “dalek” but pronounced “dalay”) to everyone you meet. Its their form of greeting but really means “good luck to you” — everyone was pleased when I said it.  Also, “too jay shay” is “thank you.” And if the kids keep begging you for money (which they will) DON’T give it to them… you might want to pick up a bag of candies or something that you can give to them instead of money. My guide said giving money to them only encourages them to do it more, which is not good. So just say “mean do” when they beg… it means “I don’t have any.” At one Himalayan village I went to, all the kids kept coming up to me and begging for money. I had accidentally left my bag with candies meant for the Tibetan children in the Land Cruiser, so I honestly didn’t have anything to give them. I continuously said, “mean do” (i don’t have any), but one little boy in particular kept begging, saying, “hello, money money money.” So I finally pulled my pants pockets inside out to show him I didn’t have anything. He sort of gave me a sad look and ran away. Hours later, after I had eaten and sightseen and taken tons of photos of his village, the little boy found me and ran up to me smiling. He then proceeded to stuff coins and bills into my pockets!!! Apparently he had begged others for money, and then hunted me down in order to give it all to me, because I had shown him I didn’t have any. THAT is the true Tibetan spirit. So generous. So happy. So loving. I wanted to give him the world, the little boy with the big heart….”

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Hometown: Tehran, Iran now lives in San Francisco, California

Where he traveled: Rishard is a well traveled guy. In the summer of 2006 he took a few months off from his job as an engineer and traveled solo through Japan, China, Nepal, India and SE Asia. (The photo to the left is of Rishard on Mt. Fuji, note the shape of the mountains shadow.)

Where our paths last crossed: Lhasa, Tibet

Rishard and I met only briefly but his enthusiasm for life and his travel stories make him a hard guy to forget. I replied to a note he had left on a travel board when I was trying to arrange a way out of Tibet (and onward to Nepal) and though are travel plans didn’t match up, we had a fine Tibetan dinner together with a group of travelers in Lhasa.

Rishard was born in Iran and grew up in there and in the US, he now works as a engineer in San Francisco. His summer trip was full of wild stories from finding himself stuck halfway up Mt. Fuji with no money and no place to stay, to being mistakenly arrested in Beijing (where he ended up getting a free police escort from the non-English speaking, embarrassed police officer onward to his intended destination), to being robbed of everything he had (passport, camera, photos, etc.) in Thailand. I admire Rishard for his sense of adventure, his energy and his desire to live life out loud.

Below is an excerpt from an email he wrote home right after his trek to Mt. Everest, and since I didn’t make it there during my time in Tibet, this is the closest you’ll get to a Mt. Everest story at noboundaries.org.

As you read, I hope you get a sense of the energy Rishard brings to his life and his travels.

We got to the Everst base camp (18,500 feet above sea level) and hiked two hours to the furthest point that people are allowed to go. With a couple of short cuts, a coffee break on tops of some rocks (made with our portable stove), we made it to what was supposed to be the final viewpoint, though once there we felt a bit unimpressed. So we decide to sneak by the guards and head towards camp 1 of Everest (20,100 feet ASL) though we only got about an hour further and found the most amazing view I have ever seen (though we had to take 4-5 deep breaths with each step to get there): a pond with turquoise water and a perfectly CLEAR view of Mt. Everest. This was going to be our rest area for the day.

By this time it was noon and the sun was so strong that we could feel our skin burning though our clothes. What to do? Well obviously, strip down and jump in the water (note the picture you see below is prior to all the clothes coming off). After two hours of bathing in the sun (we had to put our clothes back on after thirty minutes since the sun was burning us up), we decided to walk back since we saw clouds headed towards us. Within a half hour we were freezing again and all our clothes, jackets, and gloves were back on. All we could say to each other, between long deep breaths, was “What a perfect day, WOW, what a perfect day.”

Manifestation, things happen for a reason, how simple and pure we were at the age of 3, what is love and how much of it do we give on a daily basis, who are we and what is our mission in life, how has traveling changed us and what can we do to have more of our friends get the experience of traveling, and where have we been and what’s next—are just some of the conversations in our Jeep ride across Tibet to Everest and finally to Nepal, which is where I am now.

All I can say, is that you need to jump on making plans to get out here as soon as possible. The humans are changing the face of the earth, and it’s not all in a good way. Come and see this world in its raw stages before hotels and resorts are set up, and humans, with no respect for the land, just leave their garbage on the face of our mother earth. My pictures may tell you a story, and some of my words may resonate with you in one way or another, but no words or pictures can simulate the experience of sitting in front of the highest point in the world. You just can’t get enough of it. The energy that you feel is life changing. The view will burn in the back of your eyes, where you can see it again each time you think of it, and the thought of it will place you back in that spot where you sat and gazed at pure beauty and the power of the world, and you become balanced and energized.

I am now in Kathmandu, Nepal, as I got here last night. I met a guy in a bar that was going river rafting and invited me to go (the river is at its biggest and best now, as the rain season is near its end. I say near its end because we got rained on all day today). So we river rafted all day, the bus ride took 7 hours (though it should have been 3), and we are planning another 3 day rafting trip next (Nepal is one of the best places in the world for white water rafting),before I am to jump into the jungle and sleep in tents so I can maybe spot a tiger (and hope fully not be his or a Rhino’s meal).

I’ll be back on email in a week, until then….

Plan your next trip. Where do you want to go? What is your dream vacation? Just think about what place you want to go. Don’t think if you can do it or not, just write down where, and how many days, and what you want to do there. What is your dream vacation. It’s not hard to do it. So many people I meet are living their second or third dream vacations. I want my friends to live that out.

Talk to you when I’m done and in India. Again, thanks for your emails and wishes. I have the same for you all.

-Rishard

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  • 陈峦 – Chen Luan, a friend from Shanghai on her trip to Lugu Lake in Yunan, China.
  • Nicole Bruskewitz saving turtles and backpacking the back roads of Central
    and South America for a year.
  • Davey Dance, a travel video series I guarantee will help you lose an hour of your day.
  • Brian Triplett and Denny Clark walk across America, and Brian on life in Africa on his 8 months trip around-the-world.

 See my other photos from Tibet in my Flickr Gallery by clicking here or on the collage below:

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When we stopped the car on the top of a mountain pass to take some photos, these teenagers—from a nearby group of nomadic people who were tending their sheep–came over to ask for money (and sweets). We ended up convincing them to take a photo with The Cow, and it has been the only time on my trip thus far I actually thought someone was going to steal the cow; right after I snapped this photo I thought for a moment the kids on the end was going to make a run for it. Instead we gave them some candy, which they proceeded to essentially beat the sh*t out of each other to get their share. A bit scary honestly. On a mountain pass in Southern Tibet.

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The Chinese invented movable type and thousands of years later, with the same fervor the ancient Chinese built the Great Wall to keep out the advancing Mongols, it seems the modern Chinese government was now using such ‘fine print type’ to keep out this advancing mongrel traveler. 

As most readers will be even peripherally aware, Tibet is a sensitive issue and the intricacies of the debate are more complicated than either side will lead you to believe.  It was this debate that led me on a quest to decode the fine print and score a ‘tourist permit’ into Tibet.  It seems the rules and regulations of travel in Tibet change daily and even after subsequent calls to the Chinese embassy and extensive Googling, the rules and regulations on Tibetan travel made about as much sense to me as a brush stroked scroll of Chinese characters.  Adding to the mess was an incident that occurred a  few months prior, in which two American travelers unfurled a ‘Free Tibet’ banner near the Mt Everest base camp, which led to their expulsion from China, a complete lock down that kept all tourists out of Tibet for weeks and a stiffening of travel regulations in the region from there on out.

As it turns out, at the time of my travels, a tourist permit was required to enter Tibet (actually to even board the plane to Tibet) and permits could only be obtained through Tibetan-based tour operators who would also require that you buy a tour package.  No independent travel was allowed anywhere in Tibet, and technically, I was not even allowed to walk around the capital city of Lhasa without a tour guide in tow (although when we landed, this regulation was not being enforced in Lhasa). 

A mess of permits was also required to travel around Tibet and unless one could decode Chinese, it was nearly impossible to distinguish what was needed for where, thus a local tour operator was required.  Police road checks were frequent and the permitting seemed to be in full force.  Part of it is the way the government controls access to sensitive parts of Tibet and part of it is an excuse to make more money from a region that has few exploitable natural resources.  Regardless, once all of the necessary permitting had been taken care of from Hong Kong via a local Tibetan travel agent, and once I landed in Lhasa, I had no problems traveling independently in Lhasa and with a tour guide/driver outside of the city.

[TRAVEL WARNING: If you are reading this seeking tips on how to score your own tourist permit for Tibet and/or how to get around while there, be warned that policies seem to change daily and you should not, under any circumstance, believe that the rules during my visit in September 2007 apply at any other time.  Do your homework or you may waste a lot of time and money.  The Lonely Planet Thorn Tree is a good place to start.]

Having overcome the formidable visa form, I landed in Tibet and found the most beautiful scenic nature I’ve ever seen, full of a kind, friendly, simple, yet very poor people,  so devout in their religion I believe it hampers their development.  I traveled amongst the people through the fertile green valleys, on the shores of the sapphire lakes and underneath the endless cobalt skies of this great empire hidden for centuries at the top of the world, an empire whose culture is flickering and may soon disappear forever.

Over the next few posts I invite you to come with me as I share some photos, stories and perspective gained from my seven day tour of Tibet (and additional seven day stay; more on that later).  I hope you’ll join me, there’s no permit required.

What you can do now:

• Leave a comment on this post below.

• Read some of my thoughts on China-US Relations in my story of Marching in a for Democracy in China.

• Read about my visit to a Cheese Factory in a Tibetan village in Yunan, China in There’s No Sesame Chicken in China

• Visit The Lonely Planet’s Thorn Tree Discussion Board on Tibet

• Don’t know much about Tibet?  Check out Wikipedia.