As each week passes word comes of another self-emulation in Tibetan lands of China. Many are young monks, and more and more are women. The grief they must feel for the slow loss of their culture is unimaginable to me. In our tandem travels across Tibet, we saw the government’s attempts at subjugating the Tibetan culture by smothering their lands with emigrants from the Han majority:
Finally we waved and pushed off, our 26 inch prayer wheels spinning out thousands of goodwill messages up his mountain; but I think we might have missed the point. The farmer and his wife live Shangri-la, not just in it, but they are Shangri-la. They are poor, but well fed, and the circle of their days allows for a break when tired, a visit with passing strangers, the rhythm of weeding, or wall building when they feel like it, and the song of bird and stream as accompaniment to it all.
This is a re-post from about a year ago when we were still on the Tibetan Plateau. We re-post it here for those who might have missed the original. If you wish to read the complete posts of In Search of Shangri-la, click on the link under Adventures at left.
We’ve called this often grueling trip from Chengdu, the Back Road to Shangri-la. A few days ago, we entered the high gate to the garden of Shangri-la. We topped out above 15,000 feet each day, and often stayed there for hours.
We recently had a comment from Losang about my post on Litang. He he has lived in Tibet for eight years and knows all corners. If our posts gave you a taste of Tibet, Losang ‘s site offers a feast. I’ve linked to just his Litang post, but you can follow other links to the rest of his site.
We were in the middle to nowhere for three days, climbed more passes than were supposed to be there, were never below about 14,000 feet and bad weather surprised us. The road to Shangri-la is always filled with life and surprise.
Follow the whole story over the next three posts.
Though the mountain was crowded with lots of construction workers, it was somehow comforting to have some of the road crew trying to beckon us over to their fire to warm up. They didn’t seem to understand that our lightweight clothing was plenty for as hard as we were working but that we would cool down if we stopped. Much as we would have liked to have tea and a visit, we had to keep moving. We got many cheers, thumbs up, much misinformation and even a push from two road monitors.
One year ago today we rode our tandem in Chengdu, China traffic in preparation for our journey across Tibetan China and through Southeast Asia. We are beginning a series of re-posts remembering this adventure. Follow us as we remember, or better yet, go to the link at left, In Search of Shangri-la and read the whole four months.
I wrote from Bangkok that it was a Shangri-la of major cities, and despite a few inconveniences now and then, I stand by that assessment. It is a great place to get a taste of Asia without getting too far out of your comfort zone, a place from which to launch more adventurous forays into the most important continent in the coming century.
Life is measured best not by the number of breaths you take, but by the moments that take your breath away..
