Merchandise; Purchases; Crap I Bought.

Since I’ve been expounding upon the intricacies of shopping in Chinese markets, some may wonder how much crap I actually bought.  Well, here it is:

 

 

The Reason

The reason I have been so inattentive to my blog and blogfriends:

Battered Leather Journal in Tibet by stephenperisho | Make Your Own Book

Please enjoy, typos and all.

Now I can finally get back to the rest of the adventure.

Day 19: One Day Too Many in Tibet

Where yesterday I didn’t take any photos worth posting here, today I didn’t take any photos.  Period.  Carriage Return.

The Battered Leather Journal says we went shopping today, but I don’t remember it.

In the afternoon, we took one last ride with Sijila (and his little son – it was fun to see Sijila as a caring father) to the airport – an hour and a half backtracking on the route we took to Everest.  This all looks verrry familiar.  Sijila laughed at one of our jokes before we could even respond to it ourselves, reinforcing our suspicion that he is full of lies about not speaking English.  He is the type that would pretend so he wouldn’t have to interact with annoying tourists.  We hand Sijila his and Choedak’s tips, Sam hands his son an authentic American dollar bill, and we are off on the next leg of the trip: Qingdao (think: CHING-dow), via Beijing.

Day 18: Still Driving to Lhasa

Well, here we are.  In the car.  Still.

It is day four of what seems like an endless journey back to Lhasa.  Did some sort of spacial vortex develop on this damn highway since we passed through a few days ago?  It really feels like we aren’t making any progress.

It would seem that the thrill of Everest and Rombuk has chilled since yesterday.

Day 17: Goodbye to Everest

Eyes open.

Paralyzed.  You can not move your body.

Soon the morning insanity loosens its befuddling hold. Not paralyzed after all – there are just fifty pounds of blankets weighing you down. Warm and secure. This must be what it felt like in the womb. What a fan-damn-tastic way to wake up.

Cozy in a yurt at the foot of Mt. Everest. You spend some time luxuriating in this surreality.   Then you steel your nerves to venture outside to try to catch a sunrise on the roof of the world.

The cold stops your breath.  Even with all your warm gear on you have to jog around to stop your body from quaking.  The thought of exposing any skin prohibits the consideration of going to the bathroom – you fear certain things would freeze to other things and make life very uncomfortable.  It appears you were excruciatingly lucky last night because now the entire valley is filled with clouds, and you would never know that Everest was back there.  You see the sun start to light up the highest surrounding peaks, fumble through your gloves for some photos, and dive back into the yurt for hot tea and burning yak dung.  Heaven.

Day 16: Mt. Qomolangma (aka Everest)

This mountain road is incredibly beautiful.  And it’s a good thing, because we’ve been driving for days.

Scenes from the road:

On Sijila, Tibet’s Marlboro Man

So we have spent several days touring with Sijila, our enigmatic driver, and we’ve come to appreciate some of his . . . idiosyncrasies. During the trip to Everest where we spent four or fives hours driving each day, our love for Sijila and his ubiquitous old-man-jeans and short-sleeved collared white shirt grew to new heights.

Day 15 part 2: The Road to Everest – Pelkhor Chode Monastery

More hours and minutes in the 4Runner, winding through the Himalayas, laden with the uncomfortable knowledge that when we get to Gyantse there could be another tour guide waiting for us.  And there aren’t any more seats in the car, so someone is going to have to go back to Lhasa.

But before we reached that apex of awkwardness, we made our final tourist stop of the day at Pelkhor Chode Monastery.

Day 15 part 1: The Road to Everest – Yamdrok Lake

This morning we all piled into the trusty 4Runner (the same model that every other tour group drives around in this city) and started the trip to Everest.  Sijila driving, Tsering in the back, and James, Sam, Kristy and I out-of-our-mind excited about seeing Everest (hopefully.  It will depend on the weather).  But Everest is a couple of days of driving away, and I assume there a few things to see on the road.

The road to Everest slinks along the hips of the lower Himalayas.

Lhasa: A Map of Our Old Haunt

While in Lhasa I sketched out a map of the city in my battered leather journal. It’s an outrageously inaccurate map, containing such trivial sites as “the place where we always bought water from the woman with horrible teeth,” “the place the cop lost control of his motorcycle and went into a slide,” and “the place Sam always wanted to go shop in because it had pretty paper lanterns hanging outside.”

I’m not sure if anyone other than Sam and Kristy will get anything out of this (or if they will even get anything out of it), but click on the pic and then mouse over the notes to see the captions.