“I think my day at the lake was the highlight of my trip! “ Wrote Lois. And my friend Garry said: “It seems you were very lucky. You escaped a riot in Tibet and an earthquake in Sichuan.”
I, like Kim and Louis, and many others walked the safe trail between the riot and the earthquake. That however, does not make me happy, or feel lucky, nor diminishes in any way a yearning to keep going, especially to return to Lhasa, to China, , to Chengdu…
Perhaps for many people in Lhasa the March 14 riot was not a big surprise. I had paid little attention to warnings of unrest in the city. Our savvy Tibetan travel agent said demonstrations were common during the month of March, anniversary of the 1959 Tibetan revolt against Chinese occupation, but even she, organizer of our next-day-expedition to Namtso Lake, could not predict smoke signals would turn to fire…
Back from the lake in the late afternoon, unaware of the turmoil that had taken place, we were heading towards our Lhasa hotel rooms planning a shower and an evening at Ganglamedo bar-café, when suddenly the outbreak’s severity transported us from an idyllic memory on the shores of a frozen prehistoric lake, into the science-fiction surrealism of a 1960’s episode of STAR TRECK.
East of Marpo Hiill, Beijing Dong Lu appeared alien and totally deserted. Every door was shut; the metal shutters of the shops pulled down or twisted as if by brutal force, big black smoke rose out of a building and fire still burned just ahead of us
Further on, the road appeared strewn with corpses and debris… Over the cellular phone our Tibetan guide received explicit orders to quickly drive away… “Go back…Go back… Where to? Don’t know… Out… Out… Out of the city center… Yes there was a riot… Chinese military have taken over… More military are on the way…” Go… Go...”
As we approached the intersection it became evident that what in the distance appeared like corpses were in reality the mutilated manikins of a vandalized dress shop… By the time I thought of taking a photo the driver was speeding away from the scene… I’ll never graduate as field photographer…
We were taken to a hotel outside the city center, with instructions to leave the hotel only to eat in a nearby eatery, make phone calls and small purchases in a nearby everything-shop.
A constant flow of military trucks sped towards Lhasa and in the following days, while they searched for those responsible for the destructive unrest, no one entered or exited the city.
Foreign travelers in the city were trapped in their hotels while The TTB (Tibet Tourist Bureau) and the Chinese military, engaged in complex negotiation aiming to reunite the luggage left in inaccessible city hotel rooms with their owners stranded outside. With only partly successful results…
Though I never felt threatened in the days that followed, ready or not, with or without luggage, the message coming through loud and clear was that we should leave Tibet.
The hotel room we had been taken to was clean, comfortable and cheap, the food in the nearby eatery, excellent. Our concerned travel agent kept constant contact with us. The night before departure appearing exhausted she arrived with a mini-bus-load of miss-matched traveler’s luggage,
I found mine, though apart from my new sleeping bag, a blank diary and a train ticket to Xian, I had nothing that could not be replaced with twenty dollars… Not so for all travelers however, some regained only parts of their belongings and others left Tibet with no luggage at all…
In this neighborhood no one spoke English. Perhaps unaccustomed to foreign travelers were polite but distant. The man at the Hotel’s reception merely pointed at the hotel’s posted rates: - LOW SEASON - Single Occupancy with Private Toilet and Shower - 80 Yuan.- :- Payable Each Day in Advance -- We paid. He wrote receipts and gave us keys pointing to the staircase leading to the rooms.
After the next morning’s “Tashi De Le” (how are you,) I might have been shrouded in a cloak of invisibility. I saw women in the courtyard hanging bed-sheets out to dry, I saw women cooking, carrying the food to the reception’s coffee table, I saw the entire family gather around to eat, at intervals they played cards. But for as many times as I paced past them, no one gave any indication they saw me… I concluded it was how they avoided questions they could not answer, and how to practice privacy in a public space…
I will never climb Mt. Everest, perhaps never get near First Base Camp, but as Lhasa and Lake Namtso are in Tibet, I can say that for a few days I was on the Roof of the World. Any destination after leaving the Roof of the World can only be described as going…down hill…
Back to Lhasa on the road from Namtso Lake
Text and Photos Coyright©2008 M.Della Marina
I saw Kim and Louis for the last time as I lingered on the path towards the entrance of the Terracotta Army Pits… I have a dream and a wish of meeting them again in some strange corner of the world… 
But at that moment there I was, about to fulfill for Judy her own wish… an arm and a leg to see the Terracotta Soldiers… A 2200 year-old clay army ready to serve Emperor Qin Shi Huangdi’s afterlife military endavours..
Justifiably the pits are dim and protectively fenced off, but making it difficult to admire the figures’s individuality or take a respectable photo. Up to that moment I resisted temptation to buy souvenirs, but as I exited the Pits I was approached by cheery teenagers offering cut-down replicas of boxed warriors… for Judy…
