Hiking in Tibet

Leaving the monks in the morning, I begin following their directions (between the mountains and take the left fork), I’m still within sight of their monastery when it starts raining, heavily. The next hour I sit under a tree pondering my decision to go hiking to the next town, by my estimate some 100km away.

When the rain clears I continue the walk as the scenery is breath taking.

I reach a small village within a couple of hours walk and am offered food (more Tsomba) and yak butter milk tea. Not grasping that I don’t speak Tibetan at all one of the teenagers writes something in Tibetan for me to read, thinking my English is a different dialect of Tibetan.

After half an hour’s rest and eating (while one of the monks takes photos with my camera), I bid farewell to my new friends thinking that it’s far too early to call it a day.

Half of the village came to wave goodbye, very excited to have their first foreign guest.

The weather is hot and no one is around, so I decide to wash up in the river which is a relief after several hours of fast paced walking into the mountains. Tiger Leaping Gorge is a walk in the park compared to this.

Several hours after the bath in the river, I sit in the countryside looking at wildlife, resting and chatting with a Tibetan (we don’t understand each other at all).

Evening is approaching, I’ve just passed another village and it’s starting to rain. By the time I reach the next houses it’s raining heavily and I am soaked.

The houses I see belong to one family, they all consist of one room with bed and stove, stockpile of yak manure and room underneath for livestock.

Eventually, the family understand that I’m looking for a place to sleep for the night and the guy next to me says I can eat and stay at his place. He likes my camera and poses for photos every two minutes. Lunch/dinner consists of Tsomba, again.

I wait outside for evening to approach while the two guys next to me go to round up their yak, goats and horses for the night. The young boy (black and orange jacket) is full of energy and incredibly aggressive. When he’s not posing for photos, he’s throwing rocks at goats or trying to hit me with a big stick.

As night steps in, things get a little weird. A couple of friends of the guy I’m staying with arrive and as I’m returning from the bathroom, I catch them going through my bag (small compartment with no lock). I tell them off and make sure to keep the bag in sight at all times. Next the guy asks to use my camera and proceeds to take photos of himself and his friends posing. Things get really weird as one of his friends starts removing his pants while the guy takes photos of his pubes and man bits. At this point I take back the camera and wish I’d picked somewhere else to stay for the night.

When it comes time to sleep, the guys setup a bed for me outside, where the mat is in the photo. I fall asleep on the hard ground (with bag next to me) a little pissed off at how the night turned out, the guy has the audacity to ask for 20 Yuan for the bed.

I wake up several hours later as the wind is howling and snow is falling on me, notice that no one else is inside so I go inside and take his bed thinking he’s gone to his friends for the night.

The guy comes back several hours later to find me sleeping in his bed, I tell him it’s not cool to sleep outside in the snow (which has stopped now), so he helps carry the bed (jackets, pants and other clothes to keep warm) inside. As I’m falling asleep, I realise that it’s him, the friend who was stripping down and the little aggressive boy sharing the bed and it saddens me a little that they have to live with so little, even though he is a jerk.

I wake up at the crack of dawn, incredibly sore and tired from little sleep that night, eager to get away from this weird Tibetan.