18-July-2006 * Palyul
We have arrived in Palyul after a bone rattling 8 hour journey from home. Our travel companions are Palmo (Tara's youngest sister), Tsultrim Dorje (Palmo's son), Benpa (a close cousin), and Buru (village chief), who is driving his little Suzuki Chana Star bread-loaf van.
Our departure from Nongte was quick and intense. Everything packed, a crew of porters carried our bags down the mud lane from Tong-go and across the Tsang Chu bridge to Buru's van. The whole family went along and it seemed the entire Nongte Village turned out to wish us well on our journey. I climbed the embankment next to the road and managed to snap some pix of the whole throng.
There were numerous offerings of hand shakes, forehead bumpings, white silk scarves, and best wishes for our long life, safe journey, and auspicious happiness. The three of us ended up with quite a few silk scarves around our necks; then we each put all of ours around mom's neck, so she seemed entirely clothed in shimmering white. There were many tears as we gave her good-bye hugs, knowing we may never see one another again. She wished for us to have excellent lives and requested we return to Nongte, even if she were no longer living.
Then, it was up the road to Dang Kong for a round of fare-thee-wells with Tara's big sister and the others who were home at the time. She offered us a huge bag of dried dzomo (yak-cow cross) cheese and a plastic soda bottle full of dzomo butter. These, along with the bags of tsampa (roasted barley flour), cheese, morel mushrooms, wild dill seeds, and yak jerky have loaded down our large suitcase making it quite heavy.
A group of 20-some men, many dressed in their formal chubas, accompanied us up the road from Nongte on their motorcycles. A short distance up the valley from Dang Kong they had set up a farewell picnic for us in a beautiful grassy meadow, surrounded by the hills and rock cliffs of Kutse Canyon. We sat in a large circle and imbibed in Red Bull, orange sports soda, and beer. Songs and toasts were offered; I was obliged to stand and offer a broken Tibetan toast as well: "Although we live far away, our home is here and the people of Nongte are our people. We're very happy to see everyone and spend time in this place. Tashi Delegs to all."
Our next stop was Sershung Gompa (monastery) for blessings of protection on our journey. The Gompa was a lively scene with many authentic practitioners, young and old, all hanging out doing mantras, spinning prayer wheels and soaking up the powerful vibrations of the various monastic rites and Tantric practices going on within.
Then, we were finally off, rattling up the canyon and over 4245 m Nge La pass, where flowers, yaks, and prayers flags grace the grassy saddle, surrounded by stunning white granite crags jutting upward into the deep blue alpine sky.
Down through green and yellow meadows, past homes cultivating blue flowers (Tibetan Poppies?), we wound our way to Jong Kang Do for lunch. We ate in a strange little restaurant with pictures of Marx, Engels, Lenin, Stalin, Mao, and the other heroes of 20th century Chinese Communism.
From there, we passed through the deep narrow canyon that leads to the Kamtok bridge over the Dri Chu River, and into Sichuan Province. The border was fortified but placid and sleepy. Were we heading west, we would surely have been stopped, but driving east, we merely had to slow for several sets of speed bumps, and we were past it.
From Kamtok, we endured 94 km of dry, dusty, bumpy, dirt-rock track along the undulating eastern bank of the Dri Chu, or Gold Dust (Jin Sha in Mandarin) River, which swells to become the Yangtse in inner China. I could not stop looking at the Dri Chu, marveling at its powerful swirls, eddies, and rapids. The Dri Chu was swollen with summer rains and heavy with adobe-red sediment. In some areas, it cuts through narrow canyons, flowing swift and deep. In other areas, the canyon broadens and the Dri Chu spreads a broad red sea over the canyon floor.
The Dri Chu Canyon seems to always be dry and hot, as it gathers the subsiding air from every canyon it intersects. And every canyon has a stream or river that adds to the Dri Chu's mighty flow. The smaller streams seem to vanish instantly upon contact, while the larger ones maintain a short-lived stand-off, their cooler green and grey water marking a sharp line against the warmer ruddy flow of the larger river. But in the end, all flow mixes into the Dri Chu, whose waters seem to withstand the infusion with no trace of dilution. I was reminded of the massive teeming population of Han China, into which other peoples may inter-marry and mingle, leaving nary an imprint on the ethnic face of the greater population. I remember hearing an account, years ago, of a large band of Jewish refugees who resettled in China. One hundred years later, their faces had vanished into the Han Ocean. Does such a fate, conquest by assimilation, await the Tibetan people?
Bumping and grinding our way, we rattled down the Dri Chu Canyon, passing the turn-offs to the famed Palpung, Dzongsar, and Katok Monasteries. With each turn-off, the road seemed to grow smaller and less traveled, especially for the 40-some km of roadway after Katok. I felt we were headed to a remote and neglected outpost and wondered if we'd even be able to find lodging at Palyul for the night. My worries were magnified when one of our tires finally succumbed to the hot, rocky road, blowing out with a huge bang on a sharp rock. As we jacked up the car and put on the spare, I wondered where we would find a replacement and whether the other tires could survive the rest of our journey.
Our departure from Nongte was quick and intense. Everything packed, a crew of porters carried our bags down the mud lane from Tong-go and across the Tsang Chu bridge to Buru's van. The whole family went along and it seemed the entire Nongte Village turned out to wish us well on our journey. I climbed the embankment next to the road and managed to snap some pix of the whole throng.
There were numerous offerings of hand shakes, forehead bumpings, white silk scarves, and best wishes for our long life, safe journey, and auspicious happiness. The three of us ended up with quite a few silk scarves around our necks; then we each put all of ours around mom's neck, so she seemed entirely clothed in shimmering white. There were many tears as we gave her good-bye hugs, knowing we may never see one another again. She wished for us to have excellent lives and requested we return to Nongte, even if she were no longer living.
Then, it was up the road to Dang Kong for a round of fare-thee-wells with Tara's big sister and the others who were home at the time. She offered us a huge bag of dried dzomo (yak-cow cross) cheese and a plastic soda bottle full of dzomo butter. These, along with the bags of tsampa (roasted barley flour), cheese, morel mushrooms, wild dill seeds, and yak jerky have loaded down our large suitcase making it quite heavy.
A group of 20-some men, many dressed in their formal chubas, accompanied us up the road from Nongte on their motorcycles. A short distance up the valley from Dang Kong they had set up a farewell picnic for us in a beautiful grassy meadow, surrounded by the hills and rock cliffs of Kutse Canyon. We sat in a large circle and imbibed in Red Bull, orange sports soda, and beer. Songs and toasts were offered; I was obliged to stand and offer a broken Tibetan toast as well: "Although we live far away, our home is here and the people of Nongte are our people. We're very happy to see everyone and spend time in this place. Tashi Delegs to all."
Our next stop was Sershung Gompa (monastery) for blessings of protection on our journey. The Gompa was a lively scene with many authentic practitioners, young and old, all hanging out doing mantras, spinning prayer wheels and soaking up the powerful vibrations of the various monastic rites and Tantric practices going on within.
Then, we were finally off, rattling up the canyon and over 4245 m Nge La pass, where flowers, yaks, and prayers flags grace the grassy saddle, surrounded by stunning white granite crags jutting upward into the deep blue alpine sky.
Down through green and yellow meadows, past homes cultivating blue flowers (Tibetan Poppies?), we wound our way to Jong Kang Do for lunch. We ate in a strange little restaurant with pictures of Marx, Engels, Lenin, Stalin, Mao, and the other heroes of 20th century Chinese Communism.
From there, we passed through the deep narrow canyon that leads to the Kamtok bridge over the Dri Chu River, and into Sichuan Province. The border was fortified but placid and sleepy. Were we heading west, we would surely have been stopped, but driving east, we merely had to slow for several sets of speed bumps, and we were past it.From Kamtok, we endured 94 km of dry, dusty, bumpy, dirt-rock track along the undulating eastern bank of the Dri Chu, or Gold Dust (Jin Sha in Mandarin) River, which swells to become the Yangtse in inner China. I could not stop looking at the Dri Chu, marveling at its powerful swirls, eddies, and rapids. The Dri Chu was swollen with summer rains and heavy with adobe-red sediment. In some areas, it cuts through narrow canyons, flowing swift and deep. In other areas, the canyon broadens and the Dri Chu spreads a broad red sea over the canyon floor.
The Dri Chu Canyon seems to always be dry and hot, as it gathers the subsiding air from every canyon it intersects. And every canyon has a stream or river that adds to the Dri Chu's mighty flow. The smaller streams seem to vanish instantly upon contact, while the larger ones maintain a short-lived stand-off, their cooler green and grey water marking a sharp line against the warmer ruddy flow of the larger river. But in the end, all flow mixes into the Dri Chu, whose waters seem to withstand the infusion with no trace of dilution. I was reminded of the massive teeming population of Han China, into which other peoples may inter-marry and mingle, leaving nary an imprint on the ethnic face of the greater population. I remember hearing an account, years ago, of a large band of Jewish refugees who resettled in China. One hundred years later, their faces had vanished into the Han Ocean. Does such a fate, conquest by assimilation, await the Tibetan people?
Bumping and grinding our way, we rattled down the Dri Chu Canyon, passing the turn-offs to the famed Palpung, Dzongsar, and Katok Monasteries. With each turn-off, the road seemed to grow smaller and less traveled, especially for the 40-some km of roadway after Katok. I felt we were headed to a remote and neglected outpost and wondered if we'd even be able to find lodging at Palyul for the night. My worries were magnified when one of our tires finally succumbed to the hot, rocky road, blowing out with a huge bang on a sharp rock. As we jacked up the car and put on the spare, I wondered where we would find a replacement and whether the other tires could survive the rest of our journey.
posted by nerdondo at 8:56 PM
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