9/6

9/6 7:11am CST

http://picasaweb.google.com/105909573807230408134/9_6?authkey=Gv1sRgCNbcjZiRgsSKpAE

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DZGsFqPBVNg
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F39cvUbfemk
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rs0i9Byz4ls
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jDceo5LcLTo
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JhrCxEonSkM
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uWkvk2U20ZE
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KR4kXtTSvWo

Woke up after heading to bed pretty early. Supposedly we are above 3000m now, but I don't feel any different. The sun doesn't come up until around 8am or so. All of China is on the same timezone, so officially, the sunrises get later and later in time as you move west. Some people around Urumqi in Xinjiang (the provice north of Tibet) use a time that's offset by 2 hours, but it's not official.

Even without the sun up, it's apparent that the landscape has evolved overnight. There are almost no signs of habitation out there. Very occasionally you'll see a flock of yaks or whatever these cowlike animals are. I plan to get some sweet pics and movies of the scenery. It's really really wild. I saw a little antelope by itself running around near the track, and also a hyrax-like animal running on the drainage ditch near the track. Really wish I'd gotten these on camera.
Managed to snap a blurry photo of 3 antelope running along. But then I also saw this pair of strange sloth/anteater looking creatures. They were either really shaggy or really fat. Finally, I spotted this tiny fox running around. It seems like every wild animal is conducting its business and then has to bolt when the train comes by.

My mom's got some symptoms of high altitude sickness -- a touch of dizziness, headaches, purple lips. I haven't really felt anything, but hopefully it'll get better before we get to Lhasa. My cold seems to be going away, though leaving me with a bit of a dry nose and sinus.

My mom is getting a bit worse. After some deliberation on how to deal with her adjustment, she hooked up to the car oxygen, to see if it would improve her condition. Seems to be helping so far. As for me, my fingers are a little purple and I'm a bit more lightheaded when I get up and move about. I would say I just feel extremely languid. We're at 4500m and will peak to 5000m for a bit, then slope back down into 3000m for Lhasa. Hopefully we'll all be adjusted by then. We're not supposed to shower right away, as all the drawing of blood to the surface vessels can cause fainting.

We were parked for almost an hour at one station waiting for another train to pass. It's so remote now that there's only a single track for both ways. That train was going to Shanghai. Must be a hell of a ride. While we were waiting, it started hailing with the sun out. I managed to get that on video. Pretty weird, given that it was 16 deg C.

One thing I've noticed is that the railway workers seem to be instructed to stand at attention when a train passes. Some salute, some just stand, others stand but face the other way,even when there is no train track that way. Not sure what it means. But it's interesting to see so many employed by the Chinese rail system. I guess it'd be kind of terrible to get fired when an official catches you shirking your duties from a passing train.

Most depressing thing I saw was this tiny village whose basketball court didn't have poles on either end. Cows were lounging around on it.

The final hours til Lhasa are agonizing. We keep taking stops at tiny stations to let trains pass. I guess we're very close at this point.

When we arrive, it's again very picturesque. The Lhasa train station is built to evoke the shapes of Tibetan architecture. Eventually we find our contact, a coworker of my mom's college classmate. He has with him a Tibetan tour guide that he's hired to take us around for the next few days. Tsenam has the very cheesy honors of putting on us these white scarves, which I assume at some point must have been traditional. We get in some Landcruisers and go over to the Xiongbala Hotel, which claims to be the best in Lhasa. Cars seem to observe whatever traffic laws there are casually. Once we drop things off in our rooms, we quickly turn around and head out to a restaurant.

The restaurant isn't a Tibetan restaurant, but specializes in Shandong cuisine. Shandong is a northern province that I would say offers very good seafood dishes.

On a more negative note, I'll comment on the special treatment we're getting here. Obviously, not everyone has the connections to get ushered around Lhasa virtually free of charge. I have no pretensions that this part of the trip is anything but highly privileged. While I'm sure we could have made arrangements to do most of the same things on our own, having it all planned for us ahead of time is extremely convenient. Sometimes I'd like to think that when I go back to China, I'm just an ordinary person, but occasions like this remind me that's far from true. On top of all that, there's the extreme deference of our Tibetan guides, which is causing me some discomfort. One of the drivers joined us at the dinner table, and he absolutely was not part of the conversation. I wasn't chatting much either, but I still found the way he was being marginalized to be quite upsetting. If he were a Han Chinese in the same position, I'm sure everyone would have been warmer to him. There was a brief discussion on Tibetan independence, and everyone at the table practically treated him as empty space. My mom, it shames me to say, voiced some nationalist-tinged rhetoric on how the Dalai Lama would be ineffectual at improving an independent Tibet's economic status and added that some Tibetans are swayed by their blind love for the Dalai Lama. She tried to negate what she said by telling the driver to feel free to ignore her misconceptions, which of course does nothing to blunt the venom of an attitude like hers, which is very common. I told her right then that it was rude even to be able to think such things while we were in the presence of a Tibetan. The politics bother me less than my mother's ability to treat someone as a non-entity incapable of having legitimate opinions. As for my own views on Tibet, I note only this -- all along the railway, I saw an unyielding march of eletric towers bringing in electricity, courtesy of central planning from China. I wonder if Tibetans want or need that? If they didn't have those towers and power lines all over the place, my pictures of the countryside would probably look like Tibet 1000 years ago.

The driver and our waitress (also Tibetan) were beseeched by our host to speak some Tibetan and teach us a few phrases.
Tujin na -- thank you
Kalasa suo -- eat!
Tashi deleh -- something like aloha

My hotel room looks like a scene from Uncharted 2 and I have a picture to prove it.