Up, Up, and Arrive

Tomorrow morning I leave for a 10 day tour through Tibet. I'll fly into Lhasa, travel westward across the Tibetan Plateau to Mt. Everest before crossing into Nepal, from where I will return home out of Kathmandu. If the altitude sickness doesn't get me, maybe the cumulative 24+ hours I'm going to spend in a jeep will, but none of that matters if the scenery is what I'm hoping for. So tomorrow I fly to Lhasa, and you know what they say about flying into Lhasa? It's the only airport in the world where you fly up to land.

My students have had very mixed reactions when I say I'm going to Tibet. Some of them become jealous and excited, wanting to travel there themselves. Most remain quiet, reactionless, either unsure of where I'm going (in Chinese it's called XiZang), or tellingly silent about their concerns, which are vocalized by the final group. These students are concerned, telling me to be safe, warning me that people might try to shoot me. At first I was baffled, thinking there isn't much crime in Tibet. But then I realized they meant the protesters and the riots which happened last spring. In the interest of diplomacy I didn't tell them I'm more worried about the Chinese Government than the Buddist monks, that one of the most dangerous thing I could do would be to take a simple picture of a protester - and this on a trip where I'll be passing through the worlds largest mountains. So I simply thanked the students for their cares and advice, assuring them that I wasn't worried about the Tibetan people, displaying a cavalier confidence my students evidently didn't match.

More concerned about the weather than either the natives or the authorities, I'll be flying a little further than I would on a flight from Boston to Denver, and into a province three times the size of Texas. It's the heart of the Himalayas, so I plan find out just how these mountains stack up to this world's other mountain ranges. What better place to do that than from the monastery at Everest Base Camp where I will be staying for a night. My bags (and camera) are packed, I'm ready to go and I'm so excited.