Serendipity

After getting back to lhasa a few days after the festival, I headed off the next day to do some combination day hiking and monestary visiting. I had a nice day hiking to a Ngingmapa monestary, where later I slept outside on a wooden bench (there were too many rats in my room). Next day I had another really good trip to Samye monestary, and after taking that in for an afternoon, I decided to go the next day to the Chimpu cave hermitage up in the hills nearby. It was around a 6 hour walk.

Getting to chimpu was really fun. I set out from Samye monestary in the morning about 9. I had taken as little as possible and still be ok without a guest house: my sleeping bag, stove, food supplies (muesli, instant oatmeal, lentils, some dried yak meat, and dried fruit), water, andmy notebook and tibetan novel that i purchased a few days before. I also had a stove and my jacket. Although there was a road with little tractor buses most of the way to the hermitage, I hiked there anyway to make it more fun and scenic. On the way I saw a new irrigated farm project being constructed. The walk wasn’t very difficult but halfway up I was feeling low on energy, so I stopped and had a lunch of dried yak meat, water, and raisins. the senery was beautiful; as I climbed up nice views of the valley could be taken in. the skies were beautiful as well as i was coming to expect from the tibetan climate. the moon was also visible to the west. A small stream was flowing down from the ridge, and the trail met up with it from time to time. Around the stream were lush grasses, which was quite striking since the rest of the valley was arid desert: sand dunes could be seen down the valley and also on the ridge to the west. As I walked up I was assed several times by small trucks loaded with pilgrims, both going and coming from Chimpu. At about 1 I reached the end of the driveable road, and up there was a tea shack where pilgrims and tourists could eat and drink and have a rest.
I walked in to the small room and naturally attention was drawn to me, I was wearing my now standard cowboy hat, and loaded down with my bright blue and black backpack (I had bought it in China). Although lightly packed, it’s still a large pack. I sat down and used my few words of tibetan to order sweet milk tea. The interial was a small rectangular room, with about 7 benches placed around the walls, and 4 tables shared in front of the benches. So everyone was facing each other; there were about 8 people in the room, including 2 chinese tourists. My tea was poured into a small cup; it was sweet and hot, and refreshing. The tibetans in the room were very friendly. I smiled at my neighbors, and with usual tibetan frienliness they offered me food. I accepted some flatbread that when dipped in the milk tea was quite delicous. A tibetan lady to my left urged me to drink my tea, in a way that an aunt might; and the fellow across from me refilled my glass and offered me some yak meat on the bone, which I declined. (It looked good, but I was shy to take it) I was also impressed that the people were sharing food with the chinese tourists–who are not well thought of by many tibetans I spoke with. The bus horn outside sounded loudly, and soon it was time for everybody to leave. I was comfortable and stayed to have some more rest. Now left in the tea shack were the family who ran it, the mother and two daughters. There was also a man but I was unsure he was the dad. One of the girls showed an interest in my camera (a common event) and I showed some pics of the day before. Since I wanted to sit back and relax, I gave the camera to them to browse. The man/dad was looking through the pics with the girls. In this way a digital camera is a wonderful communications device! After a few minutes they came across the “tibetan Robert Johnson” video in Ganden a week before. I turned the volume up on the camera and played the song. Soon the room was filled with the sound of a bluesy tibetan folk song. This was a great hit with the rooms remaining occupants! The man offered me some cigarrettes and I was glad to accept one.
By this tiem the girls had developed an interest in having their photo taken, which was an excellent opportunity to take some more portraits. We had a lot of fun taking pictures–when I showed them the resulting pictuer on the camera they would laugh and giggle and want more. The mother said something I couldn’t understand, but with them pointing and gesturing toward the camera, I figured that they wanted the pictures. With similar charades I offered to send them the photos, and after that even the mom got into the photo session! She set up some prop drinks on the table resulting in some cheesy shots. Afterwards I sat back for some more relaxing, and with the father humming the blues song everyone seemed content. Another fellow took a nap beside me and we all seemed like family. Finally I noticed it was around 3pm and I made my way to leave. The family refused payment for the tea, and offered me to stay there for the night. I was really pleased but not that surprised. I put my pack on and said see you tomorrow as I headed out the door into the hot afternoon.