Day 00a Introduction

This is the blog of my tour to Tibet in August 2005.

As most who wants to visit Tibet will know, there are restrictions on foreigners entering Tibet - foreigners can only enter Tibet in a tour group. So we visited Tibet in the most fuss free way - joined a package tour. (In fact, as we did not fly with the main tour group, the airline staff at Chengdu airport had initially refused to checked-in us. Luckily we had a local agent in Chengdu to help us).

While I named this blog as "Mystical Tibet", there is probably not much mystique in Tibet nowadays, at least not in the two largest cities, Lhasa and Shigatse. They are just modern cities with pockets of preserved Tibetan sites. People have varied viewpoints between whether these sites are authentic or pretentious. Some have said that Tibet has been "destroyed" by the Chinese central government. Whether I agree with this view or not is not the scope of this blog. But I do believe all humans desire modern living, it is how this is being achieved that is sometimes controversial.

Nevertheless, Tibet still boast some of the best cultural, architectural and natural sites in the world, be it the Potala and Mount Everest (Chomulangma in Tibetan), or just some unnamed hills along the way. To put into perspective, most of Tibet is higher than 4,000m above sea-level. So any small unnamed hill you see along the way will probably be higher than any mountain in five out of World's seven continents (Europe, North America, Africa, Oceania and Antactica).

The tour that we joined was purposely time to visit Tibet during the Shotun ("Yogurt") festival. Besides being able to see the unfurling of the Tangka at Drepung, we also experience the festivities in the parks (Lukhang, Norbulinka) around Lhasa.