Diving in the deep (or high) end

The boys finished school on the 18th so we thought we might as well start exploring Asia. Xian's terracotta warriors, nope. Chengdu's pandas, nah. Shanghai, uh-uh. Those would all be way too easy. We loaded up three kids, 4 suitcases, stroller, car seat, backpack and headed to the political lightening rod, seemingly fading Hollywood pet, altitude sickness inducing, Buddhist spiritual wonderland of TIBET. It was all worth it though...what an amazing trip. It's going to take some time to weed through the 600+ pictures, so in this post I've just listed some things I want to remember about the trip. Probably TMI for most people, but since this is my only form of journaling it's mostly for me. I'll eventually get to more pictures, promise.

~ I came away with a much better understanding of Tibetan history, but probably am more confused about the current political climate. I definitely learned it's not as simple as the slogan "Free Tibet," but most things aren't.

~ I wasn't prepared for the heavy Chinese military/police presence. It's more overt than Israel and our guide constantly had to remind us to keep political questions/comments for the car because there are "ears everywhere." We were also told not to photograph the police, but Jack didn't get that memo so I think we have a few pictures from when Jack was in charge of the camera.

~ I was shocked that Tibetans aren't allowed to have passports and can't travel without some major hoops being jumped through.

~ Unlike the rest of China, Tibetans are allowed to have two kids if they live in the city, three if they live in the country.

~ We visited many temples/monasteries which house thousands of monks. This started me thinking about the Catholic church's recent scandals and why Buddhism hasn't had the same issue. I could care less what the Catholic church lets their priests do, but in the future when someone tries to blame the problems on celibacy with a statement like, "it's just not natural" all I will be able to think is, "well, why don't the Buddhists have an issue with it?" It's thousands of men, living a celibate life, with plenty of contact with lay people and I've never heard of a problem. Not a judgement in any way, just another thing that made me go, "hmmm."

~ Tibetan buddhists have one of the more interesting takes on vegetarianism. According to our guide, most Tibetans would prefer to be vegetarians, but given the altitude and landscape of Tibet this wasn't always possible. This is the reason yak became a staple. We had yak meat, yak butter, yak stir-fry, yak jerky, yak butter tea (a better name would be YUCK butter tea). Now that Tibet is more connected to other areas via train and better roads, they can get fruits/vegetables so our guide said many people are going back to being vegetarians. The interesting part of this is that the reason they depended mostly on yak is that they see killing and eating fish and fowl a waste. With a yak if you take the animal's life, it feeds many. Eating fish and fowl are seen as "taking a life for a handful of meat."

~ We were at the highest altitude we've ever been when at Drak Yerpa Monastery - 16023 feet (4885 meters)

~ Burials - we got a very quick explanation on what Tibetans do with the body after someone dies. So brief, and strange sounding that I had to do some Google research to make sure we'd heard our guide correctly. The highest level lamas are sort of mummified and buried in a "stupa" or type of crypt (understood). Monks are cremated (understood). Lay or "normal" people as our guide called them are hacked to pieces and fed to the vultures (what!). To make matters worse Kenny thought our guide said "given to butchers" not vultures, so he thought that meant they were then eaten by people - thus, my Google search. It gets worse....children and babies are tossed in the river so our guide said, "don't eat Tibetan fish." Um, OK pass the yak.

Watch out Tibet...here we come