Backtracking...

Here is another old-ish story I'm in the process of working on. I might have posted bits and pieces of this before back in 2008:

In the summer, one of my teachers laughed, said, “Are you sure?” when I said I was going to Tibet. “But the roads are so high—you’ll get sick...” “Yes, of course I’m going!” I laughed in disbelief.

But first, we were in China, in Chengdu, trying to recover from jet lag. In Chengdu, there was never any garbage on the streets. It was orderly. There were trash cans and recycling bins and people in orange vests sweeping with twig brooms taller than themselves seemingly day and night. In Chengdu there was pomelo fever, a strange fancy Pizza Hut. At Air China's cashier window, they counted Keith's money on an abacus.

In Chengdu, our hotel included huge buffet breakfasts: egg fried rice, tiny bits of bacon dripping grease, prune sticky rice wrapped in tiny banana leaf packets, fried dough buns, huge sections of pomelo and tea mixed with sweetened condensed milk as rain streamed off eaves. After breakfast, I cupped my hands, let them fill with water, washing the stickiness away.

But soon it was time for us to head to Tibet. We had our Lonely Planet guide. We had Keith's rudimentary Tibetan. Armed with that, and packets of ramen, bread, peanut butter and acetazolamide, we boarded a bus.

On the bus along the Tibet-Sichuan Highway from Kangding to Chengdu, there were strange Tibetan music videos playing. We passed billboards of smiling Tibetans next to Chinese military men and women. Huge sacks of fresh walnuts for sale, kiwis and kiwis and kiwis.

It was eight hours from Chengdu to Kangding--an historical border town between China and Tibet. With those eight hours came a huge gain in elevation. We arrived in the city at 8,400 feet.  In Kangding, the source of the Mekong, the Dza Chu River, flowed through town and mountains rose all around, Buddhas painted upon them.

There were only a few hotels approved for foreigners. And so we stayed in a shared room at the Black Hat guesthouse with two American girls who taught English in Chengdu. The room had brightly painted old-style wooden beds and wires sticking out of the wall with a note below that said in English, "Do not lick."

In Kangding, I had no idea what day it was. I went to a Tibetan restaurant downstairs from a hotel and drank Lhasa sweet tea from a tall clear glass while Tibetan music played noisily. It was fall. It was cold. I warmed my hand on the glass. I had a headache. Outside the street bustled with honking cars while I waited for my breakfast of scrambled eggs with tomato and tibetan bread with yak butter. There was an ATM and yak momos oozing buttery meat juice.
 
In Kangding, street vendors sold round potato slices on skewers that had been fried in hot oil. Girls had unbelievably long pony tails. The Tibetan waitresses sang while working. The streetlights had mantras on them--prayers glowing in the dark. There were Chinese shops of jewelry and tea bowls. Malas and rugs. A whole shop of bizarre plastic curtains--all hanging throughout the store so you had to walk through as though in a maze. Tea shops full of smoking men in suitcoats. A whole shop of stuffed, standing Tibetan antelope wearing yellow khataks.

Somehow, we ended up meeting the Dalai Lama's step-nephew. He helped us buy bus tickets, took us for tea, bought us dramamine for the next bus ride which would take us deeper into Tibet.