Migmar explains that in Tibetan Buddhism the spirit leaves the body when you die and the more you can help the burning of the butter lamps, the stronger will be the light that will guide your soul to its next body.
The chapel has a powerfully devotional atmosphere. The lower recesses are dark and smoky, but a shaft of sunlight catches the face of the Buddha, 80 feet (24 m) above us. The lines of the eyes, nose and lips are beautifully drawn and, with elegant simplicity, create an expression of profound compassion. Buddha statues are usually made of stone, but this one, commissioned by the 9th Panchen Lama in 1904, is made of copper, which enabled it to be such a great size. And the size works: the expression, the long fall of the robes and the lotus leaf base combine to convey a feeling of strength, serenity and immutability.
The new paved road from Shigatse south to Gyantse runs alongside streams and between pollarded willows. We pass through a village that has a big wheel made of wood with boxes fixed to it for local children to sit in and be hoisted aloft. In a field a road gang are having a picnic lunch, shovels all neatly stacked to one side.
Gyantse was once a rich wool town, on the lucrative trade route between Lhasa and India. A huge fort (dzong) dominates the high ground to the south of the town. Migmar and I stand on the battlements and look out over a flat plain that belies the fact that we are at 13,000 feet (3960 m) and still way up in the mountains.
Migmar points out the plastic-sheeted greenhouses and the modern housing blocks.
‘This place has changed so much in last 20 years. Before, all houses were Tibetan.’
Whereas the Chinese seem to have invaded Tibet many times, the British largely left it alone, though in the mid 19th century they did train up Indian spies, known as pundits, to infiltrate this secretive land. In 1903, however, on a trumped-up pretext, an army, under Colonel Francis Younghusband, crossed over from India, fought a bloody battle not far from Gyantse, in which some 3000 Tibetans died, before storming the fort from which we’re looking out and going on, unopposed, as far as Lhasa. The British left four years later, leaving behind in Gyantse a post office and a public school. All that remains now is the Anti-British Museum, housed in the dzong.
A smiling lady attendant gestures to me to go inside. She makes sure all the lights are switched on in the ‘Memorial Hall of Anti-British’, where murals depict the ghastly acts of Young-husband’s army and the heroic resistance of the Tibetans. This is echoed on a TV screen on which runs a recently made Chinese epic called Red River Valley, which also deals with the British invasion. There is nothing here, of course, that deals with their own invasion of Tibet.
We have a cup of tea (black tea this time, not yak butter) in front of the ruins of a walled monastery that contains an enormous and very ancient chorten. According to Migmar, there were many such monasteries here. Now they have been cleared and in their place are wider roads, high-rise buildings of tinted blue glass, and, as we drive down from the fort, a concrete pleasure garden, half completed, with ragged grass, fountains that don’t spout and twee, concrete bridges running over a stagnant pond.
The road from Gyantse to Lhasa runs through lonely and very wild landscape, first of all beside a rocky, steep-sided reservoir, then curling round the sinuous shoreline of Yamdrok Tso (Turquoise Lake), the biggest single stretch of water in land-locked Tibet.
Night falls and we’re still hugging the lake. Eventually the road rises steeply and winds slowly over what seem interminable passes over interminable switchbacks. I must confess to being fast asleep as we roll across the Yarlung Tsangpo (the mighty Tibetan river that U-turns round the end of the Himalaya and enters India as the Brahmaputra) and when I wake we’re on a fast dual carriageway that is the long, western approach into the world’s highest capital. We’ve reached Lhasa, the Forbidden City where, judging from the rows of shining, gaudy, neon-encrusted buildings on either side of us, it doesn’t look as if much is forbidden any longer.
I want Lhasa to be as dark and different as I’d long imagined it, a remote place of romance and possible menace, but the drive up the long approach road along West Dekyl Yam dispels illusions. The buildings we pass are more Las Vegas than Lhasa and to be welcomed into the world’s highest capital by flashing neon palm trees suggests the Chinese have well and truly won aesthetic control of this ancient city.
I’m aware that the bludgeoning tiredness I feel after crossing the mountains may well be souring my judgement and that once we’re bedded in at what is purportedly one of Lhasa’s swankier hotels all will be well again.
The shining, recently built Himalaya Hotel rises portentously from lower buildings in a quiet but characterless side street. It’s clad in glass and as we pile wearily from our vehicles we’re greeted by smiling doormen protected from the cold by fur-trimmed greatcoats. Unfortunately, the staff at reception are also protected from the cold by fur-trimmed greatcoats, as are the waitresses who take our orders at the Yak Bar. The Himalaya Hotel may have glittering, gold-wrapped pillars, shiny mirrors and ceilings encrusted with every shape and size of light fitting, but it is the dazzling gloss of an ice castle.
I pile all the bedclothes onto one bed and, stripping down to a vest, sweater and thermal underwear, climb in. I feel desperately disappointed. This was to be our reward, a hotel in the heart of the capital, the Holy Grail after some pretty savage days on the road. As it is, the Himalaya Hotel seems to be everything its name might suggest.
Day Sixty Five : Lhasa
Though for a while suffocation seemed more likely than sleep, I actually pass a reasonable night beneath my sarcophagus of blankets and when I wake a pale morning light is leaking into the room. My bags, still packed, squat around the doorway where I dropped them last night, looking mournful and expectant, like neglected pets.
With an enormous effort of willpower I heave myself out of bed and across to the window. The curtain opens jerkily to reveal a mottled sky and an horizon of crumpled, grey mountains framing dusty, undistinguished, largely modern buildings.
A view that could only lower already jaded spirits, were it not for one thing. Away to the northeast, rising gracefully above the city, like a mountain in its own right, are the white walls, russet towers and gold-tipped roofs of one of the most dramatic and serenely powerful buildings in the world, the Potala Palace.
It’s probably a couple of miles away, but even at this distance and this oblique angle it is mesmerizing, especially to one brought up with its black and white likeness in a volume of The Children’s Encyclopaedia. To be honest, I was never quite convinced of the existence of the Potala Palace. Because its size and shape was so unlike anything I’d ever seen in the West, I always assumed that it was something mythical, an ambitious piece of artistic licence.
But now I see it with my own eyes I realize it is everything it appeared to be: a great Buddha of a building, looking gravely out over the city that was for so long the heart and soul of Tibetan Buddhism. The only thing I can see that is taller than the Potala Palace is the flagpole at its eastern end, from which flies the red flag of China.
Shave, dress, wrap a scarf around me and head for the dining room. A rubber mat in the lift reads ‘Wednesday’.
Bas and Nigel are already at breakfast, dressed like Tenzing and Hillary. The staff are apologetic. The hotel is about to close for the winter and the heating has all been turned off. They do have portable radiators and will try to find some for us.