Arriving to Tibet was an odd experience. The bus ride from the airport to Lhasa was overwhelmingly beautiful... I would have probably died, my Heart burst out of Joy, had I managed to get on that friggin' train...

Once we reached Lhasa as such, it was a totally different experience, however. It was as if we had reached paved-over-heaven, a sort of touristic Disneyland built on relics of enlightenment... the very paradigm of our times.

This is where the first true rip in my Heart appeared.
This is where I lost Hope, for the first time... ever.
I could just about bare the commercialisation and westernisation of big Chinese cities, but not here. I could just about bare the rampant urbanisation and destruction of old major cities such as Shanghai and Beijing; these are, after all, the cities that seem to not only carry but generate the "modernisation" of China.

But Lhasa?

Chinese rulers may claim they have increased the life expectancy by 20 or more years for the Tibetan population, but to do that, first they had to introduce poverty, destroy the connection and seep in disharmony. But, unlike most, I do not blame Chinese people for this... I blame us, the white people.

Our hunger for sanitised versions of higher Truths.
Our hunger for entertainment and a sense of fulfilling the call of carpe diem.

The French and German tourist groups made me just as nauseous as the Chinese ones... if not more. The disturbing part about the white tourists was that I understood what they said, I saw how they moved, how they behaved, and I recognised our cultural imprints, logic and methods. It made me sick to the bone to see tourists so full of their "oh my GAWD! I'm on holiday in Lhasa!" that they didn't actually care to see any of what was really going on around them.

Whether I saw beyond anything that I chose to see, remains, of course, clear: I didn't.
But at least I like to believe I tried.


There is (was?) a really nice Nepali rooftop restaurant with a lovely view to the Jokhang and the shopping streets around. We sat there with Sarju on a multitude of occasions, watching how the rain clouds would work like a clock, most evenings, to bring in a heavy thunderstorm that would wipe clean the dusty and overly paved streets of Lhasa.

Oh Lhasa... you broke my Heart and destroyed whatever Hope was left in me.
Will You forgive me my weakness?