Greetings from Xian, China!

We left Kathmandu early on the morning of April 14, meeting a group 
of 17 other travelers and walking out of the Thamel area (they had 
decorated the streets the day before with colored lights and banners 
for the Nepalese New Year's celebration, and buses could not get into 
the neighborhood) in the rain to find our minibus. After talking with 
various other travelers and reading about Tibet, we had decided to 
abandon our originally planned flight to Shanghai from Kathmandu in 
favor of this overland adventure to the fabled city of Lhasa in Tibet.

Given Chinese restrictions on travel in Tibet, it is next to 
impossible to go there independently, so we signed up for this group 
tour, an eight day excursion driving from Kathmandu to Lhasa. That 
first morning, the minibus took us up to the border through some 
scenic, semi-tropical terraine in Nepal on into the mountains near 
the border, where we walked across the Friendship Bridge of a deep, 
narrow gorge and met our Tibetan guide, Lobsang. There, we dodged the 
gaunlet of vendors and money changers lining the road and piled into 
five Toyota Landcruisers for the drive into Tibet. We found ourselves 
joining Susan and Kathy, two nurses (from Seattle and Anchorage, 
respectively) in one of the vehicles with our taciturn but thankfully 
alert and skillful driver, Mr. Lee. For the next five days we 
traveled along the Friendship Highway, a sometimes sketchy and 
winding gravel road (no guard rails anywhere, of course) and one of 
the highest roads in the world - we topped out on day two at around 
5300 m, or about 17,400 ft. The route has absolutely stunning views 
of the Himalayas, including Everest, other mountain ranges, the high 
Tibetan tundra and plains, torquoise lakes, milky (with glacially 
ground rock dust) rivers, and spectacular hanging glaciers. Yaks and 
goats were everywhere, and Tibetan herders, farmers, and their homes 
seemed to be scattered at random, some of them in the most unlikely 
places perched on a hillside or atop a mountain.

We spent the night in guesthouses in progressively larger towns as we 
went. The first few places were coldest inside and out (below 
freezing at night), with no heat in the rooms and filthy asian squat 
toilets (in one case, a bare outhouse with two holes in the floor) in 
bathrooms with cold water or none at all. Everyone rejoiced when we 
finally got to a place with hot running water and heat in the rooms 
near the end of the trip. Despite the rough conditions, these were 
actually the finest establishments available in the towns we were 
passing through, and it gives one pause to imagine the conditions in 
which the locals exist on an everyday basis.

The people were for the most part very friendly and curious about we 
westerners, but not nearly so forward nor conversant in English as 
the Indians or Nepalese we had encountered, so it was difficult to 
engage them in conversation. Generally, we socialized with the other 
people in the group, which consisted of Austalians, English, Dutch, 
Americans, Germans, and one shy Japanese woman. We typically ate 
together with Susan, Kathy, and a subset of the others, usually 
feasting on dishes of noodles, yak meat, chicken, and momos (boiled 
or steamed dumplings - yum!).

Most of the towns along the way had Buddhist temples and old, often 
severely ruined fortresses, and we toured several of these along the 
way. Buddhism is practiced almost universally in Tibet, and the 
temples were crowded with both pilgrims (usually circumambulating 
inside or out, spinning prayer wheels, and mumbling prayers) and 
tourists (gawking at the enormous statues of every incarnation of 
Buddha, brilliantly colored paintings, hangings, and structures, and 
snapping photos at every turn). Monks in ochre shirts and maroon 
robes were often seen, either working, praying, or attending large 
burning vats of yak butter (which is ubiquitous in Tibet - we were 
even unexpectedly subjected to some yak butter tea, which we do NOT 
recommend), but apparently most if not all of the monasteries have a 
regulated headcount - for example, one of the largest monasteries in 
Lhasa, which used to have over 10,000 monks, has been limited by the 
authorities to 600. As the cities grew larger along our route, so did 
the temples and monasteries and the attendant crowds of pilgrims, 
culminating in Lhasa with the gigantic and stunning 1000 room Potala 
Palace and the epicenter of Tibetan Buddhism, the Jokhang Temple 
(around which a constant stream of pilgrims flows in a clockwise 
direction day and night, mostly oblivious to the fence of vendor 
stalls selling everything from eggs to precious jewels (or cut glass, 
you be the judge) to whoever will listen.

We spent the last three days in Lhasa, touring the various sites, 
shopping in the markets, and dining in style (stumbling upon an 
incredibly tasty buffet-style feast our last night, complete with 
live music, at a random restaurant outside the Temple). Our 
investigations regarding travel onward into China proper led us to 
the conclusion that flying was the preferred way out (1.5 hours by 
plane vs. 3 days of bad road on a bus, with some question as to 
whether we were even allowed to do so), so we bought tickets to 
Chengdu, in the Sichuan Province.

Chengdu turned out to be a nice town, quite modern and thriving, with 
new highrise office and apartment buildings springing up wherever one 
looks (this has so far proven to be the rule with Chinese cities). We 
explored the town by bicycle, visiting the Wenshu Monastery (Chinese 
Buddhism has a different flavor, with more cartoon-like statuery, the 
vivid colors dominated by red and black, and the yak butter 
thankfully replaced by regular wax candles). At this point, we were 
getting rather templed out, and found the tea garden of more 
interest, with hordes of Chinese enjoying a leisurely afternoon of 
conversation, majhong, or cards over bottomless cups of jasmine tea. 
We did a day's excursion from there to the Wolong Nature Reserve, the 
world's #1 source of pandas. This is a giant reserve in western 
Sichuan, which has a Research Center housing about 30 or 40 pandas in 
either large, naturalistic, walled enclosures or in smaller 
progressive zoo-style cages. For a fee, Chris and I were allowed to 
hand-feed a large 2 year old panda and to share a bench with another 
smaller 6 month old panda, who was quite friendly, wrapping an arm 
around our shoulder and holding our hands. This was a wonderful 
experience if at first a little scary (they look like bears, but are 
actually quite gentle - and I believe entirely vegetarian).

After a couple of days, we took a bus on to Chongqing, where we 
boarded a river cruise boat with about 200 others passengers 
(apparently all Chinese) for a two day trip down the Yangze River 
through Three Gorges. This section of the Yangze cuts through three 
successive canyons, up to about 2000 m deep, providing for some 
spectacular scenery. There are several towns and cities along the 
way, and we stopped in a couple of them to view some temples built or 
carved into the hills. The whole area is soon (2009) to be drowned by 
what will be the world's largest dam, the Three Gorges Project, 
taking with it about 8000 archeological sites and displacing over a 
million people from their homes. On the plus side, they expect 
something like 16 nuclear power plant's worth of hydroelectric power 
to result (hopefully alleviating some of the pollution due to China's 
staggeringly large use of coal for generating power), as well as 
providing ocean-going vessel access to Chongqing, 2000 km inland from 
the East China Sea. Toward the end of the trip, we passed by the 
Project site, currently well under construction, and then passed 
through a lock next to a lower dam just upriver from our exit point 
at Yichang.

After a night in Yichang, we boarded a train here to Xian, where 
we've spent the last two days. We toured around the Muslim Quarter 
(which, aside from a few covered women's heads and the dearth of pork 
in the area, didn't much resemble the Middle East; I believe the 
quarter houses mostly Chinese muslims, rather than displaced Middle 
Easterners), played some snooker (taught to us by our friend Tim from 
Varanasi and Nepal), and chatted with some locals in a football 
(that's soccer to you Americans) bar, where Chris was invited to play 
a few songs on guitar by the band (yes, I took a photo). Today, we 
took a bus out to the Terra-cotta Warriors Museum and excavation 
site. This Qin Dynasty site is amazing and very well preserved and 
presented. It was discovered in 1974, and the Chinese have done a 
great job with it, enclosing the three main pits in large climate 
controlled buildings that are lined with concourses allowing the 
visitors to walk around and see the restored statues and the in-
progress excavation work, as well as other extensive displays of 
artifacts found at the site. It quite deserves Jaques Chirac's 
appellation of "Eighth Wonder of the World".

Anyway, I hope the above wasn't took long and windy. Tomorrow, we 
travel by bus on to Laoyang (the paper city and site of the first 
seismograph - can't call myself a geophysicist and pass that by!) for 
a couple of days, then it's on to Beijing for our last stop in China.

Have a Happy May Day!
Than and Chris