As we travel around Asia, we’ve been comparing notes with Marco Polo—and one place on which we certainly disagree is Tibet. Amidst his account of the locals’ scandalous marriage practices, he barely mentions a lama or makes even a passing remark on the significant lack of oxygen in the air. But for us, from the sacred monasteries in Lhasa to the foot of Mt. Everest, the altitude wasn’t the only thing that exceeded expectations.

Chengdu

But before arriving in Tibet, we had to stop in Chengdu to pick up the necessary paperwork for our flight. Our day spent there can be pretty much summed up as follows: pandas, pandas, Sofitel, pandas.

Lhasa region

The Chinese government requires all foreign travelers in Tibet to be part of a tour group, even if that group has only one member. Ours had three and came with a driver and guide to show us the way (and handle the endless paperwork, required for every place we visited).

Our first several days in Tibet can be best described as a monastery-a-thon that got us up to speed on Tibetan buddhism. The temples here could not be more different from those we saw in Southeast Asia; the only thing they have in common is a reverence for Buddha himself. The Tibetans have taken that concept and applied it to the hundreds of lamas, kings, protector demons, and “other” buddhas to make their chapels incomparable with those elsewhere. Marco Polo—in his 13th-century wisdom—called these people “idolators”, and we can almost see why. Each monastery is adorned with thousands of statues, murals, and paintings to which pilgrims offer alms of money, grain, and especially yak butter in hopes of good fortune. The yak butter candles, mixed with incense, create a unique smell we won’t soon forget.

In many ways, yak butter is is the Tibetan’s all-purpose duct tape; It can be purchased anywhere (and in bulk) at all hours of the day, serving as a source of food, fuel, and spiritual devotion, as well as an industrial building material. Okay, so maybe nobody eats or worships with duct tape, which just means yak butter is even more versatile. Before concrete, the traditional way of leveling and sealing Tibetan floors was (and in some places, still is) a rhythmic dance of pounding sand and gravel flat while singing together with a dozen others. Yak butter is the secret ingredient: they pile on 6 inches of the stuff and let it soak in for the final seal. To this day, rookie monks are hard at work maintaining theses floors, which ironically involves scraping off drips of yak butter left behind by pilgrims, who move quickly from one image to the next with their thermoses of the melted good stuff.

In the chapels, one image notably absent is any of the current, 14th Dalai Lama. In His Holiness’ place on thrones and in shrines is a painting of Compassion Buddha, of whom the Tibetans believe he is a manifestation. We frequently felt grateful and guilty to have seen him speak in person on campus a couple years ago, while these devout people have been waiting 40 years to hear what he has to say. With this prohibition, countless security cameras, and—reportedly—spies dressed as pilgrims, it’s clear the government is still keeping a close watch on the Tibetans. Our guide, though, was willing to discuss politics with us in the safety of our Land Cruiser and shared how several of his friends have been imprisoned for even the appearance of protest.

The Friendship Highway

As we broke out of the Lhasa region and into the Himalayas, we had a lot of time on the open road, and were often thankful to be equipped with such a large SUV given the condition of some mountain passes. If there’s one place in the world where such a vehicle is appropriate it is here, and almost every truck we saw was the same make and model. I would wager that Toyota sells more Land Cruisers here than even in America. In Tibet, it seems, you have two choices: Land Cruiser or pony-cart.

Given the altitude, we were expecting a few more snow-capped peaks, but unlike on the Karakoram Highway, here you really do drive over the mountains. At first, altitude sickness was less of a problem than the surprising difficulty of even the simplest physical feats like walking up half a flight of stairs. Climbing onto the roofs of monasteries and up hills on the high mountain passes left us breathless in more ways than one.

Until day 8, when we broke 5000 m (about 16,400 ft), and Sandra—the Swedish third member of our group—succumbed to a nasty bout of altitude sickness. Dizzy, vomiting, and miserable, she had to be taken down to the Nepali border in the dead of night. That morning, she was completely fine and we were all convinced that Acute Mountain Sickness was a psychological problem, but by that afternoon we were pulling over frequently and it was clear Sandra wasn’t going to make it any higher. Our guide and driver rushed her to the nearest hospital (which wasn’t exactly around the corner), and after consulting with doctors and her family in Sweden, they decided to put her on oxygen and get her down as quickly as possible. We waited the next day for news of her condition, agonizing over every stomach grumble or twinge of headache and worrying if we ourselves would be able to continue on to Everest Base Camp the following day.

Everest

Any nerves we had about climbing higher were immediately erase when we caught our first glimpse of Qomolangma—the highest point on Earth—early the next morning. Swerving up and over one more mountain pass, suddenly we had five of the world’s tallest peaks staring us in the face, all over 8000 m in height, covered in ice, and glistening in the morning sun. It’s a good thing we had a fresh memory card, because our camera’s shutter button was down almost continuously over the next several hours. At 5200 m, we didn’t think our lungs had any more air to give, but that view honestly took our breath away.

Our driver earned his dues on the “road” leading to the foot of Everest, but we decided to hike the last several kilometers from Rongbuk Monastery up to Base Camp. We didn’t know what to expect when we got there; part of me envisioned it like a ski lodge with hot chocolate and marshmallows, and part of me thought it would be a tourist trap with tons of postcard vendors and souvenir stalls. Both parts were dead wrong. Gasping for air—this high, the air pressure is barely half that of sea level— we discovered that Base Camp wasn’t much of a camp at all; the place was completely deserted, in fact, and dead silent save for the flapping of prayer flags in the wind. In late spring, the area is packed with tents as climbers—and their guides and cooks and doctors and Sherpas and yaks and yak tenders—make ready to mount an expedition. By Halloween, no one was around to appreciate the landscape except the government officers ensuring our papers were in order and checking our sleeves for Tibetan flags. If not for the wind and the cold, we could have stood there all day, gazing in awe of the most fierce place on Earth.

In many ways, everything was downhill from there. As we eased down the Himalayan valleys towards the Nepali border, the ice melted and tress sprung up again. The air got thicker and, reinvigorated, we felt maybe strong enough to run a marathon and definitely ready for our home stretch on the Indian subcontinent.

Chengdu Pandas Pandas Pandas!

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Tibet: Lhasa Region

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Qomolangma (Mt. Everest)

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Tibet: Gyantse, Shigatse, Friendship Highway

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