Good-bye Girl...

...off to see the world. I'll miss you.

Town

Most of our scenery was pretty brown along the drive. The mountains are very rocky and brown with not a lot of vegetation, the valleys are also brown and rocky, and the river was actually made of chocolate, as you can see. But then, all of a sudden, we'd see these cool little towns with green and yellow fields layered one above the other. I assume they were irrigated from the river.

Animals & Carts

The small towns we visited were really rustic and basic, having few (if any) cars, but lots of motorcycles and carts and animals...cows, horses, pigs, and packs of mangy dogs that roam around and howl all night long.

Post office:
Crosswalk:
View of the one-street town from our "restaurant:"
Some kind of pig eating breakfast on the sidewalk:
Bored, but pretty pony & cart beside a little market:
Traversing the open plain:
And in the cities we have human-powered carts. The rickshaws have their own lanes, and they are a fabulous way to get around:
And they're harder to drive than you think!

Cute

Was talking to two Korean friends tonight and we discussed the expressions, "Crystal clear," and "Clear as mud," to indicate comprehension. So after awhile, one of them decided to try out his new knowledge, and the end of one of my sentences exclaimed, "Crystal mud!"

Pilgrims & Prayer Flags

Pilgrims from the Tibetan countryside come from all over to visit monasteries in Lhasa (the capital) and other cities. In the picture above, you can see three young boy monks bowing in front of the Jokhang, one of Lhasa's oldest and most prominent monasteries. Below, you can see a young person doing the bows on the street. Many pilgrims do this sort of bowing all the way around the temple. It takes hours and hours, and I can't imagine how hard it would be on the body. Most of them have pieces of wood strapped onto their hands so as not to rub them raw. Other pilgrims usually put small bills into their hands as they pass:
Around all monasteries, you can find prayer wheels which pilgrims and monks (and anyone else who wants to) spin as they walk by. The wheels have a little rolled up prayer inside them, so when you spin the wheel, it is thought the prayer gets released up to the gods. The woman below is not spinning the wheels, but she has her own tiny prayer wheel that she is spinning around and around as she walks the circuit:
This cute little woman saw us taking pictures and jumped right in, wanting her picture taken. The old women loved to see us and were always so friendly:
Most pilgrims, as I mentioned, spin their own wheels. Here's a man with a gigantic one! He has a pouch attached to his clothing to help him carry it:
One day while we were visiting the Jokhang, there was a mass convention going on. Pilgrims from all over came and sat all day on the floor listening to a monk read from what I assume are Buddhist scriptures, or teachings. It seemed so boring to me, but they were content. They were all following along in their own books, and every now and again the monks from the monastery would walk amongst the seated people giving them yak butter tea. There were lots of visiting monks sitting and listening too, which I will show pictures of later. This is a picture looking down on a section of the main room for the pilgrims (they weren't even in the same room as the reading monk; just listening through a speaker)...the other main room was filled with monks. There were also people sitting everywhere on the sidelines, above, below, all around:
Finally, on mountains and on highways, you can see tons and tons of prayer flags flying in the wind. They are fastened there to appease the gods, and when the wind stirs them, it is thought the prayers go up to heaven (does look a bit messy at times I admit):

Country Folk

Ok, so on the day we were supposed to visit Mt. Everest, our guide took us to see his brother and sister-in-law instead. We walked across an open plain, with no houses in sight. No houses in sight, because this is what they look like up close (you can see his brother to the right):

And from far away you can't see them, since they're made out of the same dirt the covers the fields. The above house is their summer house, where they tend sheep and yaks all summer and make the winter's supply of butter and cheese. Here's our guide and my friend walking across the plain toward the house:

Once we got there, we were welcomed inside by his sister-in-law:
What you see is basically their whole house: one room containing two little beds, a wood stove, a pile of old blankets, and a pile of sheep manure beside the stove for burning. The ceiling was low, and attached to this house was a corral for the sheep at nighttime. These people live off the land, and do not make money. Occasionally they will sell some crops to buy a few things, but other than that, they do everything for themselves. Their lives are so hard, but they are so happy, generous, and kind.

So, in the above picture, notice the round thingy she is pulling on. It's filled with home-made yak yogurt. She's rocking it back and forth to make butter. Once it started hardening, she poured it out into this basin and scooped the fresh butter off the top:
Eventually our guide's older brother showed up from tending sheep:
While we were there, we treated so kindly by these beautiful people. She gave us fresh yogurt, cheese, yak butter tea, and made us dumplings, which are a lot of work and they only eat on special occasions. I loved all the food, except the yak butter tea. So I made my friend drink that since she couldn't really stomach the goopy yogurt. heh heh.
Then these two adorable kids showed up:
They were so respectful and sweet! We had a ball playing with them all afternoon:

I'd like to say a word about the Tibetan wives. So it's still a widely-practiced custom in Tibet (especially in the countryside) that all brothers in a family share the same wife.

Yep, you heard me.

The marriage is usually arranged by the parents of the brothers and the girl. The girl is told she is going to some special occasion, so she dresses up, and is led to the house of the brothers. Only when she steps through the door and monks start throwing barley at her does she realize she is being married off, and then she usually starts to cry. Then she lives with the family so the brothers can keep tending to the family farm. The children call all the brothers, "Dad."

So, after bombarding my guide with a million questions, many of them the same question, re-worded to ensure I was really understanding this, I said,

"So...you have 2 brothers right? And they both have the same wife?"
"Yes."
"So, isn't she your wife too???"
"No. I decided I didn't like that idea. I want my own wife."

I laughed and laughed. He's great.

In the cities this custom is not really practiced anymore. There's an interesting dichotomy in Tibet: the city dwellers are very westernized (or Chinese-ized as the case may be), while the country folk are still very National Geographic.