Lhasa Luck, All of It Bad

It proved auspicious, as the Dalai Lama might say, that I had packed “The Tibetan Book of the Dead” for my long-awaited trip to Tibet last July. The sacred guidebook aims to prepare people for the most frightening trip of all: the journey after death.

My trip wasn’t that bad. Really. I’m not writing from the bardo, as Tibetans call purgatory. But this trip wasn’t supposed to be bad at all.

As my plane swooped over the Himalayas to the Tibetan plateau, I shivered with excitement, not fear. Tibet has been called Shangri-La, a forbidden land, a Lost Horizon of mystery and peace. In my “Fourteen Days in Tibet,” I planned to meet burgundy-robed monks dispensing wisdom. I would sit in high meditation caves. I would trek over sweeping vistas that would change my life. I would return, I hoped, at least a little enlightened.

Buried deep in my suitcase, “The Tibetan Book of the Dead” lamented people like me: “Oh compassion on these suffering conscious beings/Who wander in the life cycle, darkened with delusions. . . . She has no friend.”

It was true I had no friend traveling with me, but I had explored much of the world alone, and I hadn’t thought twice about solo travel in Tibet. My plans were simple enough: After a quick tour of Lhasa, Tibet’s capital, I would hire a Land Rover to take me to Nam Co, or Sky Lake, at 15,000 feet. I would spend a week meditating in Nam Co’s hermitage and caves. This would be the high point, literally and figuratively, of my trip.

I considered it a small matter that I would be entering Tibet semi-illegally. Chinese law requires that tourists come to Tibet on group tours. Travel agents in Katmandu, Nepal, suggest that independent travelers join a fabricated “group” to enter Tibet, then ditch the group and travel on a Chinese visa. I had secured my visa ahead of time by saying my destinations in China were Beijing and Shanghai.

Did these lies create bad karma from the outset?

My fake group never materialized at the Katmandu airport. Someone from a travel agency at the airport told me to get on the plane anyway. At the Lhasa airport, I was the only loner in the long line of groups passing through Chinese immigration. Desperate to belong, I latched onto a real group. I gave my papers and hotel vouchers to the group’s leader. A few moments later, I was on my foster group’s bus for the two-hour drive to Lhasa.

Ha! I was in! Exactly how, I wasn’t sure, but who cared? I sucked in the sharp air, marveled at the terrain, enjoyed the buzz of dizziness from the altitude. Lhasa is at 12,000 feet. I live at sea level in Santa Monica. My mind felt elevated, keen; I was entering a marvelously altered state.

Because I’d surrendered my vouchers, I was stuck with my foster group’s hotel, which wasn’t the quaint, Tibetan-run place I’d reserved, but a dive. I would have moved, but something was happening to my marvelously altered state. I was getting the worst migraine of my life. I was nauseated too. Was this altitude sickness? How could it be when I had climbed 14,495-foot Mt. Whitney years ago? This was so pedestrian.

And painful. For two days I lay racked with it, unable to tour Lhasa. In bed I read “The Book of the Dead”: “She is going to another life-realm, entering a thick darkness, falling into a great abyss.”

I wanted out of the abyss. The migraine pills I had with me would shrink the blood vessels in my brain--vessels that were already struggling for oxygen--so taking one didn’t seem like a good idea. By the third day, it seemed like a fine idea and I swallowed one. The pain abated.

I could finally get out of bed--just in time to see my foster group leaving for the rest of their tour.

I was alone again but not without resources. I had packed five days’ worth of delicious backpacker food to sustain me on my planned Nam Co retreat. I blessed my foresight as I stirred hot water into freeze-dried spaghetti marinara in my Chinese hovel.

My strength returned. I still had lots of time for Nam Co. Every goal worth having has its challenges, I thought.

I decided to build up endurance before venturing to Nam Co. I climbed the steps to Lhasa’s Potala Palace, the former home of the Dalai Lamas and seat of government. The Potala is a phantasmagoria of scarlet chambers, monstrous statues and jeweled stupa tombs holding relics of the enlightened dead. Tibetan Buddhism isn’t for the weak. Wrathful deities with popping eyes wave swords at you. Goddesses sport tiger skins and necklaces of skulls. Hungry ghosts bedeck the walls in “wheel of life” mandalas held in the mouth of a demon.

“Such amazing works of art,” I stuttered to other tourists, pretending that these demons weren’t going to give me nightmares.

At night “The Book of the Dead” jeered at me: “Your lies will not help.” These demons would “rip out your heart, pull out your guts, drink your blood, eat your flesh, and gnaw your bones.”

Clearly I had to become even tougher to withstand heart ripping and bone gnawing. To acclimate further, I decided to visit ancient Samye Monastery at 13,000 feet. I chartered a tractor--the only transport in the area--to take me to a meditation cave once used by Guru Rinpoche, an 8th century Buddhist master (and the author of “The Book of the Dead,” my truest guidebook for this trip).

A jolting three-hour ride and an hourlong vertical hike brought me to the cave, which was guarded by a wizened monk. Recognizing my devotion, the monk gave me three “special pills,” globs of rancid yak butter mixed with ground barley. I ate one immediately and regretted it. The monk waited for me to swallow the others. Instead I put them in the only place of honor I could think of--my passport--”for later,” I said, lying again. I never imagined having a passport that reeked of rancid yak butter.

Surely now I was ready for Nam Co. Back in Lhasa, I hired a Land Rover. Unsure about being alone with a driver named Bampa, I accepted a penniless traveling companion, a gentle, silent monk who wanted to visit Nam Co too. We set off to the tune of Bampa’s music cassettes, shrieking with age.

Tibet is the ultimate road trip. Over hill, over vale, puffing over 17,000-foot passes, charging through rivers, clinging to cliff sides, hearts pounding with terror, we went. Fifteen hours later, bumping (“Bampa” was appropriate) over peat steppes where yaks grazed, we arrived in freezing darkness at Nam Co--and found, of course, no room at the inn, not even in the local nomad tents.

Bampa earned his tip by finding an earthen structure with a bough ceiling, a 5-foot-high door and some empty cots. Triumph again! At last, Nam Co!

As if to remind me of the vanity of victory, the Tibetan altitude demons flared up the minute I lay down. “The Book of the Dead” described my feeling precisely: “They lick up your brains; they sever your head from your body.” I was afraid to take another migraine pill. How much more shrinkage could my brain take?

The next day, racked with headache, I stumbled along the shores of Nam Co. The lake was an unearthly turquoise, so gorgeous it hurt. The sky sucked me into its emptiness. I sat in the caves and meditated on it all. What was happening to this trip? What was the lesson?

I could hardly think. I retired to the hut and popped a migraine pill, plus an altitude pill, plus ibuprofen, plus some Tibetan red seeds that Bampa said the Dalai Lama himself had blessed. (I left the yak-butter pills in my passport.) No relief. An hour later, I arose to use the toilet/field outside. Bang! I slammed my forehead against the low door jamb of the hut. I collapsed in sobs. The young monk who had hitched a ride came running. He wept and propped up pillows for my head.

Another hour passed. The monk was gone now, but the pain was still there. Maybe a walk by the lake would help. I rose to leave the hut. Bang! Again. I collapsed, howling. The monk raced back, moaned, touched his heart, pointed to my head. With no other language between us, he was trying to tell me he felt my pain. And now I cried for another reason. Someone cared. Here, maybe, was my burgundy-clad monk dispensing wisdom.

The next day we jolted our way back to Lhasa. The Land Rover died a dozen times along the way. In a river gorge on a road that kept slipping away, we rounded a bend. Bang! A shower of boulders crashed onto the road, not 100 yards ahead. A Chinese road construction crew was dynamiting the hillside.

“The Book of the Dead” described it well: “Reverberating, rumbling, like fierce mantras of intense sound--squeezed between boulders, stone and dirt.” I could hardly wait to catch the next plane to Katmandu.

I ‘ve been to Nepal many times, but never before had I been charged by a bull on the streets of Katmandu. I escaped with a nasty bruise on my leg.

I recovered enough to go shopping the next day in Bagh Bazaar--where my purse was stolen. I lost my plane tickets, Nepalese visa, traveler’s checks, cash and credit cards, Katmandu house key and journal. I can’t say I minded losing my yak-butter passport.

I was scheduled to fly home in three days, and it took all those days to replace the essential documents. I could hardly wait to go home. I was so excited that I arrived early at the airport--and discovered that my flight had been canceled. I insisted that the airlines put me on any flight. They routed me the other way around the world, 40 hours of flying. I made it. My luggage didn’t. (It wandered around for a week or so on its own trip.)

Stripped of bravado and everything else, shaken by my “spiritual experience,” I am safe at home at last. I am still trying to make some sense of my trip. The “Book of the Dead” implies that the monsters were none other than me, my own shadow side. Do we create our own bardos, our own trips? I was hellbent on Shangri-La. Shangri-La became hell. The wrathful deities laugh.