Paul's Tibet Journal: Good bye to Tibet

As for my own experience in Tibet, this is a question I'm still struggling to find the answer to. Before leaving the hotel for the airport Friday morning, a friend of mine, who has long been fascinated by Tibet, caught me online and asked me about the trip. The first question he asked was whether or not it was worth his 'precious' time to make the trek from his home in Hong Kong to Tibet. The obvious answer was 'yes.' To that I had no hesitation in answering. For one, his interest in Tibet has been prevalent since I've known him. And for him not to experience the land is essentially the same as doing a lifetime of academic research on the Pyramids without ever actually going to Egypt. And two, I think the experience that is Tibet is one that would be hard-pressed, if not impossible, to duplicate anywhere else in the world.

My friend then asked me what the highlight of my 10 days has been. That question was a much more difficult one to answer. Each and every place we went and traveled through had its own flavor. From the initial rush at entering Lhasa and seeing the facade of the Potala Palace, to the previous Panchant Lama's body embalmed and gold coated at the local monastery in Shigatze, to seeing the Himalaya's -- including Mt. Everest -- with my own eyes, to experiencing the Nepalese border at Zhangmu, to dipping my hand into two of the three sacred lakes in Tibetan culture, to seeing the historic fortress at Gyangtse and to finally seeing the inside of the Potala Palace and the summer home built for the Dalai Lamas, the whole trip was a collection of once-in-a-lifetime experiences. But to put a 'highlight' label on any of them would be an injustice. I feel my Tibet experience is going to be best remembered as the combination, rather than the individual portions of the trip.

Would I want to do it again? At this stage of the game, after 10 days of constant travel in and out of vehicles -- vehicles I'm sure we spend at least 40 percent of our time in -- along with the constant external stimulus, early mornings and long days, my honest answer is 'no.' But, of course, I write this on the last leg of our journey, the plane ride home. Perhaps after a few days resettling back into my routine in Beijing, getting an opportunity to review the hundreds, if not thousands of pictures my colleagues and I took while on our adventures and basically giving myself a chance to absorb what I have gone through, that definitive 'no' may eventually begin to slide up the scale toward 'maybe,' and eventually perhaps to 'yes.' However, as much as this has been an experience that I won't soon forget, I have to continue to remind myself there is much more of China that still awaits my exploration.