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Post by Deleted on Jun 3, 2014 14:29:51 GMT
No, I understand what you are saying. There have been a few times when I just haven't "absorbed" trips into my mind. Without the pictures to look at, it would be quite difficult to recall having done anything at all. Anyway, it has happened to me generally when I planned a trip too far ahead of time and didn't really feel like going when the travel date finally arrived and I was obliged to go anyway, or else something else was going on in my life that kept my mind occupied and didn't allow me to give my full attention to my travels.
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Post by lugg on Jun 10, 2014 20:08:25 GMT
Questa - what an epic thread. I need to go through it all again several times, but for now, just want to say how much I loved looking at your photos / reading your report of this, bleak but absolutely stunning part of the world. I suspect that Potala is for you what Mt St Michel is for me. It is highly unlikely that I will ever visit , even tough I would love to see Everest for myself, so thank you.
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Post by questa on Jun 10, 2014 23:25:27 GMT
Thank you, Lugg. It is a country most people can't relate to as it is so strange and unknown. The sheer physical demands of just being there in a thin atmosphere and the many temples with their demons and gods can make you feel you are in a different world.
I wish I knew before the trip what I know now...like buying a can of oxygen to have a puff when feeling weak, and I would break my rule of not photo'ing inside temples because that is where the heart of the country is. Huge statues of the Buddha and other deities, horrific or benign, tapestries and murals in furious colours, banks of flickering yak-butter lamps, dust and cobwebs...it was like an Indiana Jones movie. The interior was not an open space but you had to wend you way around cabinets of scriptures and holy things, tombs of special lamas and many Tibetans in their best traditional clothes, spinning their prayer wheels or counting their rosary-like beads. I will see if my travel companions have any good pics.
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Post by bixaorellana on Jun 12, 2014 23:10:29 GMT
Coming late to this magnificent endeavor & have to echo Lugg's words re: epic & loving the whole thing.
The way you began your story really drew me in & I could imagine traveling on that really adorable train. Your photos from the train were great, too, as they added to the feeling of being there. Well, all of your photos were illuminating, beautiful, and often fun. I have to say that the first one of the many flags casting those delicate shadows on the building opposite gives me pleasure every time I look at it.
Re: the riot of color in religious buildings -- if color is so prized, surely it makes sense that the people would put the color in what they prize the most, plus it would be needed to "accurately" portray the world beyond.
In many photos people seem to be hunched against the cold, or perhaps from the weight of their cold-repelling garments. Forgive me if you covered this & I missed seeing it, but did you suffer from the cold as well as from the thin atmosphere? I had what might have been altitude sickness only once, but did get a bad bout of heat prostration, which I well remember as making me totally out of it, so I identify with your problems of attention, etc. You certainly retained enough of the trip to make a bang-up report!
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Post by questa on Jun 13, 2014 0:32:03 GMT
Thanks, Bixa, I am glad you enjoyed it, and more memories are coming back as I review the photos and the brain cells start firing again. Normally, I feel the cold badly and took gloves, scarf and thick beanie as suggested but didn't need them...just a cap to protect my head which was sporting a #2 comb haircut. The wind whistling around the Base camp was cold and the local lads were sitting by the yak-dung stove but it was not worse than my city in winter where we were. (BTW K2, the stove had a chimney to carry away the smoke)In winter it gets to -30 but now about +2. Daytimes I wore jeans and polar fleece top and was ok. I noticed many older women walked stooped over...and older lamas. I put it down to a lifetime of heavy work, arthritis and doing the thousands of prostrations they are expected to do. I have seen Westerners prostrate and they stand erect between bows, but in Tibet most don't straighten up so spend a long time with their head just above knee level...a physiotherapist's nightmare. Can you imagine a 4 year old kid from the distant hills, where all is pale greys, browns or white, going to a temple in Lhasa for the first time. All the scary-eyed, long-toothed, vivid coloured monsters! Watch him do as he is told when Mum or someone says, "or we will give you to the monsters!"... Psychologist's nightmare!
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