Denied!

I had hoped to take a jeep trip across southern Tibet to Lhasa next week. Going from Kathmandu back to Kham strictly over land is challenging but possible: from Lhasa the new train goes through Xining to Lanzhou, where buses occasionally head south into Amdo (upper Sichuan) and over to Kham at Luhou.

In order to enter Tibet from Nepal, the Chinese government requires foreign travelers to have a Tibet Permit in addition to a special group tourist visa. I currently have an unlimited entry business visa with a residence permit until July 20, and did not foresee any major visa difficulties as I figured it would be valid for the TAR as well.

The Chinese Embassy, however, has informed me that my work visa will be cancelled upon entering Tibet at the border, and there's a chance it will be cancelled if I enter Lhasa by plane. In order to get the Lhasa permit, which can only be arranged by a travel agent, I'd need to sign up for a tourist package, the cheapest of which costs $125 and includes two hotel nights, airport pickup, and the permit. The extra connection from Lhasa to Chengdu was only an extra $75.

I've opted to simply return to Chengdu via Air China to avoid the possibility of losing my visa and being unable to return to work without again leaving China. This is somewhat of a personal defeat. As the Geshe who stays with the Khari Rinpoche explained to me last week, an opportunity to visit the Potala and Jokhang in Lhasa is not the result of personal planning, but due to karma. Now that I have encountered such an obstacle, the implications are glaring. How does this differ from viewing the events of one's life as God's Will, unfolding according to reason but with causes too vast and compounded for a simple mortal to comprehend?

Perhaps it's no different than calling it simple bad luck. Nevertheless, I'm in denial about being denied.

Chris should have arrived in New Orleans sometime today. Hanging out with him here had been most excellent. I'm glad I was able to see him learn to wrap his tongue around a bit of Nepali. His composure was mad righteous for being abroad for the first time, and his years of living out of bags between Louisiana and Oregon gave him the endurance and street sensibility necessary to brush off the hassles of traveling in Asia. He says he'll come back next year.

I had missed both of my brothers tremendously since leaving New Orleans in August, which seems oh so short a time ago. I enjoyed our time together, though one can never have as good time as one remembers having hoped for. It's coming up on a year since I left Houston. I left a life behind, which has made me hurt. I miss the people and the love, and I got exactly what I had hoped for.

[The other morning in a lonely pre-dawn I roll over on my stomach, my arms crossed beneath me, clinging to sensation of the hard mattress on my stomach and hard pillow on my face until my shoulders and neck become cramped and I must roll to my side to massage them out. From then I had Neutral Milk Hotel's Life is Neverending in my head most of the morning:

"But I know that life is neverending.
Sometimes the miles can cut you down to size.
But I had a love,
She was my anchor,
She held me down,
And saved my soul.
So take the blood
You never gave her
And let it go."

and went to bed soloing Perfect Day by Lou Reed:

"You're gonna reap,
Just what you sow..."]

This photos is from the Shivapuri trip I wrote about a few posts down.

I hope that Chris, Mike and I can make a trip from West China over Tibet, ending in Kathmandu. Michael and I could share our cultural and linguistic knowledge, with my experience in China and Kham slowly giving way to his felicity with Tibet and Nepal. I hope we can make this trip in the summer of 2008, when the half of the world that still gives a rat about the Olympics will be fixated on the Chinese capital. It will be the time of my students' graduation. I could visit them then, though

there is the growing possibility that I will choose to remain in Kham for another year. The knowledge that remaining to teach my students in their final year will be my difficult choice to make has slowly settled in the rear of my brain. If Tenzin, the more experienced instructor for the Bridge Fund in Kangding doesn't offer to teach them and prepare them for the Chinese Government Exam and the High Educational Exam, how will I be comfortable in abandoning them to another instructor? My skills are still green but in what ways would I regret turning my back on them after only one year,

which means nothing compared to two years. I could live an easy life in Louisiana. I could handle up on the GRE and LSAT, save some money, and pick a law school or a grad program for international development methodology (the current pet fantasy).

I will definately return to Louisiana in late July, before Chris's birthday.

Speaking of the more immediate future, after Chengdu I'll probably head north into Amdo to see a friend and a student, both from nomad families, in the cold town of Hongyuan. It should be easy to make it to Luhou before nomad Losar (Tibetan New Year) unfolds. I'll be back at the Teacher's College before March, to lesson plan like mad before the start of the spring semester.