World without strangers

Saturday, 23 June 2007

Kata in Xiahe

Our roads crossed again in Xiahe with Kata, the other Hungarian working for the same company, but also an old friend. It was great to speak our language for a day. Otherwise just speaking mostly English, sometimes Tibetan, and I should speak Chinese a lot if I could. I really have to improve this latter one, bought many books already, but have very little time to study. And lost my MP3 player in Lhasa last time, which helped me to learn on the way. Anyway, I want to learn and will. Shouldn't find too many excuses instead.

Hsuen Tsang (or Xuanzang) was a famous Chinese Buddhist monk, who travelled to India in the early Tang period. He studied with many famous Buddhist masters, especially at the Nalanda University. When he returned to China after 17 years of travel, he brought with him some 657 Sanskrit texts. With the emperor’s support he set up a large translation bureau in Changan, and with his students translated many scriptures into Chinese. Behind his statue you see the Wild Goose Pagoda in Xian (once called Changan), where he worked in the 7th century. My idol. A great traveller and more.

Thursday, 14 June 2007

Xian

Wonderful place, this is where once the Silk Road started. This is always the second stop on our trips after Beijing.

Tuesday, 5 June 2007

Simatai

This time we visited another part of the Great Wall called Simatai. It is more than 3 hours from Beijing, and just to make it longer our bus broke down, but we got there anyway. It is a very picturesque place, and there are many stairs to climb.

Returning to Beijing

I had just two days in Beijing, visiting the Confucian temple, and my favourite Wang Fu Jing market (that's where this picture was taken in the evening), and started working again. This time there are only three people in the group, and the itinerary is a little bit different, this is the Nomadic China trip. 21 days from Beijing to Hongkong, but the first half of the trip is same as the Tibet trip. Beijing-Xian-Labrang Monastery-Langmusi-Chengdu. And then Yangshuo and Hongkong. On the road again...

Beyond the clouds

On the way from Kathmandu to Beijing I had to change planes in Lhasa and Chengdu, and I travelled with a group of young people, who turned out to be a team just summitted the Everest. They said, the girl (in red baseball hat) is the first Chinese woman who climed the Everest. They were all very nice, happy, very open to talk about their experiences. They spent two months in the Everest area acclimatizing and at the end climbing. There were also other surprises, I ran into Elek from Agra Travels at the Tibetan border (and his Hungarian group), and he told me a Hungarian team started climbing the Everest just the day after we were there at the base camp. Then at the immigration office on the Nepali side we met an Irish girl, who also just summitted the Everest. I started thinking if it would be possible at all, if I could ever do it. It would be really amazing. Somehow I understood why is it great to get to the top. But couldn't find words to describe it. Just felt very touched.

Monday, 4 June 2007

Boudha

I went to Boudha a few times to walk around the stupa, everything was in festive mood, because of the upcoming celebrations, I left Kathmandu just one day before Saga Dawa, the Buddha's birthday and anniversary of his passing away. Also the whole month is called Saga Dawa (the 15th, the full moon day is the birthday); most Buddhists don't eat meat during that month and avoid unwholesome actions, and do good all the time (offering alms, liberating lifes, doing religious practice), because Tibetans say, that whatever you do this month it counts 100 times.