The flight to Lhasa, Tibet is only 1.5 hrs. We have a charter flight so we are able to spread out and pick spots from which to possibly see Mt. Everest and/or any of the other magnificent mountains that make up the Himalayas. Having seen the Rocky Mountains on many occasions, now seeing these it is quite staggering in contrast.

By name, all Himalayan mountains are snow-covered year-round. Many reside well able the cloud line, and all look as freezing cold as they do majestic. Between the mountains lie the steppes, brown almost sandy looking smaller mountains and flat lands with no vegetation or growth to speak of.

Flying into Lhasa I am taken aback by the quantity of what can only be military barracks, buildings and storage facilities. A full 50% of the structures seem to be government/military related.

When we land we are ushered, yes ushered, into the large airport and queued up for passport and entry paper reviews. We are required to be in numerical order, from which we are told not to deviate. Pictures and fingerprints are taken and then we go to another holding area to have our bags and bodies scanned. The areas we are in for all this, as well as the very large part of the airport we are in, are all absolutely empty save for our group and a large number of very unsmiling military personnel.

Finally we get onto our buses, and are surprised to find our guides are warm and happy folks. We also find that each bus also has another Chinese person, not in military uniforms, as part of the team – hmmmm.

The drive to Lhasa is approximately an hour, and the landscape is mostly rural.

Mountains begin to rise up again as we get close to Lhasa, as do an increasing number of brand spanking new buildings. The Chinese government has been on a building binge in Tibet since about 2008 in their lust to erase any semblance of Tibetan life, religion, and culture to make it all and only Chinese. This has been their aim since the Dalai Lama was driven from the country in1959, but has been ramped up to warp speed during the last 10-12 years.

Our guide spoke in muted terms about the freedom, and difference, Tibetans have in their form of Buddhism as if life was now so much better and preferred. He also at one point indicated a monument built, in his words, to acknowledge the “50 years of peaceful and mutual reunification”.

In so doing, he somehow glossed over the tens of thousands of Tibetans who have been detained, brutally tortured, and murdered in the Chinese government’s attempt to “convert” them to the communist Chinese way of thinking, and to eradicate their religion in total.

We drove by Norbulingka (the Dalai Lama’s former summer palace) and go to the Potala Palace, the former winter palace of the Dalai Lama. In their day, each was a monument to the Lamas and their practice of Buddhism, filled with peaceful prayer and meditation.

Today they are shells of their heydays. Our only photo opportunity was at Potala…

In my mind though, this is how I saw it…

In site of this repression however, beauty does still exist in this, to me, enchanted land…

We are then whisked off to our lodgings for the night – the St. Regis, where we are bowled over by its’ western appearance, amenities, and opulence. The rooms are spacious, in fact the entire hotel is enormous encompassing more than a city block. As we are now living at 12,500’ in altitude, in each room their are two oxygen canisters and humidifiers. As in Cusco, Peru (11,000’), we do fine with the altitude.

Before dinner in the hotel a market area is brought in for our perusal. Dinner presents us a variety foods including yak steaks.

We wake up the next morning to 38 degrees and falling snow. (A quick spoiler alert, by the end of this day we will be in India with the temperature at 98 degrees). At the back of the hotel there is an old monastery shadowed by a snow covered mountain. The beauty of the scene, augmented by the snow, brought all photogs out of the woodwork…

And now dear friends as well…

Then, without further delay, it is back on the buses to head to the airport and Kathmandu. Driving out of town we are treated to many more mountains and scenery…

At the airport we go through three levels of intense security and screenings. During one of which a woman from our group is pulled out of line and taken away in tears. She comes back as we are boarding our plane, badly shaken but not much worse for the wear.

Flying back to Kathmandu to reunite with the members of our group who opted for a different tour we are treated to Himalayan sights that are hard to describe…

We land in Kathmandu after our 20 ours in Tibet, and connect with our fellow travelers, and the world’s skankiest bathroom, to board our jet and wing our way to Agra, India – home of the Taj Mahal and easily one of the most anticipated stops of The Trip.