Returning from the last horizon

So this is the first of my travel blogs, I've been overseas for about three weeks now and have spent quite a lot of time in Hong Kong which i would like to write about at some time but i got back from Tibet yesterday and i want to get my memories/thoughts down while they are still fresh. Tibet was hard; physically, mentally, spiritually, politically, morally and intellectually. I'm quite sure i wasn't prepared for what i encountered there and I am now exhausted but I'm so glad a went and I'm very thankful for some of the things i encountered there.

I suppose i should start at the beginning (its a very good place to start). Cathy and I left for Tibet on the 19th, catching a train from Hong Kong into Guangzhou (China) then cabbing it across the city to the other train station and waiting outside KFC (which didnt sell chips, only chicken?!?) for an acquaintance of our travel agent's, who didnt speak a word of English, to find us and deliver us our Tibet permits. For obvious reasons the Chinese government aren't entirely comfortable with westerners visiting Tibet so this transfer of permits was somewhat under the table. After a little bit of worry because the lady hadn't turned up at the expected time and a couple of frantic calls to the travel agent, the lady found us and delivered us our permits and we were able to board the train to Lhasa. There is only one way to get into Tibet and that is from a mountain pass in the North and Guangzhou is south so the train crossed a large portion of China and took a somewhat arduous 56 hours.

The trainride, however, was an experience in itself, the scenery was extraordinary and changed vastly every few hours. We really got an idea of just how big, and how populated, china really is. We were the only non-Chinese on the train and so were a novelty and got stopped for photos at every station we stopped at. We made some wonderful Chinese friends on the train too. Tommy, the first friend that we made came and introduced himself to us when we were sitting in the corridor singing Paul Kelly songs and gave us bananas. He looked after us for the whole time, showing us how to fill out our health cards which were written in Chinese characters, giving us Chinese tea for altitude sickness (didnt work for me, more on that later) and acting as our translator in a number of circumstances. Then we met Joey, a little bit younger than Tommy but also a young uni student and so spoke a bit of English, he was an absolute sweetheart and helped us out when it turned out we had set ourselves up in the wrong beds in the wrong carriages because we couldnt read our tickets. We also made friends with some of the people in our berth who didnt speak English and who we lovingly nicknamed. Tubby singer was my favourite, he was a middle aged man who would sit looking out the window for hours on end and then, as if compelled by the scenery, starting singing these beautiful Chinese songs. Also in our cabin was Mr Magic, a very regal old man who had the most expressive face ever and was constantly bemused by our strange and often dramatic actions. We also had Da (we think thats what his name was) who had obviously come to Tibet to go trekking, was incredibly agile and we think hilarious, everybody else laughed at him constantly and im sure we would have too if we knew what he was saying.

My first bout of altitude sickness came on the third day on the train when we crossed a 5000m pass into Tibet, i woke up in the morning feeling weak and nauseous and continued to feel that way until about lunchtime when i had a good vomit infront of the whole berth. Sometime after that we were chatting in the berth with Tommy when one of the drivers came past and, excited at the prospect of wierdo white girls on his train, invited the three of us up to the driver's quarters to see the engine and have some watermelon. Tommy seemed pretty excited about this and i was really happy we could provide him some perks as he had given us so much. The drivers were hilarious. They psychoanalysed us, decided that i was introverted and Cathy extroverted. They also offered us cigarettes, we had made the decision that smoking at altitude was going to be a very very bad idea so we refused but they told us it was actually good for you because it helps you breathe in oxygen (dubious) and so we shared a few cigarettes with the train drivers at 4700m. We got off the train that evening and were picked up by our guide but i've written enough for today already so the rest of the tale will have to wait.

The long and the short of it

So i havent written for a while, ive been a bit distracted, i moved home, school work got heavy and i'm leaving in eight days, also i havent done anything interesting enough to write about. But this week i encountered two things which i liked, both shown to me by my lovely friend Josh which had a sort of parallelism that deserved to be juxtaposed. The first is a video




The second is this passage from Les Miserables

The science of mathematics applies to the clouds; the radiance of starlight nourishes the rose; no thinker will dare to say that the scent of hawthorn is valueless to the constellations. Who can predict the course of a molecule? How to do we know that the creation of worlds is not determined by the fall of grains of sand? Who can measure the action and counter-action between the infinitely great and the infinitely small, the play of causes in the depths of being, the cataclysms of creation? The cheese-mite has its worth; the smallest is large and the largest is small; everything balances within the laws of necessity, a terrifying vision for the mind. Between living things and objects there is a miraculous reiationship; within that inexhaustible compass, from the sun to the grub, there is no room for disdain; each thing needs every other thing. Light does not carry the scents of earth into the upper air without knowing what it is doing with them; darkness confers the essence of the stars to the sleeping flowers. Every bird that flies carries a shred of the infinite in its claws. The process of birth is the shedding of a meteorite or the peck of a hatching swallow on the shell of its egg; it is the coming of an earthworm or of Socrates, both equally important to the scheme of things. Where the telescope ends the microscope begins, and which has the wider vision? You may choose. A patch of mould is a galaxy of blossom; a nebula is an antheap of stars. There is the same affinity, if still more inconceivable, between things of the mind and material things. Elements and principles are intermingled; they combine and marry and each increases and completes the other, so that the material and the moral world are both finally manifest. The phenomenon perpetually folds in upon itself. In the vast cosmic changes universal life comes and goes in unknown quantities, borne by the mysterious flow of invisible currents, making use of everything, wasting not a single sleeper's dream, sowing an animalcule here and shattering a star there, swaying and writhing, turning light into a force and thought into an element; disseminated yet indivisible, dissolving all things except that geometrical point, the self; reducing all things to the core which is the soul, and causing all things to flower into God; all activites from the highest to the humblest - harnessing the movements of the earth and the flight of an insect - to the secret workings of an illimitable mechanism; perhaps - who can say? - governing, if only by the universality of law, the evolution of a comet in the heavens by the circling of infusoria in a drop of water. A machine made of spirit. A huge meshing of gears of which the first motive force is the gnat and the largest wheel the zodiac

I'm sorry, its long but i couldnt leave any part of it out, its so beautifully written. The bigness of the first video makes me feel small but Victor Hugo's passage points out the bigness of the small things and the interconnection between the big and the small. It makes me feel, as Kimya Dawson would say, grounded, humble and one with everything. In fact, here is another video - i couldnt find i video clip for her Kimya Dawsons song 'i like giants' but here is a cute animation



And finally, i was going through a box of old photos in my room and i found this.



This was taken on the Young Endeavour on 2005, i didnt take it, someone else on my trip did but i've forgotten who, the quality is bad because i scanned it from a picture that i printed from the internet, sorry. It makes me so excited to travel again, i cant wait to disappear into the horizon into the world that is so big and yet so small. Arrgggh eight days! I intend to keep this blog running as a travel blog while i'm away, with any luck the next post will be coming to you from Hong Kong.