After getting off the train, our tour guide (yes, a foreigner cannot tour Tibet by himself or herself. He or she has to contact a travel agency that will get him or her a permit from the local government of the Tibet Autonomous Region) picked me up and is sending me to my hotel, where I learned that our tour group consisted of four people: me, an American, and an elderly Indian couple. Lhasa, capital of the Tibet Autonomous Region (I will tell you why and how it is so called in future posts), looked much more modern than I had expected. It seemed that the Chinese government has invested a lot, economically. The tour guide was a Tibetan, who was sent to Nepal to study when he was very young. He spoke flute, though a little hard to understand, English. He can also speak some Chinese as you can hear. He was a great guy and had a girlfriend who was also a Tibetan. But interestingly, if they both speak Tibetan, they cannot understand each other. I will tell you why later.
Posted on: Tue, 15 Jul 2014 13:15:27 +0000