Lhasa_eng

When I wake up my head is still heavy, but the situation seems a little better than yesterday. I engage my climb to the breakfast room (5 flights of stairs are no joke at 3600m!). The view is simply breathtaking: all around me the roofs of Lhasa, the mountain and right there, towering the city, the Potala palace in all its magnificence.

The breakfast buffet is generous and international, but my stomach doesn’t feel so brave yet. So I just go for hot tea and some biscuits (simple short crust pastry biscuit, those that you learn to cook as a kid).

We are a little late (weird!), so G, our real guide, reaches us and I meet him for the first time (Andrea and Marco have already met him yesterday to check and confirm our itinerary).

I like him. He has a cheerful, clever face. He is always smiling and you can see that he has gone through a lot. I fall in love with the history written on his face. We have been extremely lucky to have him as our guide in this journey.

We walk to the Potala palace, former residence of the Dalai Lama, now exiled to India. Here too, too many appreciations and adjectives are unnecessary. The word “extraordinary” includes it all. It is immense, majestic, powerful. A fortress of peace in the middle of the Tibetan plateau. G walks us through the maze of rooms (more than one thousand) which constitutes the palace, enchanting us with his descriptions. A blaze of colors, flags, sutra and statues relentlessly follow one another during the whole visit.

What is really astonishing is that the palace is melancholically empty.

Since 1950 Chinese invasion, the monks are no longer not allowed to live and officiate their functions there. They had to use move the Jokhang monastery, which is now the most important monastery of Lhasa.

My headache starts pounding again. We climb down (if Lhasa is at 3600m, the roof of Potala must be at 3700m!) under the early afternoon sun  and G walks me to buy some Tibetan medicin, an herb called Rhodiola, to fight the altitude sickness. I accompany the others to have lunch, my headache and nausea prevent me from eating anything. Despite the Diamox and the Chinese medicine, I still feel terrible. I go back to the hotel and I throw up again… I go to bed with such a strong headache that I am not even able to worry about the situation.

When the guys come back I text G aking him if it was possible to change our itinerary, since next they we were supposed to go up to 5000m.

After 20 minutes he enters our room with three oxygen tanks and advise me to use one straight away.

I feel a little better, so I decide to go out to eat something and get some fresh air.

The mix of oxygen, Rhodiola and Diamox starts producing some effects, but I still prefer not to eat too much. Some crackers will be more than enough. I go back to my room, I take a quick shower (last thing I want to do is to get my situation worse with hot water!) and I go back to bed I fall asleep immediately.

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