Page 211 - Udaan Trial Book

TO THE ROOF OF THE WORLD- TIBET (THE FORBIDDEN CITY)

By Sudipta Bhaumik

‘KHAM-SANG’ to the Roof of the World and the Forbidden City.

People with the burning desire to travel and to see new places always harbour dreams of travelling to
certain not so often visited places on this planet to unravel the mysteries that very oft surround them
and keep them away from the usual list of tourist destinations. For me planning a trip to Tibet, riding
the Qinghai –Tibet train was a long fostered dream and desire. The destination is after all the
Forbidden City, forbidden for many reasons. Difficult to access geographically, geo-political factors
keep the tag of the Forbidden City intact. In fact, I was very sure that I would not get the Tibet Permit
as I am an Indian and post Doklam, this belief became very real. I had to get a Chinese visa first but
could not declare that I would be visiting Tibet from Mainland China. Once the Chinese visa came
through I had to get the Tibet Permit which arrived just a week before our date of departure. The
original permit is never handed over to the visitor and one gets the photocopy of it which can be kept
by the visitor as a keepsake. It stays with the police authorities. There were severe restrictions
imposed on us as to what topics can be discussed during our stay in Tibet. No talk of the Dalai Lama
in the public even though the Dalai Lama is worshipped as a god in every Tibetan home. Foreign print
and electronic media is still banned from travelling to this part of the world. One interesting thing that
we experienced was the broad smile that the local Tibetans would give once they discovered that we
were Indians. Out of curiosity I asked our guide Danzeng why this behaviour and he said they are
grateful to Indians for giving a safe home to the present Dalai Lama. They would touch us as if that
would give them some blessing. All this gave us a feeling of being special in a mystic land.

Our journey to this mystic land began by reaching the starting point of this epic train journey at
Xining the capital of Qinghai region. We boarded the train with lots of apprehensions as we knew we
would have to tackle the great altitudes of the Tibetan Plateau and also AMS (Acute Mountain
Sickness) along with it. Our journey started from Xining at 2.30 p.m. and soon our train tickets were
checked and taken away by the train authorities and were given an alternate plastic ticket for the
duration of the train journey (They return the original tickets before the train arrives at Lhasa).