From Ikenna Emewu
From the outside world, Tibet, the China vast land symbolized by mountains and valleys is known for the Bhudist monks, especially the Dalai Lama.
But there are other things that mark out Tibet you would not know until you get set to visit Tibet.
One of them and the major one is that Tibet is ‘bereft’ of oxygen. Like someone said after a visit and coming down with what I joked as Lhasa Fever, ‘Tibet takes your breath away.’
You could have adventurous mind and would wish to visit places, but when the person taking you to Tibet requests that you see a doctor to confirm that you are fit to be in Tibet, the doubt and fear in you starts to swell and swirl in and around you. You ask again what is really different about the place to the extent that the one taking you asks you to sign anti-liability claim or indemnity that you willingly accepted to be in Tibet.
As you put pen to paper, you start to imagine what might be wrong or if the person is just intentionally driving you nuts to take you out of the bargain and make you shrivel from the intention.
But on getting to Tibet the distant land of China that is four flight hours and 10 minutes from Beijing to the western end of the country, you come to understand better the caution ahead of the trip.
Before you go to Tibet
For your information, before you make up your mind to travel to Tibet, make up your mind first to gamble with your life and good health. Be fully aware that, Tibet is high stake gamble.
While in Tibet, you will find out two major things – there is actually a place defined by amazing mountainous landscape, a place of lavish beauty where nature staked much resources, but almost probably forgot one – oxygen that support human life.
In Tibet, you will gasp for breath; you will palpitate with every move you make; you will learn the art of walking slowly like a 90-year-old, you will also need not to be taught to drop excitement. Why do you need to do all these? Because Tibet has oxygen in very short supply and you need to conserve the one in your system if you don’t want to die of exhaustion.
Please, don’t forget that you would need to skip and say bye to your personal hygiene of taking your bathe until you adapt. At Tibet you will learn the oft-overlooked lesson that taking your bathe is serious physical exercise to your system and the brisk rubbing of your body to clean up works your system so much that you may get exhausted in Tibet and drop dead when someone might not be there with you. As caution, forget your bathe for until your system had worked the wonder of adaptation. These are not enough yet. Furthermore, Tibet will make your head feel like splitting in ache. You will feel nausea, throw up, some knot in your tummy, dizziness and faint feat momentarily.
The reason for all these is that the quantity of oxygen your system needs to operate in Tibet is inadequate and because there is not enough to supply to our brain, the neurons revolt and bombard you with aches. Your joints feel weak like you have acute malaria all because of poor oxygen supply.
And you may ask why Tibet has so many mountains and another basic natural resource – water, and not oxygen.
Tibet occupies the highest habitable elevations in the world.  Apart from the world’s highest city by altitude in the Patagonia in Argentina, South America, the rest five highest altitude locations of the world are in Tibet. Therefore, Tibet, with the locations at an average of 4,000m (about 13,000ft), that is some 4km in vertical measurement, above sea level. At such height, there is very low atmospheric pressure implying that the air is lighter in density than normal and therefore very little oxygen.
But nature is really great and works wonders. People that live in Tibet don’t feel any of these symptoms to the extent that Lhasa, the capital city of Tibet, has a flourishing sports stadium with even a football pitch. Yes, native Tibetans play football there. They skid and jump and never feel the exhaustion because their systems have been entrained in tune with the level of oxygen there and operate effectively with it. As the natives caution you on how to remain alive there, they tell you they feel different and just normal. They will excite your mind that by the time you spend a week in Tibet, the symptoms would be mere history to you.
Moreover, not minding all these hazards, never get scared if you intend to visit Tibet because the awe and beauty of the landscape are enough to compensate for your pains. Tibet landscape beauty will blow your mind away. If only you are not jittery about the mountains that some incline like they would come down on you, you will feel like remaining in Tibet all your life.
Another generosity of nature to Tibet is water. From almost every valley or pass in between the thousands of spurs emanates a spring of pure, clean and enticing water. Tibet is the head of water supply that waters the entire China and flows to the ocean at the east of China to water the whole earth.
There is the vast Kyi River in Lhasa with the Lhasa Airport just sitting by the bank. To the east of the Himalayas are also the famous three rivers of Nu, Lancang and Gold Sand. And travelling to the south of Lhasa to the city of Linzhi or Nyinchi, pronounced ‘Linji’, the road stretches traces the water course as the river basin or flood plain is the only space spared by the jutting peaks. Every location and economic activity safe from grazing is on the flat space that meanders in tandem with the mercy of the mountains to spare some space.
Lhasa’s 4000m is like one of the least among the five highest elevations of Tibet. Travelling towards the south to Linzhi, the elevation sometimes rises beyond 5000m, until the great road arch from almost the highest peak on that stretch to the north descends sharply to the small route town of Sungduo. Before this place, the rivers flow in the opposite direction to your travel towards Lhasa possibly to team up with River Kyi, sign that leaving Lhasa towards Linzhi is gaining altitude.
But immediately after negotiating the widest loop and highest point of the road to the north, it is a continuous descent till Linzhi. The flow direction of the rivers convince of this. The river which starts as brisk and jubilant rivulet some 25km from this great loop at the west or left side of the road keeps widening to a very vast lazy river called Yarlong Zangbo River in Linzhi after travelling downhill some hundreds of kilometers. The river twists and turns with the curves of the valleys and mountains and almost circles Linzhi and heads south west towards the Linzhi Airport from where it continues down to the Sichuan Province of China for its further journey to the seas at southern China.
Down this road that reveals to you probably the most spectacular landscape of the world with towering heights, springs and rivulets emanate from every other valley from both sides of the road to join the major river channel as they form a team to journey downhill.  The river gets more bloated as the team gets bigger until it widens, spreads and slows down at Linzhi as enormous body of water.
Welcome to Lhasa
The Potala Palace of the Dalai Lama stands on a mountain at the centre of the city, the capital of the Tibet Autonomous Region of China as the major landmark. China might not be known for creed, but not in Tibet where everybody is devoted Budhist. The record of Tibet is that of the 3.2m people, there are 46,000 Budhist monks. That is an average of 70.2 persons to a monk. Tibet has about 45 ethnic minorities according to the natives, with the Tibetans making about 92% of the entire people. The region has some Han, the majority ethnic group of China, some Uygur, Mongolia and few others, some not more than 1000 people, all with their languages. It is also as diverse in religion with about 6000 Muslims and about 500 Catholics.
Government impact
Lhasa is a shiny modern city with one of the largest solar energy power plants in China, and because of the excessive sunshine, all its energy is solar with power generation output of 2.3m watts of energy, an output that is far in excess of its need, therefore it sells energy to some parts of China.
Tibet is one of the areas China has targeted with deliberate and successful poverty alleviation with amazing infrastructure in this impossible landscape. With 70,000km of highways, a GDP that has risen on double digit over 22 years, and success in liberating over 70% of the population from poverty in the past years, Tibet stands on higher ground of progress.
The leaders of the region in a meeting said that 17 major Chinese national agencies devote a certain amount of their earning to the Tibet cause as all other provinces of China donate every year a percentage of their income to the region. Tibet for instance has a very modern skills acquisition centre the tour guide at the Tibet Centre said was built by the Jiangsu Province and the sports stadium built by the Beijing Municipality. The entire Lhasa with its wide well paved streets and lighting looks like a recent construction with most buildings looking so new and most others under construction. The city stretches to new limits and with big hotels everywhere to cater to the millions of tourists that swell the economy of the Tibetans. They boast of an average annual tourist pool of about 20m irrespective of breathe cutting battle.
Nepal-Tibet-China wonder road
It looks impossible, but true that Chinese government is taking on its bravest and most expensive highway construction of the 5476km 318 Nepal-Tibet-Sichaun-Shanghai Highway that runs through mountains and hundreds of tunnels through that rugged countryside. It is actually the longest highway in China cutting across the entire country from the sea (Shanghai to the mountains at the Nepal border) It is also called the Friendship Highway. What was seen under construction is the Tibet end of it.
Already, the road has taken full shape at the Lhasa and Linzhi ends, with about 80km from the Linzhi metropolis and a little less from the Lhasa end. Travel on the road between the two spots that lasted about 10 hours is punctuated so often by construction, cutting through mountains, flying over deep valleys and rivers and steadily goes on.
As the new channel is taking shape, the old axis that starts from Linzhi through Lulang, the tourist small town heads to Sichuan Province. This axis was constructed in the early 1950s, but undergoing reconstructions. This road takes guts to travel through as it took raw courage and determination to have been created in the first place. The best description of the road that twists in thousands of times is just like carving troughs round a huge standing tree. It is an impossible but true state of the determination of China to put the entire country at equal footing in the benefits of development. There is no tiniest settlement, even if not more than 10 buildings all over Tibet spotted during our travels that hadn’t electricity and water supply.
At the Lulang tourist little town, the square hosts a chain of restaurants where young people pester tourists and they introduce themselves ad volunteers. They are college students and readily take visitors social media contacts, especially Wechat, to keep in touch with them and get their feedback on their impression of the Lulang tour spot.

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