Escape From Tibet
By Anya Vaverko
January 2005

As we camped at Nam Tso, the night was full of hail, rain, snow, lightening, thunder, and wild dogs. It was then and there that I decided it was time to leave Tibet. We (a friend and I were traveling together) endured the harsh weather, huddled in our flimsy Chinese tent- freezing. As the lightening struck all around us, we wondered if our tent in an open field would be next to be hit. We survived though, and started our journey back to Nepal. It turned out to be harder than we expected.

After several days of crazy adventures, hitchhiking with quirky characters and camping with nomads, we finally arrived at the border in the evening. Determined to spend that night in Nepal, we quickly ran to the border before it closing, jumping out of the little jeep and shouting “goodbye, thank you” to the Chinese man who gave us a ride. We were shocked when they refused to let us cross because our visa was a photocopy. We were on a group visa of three people: the third girl was not with us. So we assumed she had the original with the red stamp, which is what we lacked. (That damn red stamp was all the guard could think about.) We got into a ferocious argument. But the guards kept repeating that we had to go find this third girl (she could have been anywhere!) or that we had to return to Lhasa to our travel agent (Huh? We never had a travel agent there and had just spent 3 days non-stop, hitching and camping to get here from Lhasa!). By then we were furious: insulting, yelling, mocking them. They were doing the same right back to us.

The border soon closed and we threatened to camp in their office until they let us through. We told them we had no money left. (I expected they would want a bribe, and I would never give them one- on principle). We took out our sleeping bags and made ourselves comfortable in the lobby. As one of the guards (a too young Tibetan boy) lit up a cigarette, I ordered him in Tibetan to give me one (a phrase I picked up while living in Dharamsala). Astonished, he did immediately. Minutes later, he offered me a Budweiser beer, which came as a shock since we had all just harshly insulted each other for an hour. Another guard asked us what we would eat that night. Angrily, we answered that we had only biscuits. He then invited us to his office where his young and pretty wife cooked homemade Chinese food. I could not figure it out. We had a talk with them, in very limited English. We thanked them over and over, yet did not fail to insult the Chinese government fearlessly.

Despite our varying viewpoints, they were quite kind. However, when it came to crossing the border, we were back to square one. We returned to our corner of the border office, planning to stay the night. At one point, a young man, a boy really, came to clean the place. As he was sweeping the floors, I saw he was Nepali. I chatted with him and then I started singing a Nepali song: The boy thought we were crazy. We were. The situation made us kind of reckless and rowdy. Eventually, the head official came in and kicked us out of the office very rudely. But we would not go to one of the disgusting, overpriced hotels, especially since we had said we had no money. All the hotels refused to let us sit in their lobby, so we took a shelter under a ledge of a shop front (by now it was pouring rain) and planned to sleep there. But soon two Tibetan women came looking very worried about two young foreign girls sleeping on the street. She had a point, but we were absolutely furious, irrational, and stubborn because of the guards and the laws. We told them we had no money (“Peshe mendu! Peshe mendu!”), but they came back several times out of concern (and probably disbelieving that traveling foreigners really had no money), their number growing each time.

Eventually they just took our bags and pretty much forced us into a hotel. Next thing we knew our dorm beds had been paid for and they were gone. We ran out to the street to refund them because we did have money. And it was a lot more for them than it was for us. But we could not find them, and the hotel receptionist gestured not to worry, explained it as “Om Mane Padme Hum.” We learned a lot about generosity that night.

The next morning at the border, we continued our battle, trying to be calm and rational- but their logic made no sense. The previous evening the guards told us we could figure this out at the police station when it opened the next day. When we finally found the office that morning, already irritated and exhausted from dragging our bags and being misdirected, it was closed (hardly a surprise). So we returned to the border and the head guard told us, with a cocky smile, that he knew it was closed. We again started yelling, this time with a long queue of tourists looking on disapprovingly. They, in big organized groups with proper visas and guides, shook their heads at us. We were then lead to the police office by the main guard. He tracked down the head police chief, and he opened up the office for us. As he made phone calls, we sat hopefully. Our “Enemy No. 1” guard brought us more cigarettes and now some Red Bull energy drinks (to give us more fighting stamina?). I just could not figure out his generosity amidst our clash.

As we sat there, I was randomly looking though my papers out of boredom, when….oh my god, I had a visa with a red stamp! Embarrassed, I looked at my friend who was ready to kill me. I had no idea where it came from or why I had two copies. I jumped up and practically waved it in front of the police chief’s and guard’s faces. But now they wanted a “fee.” (I knew it!) I told them I had only 5 Yuan, if they wanted it. They looked beyond disgusted and sent us back to the border. Minutes later, we were free and began the long walk to the next crossing. Right away, we met some Nepalis crossing over and were offered a ride all the way down to it in their jeep. Then they invited us to their office at the border for lunch, where we finally feasted on Nepali food after so long. They gave us a ride back all the way to Kathmandu, which included many more meals and drinks and adventures on the way. (I smile as I remember 7 people stuffed into that little car, jovial from raksi, singing at the top of our lungs, passing fresh green mountains on curvy cliff roads.) By evening, we were dropped off practically at our front door. Though Tibet was an amazing place, we were ecstatic to be back in Nepal, where people are just nice, biscuits are actually tasty, and land is refreshingly green (well, at least outside of Kathmandu.)