Day 8 (Part 1): Descent to Panda City!

Today we are flying to Chengdu, the city famous for Panda conservation, among other things.

Thankfully we had packed last night, so it was just a case of showering, breakfast and checking-out before meeting our group at 9am. The bus journey to the airport was over an hour but we had Yangkey to entertain us; she recapped some of the history and told us some personal stories too. 

As many people did not make it to the Monastery, she went over the sky burial again. Basically, when you die, you can either have a sky burial, a water burial, a fire burial or stouppa burial. A sky burial, in its crudest form, involves your body being taken to a specific site, high in the mountains, and put on a stone where an undertaker will carve you up, but only a little bit, before the vultures descend and have a feast! Once there are only bones left, they chop these up too and the vultures return! A water burial is the same but this time your body is put in the river and the fish have a feast! A fire burial is cremation and is usually only for sick people, people on medication or young children. Also, if the vultures decide they don`t want to feast on you, you will be cremated! They say that this may happen if you have not led a good life and it is kind of a punishment; your reincarnation will probably not be human but an animal! A stouppa burial, like that of the previous Dalai Lamas, involves being covered in minerals and wrapped in cotton to remove the excess water (this will be done a few times) before being painted in gold (only for the Dalai Lamas) and put in a tomb. It really makes you think but I`m still convinced cremation is better than being eaten by a vulture or a fish!

As I said, our guide told us many interesting stories about Buddhism and their beliefs as well as stories about modern times and how things are changing. Yangkey wanted to become a tour guide and went through five years of training. When she was 22, she was due to have an arranged marriage but this would have stopped her career, so her mother stepped in and she got out of it; this is not generally looked upon well as a promise is a promise! She is now married with a daughter but doesn’t have time to make another one as she is too busy, her words! She also told us about a time when she offered tourists some snakes, rather than some snacks to eat and the time she was kissed by a tourist, who was giving her a kiss on the cheek but she turned, and you can guess what happened; afterwards, she cried as it was her first kiss!

Anyway, I will stop boring you with the stories now...I`m currently on a China Eastern flight to Chengdu and have just been served lunch. It was beef and potatoes with rice followed by melon, cake and bit of yak jerky, not in that particular order! 

The flight from Lhasa to Chengdu is only 1hour 50 minutes and is our last for the next 4 days. I called this blog “Descent to Panda City” as none of us know what is going to happen when we go back to a normal altitude! Our guide keeps telling us we will be oxygen drunk and possibly more tired so we will wait and see. My forgetfulness, or Tibetan Moments as they call it, will hopefully get better too!

Landing in 15 minutes......see you on the ground!