Overnight Tour of the Tibetan Plateau
February 12, 2011 by Bert Verbeeke
It is a local tradition on Tibetan New Year, which fell on February 3 this year, to visit friends and family beginning in the first few hours of the new year, moving from house to house to greet friends and wish them blessings. This year my family and I decided to take part in this yearly ritual and to visit the Global Nomad employees and their families’ homes.
After we lit fireworks at midnight, we went with Angdanjia, one of Global Nomad’s web developers, to his fathers’ house. Over a dozen other people also showed up while we were there. We then accommodated Angdanjia and his family to a monastery to pay respect to the monks and receive a blessing. After we wished them a good new year and took some pictures, we then made a quick stop at the home of a local village member who turned 84 this year before driving on to Angdanjia’s brother’s house. We were welcomed with a huge breakfast around 6 a.m., and we watched as our host showed his respects to the mountain gods at sunrise. We arrived back home around 9 a.m. and were exhausted… but there was no time to sleep, as we then had to make visits to all of our neighbors. Finally at 8 p.m. we were able to go to bed. What an exhausting day!
The next day we made more visits. Our first stop was the neighbors of the Global Nomad office. Next was the home of Caiduoma, a web developer at Global Nomad. We had a great time partying with all her relatives who had cooked up a feast of wonderful Tibetan dishes, and our youngest son Hizkia got to ride a horse. Our third and last stop was to the home of one of our close friends. The problem was, though, that we weren’t exactly sure where he lived. So we called him and he agreed to come meet us and lead us to his home. After nearly an hour of waiting he finally arrived on his motorcycle and then after another hour of following him in our jeep over the grasslands, we arrived at his home and had a fun time eating meat and drinking milk tea. By this time it was dark already, which made the drive back very interesting…
This was where the real adventure started. On the trip up to our friend’s home we tried to keep track of a few landmarks so we could find our way back, but there just aren’t many noticeable landmarks on open grasslands (no roads) in the dark. And of course I forgot to bring my GPS that night! We started out onto the 20 km by 20 km grassland area in front of us, but quickly got lost. We asked for directions when we came upon some Tibetan ladies, but foreigners asking for help made them nervous and shy and they couldn’t explain the route. Nevertheless we finally found the main road and made it home by 11:30 p.m., and found our neighbor waiting at our house to invite us to attend their granddaughter’s 3rd birthday celebration early the next morning. Thankfully that night we got 6 hours of much-needed sleep!
Bright and early the next morning we went to the neighbors’ house as promised. The celebration of the little girl’s birthday started with the first-ever cutting of her hair, which she was not very happy about! She eventually got over it though and was happily playing again by the time we left.
Through our New Years experience here, we learned something new about Tibetan etiquette, namely that guests should always give a gift when walking into the host’s home. Likewise, the host should always give a gift to the guests as they are leaving. Now if the gift that the host gives the guests when they leave is the same gift that the guests (or other guests) gave when they arrived, that isn’t a problem! Believe it or not it is actually okay to give back the very present that the guest himself brought when he arrived. The act of giving is what is most important.
Visiting local friends on their most important holiday of the year, seeing snow-covered mountains, crossing frozen streams, drinking milk tea, and eating Tibetan noodles – these things gave us a glimpse into real Tibetan culture and surroundings. We are privileged to live here at this time and to participate in such interesting cultural festivities!
Happy New Year!
