Altitude and colds don't mix

The only thing rarer than oxygen and hamburgers in the TAR is Internet access, so apologies for these necessarily post-facto posts.

Tibet Day 1
From the instant you step off the plane onto the gangplank, it's clear something is not quite right with your lungs or your head. You notice you're taking two breaths for every step, and everyone seems to be moving faster than you. A guy on the plane who has been traveling in and out of the TAR for the past year offers this wisdom: Say little, move slowly, expect to feel uncomfortable in the middle of the night. Most importantly, don't panic.

We meet our guide who welcomes us with hada, long white scarves that he says, I'm not supposed to step on. I step on it three times as I stumble to the van with my backpack, which suddenly feels ridicuously oversized and overstuffed. I realize I should not have packed a copy of Endless Feasts: Sixty Years of Writing from Gourmet Magazine along with my collection of Chinese and Tibetan language books. I also suddenly realize all I want to do is sleep. The only thing I notice on the way to the hotel is the ring of enormous, charcoal gray mountains encircling us. They are so sharp they are like the jagged teeth of a giant, charred beast. We enter a tunnel that cuts through one of the largest peaks, and we don't see daylight for a full five minutes. On the other side, the mountains are not gray, but bright white, red or green. All along their bases, countless people have painted criss-crossing forms, white lines that look like ladders. They are prayers climbing up to the bluest sky I have ever seen.

Itinerary

We are in a holding pattern for a few days until the TAR travel permit comes through. The plan is this:

• A few days around Shanghai (including short trips to Suzhou, Nanjing, and so forth);
• 10 days in Xizhang Province (Tibet);
• 36 hours on the Tibet-Qinghai train from Lhasa to Xi'an;
• A few days in Xi'an; and finally,
• A few days in Chengdu or Shanghai (we have some votes for pandas and some votes for shopping).

Right now, my biggest concern is the cold I have had for three weeks and what will happen when my brain goes from 0 to 14,000 feet when the plane door opens in Lhasa.

Up, up, and away

In preparing for this trip to Tibet, I've been learning about altitude sickness. It is basically what happens when you slowly drown in air. Everyone new to altitudes above 8,000 feet (2,400 meters) will have some symptoms, but genetics are the dividing line between feeling sleep and cerebral edema. Lhasa is more than 12,000 feet (3,600 m) above sea level.

My genes are of the low-land variety and I tend to act mildly drunk for the first few days above 9,000 feet. I kept a journal when I was studying butterflies in the Rocky Mountains in college. Here is a quote: "Gathered butterfly data today and sampled nectar with micro-pipettes. Why aren't they called, 'tiny vacuums'?'"

I got a prescription for Diamox, which is the standard, Western medicine for this sort of thing. Diamox helps by making you breathe like a hamster (hyperventilate without feeling like you are hyperventilating). This helps lessen the drowning effect but if it gets too bad, the only solution is to head down the mountain. My parents are going the Eastern medicine route of chewing on medicinal herbs, so we'll see which works better.