International Herald Tribune 28 September 1995

By John K Cooley

KATMANDU. Nepal - After a week of travel in Chinese-occupied Tibet, it's easy to look upon the trip as a kind of pro gression, with retreats, across a Monopoly-type game board.

On the Tibet board today, there is no Valley of the Blue Moon as in James Hilton's 1933 novel 'Lost Horizon" - and no Shangri-La, either What you have to concen trate on much of the time is not keeping your youth, as in the novel. It's enough work just getting enough oxygen into your lungs to keep going, at altitudes of 5,000 meters (16,000 feet) and higher.

Let's start at GO, which in this case is the airport here in Katmandu, next door in Nepal. An unscheduled China Southwest Airlines flight carries your tour group across the Himalayas to an airport outside the once-forbidden Tibetan capital, Lhasa. On the way, you can peek, at Mount Ever est's snowy summit.

After a teeth-rattling ride from the airport, you arrive in Lhasa, which is just as it looks in old films. You see the golden-roofed towers of the Potala, winter palace of the (now exiled) Dalai Lama on its crag. Some of its best features are draped with giant red banners: Chi na's dignitaries have come from Beijing to join the Tibetan Com munists in celebrating the 30th an niversary of Tibet's annexation by the Chinese "motherland."

Now the game begins in earnest:

1. Go to Lhasa's new Holiday Inn, where tour group has paid reservations.

2. Do not move into hotel. Chinese travel mob boss, wearing wraparound sunglasses and carrying mobile phone, arrives in Land Cruiser with three sidekicks. He wants to pocket $80 per person paid in advance for Holiday Inn rooms and put group instead in a $15 per night third-class Chinese tourist hotel outside town.

3. Tibetan tour leader argues for three hours with Chinese boss. He threatens to expose boss's racket to news media ,abroad.

4. Blackmail pays! Advance three spaces arid move into room at Holiday Inn.

5. Chinese officers take over main hotel dining room and close coffee shop. Move back one space and look for restaurant in town.

6. Get excellent rate by buying Chinese yuan for dollar traveler checks from hotel cashier. Advance a space and go restaurant-hunting.

7. Drink hot tea laced with butter from yak, Tibet's national animal, in tea shop in Lhasa's older Ti betan quarter. Meet friendly Ti betans there and at neighboring monastery. Advance two spaces.

8. Go back a space. Chinese restaurant, in new Chinese quarter of Lhasa, has only dry noodles sold in plastic pots. Hot water must be added. (Eventually you will eat many more potted Chinese noodles in Tibet - good Tibetan food, like hot spiced meat inside thin bread or barley cakes, is hard to find.)

9. Advance three spaces as you join Tibetan pilgrims in traditional circular walk around Zhokang, Lhasa's main Buddhist monastery. Use video camera to get sight and sound of monks chanting, turning prayer wheels. Go back one space when Chinese plainclothes police man bumps shoulder hard while you try to film portrait of Dalai Lama on an altar.

10. See other main sights of Lhasa during two intensive days of busing and trekking, before setting out on journey west through Hi malayan valleys.

11. Have major argument with tour operator over big bus he in tends to use: bus appears to have no springs or shock absorbers. Go back three spaces.

12. Head out of Lhasa; group now has two minibuses that -bounce well on the bumps. But then come STOP: a Chinese Army roadblock. One tourist dis covers she apparently left passport in hotel. Tibetan tour guide, pan icking, take bus back to hotel to retrieve passport. Two hours lost.

13. Advance six spaces on trip to Gyangze, passing beautiful and deserted turquoise lake. Bus stops in a dust cloud at about 5,300 me ters (17,500 feet) for magnificent photo of Himalayas.

14. Find fairly clean Chinese hotel in Gyangze; advance two more spaces. Go back one space when you discover bathroom has no running water. Main item on dinner menu is noodles.

15. Travel from Gyangze to Jihgatse over high passes and dusty. rocky roads, 12 hours of bouncing. Advance six spaces when you come to Tashilunpo Monastery, magnificent with many secret en closures. Could this have provided James Hilton with his quote about Shangri-La's "austere serenity'' with its "forsaken courts and pale pavilions shimmering in repose"?

16. Freeze and wait in suspense as three Chinese security jeeps roar into one of Tashilunpo's court yards, otherwise off limits to mo tor vehicles. Monks and tourists wonder: Is this a raid? Will there be arrests? Discover that Chinese se curity men are merely escorting three VIPs from Beijing who com pel senior monk to take them on monastery tour.

17. Travel from Jihgatse to Xe gar, last big stop before returning to Nepal. Advance at least 10 spaces with visit to a Mongolian-type Buddhist monastery and sev eral other places that a minder, who joined tour with guide, in sisted were inaccessible

18. Buy elaborate bead strings in Xegar for a few yuan. Go back a space when beads fall apart. Food in Chinese hotel inedible. Buy own noodles outside.

19. Learn about Himalayan climbing from American and New Zealand members of an expedition waiting for their sherpas to tackle Cho Oyu, world's eighth-highest mountain. Advance three spaces.

20. Near journey's end, find that avalanche has blocked road to Nepal.

Go back four spaces. Get out of bus in heavy rain and con fide baggage to porters who appear by magic out of the cloud. Creep around rock and mudslide to wait ing Chinese Army trucks.

21. Reach Zhangmu. the border town. After night in tolerable ho tel, pass Chinese customs. You hold breath, but no Chinese check of purchases, money, etc., threatened in guidebook. Two-hour trek down through mud to actual frontier, the China-Nepal Friendship Bridge over a seem ingly bottomless gorge.

22. Arrive in Kathmandu.. Look back on trip with pride, but say "Never again." Do not order Chinese noodles for dinner.

(The writer, an ABC News correspondent and author in Cyprus contributed this comment to the international Herald Tribune.)