I ask for a map of Lhasa on the way to the restaurant and my tour guide phones his counterpart and asks him to meet us there.

The Lhasa Namatse Restaurant is on the second floor of what seems to be a department store complex, as we pass through various areas selling different items. The restaurant has huge windows all the way around.

As we’re having lunch, army trucks begin rolling down the streets on the corner of where the restaurant is. I take a couple of pictures through the window as everyone gets up and looks out.

Then we find out that the person who was to bring the map is unable to come as the street where the tour company office is has been blockaded off. Some violence has erupted and the access to the street is closed by the police. It seems some kind of an incident has happened.

We are all cautious as we head back out to the vehicle and drive to the Ani Tsankhung Monastery/nunnery. Police and army are everywhere, standing on corners, directing traffic, walking around, watchful.

The streets are very narrow where we go, and as we walk, I am told to be careful about what we say by my guide. He whispers that there are police to our left…a man and a woman (they are not in uniform), but undercover, looking like the average people on the street, though scrutinizing the crowds. I’m not sure how he knows this, but we quickly go into the nunnery entrance. There is no need for us to be involved in any confrontations and questioning.

We emerge from the tour about 30 minutes or so later and the streets are strangely quiet; you can almost feel the palpitations of something unseen going on, something about to erupt. We walk quickly back up the street to find the vehicle. Ahead we can see people pulling down the overhead doors to their shops and locking them…way ahead the army is coming…people begin to hurry to get out of the way, but not running as they don’t want to attract unwanted attention.

By our vehicle there is a woman on the stoop of her shop who speaks with the guide and tells him the police are questioning someone who has been speaking out of turn against the Chinese government and so they are hassling everyone along the way. The driver finally returns and we scurry into the vehicle and get out of the narrow alleyway/street. Sometimes it is so narrow that pedestrians have to step into doorways so the vehicle can get through.

When we get onto the main street there are many army personnel and trucks. They have blocked the left hand lane and are directing the right hand traffic to turn down another street. The soldiers are lined up across the street with plastic shields, prepared for anything. More army trucks roll down the street and turn into the police headquarters building and grounds, which we must pass. There are many soldiers in the back of the trucks; grimly looking out, shields perched in front of them, prepared for fighting and crows control.

We manage to get out of the centre of the old city, but have to take various detours when we come across road blocks. As we drive, we are constantly amazed by the number of police, army, and patrols going through the streets, standing at corners, forming lines and barricades with bodies and vehicles. I cannot take photos—this would mean instant repercussions not only for me, but for my guide and driver…severe problems for them. I would only be deported, but they and their families would suffer for many years.

I’ve asked to see one of the large monasteries from a distance at least, as they are all closed and there will be no other opportunity for me. I secretly want to see what I can about the troops guarding them, as I’ve heard stories about thousands of soldiers ringing the monasteries, barricading them in. Sometimes we hear the numbers guarding the monasteries are less, but I understand that although there are 2.1 million residents in Tibet, there are 1 million soldiers, so it could easily be true.

No one has been able to get into the monasteries since the March 10 demonstrations by the monks. Even the temples (smaller monasteries), like the Jokhang Temple have been partially closed, depending on the day. Earlier in the day I had met a young man from London. He was able to get into the Jokhang Temple earlier that morning, but that he had probably gotten in because he was not with a tour guide, because they would not chance it.

The guy from London told me he also took a bus to one of the large monasteries just outside the city and saw the lines of police outside, but was just told to move along, as he played dumb about what was going on. Taxis and buses are now forbidden to go to the monasteries. The tour guides and drivers had been forbidden to go several days earlier and have followed these instructions. The bus the British lad took was most likely a local one, going by the monastery on its regular route.
At my request then, my guide and driver take me to a place so I can view one of the largest monasteries in Lhasa at a safe distance. We are across the river from the new train station.

I take photographs of the monastery way in the distance where it is nestled at the bottom of a mountain, but I cannot make out any figures or vehicles surrounding it. All I can see is a mass of buildings. I have heard several days earlier that the monks are locked in and without access to food sources. My vantage point is worse than a post card photo, but all I am able to get.

As we head back, we suddenly notice plumes of smoke are rising from the city centre. We think it might be clouds of tear gas or maybe it’s smoke from something burning. My guide gets on the phone to see if he can find out what’s going on. We hear a police car or army vehicle has been set on fire. But there is more smoke than just one item burning.

Back in the hotel I meet a young Chinese man, who has been asked by the hotel staff to relay to me in English that I must stay in the hotel that it is not safe to be in the streets.

Later I talk to English-speaking guests, who were there in the morning when the first street was closed off and saw what actually happened. Some fanatical man (some say Tibetan, bu this is not substantiated) went running through the street with a machete in each hand, swinging at people (some say Chinese (Han), but again this is not substantiated). This escalated into violent attacks of throwing stones and bricks, hitting with sticks, metal rods, etc. between many Tibetan and Chinese people. Some used their fists, and the English speaking people /foreginers were almost clobbered too. Then the army arrived, ten across and 20 or 30 deep with their shields up and moving forward into the crowd. By this time many were heading to do destruction in the shops owned by the Chinese, which is when the shops were set on fire.

I also heard this same story later from others that were there. One woman who had been touring the Potala Palace at the same time as me, had actually been rushed by her tour guide into the back of a nearby house away from windows, where they cowered for quite some time in the dark. (This same tour guide was to help me later at the airport.)

No one seems to know what set the one man off in the first place. Can this have been a ploy by the Chinese government, or is it a person who has just snapped with all the military presence for the past few days? Has someone taunted him, or caused harm to some member of his family? This is outbreak is clearly not sanctioned or begun by the Buddhist monks, and certainly not by the Dalai Lama.

A short while later another tour guide comes into the hotel with a group of people that have just returned from a two day mountain excursion. He is the boss of the tour company I’ve been using, and recognizes me from the restaurant earlier in the day. He tells me how lucky we were to leave the restaurant when we did. Right afterwards it was closed down with all the people still inside and the department store doors closed and secure. No one could leave for at least two hours.

Turns out the group he has just brought to the hotel had been staying in a hostel in the city centre, which was now closed off to everyone. Many of their things were still there, and they didn’t know if they would ever see them again, as the fires that had erupted after the burning of the police vehicle were the shops on the same street as their hostel. This takes place on the street that I have been on everyday while in Tibet, passing those shops, eating in two of the restaurants: The Lhasa Kitchen Restaurant and the Lhasa Snowland Restuarant.

The street that links to the Jokhang Temple. (The Temple is just out of view in the upper left hand corner in the picture taken from the second floor restauran of the Lhasa Kitchen Restaurant.) The street where I have come to know a few people, where I have shopped and eaten in their restaurants. Now I have a personal connection and I wonder how they all are faring.

The temple itself doesn’t look like much from far away across the end of the street. But people go there every morning to do prostrations and pray. People also make pilgrimages to Lhasa, to the temple and the Potala Palace.
(Photos: Jokhang Temple)

Then my new Chinese friend receives news that Lhasa is under marshal law and the road to the airport has been closed and all shops, etc ordered closed. People are to remain indoors and there is a curfew. We try to find more information out about this news, as I have decided it would be best if I left Lhasa the next day, but there is no point in booking a flight if we can’t get out.

In the meantime, another group of people arrive at the hotel, brought by my driver from earlier in the day. They have just arrived in Lhasa, so I question them as to how they got through if the road from the airport was closed, but they had arrived by train. They said there were tons of people on the train coming into Lhasa for some reason. Part of this might be because the train takes over 45 hours to get from Xi’an to Lhasa and once it starts there aren’t too many places to get off, and definitely nowhere to catch a train back. Besides, when they started out, things weren’t that bad. When they arrived, they were told they must turn around and leave immediately the next day.

Through the interpretation of my English speaking Chinese friend, I asked their driver (who was mine earlier in the day) to call my guide…I had just been trying to phone my guide, but the phone in my hotel room wouldn’t let me make outside calls. (Later all phones in Lhasa would be cut off.) My guide answered and said he would see what he could find out and let me know if we could get out of the city.

In the meantime, several of us who were visitors to Lhasa – some Chinese citizens and some of us foreigners – have been chatting about what to do and how to leave. I spoke again with my hotel friend and he was been told that Lhasa was not yet under marshal law and that the road to the airport was not officially closed, just that people were throwing stones and bricks at cars coming and going and it might be dangerous to leave…we decided we were willing to chance it.

I start looking up flights to Chengdu, the closest place outside of Tibet, and find the same one my new friend was going on. When he makes some calls and orders a cab for the morning; I ask if I can share it with him. We decide we will leave at 8:30 in the morning. Taking a taxi is probably the only way we will be able to leave and make it on time and as no one locally, like the tour guides, wanted to make the one hour trek to the airport.

We’re not sure yet, if we’ll actually get out, or if taxis and buses will be stopped. Stories we hear are conflicting. (My Chinese friend has actually ordered three taxis, but doesn’t know if any of them will show up.)

All the shops are closed in the whole city, the huge metal garage doors drawn over the windows and the heavy gates into the hotels are also clanged shut tightly. No one can get in or out. There is little movement outside where I am, however, I have been getting snippets of news here and there.

Besides some shops in the old centre of Lhasa being set on fire, apparently one nun has been killed and perhaps several other people, including maybe 6 or 8 monks, though this has not been confirmed. I wonder if the nun is one from the nunnery I was at earlier, as it is definitely in the vicinity where all the action is taking place. I try to picture which one it might have been, and can’t imagine it. When I saw them they were all chanting and then praying peacefully.

Although we heard the day before and that morning that they are not letting any more tourists into Lhasa, some are still arriving, like the group who came by train a short while ago. Others are being stopped at the outside airports before take off, yet we hear the planes are full of people arriving, though we don’t know who they are, could be citizens of Lhasa. For sure, no reporters are being allowed in. I had heard earlier in the week that it is the Americans that are not being refused entry, so thank God I am Canadian and they will treat me better.

By nightfall, it is confirmed that there are absolutely no places open and no one on the streets. This means that there are no stores to buy anything and no restaurants open. As there is no restaurant in the hotel, we do not know how we are going to get something to eat, unless my guide and driver come with something, but there are many of us to feed.

My two favourite restaurants are in the dangerous part of the city and therefore not accessible (nor open, in fact, since the fires have been set in the very streets where they were located, and where I’d been walking many times in the past couple of days, and the restaurants may have been burned as well.)

My tour guide and driver are coming to the hotel this evening to see if they can help me get out of Tibet – they don’t know I’ve already booked my flight and have a way to go in the morning. The will also see what they can do to find us something to eat. It won’t be the first time I’ve gone to bed hungry in China if they can’t bring me anything.

They duly arrived just before 7:00 pm, along with another group of tourists that had been staying in the old part of Lhasa. They had to be evacuated and we’ve all been told we (tourists) are to leave the country the next day. Apparently the police/authorities phone all the tour companies and hotels to tell them to make sure they take care to protect all foreigners.

While we are considering what to do, we hear again that maybe there is a curfew in the city for tonight, but it’s not substantiated, though certainly there is barely any movement on the streets. Hopefully, the unrest will abate by tomorrow morning when we have to leave.

Finally, the hotel sends someone out to buy a couple of small cases of the dried instant noodle bowl things that you put boiled water into. They’ve managed through their connections to get some, perhaps through a back door of a shop somewhere. We were able to buy them for 5 rmb (70 cents) and the hotel boils the water to make them.

While I was waiting for mine, a call came through to the hotel staff and we were all told that we must go to our rooms immediately and stay there, although not why. I managed to hear that there have been shootings and lots of other bad things happening…still not much in the way of details.

When my Tiebtan guide and driver assure themselves that I will be safe and that I have a way out of the city to teh airport, they leave, and I thank them profusely for how wonderful they have been to me during my time in Lhasa.

I head to my room, but every once in a while I poke my head out to see if there’s anything to see. (I’m like a curious cat.) The streets are basically deserted, with only the odd person scurrying along on foot, or by bicycle or the odd cab dropping somebody off. Everything is closed and shuttered; some places even have boards or sheets of plywood across their windows in anticipation of what is to come. The hotel gates are closed and the lights are out. There is a strange quiet, an ominous feel and tone everywhere.

From time to time the electricity goes off and back on again. Then, all at once the access to the Internet disappears, so I decide I will head to bed. But I find I’m not able to sleep and I need another blanket, because I am cold, even though I am wearing all my clothes.

Eventually I venture out of my room. It’s about 10:30. I hear voices in the hotel lobby ….it’s the group of who have arrived by train, discussing how they can leave…earlier they had all phoned home to let their family know they were safe…ironically one young man, who has just told his mother he is safe, had to cut his conversation short by telling her that we were all ordered to go to our rooms and stay there….probably didn’t leave her with a comforting feeling.

A few minutes later just before 11 pm, the hotel receptionist turns the light off and on and motions for us all to go to sleep. We leave, and she shuts everything down, lights, computers, etc. This is another directive from the police/government. All hotels are to be shut down as much as possible. Besides who wants to make themselves a target for trouble.

I go back to my room and snuggle as best as I can back into bed, but I’m lying there in the dark shivering and thinking about the day’s events and wondering if I’ll actually be able to get a flight out, as when I booked online, it had not been confirmed. Or had it? I had no way of connecting again. Would we even get to the airport without incident?

I’m scrunching my eyes shut trying to pretend I’m sleeping, I hear big machinery rolling by and what sound like muffled shots – I don’t have a window on the street side of the hotel, but I pop out and someone tells me two tanks have gone by and he’s sure too there has been many shots fired, confirming my suspicions. I go back to my bed and try to relax. All of a sudden my phone rings. It’s about 11:30 pm.

It’s my Chinese friend and he’s decided that we might not make it out of Lhasa in the morning, or perhaps not in time for our flight, or without danger. It seems quiet in the streets now. He’s booked a couple of taxis and if I want to go now, I have 15 minutes to prepare. “I’m in,” I tell him.

I’ve never unpacked or undressed, so it doesn’t take me long to get to the lobby. There are 8 of us going. We finally get checked out, and get everything together and head out about an hour later. Turned out the two cabs were going to have to make two trips as there are so many people and so much luggage. I’m in the first group to leave. This has all been decided in Chinese, and I am grateful I have people watching out for me, keeping me safe. Although I am in a car with only Chinese speaking people, I am given a signal to use to call someone in the second car who can also speak English if I am scared or if there is a problem.

The streets are deserted. We take back roads to get to the road to the airport, avoiding the centre of Lhasa. The drive is an hour long. There is not much traffic on it, and we don’t run into anything, except, almost, 4 yaks that appear on the road when we round a mountain corner. We manage to swerve around them—we aren’t going at a very high speed anyway, as we are in a ‘convoy’ and the lead car.

Finally we make it to the outside of the barricade at the airport and airport hotel. Within seconds a police car with flashing lights, screams out to us and five police and army personnel surround our car andkeep the other one within their sites. The gate guard watches as the ‘authorities’ start hauling all the luggage out and going through everything. My suitcase isn’t with me. It didn’t fit in the same car as I ended up going in….After a long time of meticulous searching through both cars, we are finally allowed to go to the hotel.

The hotel isn’t great, but par for the course we are on for the night. It takes us some time to get our rooms straightened out, make our own beds, ask for some water and some toilet paper, etc. The place is a real dive and a poor substitute for an airport hotel or any place anyone would want to stay. I definitely don’t want to step on the floor, and barely get into my room as the door handle is falling off. I pull out my alarm clock and gingerly ease myself into bed, still fully dressed. The airport is across the large parking lot and we are all meeting in the hotel lobby at 9:30 as we are all on the same flight.

My friend came in the second conveyance, and didn’t get to the hotel til after 3:30 am. They had a very rough time with the police and army at the gate to the airport. At least we were able to phone them and let them know what to expect.

I wake well before 9:00 am and have a shower, sort of…I’ve been in the same clothes for two days, and though I don’t know where my luggage is and can’t change, I feel really grubby and especially want to wash my hair. There is hot water, but the sprayer goes every which way, except where it’s aimed and the whole bathroom floor is soaked, but it’s obviously a common occurrence as one can see from the rotting baseboards, lifting tiles, and sinking toilet. The floor for the shower is just part of the bathroom floor, on the same level with no barriers to hold the water back, and no slant for the water to drain where it is intended to go.

I’m the first one to the lobby, followed a few minutes later by another of the Chinese men in our group. He decides to help me get some breakfast, which is free with our room rental, while we wait for the others to gather. He is concerned that I should be hungry, though I have not indicated this. It’s another Chinese style breakfast and I point to some kind of wonton soup. It duly arrives and I eat the wontons out of it, finding myself hungry from the night before, but can’t stomach the mass of water spinach shrouding them. (I’ve had water spinach served to me almost every day of my time in China. Although it was tasty at first, I can’t eat any more of it.)

Eventually we are all assembled and we all look awful…I washed my hair, but didn’t have any shampoo or conditioner and I look the worse for wear, but nobody cares. We’re just happy to be out of Lhasa city, though we know there is still a possibility we might not get on the flight. I especially am not sure if I have a flight, because the Internet was cut off before I received confirmation of my booking online.

Although the line-ups at the airport aren’t long, they are scrutinzing everyone very carefully. I discover the woman from the Potala Temple is somewhere in the line behind me with her tour guide. She tells me of her narrow escape the day before. When it is my turn at the ticket wicket, there seems to be a problem with my on line booking. At first I don’t understand. The airline person waves me away and indicates I am to go to the second floor and take care of something.

One of my cohorts tells me that my actual passport number doesn’t match the passport number on my online booking information. I don’t want to get out of the check-in line, because I may never get on the flight and I won’t be with my friends any more and they won’t be able to help me. But they tell me there is nothing I can do; I will have to do and straighten it out. I ask them to tell the wicked wicket clerk that it is just a typo. (I’m one number out somewhere in the middle – a 3 instead of a 4.) She indicates for me to go deal with it and a security guard becomes to head my way.

Somehow, the female tour guide of the woman I’ve been talking to earlier sees my distress and asks if she can help. I explain the situation. She tells me to stay where I am, she will see what she can do. She explains to the authorities she will help me. They let me stay where I am.

First she has to help her tourist get through as her flight is twenty minutes earlier than mine. Security is opening everyone’s luggage and searching very thoroughly, and she is there to help the woman get through this ordeal. Meanwhile, the rest of my group is trying to get checked in, while at the same time, Chinese people are trying to muscle in and get in line ahead of everyone, but I am not budging from my spot.

Many moments pass and I can’t see the tour guide any more and she has my passport. I am distracted for a time by a verbal fight behind me. My group is bigger than the passengers in line first realized, because it took them some time to get their baggage onto trolleys and get properly into the line, though we have been holding their places and have all their passports. Security comes over, but nothing seems to be resolved, though some of these other passengers are eventually sent to other line-ups. Others are pushing in front of us to get through.

Ironically the line-ups aren’t actually that long and it won’t take that much more time for all of us to get through. Except for maybe me…..not sure what’s going to happen. I don’t want to lose sight of my new friends and be left behind to fend for myself.

What a dumb time to find a typo! I’ve been using Expedia all throughout my travels to book my flights. It has an automatic response to filling in information, and when I originally set this up, the typo was there, but I hadn’t noticed it. N one for the past four months of my travelling hroughout the Mediterranean had ever noticed it, and definitely for my month in China no one had noticed it before either. Heightened security tactics were now in place, much to my chagrin and frsutration.

Eventually, the tour guide came back and said she had straightened it all out for me. She told the wicked wicket clerk it was fine now and when I turned to thank my rescuer, she was already gone. Somehow or other, my suitcase got bumped onto the conveyor belt without being searched, and I was free to go to the rest of the airport security and the gates.

By this time though our entire group was not through checking in so we waited until we were all ready, then headed to our flight. I’m not sure how many more security check points we went through, but the final one was a dilly, and we were standing in line watching and listening to announcements that our flight was boarding. We were still not home free.

Someone from the group asked a security guard if they would hold the flight for us and he said they would. We relaxed a little, sure now we would be flying out. Ironically there was hardly anyone on the plane and we all had a couple of seats to ourselves. We breathed a collective sigh of relief that we were on our way to Chengdu.