Or food or water.įor what Tibetans call inji nyempo-or crazy tourists, although these gentle, soft-spoken persons are cursed mercifully by few of those, not counting me-there is one notable drawback. In part, they are in Tibet to aim automatic weapons at the sheep who clog the runway at Lhasa's airport-a facility nowhere near Lhasa, by the way.

Mine was Jane Chang, who stopped speaking after a semi-ugly discourse that began, 'So why are the Chinese in Tibet?' In true InTourist style, visitors are assigned chaperones. I did learn there, however, that the Chinese government is paranoid about untethered Westerners roaming their streets. The city's image would improve if all its municipal buildings were fashioned of vinyl-clad double-wides. Chengdu is the capital of Sichuan Province and is a kind of neo-cinderblock Communist version of Akron but with no good Chinese restaurants. Five Days to LhasaĪnd so it was that I expended five days merely flying to Lhasa, getting stuck for 48 hours in Chengdu, China. 'The word Himalayas mean anything to you? Any Union 76 stations recently erected atop Everest?' 'You seem conveniently to have forgotten a minor topographical anomaly between Tibet and Nepal,' I explained with as much sarcasm as I could drip. I may not be able to find Bucyrus, but my grasp of Asian cartography is unexcelled.

'Okay, so what you do next is drive a car from Tibet to Nepal. 'Aren't you the guy who drove a minivan onto the Arctic pack ice, then fell in?' he asked. He had brilliantly breached our militant receptionist's usually impenetrable screening techniques, blurting, 'I've got a story so stupid that you better get Phillips on the line, like right now!' Most of my intestinal worms have slithered off to inhabit the GI tracts of pet-shop puppies, so, in retrospect, it's all vaguely amusing.īut I'd still like to meet the subscriber who suggested this adventure.

From the February 1995 issue of Car and Driver.

Have a nice death how long to beat