When Sander and first talked about taking a journey together, he expressed an interest in Tibet and Mongolia. Without any financial restrictions, we began mapping out our ideal journey.
Our initial plans started out by flying to Amsterdam, then heading to Finland, before landing in St. Petersburg by boat and in Moscow by rail. From Moscow, we planned to take the Trans-Siberian Railway to Ulan Bator, Mongolia. After a week or so in Mongolia, we planned to take the railway to Beijing and on to Lhasa, Tibet. But then the financial realities set in and we had to make hard decisions.
While looking for options, I stumbled upon two websites designed and maintained by Losang. Losang is from the United States but has been living in Greater Tibet with his wife and their two children for the past eight years. He has carved out an absolutely fascinating living for himself through research, contributions to notable publishing houses and television shows, and leading tours.
When I shared Losang's websites with my son, he pored over the pages and photographs (I've also recommended these two sites to my former colleagues interested in this part of the world). Shortly after Sander began exploring Losang's pages, he enthusiastically expressed an interest to go to the Amdo Region of Greater Tibet (located in Qinghai Province, China) to see the Tibetans and Mongolians who live there. This change of plans made our journey financially possible. It also made Sander more excited than ever for our journey (and our journey turned out to be everything he expected and more).
Now, we can't wait to go back!
Losang's two websites can be found here:
Land of Snows
http://landofsnows.com/los/Home.html
Life on the Tibetan Plateau
http://kekexili.typepad.com/
It was from these pages that I discovered two of the five books I took along (Mapping the Tibetan World and Footprint: Tibet Handbook).
So I must give my belated thanks to Losang for all we learned from his websites, photographs, and book recommendations.
大路到青海, High Road to Qinghai, is a blog about a five-week journey with my son, Sander, to the Amdo region of Greater Tibet in western China. We made this journey for many reasons, but one was to demonstrate how education should not be dull, dogmatic, or indoctrinating but fun, enthralling, and transformative. Hold on to your chubas! Our son-and-father adventure evolved in ways we never would have predicted! Now this is what education is all about. (All photographs Copyright © 2010 by Brad Houk.)
Brad....you are more than welcome. I look forward to meeting you next year.
ReplyDeleteTashi Delek!
Losang