The Hotel on the Roof of the World Read Online Free PDF

caught between his molars, it was apparent that dental floss is either not widely used or simply unavailable in China. I wondered if I had packed any in my 20 kg luggage allowance.
    Coming out of his yawn, he squinted to focus on me and, seeing that he was sitting next to a foreigner, he beamed into a Cheshire cat Chinese smile.
    â€˜Hello,’ I said.
    â€˜Lhasa!’ he replied, pointing out of the window.
    I could see that communication was going to be a problem but at least the Chinese seemed to be friendly people. After reading countless Western newspaper articles about China and Tibet I had been conditioned into mistrusting the Chinese. It was quite a pleasant surprise to find that as long as they were not standing behind a desk in a uniform or working in any capacity, the Chinese were generally extremely likeable people.
    â€˜Lhasa!’ beamed the Chinaman again, pointing eagerly to the floor of the plane. I peered out of the window. Still nothing.

TOUCHDOWN IN TIBET
    The relentless, almost imperceptible descent over the Tsangpo valley is slightly unnerving for the first time. I could feel that the plane was descending but below there were no signs of any city or airport or runway. The plane did not circle or turn in any way but just continued to sink lower and ever lower in the morning sky. The mountaintops, viewed with delight from far away, now appeared ominously close outside the windows. Some were even above the plane.
    The inquisitive mind can stretch the minutes of the descent into anxious hours. ‘Was the pilot really the uniformed youth we saw slurping from his jam jar of tea at the top of the steps? Has he been in a plane before? Did the man with the screwdriver do his job? Why can’t we see anything of the airport?’
    Hearts pounded as the aircraft rapidly approached the river bed and dunes. There were still no signs of modernity below; just the ever-nearing earth. As if in answer to the many prayers being said aboard the plane, a flash of grey runway appeared at the windows at the moment of impact and the jet liner rolled securely along one of the longest runways in Asia. Four kilometres of precision-laid Chinese concrete.
    The relief of a safe touch-down is normally missed by the foreign passengers who watch in disbelief at the sight of many jolly Tibetans happily standing in the aisle at this tense moment, stretching, yawning and then unpacking their belongings from the overhead lockers. The stewardesses notice nothing unusual. I once sat on the plane to Lhasa with an American visitor who screamed, ‘SIT DOWN! EVERYBODY SIT DOWN!’ at the top of her voice. All heads turned to this frantic lady who was gesticulating wildly at the Tibetans to get back in their seats. Rather sheepishly, those standing in the aisle, looked at one another, then back to the wild woman and decided that there would be less trouble if they just perched on the arms of their seats and waited until the plane had landed before going back to the overhead lockers.
    After touchdown the stewardesses pushed their way along the aisle to return firearms and weapons to their respective owners. Chinese soldiers received revolvers and three tall Tibetans, each with a long red tassel braided into their hair, received daggers. Being somewhat larger than the Swiss army knife which I had been allowed to keep with me, these objects had been stored in CAAC brown paper envelopes for the duration of the journey. The envelopes were hopelessly small for the weapons they contained and the daggers repeatedly fell out of their sheaths, slicing through the air and digging into the Boeing carpet.
    As the recipients of the daggers grinned with delight at having their weapons returned I realised that I was seeing Khampas for the first time. I had read much about these fearsome people: the warriors of eastern Kham province.
    It was the Khampas who were called upon to fight against the British invasion of Tibet in 1904 and who were