Via Lhasa

Tibet was one area I really wanted to visit as part of this trip. It's not somewhere you get the opportunity to visit every day, so while we were in the area I wanted to investigate, to see what all the fuss was about. Getting into the region can be difficult for foreigners, with entry requirements changing as often as the Irish weather. In a case of bad timing on our part, our planned visit to Tibet happened to coincide with the 50th anniversary of Chinese rule in the region, and for this reason the it was completely closed off to foreigners for the month of March. So no Tibet, but on the brightside this did give us more time to play with in China itself.

And we did get to visit Tibet in the end, sort of. We were flying from Kathmandu to Chengdu, in Sichuan Province, central China, and the flight has a stopover at Lhasa airport. The stopover was an experience in itself. The airport at Lhasa is ultra modern and big, totally different to the cow-shed I was expecting.

Stepping into the terminal, I immediately realised I was now in a different world. The contrast with Kathmandu's hurried mess of an airport was startling – the cleanliness, the organisation, the politeness of the staff – it felt like we had jumped one hundred years into the future. I wish I had the pictures to show you, but taking into account the current political climate, and where we were, we decided against taking any pictures.

Adding to the surrealism of the place was the lack of people – probably due to the fact that Lhasa was closed to non-Chinese the airport was a ghost town. Our plane landed, we went through customs and security, then re-boarded the same plane en route to Chengdu – and in that whole time no other aircraft could be seen. All shops and restaurants were closed. The huge waiting hall of our departure gate was under-utilised and desolate. Even the airport itself was surrounded by barren lifeless landscape, being located well outside Lhasa itself.

This would be the last time we'd have so much space to ourselves for a good while.