As a non-Chinese citizen, getting to Tibet is not easy, so I decided to take that trip before leaving the country. We arrived in Lhasa and joined the rest of our tour group, 3 teachers from an international school in Nanjing and a lone Italian train conductor. There was way more driving than I expected, and we just had hours and hours of nothing to do. Michelle, whose specialties are geography and math, taught us a lot about the different rock formations. I had some interesting philosophical discussions with Tim, who was an English major in college. And the English dude whose name I no longer recall was quite into music, and we had a fun time playing Music Quiz on my iPod (yes, that’s right, I still had an iPod in 2014).
When we took this photo I was re-reading Into Thin Air. The background is Mount Everest, and as I pondered on the ephemerality of life in general and my life specifically, I felt a sense of community to be among these people, strangers who are closer to me this moment than my family and friends. I wonder if that’s what the people on the mountain felt, and why people who go through certain adversity together feel so close to each other. Perhaps for us, this moment will fade, only to be recalled when a particular photo jogs our memory. I guess life is just made of so many of these moments of connections, and the people you are closest to are the ones who share so many of these moments.
Leave a Reply