What is acute mountain sickness and why is my head pounding?

May 9th, 2004

Greetings from Shangri la,

Feeling that a change was in order, this past week, I packed up my bags and headed south. My destination was the rainy city of Yi Chang. An otherwise crappy river town, this city of 3 million is the gateway city to Yangtze River and is also very close to the Three Gorges damn project.

This is one of the many questionable public works projects China has begun to reaffirm their greatness as a nation. On one hand the damn could supposedly prevent flooding, which has always been a scourge to the region, and be a source of great energy for all of southern China (equivalent to 18 nuclear power plants). However, critics have also pointed out that the damn will displace over two million people and could also become China's largest cess pool. Either way, it is a damn big damn. The security around the damn was surprisingly easy to bypass and I found myself down in the construction site being gawked at by hundreds of workers.

The next day I met up with my roommate, Peter, who invited me to go up the river. What he didn't tell me was that we were going to be pimp styling up the Yangtze in the PHATEST boat on the river. For me, luxury is only an indulgence obtained in dreams, so the two western buffets a day, private showers, and english service was well welcomed. The five day cruise had many fine points but the one that sits out acutely in my mind was lounging in the back of the boat feeling the hot river sun on my shoulders, viewing the abandoned cities that were going to be swallowed by 2009, listening to Miles Davis.

I then arrived into Chongqing where I then took a very bumpy bus ride to Chengdu in Sichuan province. It was while in Chengdu that I faced a conundrum. Where should I go next?

Now I am in Lhasa, Tibet, making desperate attempts to inhale enough oxygen to maintain conscience. From what I have seen of this once forbidden land is that there is much for me to discover. Hopefully, by today I will be acclimated enough to start trekking around.

Sincerely eating way too much Yak,


Jason