I feel like someone has replaced my brain with cotton. There is a distant buzzing, which through my exhaustion I realize is my alarm clock, and I force myself out of my cocoon of blankets. I am severely sleep deprived and have gotten about 8 hours in the last 2 days. But I can’t complain. I’m sleep deprived from spending time with my favorite people in Beijing, before I hit the road for a month.

Beijing is uncharacteristically wet and muggy. It had been raining for four days straight and even at 5 am, a cloud of vapor and smog is thick in the air. Combined with the sleep deprivation, I feel like I’m wading through a dream. I finish the haphazard stuffing of my rucksack which contains only the bare minimum I need to survive. My camera bag gets the same once over as well. Nothing more than my trusty Nikon and 3 prime lenses in terms of gear. I carry two hard drives, one turned into a photo bank that I can use to back up my handful of SD cards. This is bare bones travel photography like Mark, my mentor used to pound into my then-teenage brain. No zooms, no flashes, no fancy and intimidating gear. Back to basics.

Several hours and one stopover later, the pilot’s announcement comes over the PA. I don’t even try to contain the excitement and like every other passenger on the flight, am snapping photos as we wind our way through the Himalayas. We narrowly miss rocky cliffs and I am amazed at how close the clouds are to the top of the mountains.

Landing in Lhasa is a shock to your system. From the fighter jets that are parked on the runway, to how bright everything is. Very little of the sunlight is filtered out at this altitude.

I am completely overwhelmed to be here. In 2008 I spent two weeks living and photographing in a Tibetan refugee camp in Nepal. The experience was all the more overwhelming as I went during the riots that preceded the Beijing Olympics. Never have I found it so difficult to be an ethnic Chinese and so deeply moved by the warmth and kindness I was shown by the refugees that I am so honored to be able to call friends.

I felt the tears sting my eyes as I stepped out of the airport. I had never planned to be here. Foreigners need special passes to visit the TAR, but through my citizenships I have the freedom to move around like a local. And all I could think of was how unfair it was that I can come and go with such ease, and yet so many of my friends from here can never return to their home.

Thus begins the first leg of my back packing trip. I meet up with Melissa in a week, but Tibet.. This magical world that captures the imagination and has stolen my heart… This is a journey I take alone.