Today, with daily flights in and out of Lhasa, visiting Tibet has become much more feasible and can take much less time. Over 600,000 visitors are expected this year, from other Chinese provinces and from foreign countries. While special permits and numerous restrictions on unguided travel still make independent travel through Tibet difficult on the foreigner, the Chinese government seems to be easing up its restrictive policies on the Tibetan Autonomous Region.

Permit checkpoints are becoming, although annoying, simply perfunctory. Next year, China Southwest Airlines will no longer hold a monopoly on flights in and out of Tibet. Foreign direct investments also become welcome for the first time... meaning that you should expect to see Starbucks and KFC soon.

My journey into Tibet would begin with a flight from Chengdu to Lhasa, and end a week later on a return flight out of Lhasa. In between, I would spend 3 days touring around Lhasa and another 3 days on a guided overland minibus tour to Shigatse and Gyantse, Tibet’s second and third most populous cities. I would see the Potala Palace (Lhasa), the Summer Palace at Norbulingka (Lhasa), the Jokhang Temple (Lhasa), the Pelkhor Chode Temple and Kumbum Stupa (Gyantse), and the Tashilhunpo Monastery (Shigatse).

But enough preamble, let’s begin.

As I write in my journal, crowds form to peer inquisitively over my shoulder and watch the strange inscriptions created by this strange white man. I’m interrupted every 10 minutes or so to join in photos, and even more frequently by Tibetan locals who want to sell me turquoise necklaces or bronze prayer wheels. I’ve even been startled a few times by the innocent touch of a Tibetan pilgrim or curious child who needs to feel my skin or clothes to confirm that I’m real. While Lhasa gets its fair share of western tourists, these pilgrims who have come to Lhasa from the more remote corners of Tibet have seldom if ever seen foreigners.

This morning I visited the Potala Palace, and walked through many of its chambers, halls, and temples. Though mostly vacant now – almost museum-like – the palace is as elaborate inside as it is grand outside.

Intricately carved doorframes, pillars and support beams are painted with equally intricate artwork to highlight the depth and curves of the relief. Murals, statues, and reliefwork depict the history of Buddhism and honor its monastical hierarchy, lead by a lineage of 14 Dalai Lamas. Guilded and bejeweled reliquary stupas preserve holy relics and even the mummified bodies of past Dalai Lamas.

Unlike the vacant Potala, the Jokhang hums with activity. Inside, the music and chanting are positively hypnotic, and the incense nearly intoxicating. Views from the roof are also outstanding. Outside, pilgrims march clockwise around the Jokhang in a pilgrim circuit known as the Barkhor. A collection of narrow streets, the Barkhor is also a sprawling shopping bazaar where you can pick up various Tibetan goods from yak-hair rugs to beaded jewelry.

I’m trying to write with the same hand that for the last four hours clutched desperately to the handrail of a minibus that careened furiously along the precipitous curves of a steep mountain road.

Three other tourists and I were picked up this morning in Lhasa on shuttle to Shigatse aboard a minibus at the command of a deranged driver who tore up and down mountain roads like a derby racer. He seemed determined to pass every other vehicle along the way, on dirt roads that could barely accommodate one car. On tortuous roads carved into the sides of mountains, several hundred feet above the valley floor, he would rush up behind other vehicles, one-hand resting firmly on the horn, and through blinding clouds of dust that had been kicked up, he would pass the other vehicle on whichever side gave us a better view to our death.

The driver hasn’t said a word the entire time. When he stops, we get out. When he gets back in, we know to do the same. In fact, he hasn’t opened his mouth at all today accept to lock in or release yet another cigarette. Occasionally, he also has to pull off the road to check to see if the axle, shocks and t-rods are still in place after having darted over bumps at 60mph. I’m thinking he lost the shocks a while ago.

I expected the same thing to happen in Asia – that after a dozen or so Buddhist temples, my attention might wane and interest dull. Over the last five weeks, through China and Tibet, I have seen easily over 20 Buddhist temples and monasteries (I’ve even stayed the night in three). But here in the Maitreya Temple in Shigatse on the grounds of the Tashilhunpo Monastery, or even yesterday at the Pelkhor Chode Monastery in Gyantse, both deep in the spiritual heart of Tibet, I am more taken aback and moved to awe than in any previous temple or monastery.

Perhaps it is the remoteness – the total foreignness of this place and its people. Perhaps it is the dizziness that comes with increasing altitude, or the lightheadedness produced by choking clouds of incense. Perhaps it is the hypnotic chanting of monks, the centrifugal force of circumambulating pilgrims, or the faint and fleeting clink of finger-cymbals. Maybe it is the arresting enormity of the temple’s guilded statues or the vibrant silks strewn decoratively from the ceiling. Perhaps it is all these things, but today, 15,000 feet closer to heaven, I find myself a little more quiet and a little less sarcastic.

I’m not a religious person, or even very spiritual, but this place awakens childhood wonder and silences the ego. Put simply, this place puts me in my place.

I first saw Pam at the Chengdu airport. She was throwing a fit at the security checkpoint because they wouldn’t let her take her flammable hairspray onboard. To my considerable dismay, she ended up on the same minibus tour as me and two other equally roiled tourists. When she isn’t complaining about something, Pam (which I believe has to be an acronym for "Plump-Ass Malcontent") is trying to argue with you, quite adamantly, about something she knows absolutely nothing about. If it wasn’t so annoying, the sheer conviction of her idiotic arguments would be funny.

My "favorite" argument had to be about the Dalai Lama. In a casual conversation over dinner, I mentioned that I had read that the current Dalai Lama believed he would not be reincarnated and that he would be the last Dalai Lama. Pam butt in to correct me.

"No. You don’t know what you’re talking about. The Dalai Lama already picked the next Dalai Lama, and he’s a 7-year-old American boy from Seattle. You should know that, Ken – I mean, being an American. Anyway, he wasn’t reincarnated because every 1,000 years or so a ‘special child’ is sent to become the new Dalai Lama. But, the problem, you see, is that the Chinese government found out, and so they captured him at the airport on his way to Tibet, and they’re holding him under house arrest in Beijing."

What do you say to something like that? It took me a long time afterwards to unravel her long diatribe and figure out just how she had come up with such a fantastic story. Elements of it were familiar – some even close to true – but lumped together, it was an amalgam of half-truths, movie plots, and pure insanity.

The way she referred to the boy, for example, as the "special child" made me believe that she had watched the movie, Golden Child, where Eddie Murphy has to save a kidnaped "special child" that is sent every 3,000 years to battle evil. The part about the boy from Seattle – that, I believe, was taken from Little Buddha, a movie inspired by the story of Sonam Wangdu, a Seattle boy who was said to be the reincarnation of his great, great uncle Deshun Rinposte III, a revered Lama (or Buddhist priest) of the Sakya sect. And the part about the kidnaped boy in Beijing – partially true, but wrong person. Gyaincain Norbu, a 13-year-old boy from Tibet, was taken from his home by Chinese officials shortly after being enthroned the Panchen Lama (Tibetan Buddhism's second-highest leader) to be properly educated in Beijing.

The current Dalai Lama, by the way, is still in exile in India.

But make it to Tibet and you will be rewarded with a surfeit of sensory experiences. Tibet will delight and challenge your senses with smells, tastes and colors you have never experienced before. Good or bad, you’ll discover the fetid odor of yak butter and incense that smacks of hashish. You’ll taste rich, savory stews of spicy yak, crisp Asian pears, and sweet local melons. You’ll catch sight of colors that you would not have known hitherto occurred in nature. But of all the sensory experiences I had the pleasure to take in, it had to be the colors that got me the most.

Tibetans love color – the more the better, the brighter the best. Their clothes have more colors in a single item than you’ll find in my entire wardrobe. Their temples and palaces are a riot of color, designed to the widen the eyes and challenge optics.

Tibetans have a practice of affixing prayer flags to rooftops and mountain passes. They believe that when the winds whips through prayer flags, prayers are released into the heavens. Each color of the strewn prayer flags represents something different they are thankful for. Blue is for the sky, white for the clouds, yellow for the earth, green for the water, and red for fire. In fact, these symbolic, simple colors are almost accurate.

The earth these people occupy, though arid and spartan, is rich in contrast. Colors are not compromised, dulled or muted. The sky is blue. The water is turquoise. The earth is cinnamon- or camel-brown, and, at times, even yellow. It seems almost a perfect canvas of solid, clean forms of color, on top of which the Tibetans are free to add vibrant, intricate detail.

Also, it may be slight, but altitude does have some effect on color and light refraction. At various altitudes in Tibet, air density is 30-50% lower than at sea level. With rarefied air, there are fewer molecules to diffract and scatter light, and thus wavelengths reach your eyes untransformed, producing crisp and clear colors.