Now for the unexpected

I have not yet abandoned the minimal support provided by a few people, like tour guides, who speak some english. Most of the people I am encountering day to day have no English, and my Chinese is very basic. From here on though, I will be moving into areas where very few people speak Chinese; nobody speaks any English; and where I have no Tibetan at all. The stress and strain of working in such a foreign environment is much greater than I anticipated. It turns every encounter, no matter how trivial, into a major exercise. Have I got sufficient words from the phrase book to set and recognise the context in which something is being said? What exactly is it I am trying to do right now? What do I need to have as an absolute minimum to succeed in what I am doing and how will I recognise when I have got that minimum? When you apply this to getting a taxi into town; finding something to eat; arranging tours; sorting out the areas to go to; and how to get to them; indeed to everything, then the wear and tear soon starts to mount up. Throw in my timidity in the face of the unknown and something has to give. At present, the thing that is giving most is eating - I have never found it possible to eat very much when travelling, irrespective of cuisine, or lack of it. On this trip so far, I have been spending so much time trying to sort out things, that I keep forgetting to eat. Still it is good for the figure - in three weeks of travelling I have lost 6kg.

As the difficulties are only going to grow from now on, and though I have yet to gain any of the benefits I am looking for from this trip, I have started to question whether I can do this, or whether I would be better off considering a fallback position - such as employing tour operators to arrange tours for me to at least give me the support that local knowledge will provide. It is proving far, far harder than I thought it would be; and I do wonder if wimpiness is the better part of discretion.