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I first glimpsed the Potala Palace behind the bending legs of a prostitute She swayed, obscuring a vista of the Dalai Lama’s vacant home with the taut sail of a black dress rigged from her hips, eyes closed, face contorted into a mask of transcendence and passion, belting out a Tibetan folk song somewhere in downtown Xining, an urban barnacle on the Eastern edge of the Tibetan plateau The karaoke TV screen panned across Lhasa, the Potala Palace and ethereal valleys spoiled by scrolling lyrics and a digital dot measuring their progress There aren’t enough lukewarm beers on the tray in front of me, I thought, to wrangle this scene into the pen of ‘sense’ This was not how I intended to begin my Tibetan journey, but then the unintended and unexpected are the stimuli of travel, delight or horror the effects Let the sober ombudsman of the morning work it out, I thought   A Welshman, a Monguor and two Tibetans walk into an euphemism, that’s how the night’s joke began Heard that one? A classic Here, listen to this   ***   I was disturbed from a nap by my effervescent hostel room-mate, a twenty-something Monguor anthropologist Did I want to play basketball with him and his friends? I did, and followed him to a modern university campus lit by a chromatographic sunset of pinks, oranges and blues Beer and a heavy meal of spiced mutton followed humiliation by the skillful pivots of my Asian friends Come to the karaoke club, was the next suggestion The compass needle in my guts twitched towards, ‘Euphemism: brothel’, but curiosity juggled its bag of magnet: the company was far too good to abandon for bed and rest ahead of the next day’s long ascent to the Tibetan plateau proper The club’s lobby was an oblong room with a long bar Sagging from the walls were garish posters of tropical scenes faded by time, smoke and the low pink lights Kitsch exoticism of golden sands and palm fronds in this poverty-locked, politics-locked, landlocked lobe of Central China, where local exoticism winked at me