Foreigners are seeing less and less of Tibet and Xinjiang, China…..

Locations: Lhasa Valley, Tibet, China (29° 45′ 28.8″ N, 91° 28′ 30″ E)
Date: 10 August 2007; 9.0am
Camera: Canon 400D with Sigma 17-70/f2.8-4.5

I have to consider myself lucky as far as traveling to Tibet is concerned. I did 3 trips to Tibet between 2003 and 2007 and went to a fair number of places that the Chinese government forbids foreigners to visit. Some of the landscapes and tradition/culture of the people I met and visited are etched forever in my memories. I am lucky because the Chinese government has closed off more and more of the province to foreigners for political and information censorship reasons. In any case, the Han Chinese are changing Tibet so dramatically and so quickly that the character and spirituality of many wonderful places in Tibet are just no longer the same- in some ways one can say the same of the whole of China. Hence I consider myself lucky to be able to experience the magic of these places and their people before their modern and developmental transformations.