We arrive at Lhasa around 9pm and are met by our local guide and our driver. we take a mini van to our hotel. The Potala palace is lit up by floodlights and looks beautiful. In the foreground are many brightly lit flashing neon signs. It looks gaudy. We drive past the Potala Palace. Directly in front of it on the other side of the road is the "liberation" square.
In the morning we visit a 7th century Buddhist temple with many rooms and many statues - the Jokhang temple. There is a strong smell of yak butter everywhere. Each small room has an urn with yak butter candles in it. Visitors carry thermos flasks of melted yak butter which they add to the urns. The floor is slippery with yak butter. Monks carry large canisters of yak butter. I'm grateful they didn't make us take of our shoes.
View from the roof of the Jokhang temple.
The Potola Palace can be seen upper right.
In the afternoon we visit a monastery where we watch the monks debating. The monks are all in a courtyard and are mostly in pairs. One monk sits passively and answer questions. The other monk that asks questions is very animated and appears aggressive. He stands on one leg with his right arm raised as of about to attack. He lunges forward and shouts his question and land as his right hand hits his left hand in front of him. There are about 100 monks debating like this.
Older monks sitting further back in the courtyard are more laissez faire.
The next day I visit the Potala palace, the home of the 14th Dalai Lama before his exile. It is inspirational and I feel honored.
The view overlooking Lhasa when leaving the Potola Palace.
After lunch I return to my hotel room, rest and read and take a nap. After I wake and shower I head back to town and wander the streets. In front of the temple a young girl of about nine is prostrating herself before the temple. She has sort of plastic covered wooden mittens on her hands. She joins her hands together and touches her head, her throat and her chest. She then dives to the ground. The mittens slide on the stone floor and she touches the ground with most of her body including her forehead. She gets up and repeats this slowly making her way all the way around the temple.
The streets of Lhasa. The foot traffic is one-way around the temple.
We plan to have a home-stay by a lake but there has been snow on the pass and we cannot make it. Instead we visit Ganden Monastery which was founded in 1409 by Je Tsongkhapa, the teacher of the first Dalai Lama. After the visit we take a walk on a path around the monastery and have wonderful views of a large valley. As we return it starts to snow which adds to the magical spiritual feeling.
Clothes and belongings of the deceased are littered beside the path.
Sky burials are performed in this area.
When we return to Lhasa we discover that there has been a problem with our permits. The authorities have decided we must leave Tibet. We must follow our original itinerary over the course of the next few days directly to the border and then we must cross over into Nepal. This is very disappointing for everyone as it cuts short our time in Tibet by a week. This is the second disruption to our itinerary as we have already been refused the trek around Mt Kailash.
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