We Travel World

Potala Palace
The first big test we faced upon arrival in Lhasa is the three hundred meter walk with your bags from the train to the bus that was taking us to our hotel. Now I know that this doesnt sound that hard, but when you have jsut stepped out of an oxygen enriched environment to the thin air at 3600 meters, it is not as easy as it sounds. I have been lucky enough that the altitude did not affect me much in Lhasa, but some of the others were not so lucky. And even those of us that were OK were out of breath by the time we made it to the bus.

I had decided on the train ride that I was going to make it a goal while I am in Tibet to eat yak in as many forms as possible and so for our first meal in Lhasa we went out for yak burgers, as this nice little rooftop restaurant that has a great view of Barkhor square and front of the Jokhang Temple, the main pilgrimage site in Tibetan Bhuddism. Thus our first evening in town was most pleasantly spent watching pilgrims circumambulate the Jokhang and
Sera Monastery
drink Lhasa beer.

In the morning, the first order of business was to do laundry, which I only bring up as it led to our group’s first run in with the military. We had been warned by Tsoka (our tour leader) that the military is very sensitive to having their photos taken and if they catch you doing it they will, if you are lucky, look at the photos and delete them, and if you are unlucky, simply confiscate your memory card. We were all standing around in this side street and Chris decided to take a photo of the street scene, but unfortunately he hadn’t noticed a squad of five soldiers that had just marched into the end of the street and he got them in the photo by accident. The soldiers halted right by all of us, while the squad leader looked at Chris’s photos and had him delete a couple of them. He was quite professional and polite about it and we all breathed a sigh of relief as they marched off.

Tsoka gave us a good orientation walk around the center of town, showing us the Barkhor Square, the front of the Jokhang (we
Potala Palace
had a tour booked for the afternoon) and then we performed a circumambulation of the Jokhang while she showed us some of the side streets. It was quite an experience to walk around with thousands of pilgrims that were performing their holy rituals. People of all ages were there, though the majority are elderly. Every Tibetian tries to make a pilgrimage to the Jokhang at some point in their lives, many of whom walk from their home towns and so they arrive very poor and seek alms from passersby. They often have a prayer wheel in one hand and prayer beads (much like a rosary) in the other hand. The most devout prostrate themselves, full length on the ground, every step. I saw one guy in the morning at the front of the Jokhang and by late afternoon had made it only a third of the way around.

The first thing that surprised me about Lhasa is that it is bloody hot and the sun has a real bite to it. I really havent felt that kind of sting on the back of my neck since living in Karratha and I am glad that I had put on suncream
Sera Monastery
by habit in the morning. A couple of the girls had not done so and there were a few pink faces and shoulders on show the next morning. I guess that is why most of the men wear what are effectively leather cowboy hats everywhere, while the women wear large, floppy hats.

For lunch we went to the only convent in town, Ani Gompa. Five of us had decided to just wander around the streets surrounding the Jokhang and found behind an almost unmarked passageway the convent and attached tea house. Simon and I decided that we didn’t want to pay the entrance fee to look inside, so we got a table at the tea house that we crowded with pilgrims; we were the only white people in there. We ended up sharing a table with a couple of pilgrims and we were getting some very interesting looks. While I looked after the bags, Simon went and tried to find something to drink and eat, and after about 20 minutes and lining up three times came back with a plate of two dozen yak dumplings and a thermos full of sweet milk tea for the grand price of 8
Sera Monastery
yuan (about $1.20). By this time the others had returned from the inside of the nunnery and the food and drink was delicious and enough for all of us for lunch.

The Chinese government requires that any foreign tourist to Tibet is part of a tour and has a local tour guide with them wherever they go. Moreover, the local tour guide is responsible for all the people under their charge and if they get up to anything in Tibet, the guide is held responsible and can lose their job or worse. We have gotten lucky and Dawa as a local guide the whole for the rest of our journey. He is very knowledgeable and very patient when trying to explain the intricacies of buddhism and tibetian culture to a bunch of know-nothings.

His first job was to show us around the Jokhang, the heart of Tibetian Buddhism and a quite spectacular temple in its own right. The paintings and statues are quite spectacular and made even more so as it is primarily a working temple, unlike many great Christian cathedrals. While tour groups are being ushered around the temples, pilgrims and locals are streaming in to pray
Sera Monastery
or make offerings of yak butter (for the candles), barley, prayer scarves or money. Given the intimacy of such a place, they rightly enough do not allow photography inside.

The thing that strikes me about most buddhist temples is that they are so dark. Rarely are they any windows, with most of the light coming via the door, yak butter candles or, in a modern improvement, low wattage lights. The centuries of light from candles means that many of the beautiful paintings on the wall are blackened with soot, adding to the lived-in feel of the temples and I really hope they dont clean everything to make it nicer for the tourists.

The roof of the Jokhang provides a great view of Lhasa, which is much larger than it feels from street level. Over 400,000 people now live here and I am glad that I managed to visit now, as I would guess that within ten years the Tibetian essence of the place will be gone and another modern city will stand in its place.

I will say that Lhasa has benefitted from modernization in that the bar scene is very cool. There are a bunch of
Jokhang
smaller dive bars, with cool furniture, music and atmosphere, that we spent hours in drinking cold Lhasa beers. As a side note, I also have to put a shout out to the Summit Cafe. They advertise that they have free wi-fi, the best pastries and the cleanest toilets in Lhasa, and let me assure you that they do. For those who have never travelled for an extended period in a developing country will not truely understand how nice it is to encounter a clean toilet with hand soap and paper towels. Couple this with warm out of the over banana muffins, a killer carrot cake and perfect hot chocolate, it is no surprise that I went there every morning.

After a few cold Lhasas, I decided to head down to the Potala Palace, the former home of the Dalai Lamas, to see it lit up night. I am not quite sure why but I was expecting to be underwhelmed by the Potala, but seeing it lit up at night left me awed. Oddly enough, I always thought that it was built into the side of a cliff, I guess it just the angle of photos that I had seen.
Jokhang
On the contrary, it is a massive palace / fort / temple built on the top of a hill that is much bigger than I had though. I would highly recommend that you see it for the first time at night, it a sight not soon forgotten.

It was here that I had my only run in with the Chinese military and while I am here I will say a few words on the subject. The best way that I can put it is that I thought that even though there is an obvious military presence, I did not get the feeling that it was threatening, although tourists are clearly not the reason why they are there and I would probably feel different if it was in my home town. The military presence is really restricted to several key intersections and posts around Barkhor Square and roving patrols of 4-6 soldiers in the nearby streets. The thing that I found funny was that in each patrol or roadblock only one guy was armed (typically with a shotgun, finger always on the trigger or trigger guard), but the other guys were armed at best with a knife. Didn’t they ever
Momo Making
hear the old addage about never bringing a knife to a gunfight. The other thing that struck me was the youth of the soldiers; none looked much over 22 years old.

My run in with the military was kind of amusing. I had taken a few photos of the Potala, using my tripod resting on a large flower planter and had just moved to take one from right in the middle of the square in front. There was nothing to rest on, and since my tripod is only about a foot high, as I usually do, I sat on the ground behind the camera to help get the right angle. I guess the military has a rule about sitting in the square and before I could even take my first photo a soldier came up behind me, said something in Chinese and when I looked, signalled with his hand for me to stand up. I nodded, smiled and stood up and he returned the smile, snapped off a quick salute and walked away. I guess he knew I wasn’t any risk and he felt a little embarassed to enforce such a rule.

Funnily enough, the next morning I
Bathing Festival
went back to the square and arranged in full parage dress was a brass band and platoon of soldiers. I think that might have been making some sort of movie as the whole thing was being filmed. Plenty of tourists were taking photos as well and I got some great snaps, which are below and I hope dont get me into any trouble.

The next afternoon we had planned a guided trip to the Potala (tickets are for a set time) and so the morning was free and I used this time to do the circumambulation (or kora, which is way shorter to type) of the Potala. The walk took me the whoe way around the hill upon which the palace sits and it was a great experience to join to throng making their morning prayers or pilgrimage. Right at the front of the palace there were dozens of people prostrating themselves in prayer and it is here that the kora starts. Once off the main road, the palace is ringed with prayer wheels, which are spun by the devout in prayer. As I walked I was surrounded by people: groups of old ladies, a single man with a
Bathing Festival
hand held prayer wheel, a young boy on a skateboard and a man pushing an old woman in a wheelchair who spun the prayer wheels. Even a devout agnistic like myself couldn’t help but be moved by the sense of peace, belief and community surrounding me.

Like and answer to my prayers, at the end of the kora I found a place that was advertising yak yogurt (using yak milk, not chunks of yak meat, for those like Maria who need clarifiaction). Even better, once I got inside I was even happier to find that they have yak ice cream (with a light green tea flavor) and they serve the yogurt and ice cream in the same bowl. Both flavors alone were good, but the slight sourness of the yogurt and sweetness of the ice cream perfectly complemented each other.

My next stop was a large market, which I ran across completely by accident. One of the things that I love doing whenever I travel is going to the local produce market, to see what the locals really eat and how they buy it. This usually means a huge wearhouse with tressel tables covered in various meats, vegetables
My new Rug
and seafood. In China you get to add cages full of chickens, geese, rabbits, frogs and tubs full of snakes, fish and crustaceans. In Tibet, on top of this you get guys hacking up whole yaks with large axes. It was great to walk around and smell and see everything; the cook in my was itching for a kitchen to use these fresh ingredients in. I also got to try some smoked yak cheese, which lokoed like smoked gouda and inside had the consistency of ricotta and was just amazing.

The Potala itself is amazing and both inside (again no photos) and outside on a par with any palace or temple that I have ever been in. Given the age of the building (parts date to the 14th Century) and building materials, the rooms within the palace are small and dark. The bedroom of the Lamas is about half the size of the room of my bedroom and even the formal receiving halls were not much bigger. To make up for this there are over 1,000 rooms and we only got to see a few. The government greatly restricts the number of people that can visit each day, and
Jokhang
even those people are limited to one hour inside (again with the tour guide to pay the price of non-compliance). While it would have been nice to wander at my own pace, looking back, the current system seems the only practical way as it would just be a log jam of people otherwise.

The one thing that struck me about the palace, and in general one of the problems that I have with religion, is the opulance of various things and in this case is the tombs of the lamas. One lama has over 3000kg of gold on his tomb. Most of the others have similar amounts. Given that Tibet has never been a prosperous place, and the poverty is obvious to this day on the street in front to the palace, it strikes me that this wealth could have been put to better use.

Leaving the Potala we headed straight to the Sera Monastery, which is on the outskirts of town, and the scene of daily monk debates. The monks debate philosophical matters and I thought that most of it would be old guys arguing about the best path to enlightenment. In reality it is a group
Jokhang
of younger monks sitting or standing around under trees, surrounded by tourists, yelling at each other and slapping hands in a kung fu like motion to prove a point. After about two minutes I just kept having this feeling that the monks were playing for the cameras and it was more like watching a reality tv show than anything else. I got bored (and somewhat saddened that this is what holy men have been reduced to) and headed outside while the others watched. I did wander about the monastery a bit and found a great sand mandala, which was really cool. The monks locked up the building right after I went in there and so no one else in the group got to see it. The rest of the group, however, did get a blessing from a horse-headed buddha so I guess that evened out.

We had all planned on going out to the Ganden Monastery, which is located a two hour out of town on a hil top and affords great views of the surrounding mountains and valleys. Unfortunately, there had been an outbreak of swine flu in the region, with 70 people getting sick, and the government
Jokhang
had quarantined the area by simply closing all the roads and letting no one in or out. Can you imagine shutting a county off like that in the US or Australia? Benefits of a command government I guess.

Since we only found this out in the early evening, it lft us with few options for the next day and most of us just decided to wander around, see a few things we had missed, do a little shopping or simply relax. The main thing that I wanted to do in the morning was find a small temple that Tsoka had shown us on our orientation walk. It looked like a really nice temple inside, and more importantly it had a prayer wheel that was bigger than anything that I had spun to date. Sarah, Erin and I found it eventually, but there were so many people actively spinning the prayer wheel that I was nervous about going in and getting in the way. I stood near the front, hoping that a few people would drop off, but people continually entered and I didnt think that I would ever get there. The monk at the door kept smiling and waving
Jokhang
me in, so I went and stood near the wheel, but didnt dare to go near until a little old lady nearly caused a huge pile-up of people behind her to create a gap and let me in. I did two koras and it was another great experience. I have to say that the Buddhists are the most inclusive people when it comes to sharing religious experiences.

For lunch Sarah, Candy, Simon, Jacqui and I had organized to have an cooking lesson and learn how to make tsampa, which are Tibetian dumplings, at a nearby hotel. It turns out that Mongolian and Tibetian dumplings are almost identical in the preparation method, with the only difference being that Mongolian dumplings use beef and potato, while Tibetian dumplings use yak and onions. It also turns out that my dumpling making skills have not improved since the ger camp and I guess that I am destined not to be a professional dumpling maker. While all the others improved over the course of making at least two dozen dumplings each, mine remained miserably bad. Simon referred to my efforts as “Old Man Balls” while Candy simply refused to eat them, once they were
Jokhang
cooked. We all had a great time, though, and came away full and merry.

In the late afternon we headed down to the river to see the Bathing Festival, that had started the day before and runs for a week. During this week people head down to the river, to both bathe and recieve a blessing from the holy river. The locals make a day of it, having picnics, washing out rugs, and, concerningly untanned sheep skins. Simon, Jacqui and I each walked in to mid-calf in the cold water but no further, given the amount of garbage flowing past. This didnt stop the locals, however, who were bathing in the river or washing their hair. In another piece of proof that people are the same the world over, good loking people keep themselves well covered in public while the less attractive (read massively overweight) are more than happy to flaunt everything that they have.

About the only other thing of note from my time in Lhasa was that I bought a rug. I really haven’t bought any souveniers, except fridge magnets, on the trip and had no intention of buying anything major in Tibet. The previous morning
Jokhang
I had been waiting for Sarah to buy some prayer flags and I had wandered into a nearby shop, whcih turned out to be one the swankiest in town. To waste time I had started flicking through the big floor rugs and, oddly enough, fell in love almost instantly with the one second from the bottom. Made of yak wool and hand woven, it has the exact colors of my living and dining rooms. I had always thought that I would get a Turkish rug for my living room, bit seeing this, I knew I would never find anything better. Fortunately for me, Sarah has some experience selling rugs and she told me that it is indeed of high quality and worth what they were asking for it. Iat least managed to drag myself away from buying it right there and then (mostly because I didnt have my credit card on me). But going back the next day, it was lying on top of the pile and I knew I still had to have it. I managed to haggle the price down a bit and get them to include all the souveniers I had bought to date when shipping it,
Potala Palace
so I was very happy at both the purchase and carrying a few kilos less through the rest of Tibet.