I've been in Tibet for over a week now and things have been busy busy busy. We polished off our time in Lhasa by visiting the Potala Palace, the former home of the Dalai Lama, and Ganden Monastery, up in the mountains.

The Potala was interesting, but not what I expected it to be. It is a much more imposing place from the outside, due to its massive size. The Potala was once the largest building in the world and was decently damaged in the Chinese Cultural Revolution but not leveled (a tough feat) due to the intervention of Zhou Enlai, the Chinese second in command at the time. The Potala is also the final resting place of many of the dalai lamas, whose ashes lie in massive golden stupas inside the building.

Our next stop was Ganden Monastery which is located about 1.5 hours outside of Lhasa by a route filled with hairpin turns and steep drops. The monastery itself was pretty cool and we got to see some more chanting and mantra saying:

Ohm mani padme hum

The views were beautiful and we walked the pilgrims' kora around the monastery which was filled with prayer flags, river views, monks, and pilgrims. Rumor had it that there was a sky burial site in the area but I didn't see it.

The highlight of my Lhasa experience was in a tiny nameless temple off of the Barhkor Square, down what I called the "toilet alley" because I remembered where it was in relation to the TOILET sign. A fellow Intrepid character, Scott, and I wandered down this small lane to the end where we stumbled upon over a hundred Tibetans spinning their prayer wheels and saying their mantras. After carefully working our way through the devout, we entered the temple.

This was a seriously intense experience. The small temple was filled with incense smoke and we had to pick our way through to any free space we could find. Luckily, an older woman made room for me, and Scott squeezed in nearby. No sooner was my bum was on the cushion when a cup of yak butter tea was offered to me. Yak butter tea is an "acquired" taste and drinking a full cupfull is not appealing to me, but to refuse would have been extremely rude. I looked at Scott as he laughed at my plight, only to be silenced with his own cup of the salty buttery stuff. I closed my eyes and downed the first gulp.

To my pleasant surprise, it was good! My last experience with this traditional tea was not so good (seriously, think of drinking the salt and butter you pour on popcorn) and this greatly relieved me. As soon as I finished a little of it, a monk ran over to top it up for me. To add to my yak butter stresses, all the little old ladies were watching me for my reaction and when they were satisfied Scott and I were not deranged, they offered us candies and weird biscuit type foods.

I spent the next forty five minutes mostly with my eyes closed listening to the people around me chanting, with the occassional sip of tea. Every once in a while monks would play cymbals, bang on drum, or play a weird clarinet type intrument. Finally when my legs were jelly, I motioned to Scott that we should leave. I thought that my day couldn't get any more interesting, but I was wrong.

As we left the temple, we were treated like celebrities. Everyone was yelling out "tashi delay!!!" which means "hello" and waving to us. One sassy woman motioned for us to come join her and her friends as they spun their prayer wheels. She took a stool and turned it on its side for me to sit on... why I couldn't sit on it normally, I don't know and didn't have the linguistic ability to ask. Sassy lady then motioned to her older friend, who was holding a sad and shy little boy, to send him over. The site of two longnoses (what Chinese/Tibetans call westerners) scared him and he hid in the older woman's shoulder. Then I realized WHY she was calling the little boy over- she was pointing to my boobs! She motioned that he should come over and latch on to one of them!!! The was no doubt as to what she meant because she whacked my boob and made a sucking gesture with her mouth.

UM, NO. Sorry, I'm not currently lactating, so please leave the boobs alone. This seems to be a recurrent theme for me in Asia.

Luckily, I was able to escape because another old lady was trying to get her friend to kiss Scott and he was wanting to leave as well. As we walked down the street, we waved goodbye to our hosts and fans, with a weird memory of Lhasa to savor forever.