Days 233-236: Lhasa
Tibet is a magical place. Everywhere we went there were pilgrims filing past Buddhist temples spinning prayer wheels and the air was filled with the smells of yak butter and incense.
We flew from Chengdu to Lhasa over spectacular scenery of mountains peaking through the clouds. Lhasa sits on the Tibetan plateau at an elevation of 3700m and it took a bit to get used to the abrupt elevation change. Lhasa is a really cool city. The place is packed with people from all over Tibet dressed in ethnic outfits. It was refreshing to see folks proudly wearing cultural dress when they couldn’t care less if tourists were around.
Tibet is really big on yak. These are some seriously hairy bovines (yes, hairier than Marcus) with a bad attitude. There are dozens of stalls selling yak meat. Yak ‘sizzler’ appeared on every menu. Shops sell clothing made of yak wool and ceremonial poles were topped with braided yak hair. Dried yak chips are used as fuel for stoves and for insulating house roofs. You can smell yak butter everywhere. Yak butter is used as fuel for enormous multi-wick candles in the temples and monestaries (pilgrims donate money and yak butter). Yak butter tea is a salty brew that neither of us cared for. We even had a chocolate cake that tasted much more like yak than chocolate.
Tibet was “liberated” by China in 1950 and has a heavy police presence. Along with lots of Chinese settlers, China has brought a tremendous amount of infrastructure to the region (schools, roads, etc). But all of this has come at a cost to Tibetan culture and religion. Fortunately, not everything was destroyed during the Cultural Revolution and the place has a wonderful religious feel about it that even non-buddhists can appreciate. There are no Tibetan flags anywhere, nor images of the Dali Lama. We had monks whispering ‘Dali Lama’ to us in the Potala Palace in an incredibly quiet voice to avoid being overheard by the numerous police stationed inside the place. It felt a bit overbearing. At a particularly cold hotel within a stone’s throw of a government-run behemoth, one traveller told us: “I’ll free Tibet tomorrow, but I want a hot shower tonight.”
Signs for an ironically-named company in Lhasa.
The Potala Palace sits on a hill looming over Lhasa. It is the seat of Tibetan Buddhism and former residence of the Dali Lama (he’s living in exile in India). The place is huge and maze-like with thousands of rooms, but we only got to see a tiny fraction. Some interesting rooms were on display; it was cool being in the room where the Dali Lama received dignitaries.
The Potala Palace sits on the hill over Lhasa.
A corner of the white-washed walls of the palace.
A really cool, eco-friendly appliance we saw all over the place was a sun reflector used for heating water. Didn’t there used to be a thing called ‘solar tea’?
The Jokhang Temple is at the heart of Lhasa and the place was surrounded by a procession of pilgrims spinning prayer wheels and prostrating themselves in front of the temple.
Pilgrims making the circuit around Jokhang.
Prayer wheels are a remarkable labor-saving device. The Buddhist mantra ‘Om mani padme hun’ (means something like ‘hail to the jewel in the lotus’) is written thousands of times on paper inside the wheel. Whenever the wheel is spun once, it is supposed to send these thousands of prayers. There are huge ones at the temples and most of the pilgrims had little hand-held versions that they spun constantly as they made the circuit.
The inner hall at Jokhang is surround by a wall of prayer wheels.
The main meeting hall at Jokhang was the most stunning religious room we’ve seen. But no cameras were allowed, so you’ll have to go see it yourselves and settle for this smaller, less ornate meeting room upstairs.
The doors in Tibet are amazingly decorated. Most are painted in vibrant colors, covered with metal ornamentation, and have colorful braids on the door handles. Here’s a neat doorway at Jokhang Temple.
While we were at Jokhang, they were white-washing the walls with what appeared to be yak milk. Is there nothing that animal cannot provide!? Speaking of white-washing, we couldn’t find sunblock for sale anywhere in China except in a “Skin Whitening” set complete with skin bleach. Since we had been working so hard on bronzing, we left the skin whitener in Lhasa.
Tags: Tibet
Kelly & Marcus
November 11th, 2005 at 6:39 am
If you can deal with the elevation, Tibet sounds like a very peaceful, lovely country… Nice change from other places you have shown us.
Hope Nepal is equally tranquil…
Hugs xoxox
November 11th, 2005 at 3:12 pm
Hey Marcus:
Were you able to resist the urge to go Golden Child on that big prayer wheel? I can see you doing an Eddie Murphy imitation and making a complete jack ass out of yourself…
JR
November 16th, 2005 at 7:45 pm
i was meditating and waved as you walked up the temple steps…i guess you didn’t wanna yak
we call it sun tea
i add stoli…