Lhasa:

April 6th, 2005 - April 10th, 2005

Greetings again from Lhasa.

We've been here almost a week since our return from Everest and each day is just as enchanting as the next. Lhasa quite possibly could be the best city on our whole trip. The people here are so friendly, the atmosphere is very relaxed, and aimlessly wandering around town proves to be exciting each and every time we do it.

On our trip we have come across many foods; some bad like Sheep Brain in Bombay or Pig Intestine in Dali... and some good like White Rose in Hoi An and our newfound love: Yak Steak!!!

Yak is a huge staple of the Tibetan diet as well as a somewhat holy animal. In fact, people who have herds of yak dress them up and practically treat them like their own children.

Anyway, we discovered a great place for yak steak before heading off to Everest and we introduced the rest of our group to it when we got back and it was a big hit. In fact, our final dinner will be held there tonight over fresh cuts of yak steak.

Along with yak steak, they also have great yak jerky here. However, yak butter tea - another Tibetan staple - would have to fall on the "not so good" end of the spectrum. We tried it yesterday for the first time and you can just feel your stomach struggle to try and digest it. Although, the Tibetans swear by it and drink numerous cups a day - mostly to keep warm and prevent chapped lips in the cold weather and harsh sunlight.

Besides eating - which does occupy a lot of our time here - we found some time to search for some souvenirs to bring home. We have more or less resisted going nuts on souvenirs to this point; however, the stuff here is so unique that we had to bring home a few things including prayer scarves, prayer flags, a singing bowl, and of course our prized prayer wheel made out of silver. One of the best parts of walking past all the souvenir stalls is that all the vendors yell, "Hello just looking" as if they were yelling "Hello how are you." I guess so many tourists would yell back to them "Hello just looking" in response to "Hello" that they have now all adopted "Hello just looking" as their saying!

The other day we ventured out to Sera Monastery which is 5km from Lhasa. It is set up like a small city - much like the monastery we visited in Shigatse. However, the big lure of Sera is the daily debating session that takes place in the big courtyard each afternoon. The monks pair off and debate religion with each other.

One monk stands and aggressively slaps his hands forwards towards the seated monk as he makes his point. The seated monk will sometimes retort and wave a finger in a "no no" kind of fashion to disagree with the arguments. It is a very animated and noisy display, but a lot of fun to watch.

We also finally made it inside the Potala Palace, the former home of the Dalai Lama - now "looked after" by the Chinese! Politics aside, the place is massive and beautiful from the outside, standing high upon a hill in the middle of Lhasa.

Surrounding the Palace is a kora (religious pilgrim circuit) which is lined the whole way with prayer wheels. It is bustling with energy all day long. Inside the Palace is a bit of a different story. A lot of the rooms look grim and have fallen out of order.

A major reconstruction project has just begun and hopefully they will make the inside nice again. Of course, the construction meant that our rather expensive entry fee only allowed us access to a very small number of rooms which was disappointing.

On Saturday we took another minibus outside of town. This time we went 8km to the west to Drepung Monastery, which translates literally as "Rice Heap", and for good reason. It is a massive collection of white buildings on a hillside that does, from a distance, resemble a massive heap of rice.

The monastery used to house 10,000 monks, making it the largest monastery in the world. That is no longer the case. Sadly, when we visited, the monastery was virtually empty. We had the place to ourselves as we wondered through the various temples and colleges. Most of the interiors were similar in design to the other monasteries which we had seen, save for the massive statue that we found in a temple attached to the main hall.

Interior photography in this monastery costs 20 Yuan, but a monk gave me 10 Yuan change for that photo because he liked us! That was about all the interaction we had with monks at Drepung because they were nowhere to be seen.

Today was our final day and it proved to be our most adventurous day in Lhasa. We chose to walk the Lingkor Kora - a pilgrim circuit which traces the exterior of the former old city of Lhasa. Most of the area is Tibetan; however, some of it is scarred by modern shops, mostly of Chinese nature. As I have mentioned before, only 4% of the area in Lhasa in still Tibetan.

The highlights of the kora included a stroll through the Muslim Quarter - about 2,000 Muslims live in Lhasa. We saw both of the city's mosques, each were quite modern in design. We also saw a couple of local markets and found the area more active than other parts of town.

From there we reached the bottom of a small mountain that rises in the south of town, opposite the Potala Palace. It was doused in prayer flags, unlike anything else we had seen. Pilgrims were praying and chanting as they walked up one side and down the other of the mountain. Also on display were eye-catching carvings in the stone of the mountain. The area had an aura to that was quite different than the rest of Lhasa, making the long journey well worth it.

At this point we were back near the Potala and we wanted to climb the mountain so we could take better photos of the Palace. We had difficulty finding the access up the hill that was so easy to find according to the guidebook. Finally we went through a gateway that appeared to lead to a residential neighbourhood at the base of the mountain.

We found a small path up the hill and we climbed some rocks to get to it. We walked up the path towards a gate that led to some stairs to the top of the hill. As we went through the gate and up the stairs a Chinese soldier (more like a 15-year-old boy in a uniform) came running after us. Moments later another soldier was on his tail and a third one was running down the stairs towards us!

Luckily, Naama was with us (one of our friends from our Everest trip). She is the only Israeli I know who speaks decent Chinese and she explained to the soldiers that we just wanted to take photos of the Potala Palace from the hill. They said we couldn't so we started to head back down the hill. At this point the General showed up and made sure we went down the hill. I'm sure he is a proud General, being in charge of keeping tourists off a hill in Lhasa!

Anyway, we went to a lower hill with the rest of the tourists and took some photos!

We spent our final daylight hours in Lhasa by doing one final tour of the Barkhor circuit. This time we decided to poke our heads in some smaller temples. The first one had a massive Buddha statute that sat on the first floor and had its head extend all the way to the top of the building.

Upon our exit from that temple we continued down the small alleyway and through a door. We came into a massive courtyard full of seated Tibetans - mostly old - drinking tea, chatting, and all spinning their prayer wheels. It was a bit surreal. It was like they all went there and hid out to avoid life.

They were all very receptive to our visit. We offered a "Tashi Dalai" and they responded in turn with a slight gesture with their palm open and extended. We wandered into the temple which was bustling with energy and then up two flights of stairs to the roof where there was more of the same sort of gathering.

A group of four guys asked us to join them - more like insisted - and inquired as to where we were from. "Canada" began buzzing on the lips of nearly all of the 50-75 people on the roof of the building - talk about news spreading fast.

We had a nice conversation in broken English and saw one of the nicest prayer wheels on our trip. We left that group and tried to leave but another group insisted we join them for some chitter chatter. In the group were two monks - one from Shigatse and one from Gyantse. The one from Shigatse did most of the talking as he spoke the best English. That lasted 15 more minutes and finally we were on our way back down to another course of Tahsi Dalai's...

That wraps up our time here in Lhasa. It will definitely be sad leaving here tomorrow. From here we are off to Beijing and will be there for about a week before heading off to Shanghai for four days and then wrapping up our trip in Hong Kong.

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