"Of monastries and monks." a Lhasa Travel Page by joks

The trip to Tibet was a sudden one, a week in September was all I had. And the offer from my cousins were too hard to resist. They continued on ..and I had to fly back to Melbourne.

We flew into Lhasa from Chengdu. The views from the airplane were fascinating and I stuck my face on the window throughout the entire flight journey. We were warned before that AMS or acute mountain syndrome could be very serious and we would need to spend the first two days acclimatising in Lhasa.

Never did we know a couple of us will be spending days in the hospital undergoing an IV drop. The first night in Lhasa was horrible. I had trouble eating the first day and ended up throwing up the whole night. My head felt like its being squeezed by a large clamp. It took me the next day to recover completely. One could not talk too much and walk to fast. After being holed up in the hotel for 1.5 days, I was just dying to get out there.

The first visit was to the Potala palace. The climb up to the Palace was quite a hard one; it was a hundred or so meters above ground. Add to that the fact that you are nearly 3600 meters above sea level. All I could say that it's definitely worth the climb. The upper part of the palace ( the red palace) holds a lot of museums and rooms; In them were the treasures of the Kingdom. Buddhist scriptures, Stupas of the dalai lamas and statues and murals of the Buddhist gods. Going with a guide is worth the extra money, especially if you are Chinese speaking since I found the English speaking guides next to us were pretty bad at describing the historal facts.

The visit to Barkhor St is also a must for the die hard shopper. The Tibetian ladies are very well groomed in the jewellery department, and boy are the shops around the octoganal street interesting. You see them selling everything you turqouise earrings, ivory daggers to Tibetian prayer murals and flags. I easily spent the day hunting for cheap souveniers. The holiest temple in Lhasa is the Johklang Temple which lies in the middle of Barkhor Street. If you like to witness the procession of a pilgrim, (the routine of walking 3 steps and kneeling and scrubbing yourself on the ground), this is the place to see it. We were told some of the pilgrims travel for weeks on foot from their villages and you could see this on some of the pilgrims.

The picture on the left shows the square from the temple. We were told this was the place where demonstrations were held often; as a result you see a fair share of Chinese armies around the area. (We saw many Chinese Army trucks around the capital too).. You can see the Potala in the distance.

Drepung was wonderful. We went here alone so we were really unsure about the history of this monastery. Sadly, parts of it were destroyed during the cultural revolution. Nevertheless, it still looks glorious and the monks are back. There seem to be a village along the way up to the monastery and when you are up there; the view towards the surrounding rock mountains were great! As well, there is a traditional Tibetian kitchen which has a giant pot for cooking. I did not last a minute in there. The minute I walk in, my face was green and I was about to puke. WHY? The smell of yak butter!

I would love to come back to this sacred land one day before things change too much. A lot of Tibetian villages are being destroyed to make way for highways and bridges. The next time, I will love to travel around the countryside and interact more with the local people.