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Published: September 26th 2006
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Pilgrims at Jokhang Temple, Lhasa, TibetOur group visited Jokhang Temple in the morning, but only briefly as there were stacks of pilgrims lined up around the building to pay their respects. Karma guided us through, explaining some of the more important statues & although we didn't get into the room housing the three most important, we could see from the outside what people travel enormous distances to see. We wandered about the temple grounds taking photos before heading off to Potala Palace at our allocated time. A limited amount of tickets are sold each day to visit the Palace & everybody is allocated an entry time. Unfortunately our group was split, with the majority visiting today & the remaining dozen or so pushed back until tomorrow morning.
After an airport like security check, we milled around in the Palace grounds for about twenty minutes, expecting Karma or a Palace guide to take us through. When nobody showed, we decided not to waste more time & headed off to guide ourselves. We met up with Karma at the Palace's entrance & after a short historical spiel, he explained it would be very busy inside so he couldn't come in; we were essentially on our own again
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Pilgrims at Jokhang Temple, Lhasa, Tibet - surprise, surprise! Inside, we found that it wasn't very busy at all & most other groups had guides, so we eavesdropped here & there to get better explanation of particular items of interest. Potala Palace housed the Dalai Lama until the Chinese Revolution when he was expelled from Tibet. At the time the Dalai Lama was ruler of Tibet & head of the Buddhist religion, as he is today. I was blown away by the size & magnificence of the Palace, however the extravagant opulence really saddened me because I realized that Buddhism is essentially the same as other religions, all the wealth & power is given to a privileged few at the top of the food chain, whilst the masses of followers live out a far less fortunate existence.
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