Lhasa day 2

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After breakfast in the hotel, we met Gelleck and went to the Potala. We began at the village at the bottom of the Potala that had traditionally been where lawyers, criminals, soldiers, and other professionals had lived and worked. If I remember right, it was also the former red light district. Then we began the long climb up the stairs to the Potala proper. The Potala is a very impressive building, sitting about 80 meters above the surrounding city. The central part is red while the outer buildings are whitewashed.

Again, we toured the various temples inside the Potala, and Gelleck tried to explain what the various statues and paintings were about. The most impressive things we saw were the tombs of the former dalai lamas. The tombs were massive structures maybe 20 feet tall covered in gold and precious stones; quite the ornate burial for a spiritual leader. The views of Lhasa from the top of the Potala were also very impressive. Generally speaking, however, the Potala was rather a dark, dank place and I could see why the dalai lama would want to flee to the Summer Palace as soon as possible each year.

We took lunch in restaurant a couple of doors down from our hotel where I had some curried potatoes and yak meat momos. As I bit into the first momo, I noticed that the meat did not seem fully cooked. I mentioned this to Kris who said that often when he had had dumplings with meat in them, they didn't seem fully cooked but he had never had a problem. So even though I knew better, I ate four of the momos. Chris had four as well, and Ido ate one. As I started eating I remarked that it would be interesting to see if that meal "stayed down". Little did I know what was in store.

After lunch we went to the Sera monastery just on the edge of town. There we toured more temples, saw more statues of Buddha, dalai lamas, and former kings. We got to see the printing operation where men using woodblocks would manually print the long pages of the Tibetan holy books. According to Gelleck, a hard working printer could crank out 1,000 pages of text per day. Not bad considering that the block had to be re-inked before every print. We also went through a temple where monks were blessing people. The faithful would stick their head into an opening, touching their forehead to something inside, a protector deity statue I believe. For the children too scared to do that, the monks would say a blessing a put a black smudge on the child's nose.

But the highlight of the Sera monastery was the "debating monks". Inside a walled courtyard covered in pebbles and cobbles, nearly forty monks assembled to debate Tibetan Buddhist teachings. Actually, it wasn't really a debate, but more of a teaching instrument for younger monks. The young monks would sit on the ground while an older monk shouted a question at the young monk. The end of the question was punctuated by a loud clap and step toward the young, seated monk, whereupon the young monk would offer his answer. Then discussion would ensue after which the older monk would throw out the next question. With dozens of monks participating, it made for a quite a noisy and entertaining spectacle.

After watching the debating monks for about half an hour, we left the Sera monastery. On the way out, we paused for a quick game of pool. We were all terrible and so it wasn't that quick of a game. Ido and I each had an ice cream on a stick, and then we flagged a cab. I had brought empty fuel bottles for my stove, so we stopped at a gas station to fill them with gasoline. Apparently, it took me too long to fill them, and the cab driver became pissed off and demanded more money whereupon an argument erupted between Gelleck and the cab driver. In the end, I think Gelleck won by arguing to the cab driver that he was making Tibetans look greedy and bad in front of foreigners.

Back at the hotel, we split ways. Gelleck and Ido went off to find a camera battery for Ido and Kris and I went food shopping. By the time we had walked the short distance to the grocery store, I was starting to feel sick. On the way back to hotel, I knew what was coming and remarked to Kris that I was going to be sick. Back at the hotel, I lay down for a while, and then the vomiting started. It took about three vomiting episodes for me to get up all of the lunch I had eaten, as well as everything that I had eaten and drank since lunch. I tried to take Cipro, but I threw that up too. I tried to sip water throughout the night to stay hydrated, but every three or four hours, I would throw up whatever I had drunk. I got really dehydrated and had a pretty miserable night.

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Comments

[Wendy]

hehe, so never ever have not fully cooked meat any more. I got food poisoning in Thailand about 3 years ago, I believe that was because of the not well-cooked chicken, that was the worst! Vomiting, dizzy, dehydrating...horribly awful!