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Published: September 16th 2010
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9/3/2010 Friday - Flight to Tibet. Quite the amount processing for us in Shanghai. The guy next to us was Chinese and he sailed through. Our papers were checked twice and we had extra screening through security. We stopped in Xi’an and then on to Lhasa. The airport is literally a flat spot in the mountains 11,000 feet above sea level. It was really cool to see and not at all frightening because we assumed the pilots knew what they were doing getting us in. We were picked up by our guide and driver and were off to the hotel. The Xin Ding Hotel is very nice and the high altitude does not seem to be bothering either one of us. I’m sure the medicine we are taking is helping. I was up most of the night with a migraine but that is par for the course with me and travel. All is good now.
9/4/2010 Saturday - The sun does not rise in Lhasa until 7:30 (all of China is one time zone) so we slept in a little. We had breakfast and then walked around town. There were a lot of Tibetan people out for their morning
prayers and they gave us a lot of smiles. Our first official stop today was the Potala Palace. This is the former winter home of the Dalai Lama. The current Dalia Lama became the 14th one when he was 4 ½ years old. At age 25 (50 years ago) he was forces into exile to India where he still lives today. The Potala Palace today is mostly a tourist site and used by the military. They limit the visitors to 4000 a day and give a one hour limit to your visit. The process was a little weird for us. We had to leave our guide outside and pick up a different one, Myidon (means Sun Goddess), to get us into the palace. Once inside our China Highlights guide, Sang Mo could take us through. We have many pictures from the outside but none were allowed to be taken once inside. Off to lunch at the Lhasa kitchen. This must be a tourist restaurant as it was full of Westerners. Here we tried Yak meat for the first time. It actually looked like beef and although a little tough, had a really good flavor. Our next stop was the Sera
Monastery. It is known as one of the three greatest monasteries of Tibet. It is here that the monks (250 live here) “famous daily debates” take place. They do this from Monday through Saturday with Sunday off. It costs them 10 Yuan or about $1.50 a day if they miss this. The debates are really discussions or question and answer sessions put on for tourist to see. They do this at various monasteries but this is the only one where the public is invited to watch and take pictures. Also today at Sera monastery, the children were being brought for a prayer to keep them from crying. Our guide’s sister had Sang Mo’s 2 year old son there so we were able to meet him. Really cute and he loved playing in the puddles!
Lhasa is a very walkable city so after a quick nap we walked to the Jokhang Temple area. The local people walk around the temple on Barkhor Street every day in a clockwise direction saying their prayers. I guess it is very disrespectable to walk the other way. Along the way are vendors selling all kinds of things. Some religious and some just stuff.
The crazy thing was that you could not go back to a vendor if you wanted to buy something. You would have to completely go around the temple again. Definitely helped with the decision making. After doing some shopping and dinner we headed back to the hotel for the night.
9/5/2010 Sunday - Our second full day in Lhasa brought three more temples/monasteries. We joke that being a tourist in China means that you must fill your quota of temples/monasteries before they will let you go home. Every tour that we go on we see one after another. They do seem to be set up different here in Tibet but are made up of the same Buddhas.
Our first stop was the Drepung Monastery which was used by the first four Dalai Lamas until the fifth one built the Potata Palace. The monastery was built in 1416 and is surrounded by the Black Mountains about 6 miles outside of Lhasa.
Next we went to Norbulingka which means “Jeweled Garden”. It was constructed by the 5th Dalai Lama and served as the summer palace. The current Dalai Lama built a larger palace on the grounds
in the 1950’s and now the property and gardens are mostly a tourist site.
The last temple of the day was Jokhang Temple. This is the oldest temple in Tibet being built in 647 A.D. and is considered the most holy. Yak butter lamps burn in front of the statuary that includes a statue of the 12 year old Sakyamuni Buddha brought to Tibet in the 7th century by the Chinese Princess Wen Cheng.
Once again we came back to the hotel for a nap (actually Jason naps and I write this blog) and then headed back to the “Old Lhasa” area around Jokhang Temple. The restaurants here all serve about the same menu so we tried another recommendation from our guide. All good food and about $12 for the two of us so we can’t complain.
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