Will be traveling

Thought I would send this last picture of downtown Lhasa with the beautiful Potala Palace in the background, as we will be traveling for the next couple of days and I may not get to my blog. Just a reminder that as I can't see my blog, there is no point in sending comments or greetings as I will not be able to answer. I will catch up with everyone when I get back.

The Potala Palace

The highlight of Lhasa and probably the whole of Tibet is the huge Potala Palace monastery. Very few monks live in the monastery which was the winter palace for the Dalai Lama, and different groups lived in the white and yellow areas, with the red area reserved solely for the Dalai Lama. There are hundreds of steps to climb both outside and inside, and they start at street level and go to the rooms at the very top. It is not for the faint of heart, especially when you are at an altitude of over 12,000ft. It contains room after room of Buddhas, Stupas containing ashes, relics and scriptures, all surrounded with a strong scent of incense burning. About half way through it is a little overwhelming and you long to be out in the light and the fresh air.

It stands majestically, close to the center of town, and makes an imposing sight looming about 400ft above the street level. Always wanted to see it, and now I have.

Women, young and old

The younger women are street vendors selling mostly prayer beads and other jewelry. Like most people in Lhasa they wear a hat and a face mask to protect them from the sun. The long skirts are typical, and the striped apron indicates the woman is married.

The old women are from eastern Tibet and came into town for a religious festival. Although, a couple of them have grey hair, I have yet to see anyone as white haired as myself, and I get lots of stares. As the guide said, I am a celebrity!

Different types of prayer

All Tibetans are Buddhists and a large portion of their life is given to prayer.

The woman with the mat is prostrating herself using small hand mats which allow her to slide her body to the ground, and then slide herself back again before she stands up and prepares for the next slide. Her legs are bound together and her feet never leave the ground. She does this repeatedly for hours and she was back again the next day when we passed by. Both men and women do this facing the doors of a monastery,

The second photo shows a stream of people in the foreground walking around the circumference of the Potala Palace. They do it at all times of day, sometimes 3 times a day or maybe once per week, and it takes place around other monasteries too. As they walk they pray and spin hand- helled prayer wheels in a clockwise motion, and both sexes of all ages participate.

Traditional clothing

This is the traditional clothing for men and women in Tibet.

A first stroll in Lhasa

After meeting our female guide Choredna who was educated in India when Tibetans could still get a passport, and our driver whose name I have forgotten, we drove about 1 hour from the airport to the city. Infrastructure construction is going on everywhere with new highways and railroads (built by the Chinese) but it is contrasted by the farmers manually planting and tending their crops of barley (a staple of their diet), potatoes, some vegetables, and water melons. People's diet consists of all kinds of meat, but Tibetans do not eat fish as they are considered to be gods.

We are left to our own devices regarding dinner every evening, so we took our first stroll in the town.The buildings are typical of most streets in the center of Lhasa - white with beautiful decoration around windows and doors, and nearly always 4 floors high. The ground level is rows of small shops with large doors which when closed cover the storefront at night, and most of the have a sign with large Chinese letters and very small English words. That together with the fact that they do not have street maps makes finding places difficult.

Finally, we stumbled on an upstairs vegetarian restaurant where we ordered what we thought were two main dishes and two sides. It was 4 large dishes of great food but it would have fed 6 people. It only cost $12!!! Amazingly, they had boxes to go so we packaged up food as we had seen a few people begging on the street, and it did not go to waste.

Then it was home to our comfy beds for what we hoped would be a good nights sleep.

We made it!

I know you have all been anxiously waiting and I apologize for the delay, even though it was by no means my fault. The extreme weather over Hong Kong meddled with our travel plans and created a journey where we were in Transit 48 hours, arriving at our overnight in Chengdu, China at 2am Monday morning after leaving JFK on Saturday. Add to that an error in our passport numbers which had been entered into the system - thankfully resolved by a supervisor at the airport - it made for a rough trip but one with spectacular views of the Himalayas peeking up through the clouds.
However, we are here, safely settled in our charming hotel in Lhasa, Tibet.