Lhasa - Day One

We awoke the next morning and had breakfast. We were both in heaven. Love (although he pronounced it more like Lop) was our host every morning for breakfast. The best I could tell he ran everything down stairs except the front desk and was there from before we woke up (7AM) until about 9 at night. He was another great example of how a great smile and a good disposition can go so far in everyday life.

Breakfast was a traditional Western breakfast with eggs to order, pancakes, potatoes, coffee and all the trimmings in between. It was quite good especially compared to what we were use to on the train. It looked like your typical tourist crowd. I would say it was an even mix of Europeans and Chinese. I was always surprised how few people we met from the US, Canada and South America.

After breakfast we met up with Tashi. Our plans were to include the Jokhang Temple and the Barkhor Street bazaar. It was almost surreal walking into the Jokhang Temple. It was everything I imagined and then some. I am not a huge fan of visiting static museum exhibits. I get bored way too quickly. That’s what so great about Tibet. It is one huge living, interactive museum.

In almost all cases you are not allowed to take photographs in the temples, so unfortunately I only have one photograph that was taken within an actual temple. And that was taken on the down low.

Jokhang Temple is probably split 40/60 with tourists (40%) and practicing Tibetans (60%). It was just surreal walking through this temple. It is hard to use words to describe it. If you have seen the movies, if you have seen the pictures, it is all this plus some. Words can not describe how I felt when I first approached my first set of true, authentic yak butter burning candles. It was straight out of the movies and pictures I have seen, but it was that much better because you had every sense working overtime especially your sense of smell. Tashi did a great job of pointing out all the details and leading us in the right direction. His descriptions and English were amazing. It will be an experience I will never forget.

After our tour of the Jokhang Temple we did a quick tour of the Barkhor Street bazaar. This bazaar encircles the Temple and it is part of the pilgrim experience for the locals. Custom dictates that you are to walk clockwise around this temple multiple times. It is a truly exhilarating experience. Locals far out number foreigners to the point that we always had a group of people staring at us. After we looked around a bit Tashi turned us lose for lunch which allowed him to go take care of some paperwork. We spent most of our time sitting on some planters watching people go by and taking photographs. Of course if one observed this from a distance, one would question whether we were watching them or they were watching us. It was just one of those once in a life time experiences. We smiled at people as they passed by, they smiled at us and the world seemed to be that much smaller if not just for a little bit.

We actually got so caught up in people watching that we ran out of time to eat and needed to meet up with Tashi to visit Potala Palace. This was just another once in a life time moment that seemed to happen non-stop through out the trip. At the hotel we met up with not only Tashi, but the driver as well. It is a short drive from the hotel to the Palace.

On our drive over to the Palace the Land Cruiser stalled out in the middle of traffic. At the time we did not know what happened, but later we found out that the Land Cruiser was out of gas. I could instantly feel Bernadette tense up. Since I have done quite a bit of traveling in Asia I was not as worried. It is my philosophy that something will always go wrong on trips like this. It is just the nature of the beast. To me what is important is how you or more importantly your guide deals with the situation. This was the first instance of many in which Tashi, our guide, really earned my respect. Without missing a beat he left the driver with the car and we jumped in a cab to make the rest of the trip. We could have easily hung out with the car for a bit, we could have easily walked the remainder of the distance, but instead Tashi did what I think any good guide should do. He took care of his clients first and then worried about the rest latter. This was not the only instance where Tashi went the extra mile. He never let us carry our bags and he always made sure we were eating before he ever would find a bite for himself. There are many people in the world that could learn a great deal from this great person.

When we arrived at the Potala Palace we moved towards the front gate. You are required to not only show tickets, but your tickets are assigned a certain time window that must be obeyed. It is interesting to note that right beyond the ticket takers was a metal detector and x-ray machine. Without even thinking about it we started putting our items on the belt of the metal detector then Tashi smiled, laughed a little and said not to worry about it. And then pointed out that without electricity these types of machines don’t work very well.

You can find all kinds of information on this Palace on the net, so I won’t go into great details, but I can confirm it is as amazing as it sounds.

This is another one of those sites that has no elevators. From what I could tell is you hike to the top and then work your way down through the palace. I would guess hiking to the top consists of hiking to the top of a ten story building. With the altitude tugging at you it is no easy task, but it is very doable and there are many places to rest and take breaks. Just take your time.

Once inside you are treated to a truly memorizing experience. It is overwhelming to take everything in. The only disappointing part is how empty the place feels. The palace is just absolutely huge, yet there are only a hand full of monks and tourists walking about. I can only imagine how amazing this place must have been in its hay day. This is one of those places where there are only very limited places where you can take photographs.

You exit out the back side of the Palace. You walk down a path and are given the choice of swinging up and around to the front side where you started or you can continue out the back where there is a nice park that is relatively new. I have to give the Chinese credit and say that they don’t do all bad. This park did seem to fit well into the over all scheme of what was taking place.

After touring the Palace we made our way back to the hotel. We were exhausted and did not want to make the trek out to find something to eat, so we ordered some food down in the bottom restaurant and then had it delivered to the roof top deck. This was actually quite amazing. The photograph two up of the Potala Palace is taken from this rooftop. It really was a great place to have a quite meal with the cityscape of Lhasa in the background. We were up there totally by ourselves. It was not long after that we were dead asleep in our hotel room.

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