I guess the second part of our stay in Lhasa can be summarized by: Temple, Monastery and Palace. In order to visit the famous Potala Palace, prospective visitors must reserve tickets one day ahead, unfortunately the day we returned from our NamTso lake excursion around 5:00pm the 1,000 daily reservation had already been issued. So in the morning, we met our guide and went to visit the Jokhang Temple close by our hotel.
Since our arrival in Lhasa, we’ve felt immersed into a different culture within China. Although we’ve seen many Buddhist temples throughout out trip, we have a hard time relating to the devout pilgrims that queue several hours each morning at the Jokhang Temple in order to pray in the various chapels contained in the temple. We’ve seen an ongoing flow of pilgrims turning their hand-held prayer wheel or stationary prayer wheel. From our western Christian perspective, it is a bit hard to comprehend the extent of the Buddhist faith. As we understand, although the Buddhism was imported from India, it appears that Tibet has blended to it some of its own particularities.
As we entered the Jokhang Temple with our guide, we felt that we benefited from a Disney FastPass in that we were able to by-pass all the pilgrims and quickly gained access to the various chapels. Photography within the temples, monasteries and palace are typically prohibited or available for certain chapels at a premium cost.
After visiting the Temple, we took the taxi to secure our reservation for tickets for the Potala Palace for the next day. After waiting more than one hour in line, we got a confirmed visiting time of 2:20pm for the following day. During the wait, Jenny had a long chat with some Chinese teachers that had just driven from Chengdu to Lhasa with another group of teachers. It appeared, according to these teachers, that Lhasa has lost much of its Tibetan flavor compared to other parts of Tibet they had seen over the past few weeks of driving.
Later, we explored a pleasant park at the base of the back of the Potala Palace. The park contained many exercise equipment which the locals enjoy very much.. After lunch, we returned to our hotel for a rest. Victoria and Jenny have now picked up a cold – most likely as result from our NamTso lake excursion.
Later in the afternoon, we ventured out again among the market alleyways in search of some souvenirs. We even walked through a Muslim sector of town… but failed to find any souvenirs meaningful to us. It appeared that most souvenirs we saw were Buddhist related.
Since our arrival into Lhasa, we noticed a clear military presence. The military stand guard at various street corners. Military patrols seem to continually walk in the market area surrounding Jokhang Temple. It appears the military have been present in the area since a Tibetan uprising in 2008. I trust many local Tibetan must find the military presence somewhat annoying.
On Wednesday morning, we were awaken by a heavy incent smell in our hotel room. We were not sure whether it was coming from outside or inside the hotel. We learned later that today was the beginning of some Buddhist religious celebration.
We opted, with input from our guide, to visit the Sera Monastery (5kms away). At the entrance, Jenny and Victoria opted to wait for me and the guide as they were concerned that incent smoke would disturb them as it did at the previous day at Jokhang Temple. The visit lasted an hour. Again, the queue of pilgrims awaiting to pray in the chapels of the monastery was overwhelming. At the conclusion our visit, we learned that our guide’s brother was a monk at this monastery for the past twenty years.
In the afternoon, we went for our long awaited visit of the Potala Palace. The Palace is separated in two distinct part identified by the building’s predominant colors: white and red. The White Palace is the living quarters of the Dalai Lama while the Red Palace is devoted to religious study and Buddhist prayer The building is said to house more than 1,000 rooms. Obviously, our 1 hour visit only scratched the surface of this amazing building. We also learned that the 1,000 reservation ticket was implemented as a building preservation measure to avoid unnecessary structural stress on the building.
For the past couple of evenings, we’ve been enjoying some ice cream and coffee at an Italian Cafe located next to our hotel parking lot.
Thursday could not have come any sooner for Jenny and Victoria. As our flight was scheduled for later in the afternoon, I took another try at finding some meaningful souvenir but I resigned myself leaving Lhasa without any specific Tibetan articles – except photos and memories!
Someone must of know that Jenny was eager to reach Shanghai since for the first time of our trip, our plane was over two hours late. Our stop-over in Xian was also marked with some flight confusion – waiting over 30 minutes for foreigners that never showed up!
Jenny almost kissed the ground upon our arrival in Shanghai! As for me, I did enjoy the Tibetan scenery and culture but I did not appreciate the travel restrictions imposed on foreigners, namely the need to have a guide throughout our stay in Tibet.