Tibet...Part One

Okay, so I know the reason that I'm procrastinating getting these photos out....there are so many of them I always get overwhelmed. We took something ridiculous like 950 photos and while I know everyone loves seeing what we've been up to...that many would just put you to sleep.

So, to break it up I think these are going to come to you in stages a bit. This post is about our first few days in Tibet...in Lhasa. Lhasa is the largest city in Tibet and we were there for three days to help us acclimate to the fact that it sits at 11,975 feet. To give you some perspective on how high that is...when we were at the top of Fuji it was only 12,388 feet, so barely higher than the town of Lhasa. Thankfully, while you found yourself huffing and puffing when going up a flight of stairs, we didn't suffer from any other adverse symptoms.

The first day there we got to go to the Potala Palace, which was the main residence of the Dalai Lama before he got run out of the country. It's quite interesting....there are Chinese military men everywhere heavily armed and they patrol the streets non stop. It is basically an occupied country. But the palace was lovely...a bit barren, but sitting on top of the city and full of Buddha images and sacred scriptures. We didn't take that many pictures inside the palace because for most areas they were not allowed. When we got to the palace...our tickets were for the opening, we found out that we only had a one hour pass to see the entire thing....new government rules. I got the impression that the rules were altered frequently for no reason whatsoever. Our guide was great though and we saw everything in our limited timing. Apparently we were there on a very auspicious day, so there were a lot of people walking around the palace, which is apparently good luck. So of course that night we walked around it too and it was so lovely.

We also got to see the summer palace of the Dalai Lama, Norbulingka Palace. One of the past Dalai Lamas had what sounded like arthritis and built the palace so that he could go swim, which helped his joints. That was followed up by the Jokhang Temple, which was a bit of crazy. First of all outside the temple there were people everywhere prostrating, which is a series of motions which you basically fall on your face in worship. Then there was a huge line of Tibetans going inside the temple to view the special Buddha images. Being tourists we got to go right in, but had to fight our way through the hordes of people. It was craziness!

I am happy to report that there were some really good restaurants in Lhasa and we even found a great coffee shop!

Okay, so more to come, but here are the pictures of our first day in Lhasa.

Until next time...Jenn