Baza Hotel Lhasa

... of jade, clothing, household tools and a good display of metalware. On display were musical instruments, theatre masks and costumes. Upstairs we saw a good display of Buddhist religious statuettes and thangkas- the painted or embroidered religious pictures which show the deities/buddhas and also teaching thangkas with medical and educational charts as thangkas.Explaining the lamas in another section there was an abrupt end to the display with the 13th dalai lama, the 14th’ ...

... in terms of a somehow mystical spiritual importance for it’s people. Actually the Mount Ararat in Armenia is the only challenger that I can think of at this moment.

One thing that partly ruins the atmosphere in Lhasa however, is the presence of the Chinese military, which is thorough. Policemen and machine gun-holding soldiers are just everywhere you can think of, even some of the monks in the most famous temples are said to be working ...

... ore and old growth lumber to fuel China’s prodigious growth. And this is to say nothing of the reports of uranium deposits up on Tibet’s Chang Tang wilderness.

The recent riots and protests that erupted across Tibetan counties in five Chinese provinces in 2008 and again, to a lesser degree, in 2009 were basically in reaction to the unyielding development of Tibet, and the consequential and inverse threat to traditional culture that it poses.

As a ...

... motivated and very organized. The reason that I finally ended up choosing Sim's Guesthouse to put it all together was because I had been there for a week and I thought that there would be some loyalty there and hopefully he would make sure that everything would run smoothly!!!!!! To be fair to Sim, I did e-mail him and he did call and was willing to return any of his commissions earned (which I did not take but asked that it ...

... large handles, the rooms were painted with many bright colours, there were many tapestries, many of the rooms were small and dark and only light by yak butter lamps and the incense smells different here. It was very unique and hard to compare to anything else we have seen before. It is certainly one of the most impressive things we have seen too. We walked down stairs and a ramp around the outside and back of the complex. We spent 2 hours there and ...

... a nomad Tibetan family for an extra 400 Y. Want to see more than Lhasa which I have found something of a disappointment. Just another busy Chinese city with a scattering of Tibetans in colorful traditional dress. Not the exotic place of many decades ago. So if you give Lhasa a pass I can't say you have really missed something special. There are many other places in China I would have hated to miss. Beijing, Great Wall, Tiger Leaping Gorge ...

... enjoying a chat with their friends and wanted to stay a bit longer! Later that day, we went to a blind school set up by the organisation 'braille without borders'. While we waited to be shown around, I played and talked a little with the kids. I had a couple of balloons which they loved and they were really smart. Before the school had been set up there had been nothing like it in Lhasa and the kids couldn't keep up with the mainstream schools. Now children come ...

... province, told the Qingdao Morning Post on Aug 21 that they would be delivered on schedule in February. The company was not informed that the service would be operating in September. The newspaper report said the train would have 12 passenger cars, two dining cars and a sightseeing car. Each passenger car would have four 20 sq m suites with double beds and bathing facilities. Ministry of Railways spokesman Wang Yongping wrote in his personal blog ...

... center of the main square in the old part of town. It was being circled clockwise by Tibetans wielding clockwise spinning prayer wheels. Sebastian, easily entertained, become mesmerized by these spinning prayer wheels which later led to a frantic shopping spree in which Sebastian dragged Fiona around town in search of the perfect prayer wheel. The Jokhang temple was a very busy temple with loads of Han Chinese tourists. It was built on a lake at one point, so it is ...

... all the grandmas were leaping around and scaling stones, and some of the monks were running, just to show off. the people where really funny, they kept showing us the right paths to take, and if you tried your own way you were likely to end up on a precarious cliff face and having to backtrack. once the kora was finished we wandered around the monastry. again, the tibetans were showing us where to go and what to do. i got adopted by an old ...