Golden Bridge Hotel Lhasa

... and make this intricate<br>knot which is decorated by colorful hair jewelery. Other women weave<br>brightly-colored yarn in their hair. We think it's the Kham men who<br>wear the red scarves in their hair and weave red yarn into their hair<br>&#8211; they also wear turquoise earrings. Turquoise and coral are the<br>big gemstones in Tibetan culture &#8211; men and women wear it and they<br>also incorporate the stones in their prayer beads and prayer wheels. <br><br><br><br><br>We ...

Did you know that internet is hard to find in Tibet?<br><br>Well it is.<br><br>So is oxygen.<br><br>This will be quick because I'm knackered after today. I trekked up a mountain (about 600m up over 5 miles in rough countryside). I even had a nomad carrying my bag and jacket (he grabbed them and wouldn't give them back, actually) and it was STILL exhausting. The scenery was amazing though. And I had yak butter tea twice in a day, and it was actually nicest in the ...

... plane to Lhasa. <br>The whole 3 days in Xi'an we have not seen the sun or blue sky, and the last day it rained, so other than the amazing history and the terracotta warriors I think we were all happy to leave.<br>The flight to Lhasa was beautiful, all the way we could see the most amazing mountains, and at some stages snow capped mountains.<br>when we arrived at Lhasa airport, 3 hours late, at 5.30pm they were closing up, but the blue sky and sunshine was ...

... bevor es wieder auf kurze Erholung ins Hotel geht.<br><br>Am Nachmaittag dann noch zum Sera Kloster am Rande von Lhasa - einem der 3 heiligsten Klöster. Auch hier ein ähnliches BIld.<br>Interessant dann der Debattierhof in dem sich die Mönche im "Argumentieren und Streiten" üben.<br>Bin dann gegen 1/2 5 wieder im Hotel .

... a small chapel with a stupas and 16 Arhats. In the next chapel has the Past and Present Buddhas and a monk was chanting in there. In the last small chapel there was a statue of the Present Buddha.<br><br>We went back into the courtyard in front of the Chanting Hall. Bill took some pictures and we were able to see the new flags that had been raised. Pasang spotted a yak. He was lying comfortably at the top of the stairs in front of the Audience Hall! Too funny!<br><br>It ...

... too much because Bill is not eating. The tourists had mostly emptied out by the time we left the restaurant. It had been very busy. The staff spoke English very well. Yeah! I guess Tibet is more interested in foreigners than the rest of China. Pasang taught us that for beer you have to pour 3 times and sip 3 times. "Shapta" means cheers, but you are supposed to drink it all. "Goon Come Saw" means greetings. We walked to a bookstore to try and find a map, but had ...

... occasionally dusted with snowcaps like rolling waves and interspersed with turquoise lakes glistening like jewels: the undulating hills of the Tibetan plateau which until then I had mistakenly thought to be rather flat. The land was barren with hardly any trees other than along some ot the Chinese built roads. And this was to remain so until we hit the Nepali border again. At the airport we were picked up by our Tibetan guide Lobsang and our driver Jampa ...

... a moment and I stared at him and he finally came and showed us our compartment and which beds were ours. And now the fun begins, there are 6 berths in each compartment - which we were well aware of, but in our compartment there is a Mom and 4 or 5 year old son, husband (he actually has a seat only but in another car way up front), a young woman who is going to university, a man who spent all of his time in his bed on the 2nd bunk and another mature man who had the 3rd ...

... Age of Kalki, the end of the world. Waving the latest casualty counts from Iraq, he referred me to the Mahabharata: 'Property will alone confer rank. Wealth will be the only source of devotion. Passion will be the sole bond of union between sexes. Falsehood will be the only means of success in litigation.' That did sound familiar. Brahm was part of a noble tradition of Westerners seeking revelation in Shambhala, one that ran back to the 1620s, when Jesuit missionaries climbed up from ...

... Xinhua quoted Sandstrom as saying. The five-day trip is their first to Tibet, Xinhua said. "We have no worries about the safety here," Sandstrom said. "The only worry was to get the permission to come." The Himalayan region has been all but closed to the outside world since the biggest protests against Chinese rule in two decades exploded into rioting March 14 in Lhasa, leading Beijing to swiftly shut off the area. Troops also flooded into predominantly Tibetan ...